Bike leasing is a thing now. Here in Berlin, I've used Swapfiets for a while. You pay something like 25 euros a month and in return you get a decent bike to ride (comfortable, 6 gears, good brakes, etc.). If there are any issues, you just go to store and get a freshly serviced one. Zero hassle. I've done this for minor rattles, the gears feeling a bit loose, etc. They actually remind people to come in for a fresh bike once in a while because they know these things need maintenance.

You end up spending about 300/year. And for that money you have no need to worry about repairs. Or theft. These things seem to be immune to being stolen. Both those things are big issues because repairs are expensive if you don't do them yourself and bike theft means you need to replace them (or pay extra for insurance) when that happens and it also means that using a nice bike to get around is risky.

With Swapfiets, I never worried about theft. You just lock it and the bike thieves apparently ignore them as they are probably hard to sell on (as they are very recognizable). I've done that all over Berlin, including many of the hot spots where I'd normally be reluctant to leave anything of value unattended.

I’m kind of stuck in the worst spot between both. Maintenance is a chore, but I still prefer to DIY vs taking it to the shops near me, which are various combinations of rude, unreliable (both in terms of scheduling and quality of work), and expensive.

So I just suck it up and try to fit the work in when I can, which is almost never.

Yeah, the "LBS" thing has been slowly dying. Maybe because of online shopping, but it also feels weird to pay premium for subpar service. Perhaps a spiral of death of sorts.

There is no bike repair in walking distance from me, so taking a bike in for repair means having to find other means of getting home and back there. To me, that's the biggest hurdle. Also, they give Littles guarantees to when they will actually work on the bike, and I don't want to be without it for an indefinite time.

If I instead could book a slot, come there, deliver it, walk around some other shops for an hour or two, then pick it up and bike home, I would've probably given them more business.

I enjoy most of my bike repairs, but some of them I can do without. For instance switching to studded winter tires, my tire+rim combo is a hassle to get on.

This.

I think it's worth mentioning that cycle touring doesn't have to be complicated either. I was always scared to take a bike ride longer than a weekend because so many people in that scene appear to be major gear nerds. Then I met a hobo who had just jumped off a train with a battered up omafiets and he inspired me to strap a bunch of crap to my cheap hybrid and cycle all the way across North America.

Turns out you don't need the latest and greatest anything, you don't need to spend a zillion dollars on tools, or sit around tinkering every day. If you can change a tube and oil the chain, that's about all you need to know how to do. Even with broken spokes or a snapped cable you can hobble along for a couple days, till the next town with a bike shop. And if your bike is cheap and generic, every bike shop will have the replacement parts already in stock.

When I cycled through Colombia I did it on a Buffalo Bike which was slow, heavy and pretty much indestructible. Took ages to get anywhere, but who cares? Rather spend my time pootling along slowly than trying to fix stuff. Fixing stuff is my job, that's the last thing I want to do in my personal time.

You’re on to something here - as a Dutch person, luke any of my friends, I have a ‘ daily driver’ bike with a in-hub set of gears, enclosed chain, drum brakes - and the thing is near indestructible. It spends its days in the street in front of my house chained to a bike rack ans still barely ever needs anything fixed. The typical ‘road bikes’ with derailleurs and rim brakes are fun when performance counts -but if you’re just getting around, who cares?

Interesting point of view, thank you! For me maintenance and repair have enhanced riding rather than diminish it. I find it's similar to how cooking enhances eating, or yard work enhances laying around the yard. Of course I hate having a malfunction while riding as much as the next guy, but I also ride with more confidence because I know I can handle pretty much anything that can go wrong, even on the go.

I'm strongly with GP on this. I wonder if this isn't some kind of broader difference between people, because I also disagree with the excellent examples you used. Cooking and yard work don't enhance my subsequent enjoyment of a good meal or relaxation - rather, I experience both to be annoying bullshit chores (ABC!) that, more often than not, I can't get myself to engage in, which means they deny the experience altogether instead of enhancing it.

Makes me think of the old, well-known saying, that you should focus on the journey rather than destination. In my mind, it does not compute. I often wonder if I'm broken somehow.

That’s why I favour simple single-speed bikes for commuting. Almost nothing can go wrong with them, and you can fix almost anything that does go wrong with a small bike tool. It’s also nice that they’re so cheap you don’t really care too much if it gets stolen, so there’s no stress about locking it up somewhere a bit dodgy.

I agree with you. I've also found that themore modern a bike is the more difficult it is to maintain

Take hydraulic disc brakes for example, when they work they are great but when they fail they don't work at all. You then have to bleed them which is fiddly, messy and requires special tools then you'll probably have to do it all over again after a few rides. Tubeless tyres are similar.

My experience with tubeless is that once I found a good setup, it's set and forget. I don't get punctures (none at all), maybe once a week top up the pressure, once a year top up the milk and that's it. It was like that with Panaracer GK+ tyres, but they have to be under pressure when I don't ride for longer periods, otherwise there are issues. Now I use Pirelli Cinturato Velo tlr and it's the best tyre I ever had.

