Beware the dirt cheap French and Italian frames. Especially the French frames. For historic reasons those countries have their own local hardware sizing and threading standards, making it trickier than usual to find appropriate parts and often requiring country-specific tools. In particular the bottom brackets and headsets. See our lord and savior Sheldon Brown’s French Bicycles page for a pretty exhaustive cheat sheet if you do decide to commit to one of those colorful Peugeots. And talk to the folks at your local bike coop if you have one, they can advise on the practicality of servicing a particular bike and are generally the most affordable place to do so.

I got myself a broken, 12 year old, 2nd hand e-bike for 100€. The battery still lasted a year, then I replaced it for 150€. It has since become my main mode of transport.

At this point it’s not even counterculture, but good economic thinking. I need to help repair broken bikes for my family to not feel like a dirty Capitalist for how much money this thing saves me nowadays.

So bikes may not be the cheapest hobby, but if you get so into it that you do your own repairs, its worth every hour in terms of money and fullfilment.

My current most-used bike is a cargo e-bike I got because I wanted to be able to haul my kids to school.

But my long-time “daily-driver” bike is a circa-1991 rigid mountain bike that I got from a charity bike co-op for free (because I was a poor college student at the time), and it’s served me well for more than a decade.

I agree with the sentiment, but does it have to be so aggro? Was not expecting a suicide reference…

I ride a beater bike around too, but it does coat money to buy new consumable parts for it. So expect to buy used for £50 or whatever, but then put an equivalent amount into it every year or two for brake service, shifting service, tires, chains and other drivetrain parts, eventually new bearings or wheels, etc, as things wear out.

If instead you just chuck it and buy another used bike, well I guess you could do that, but it feels wrong.

Great vid!