Special tools: a bleed kit (funnel, syringe, silicon hose), two Alen wrenches an insert press and a hose cutter but you can also get away with a hammer, a vice, yellow holding blocks provided with the hose kit and a regular cutter. For tubelees you need a syringe and a tire booster.

Bicycle maintenance is what got me out of the habit of riding. You don’t ride for a little while and soon trying to pick it back up first means tires need a lot of air… oh that one’s going flat before the end of the block… Christ, it’s the rear one, there goes the whole afternoon expecially since I’ll for-sure mess up other stuff in the process. Guess I’ll do it next time.

Then I don’t, and stop riding.

It’s crazy that my car beats every bike I’ve owned handily in both maintenance-hours-per-hour-of-use and (obviously, by a loooong shot) maintenance-hours-per-mile. And it has complex electronics and has to contain little explosions and has parts than spin thousands of times per minute! And a damn air conditioner, which is a whole thing all in its own! Plus only cost as much as a surprisingly small number of allegedly-minimally-decent bikes despite requiring way more mass in materials and far more complex manufacturing. Hell, the precious metals in it alone… the bikes have none or practically none of that.

I love riding bikes though. Negative interest in spending any time maintaining them, and taking them to the shop all the time’s impractical (now the costs are really crazy, plus I have to transport them there and back)

[edit] fwiw when I eventually get over the sticker shock at what bikes with any nice features at all cost, I’ll probably get a low-maintenance bike like yours. Do wanna try those airless tires some companies make first, though. Shit’s always going flat, it’s the worst, hardly worth it if I’m still gonna have that problem or if the airless tires are terrible in other ways.

> You don’t ride for a little while and soon trying to pick it back up first means tires need a lot of air [...] Shit’s always going flat

I don't know what it is about this, I've owned bikes for 30 years to ride in a mix of conditions (from mountain trail to city) and I've had like 5 flats, tops. One because I failed to bunny hop a curb and blew the whole thing, busting the wheel in the process, and the others because I drove over something that punctured the tube.

My last bike I've had for about 10 years til it was stolen last year, at some point I left it unattended for like 3 years, and when I picked it up again it wasn't at perfect pressure, but certainly wasn't flat at all, far from it, and definitely ridable. I know because my el cheapo pump was bust and I rode it to the nearest shop.

By the time it got stolen, only the front tube had a change a couple years before because of a puncture (rode on shattered glass) but the other was still factory and perfectly fine at holding air.

This experience has been consistent with all my bikes, and friends that ride good hardware have a similar experience. Some others though, they keep on regularly being flat but from what I gather it's a) cheaping out on the hardware and b) being mind boggingly careless about what they ride over.

I've never had problems with flats, other than once where I had got lots of metal shavings in my tire which gave me flats for a few days until I caved and bought a new tire.

So your problem doesn't really sound like one most people have. I normally get flats like every other year or so. And that's with thousands and thousands of kilometers of riding each year.

Priority Continuum Onyx by any chance? Those things are absolute beasts. Fantastic commuter bikes.

That's the reason I use a single-speed bike (not to be confused with a "fixie") for commuting. I absolutely love the simplicity of it: no gears to muck around with, much less maintenance, light, and hassle-free. Perfect to deal with the "frequently stop and start" biking in a city.

In a (flat) city for commuting short distances, you simply don't need gears if you're below 50. It's a nice to have.

It also helps that I live in the "Low Lands" (Flanders, Belgium), so no hills around here, and it's a bicycle-first city.

Seconded. Love that my single speed rarely needs anything other than some air in the tires. I've got a converted 70s Raleigh that has been bomber for almost 20 years, with the only exception being a busted crank arm. Replace those old hollow aluminum things if you go this route.

Even got my dad a single speed e-bike. If you live somewhere mildly flat, that's a fantastic choice for durability with an ebike.

So many bikes end up unridden because the gears went wonky.

Yeah, nicely done, on the single speed e-bike. I didn't know that's a thing. I naively assumed all e-bikes have gears.

> you simply don't need gears if you're below 50

And here I am with all the gears; on a nice road bike; and I struggle to maintain 30 km/h on flat.

Is maintaining 30 km/h important? Why not leave a little earlier?

Yeah, the person you replied to thinks of cycling as a sport, not as a form of transportation. That is the sorry state of affairs in North America and Australia.

Edit: I see now that you are in TX, so this isn't news to you.

You guessed wrong! I biked for sport in France and the bay area. But also for commuting in San Francisco (so dangerous), and Palo Alto for many years.

My reaction was to the 50 km/h, as if the person was cycling at that speed. edit: maybe they meant that below 50 years old you don't need gears.

By the way, France has switched to a 30 km/h limits in towns. Pretty nice for cyclists feeling of safety.

Oh, I now see I was not clear. I was indeed talking about age when I said "below 50". Not speed. My bad.

My bad! Yes, I interpreted it as "below 50 years old you don't need gears".

That was my original intention indeed :)

I was explicitly talking about commuting in a small city, where there's a lot of start-and-stop-start bicycling is the "way of life". :-)