You are probably used to tuning in to the Singletrack website and seeing what new and wonderful toys have come through the door. I won’t lie, getting to try today what was only released yesterday is one of the best bits of the job, and there’s often a lot of excitement when a new bike lands here and we play guess the weight and price. Fun times indeed.
Side note: Amusingly the thing that gets us most excited here at the office is a box of innertubes, everyone always needs innertubes.
The down side to all these new test bikes we get to ride is that our own bikes can end up languishing unloved and under-ridden. This isn’t because we don’t love them anymore, but time constraints mean test bikes take priority over personal bikes and, well, we’re all curious to try as many different bikes as possible.
This leads us to the inevitable, and slightly dirty, topic of downsizing. Actually owning fewer bikes. I know, it’s just wrong. The golden equation of bike ownership is n+1, with n being your current number of bikes. But sometimes the numbers don’t add up. A cellar has a finite amount of room for bikes, there’s only so many rides that can be squeezed into or out of a week and bikes need to be ridden or they get grumpy and seize up or leak fluids everywhere. Much like people really. I’m sure it’s not just us magazine tarts who have this problem; buying  a new bike can result in the previous favourite being relegated to the back of the shed and being dragged out only when the newer model needs some TLC.
When this happens there are a number of options; pass the seldom ridden bikes on to someone who’ll love and cherish them and if you’re lucky they’ll give you money/beer/cake/love, to let them continue to sit untouched in the corner in the hope that one day you’ll be able to drag them out for a ride, or to make more of an effort to ride more bikes more often.
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I think there’s an obvious answer there.
“Fewer, but perfected” is The Future IMO 🙂
3 is the magic number.
my fleet is perfect.
1x trance, for long, all day, marathon rides and enduro events
1x Summer season with 6″ marzocchis for “downhill dabbling”
1x XtC Singlespeed, with bombproof MXcomps for maintenence free hacking and mud riding.
perfect.
could use a road bike for the commute though as it will soon be increasing from a 32:18 friendly 3miles to a less friendly 15 miles….
do road bikes count?
Road bikes NEVER count.
Money/beer/cake/love here for the SS 🙂
A large portion of the first of those might work 🙂
ahhh, Benji… come on, embrace the roadie. It’s not like it will take over completely…
Though, on seconds thoughts maybe I should agree with you, or rather I should get the wife to for the sake of n+1!
If it helps, I have plenty of room for the bikes in the garage and would be only too happy to look after less-ridden ones!
Hmmm, rationally I know that my Kona full suss, my On One hard tail and my road bike are more than enough.
I am not a rational person however. If only my wife was not about to pop out our first sprog I could realise my plans for MTB global domination.
I second that. Road bikes never, ever, never count. How could they? Currently, my Santa Cruz blur XC is the only bike for me-and all I really need. It was true love at first sight, you see, maybe because it’s gangreen in color- It can handle anything I throw at it here in Minnesota. BUT, I would LOVE to get my hands on a truly fine piece of British craftsmanship-an Orange! orange bikes just always look so right..
With the N+1 formula you are of course assuming that n<a, where n is the number of bikes owned by the person in question, and a is the number of bikes owned by their riding buddy. Let number of bikes required=r, and the number of additional bikes needed=y
So
r=a+1 if na y=1
How many bikes does your riding buddy have?
Of course, if the riding buddy then applies this formula to his own situation, using the new value of n, let’s call it N, then his r and y are calculated as
r=N+1 if aN y=1
The more asstute among you will of course have noticed that we have an infinte sequence in which inevitably
a=N= ∞
One can never have too many bikes.
I once did hint to my riding buddy that I may have too many, but he helpfully suggested a solution to my problem. ‘Get a bigger garage.’
Meant to say, n+1 only works assuming that n<a, where n is the number of bikes owned by the person in question, and a is the number of bikes owned by their riding buddy. Let number of bikes required=r, and the number of additional bikes needed=y
So
r=a+1 if na y=1
Of course, if the riding buddy then applies this formula to his own situation, using the new value of n, let’s call it N, then his r and y are calculated as
r=N+1 if aN y=1
The more asstute among you will of course have noticed that we have an infinte sequence in which inevitably
a=N= ∞
Makes more sense now. Copied it (badly) from my own post
http://www.singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/do-i-need-another-bike-how-can-i-justify-it-to-myself
If road bikes don’t count then what about cross bikes? Great fun passing roadies with the knobblies buzzing on the tarmac and the big wide ugly canti’s sticking out each side of the seatstay’s like an offroad badge of honour. As roadies slow up for speed ramps a ‘cross bike makes you speed up to pass them while bunny hopping it! Also great fun passing unfit, overbiked, armour wearing MTB’ers lugging their behemoths up the gentler trails. The looks you get passing on a “road bike” is priceless! Every true mountain biker should have one in his stable! 🙂
africa!
My current stable:
Spesh Stumpy FSR
Inbred 456 with rigid forks
Shiny new Van Nicholas Ti road bike
Classic steel Roberts MTB set up as a singlespeed.
They’re all good, but I find myself hankering after a Ti hardtail with a nice pair of Fox forks… and maybe a less shiny road bike for the winter… definitely not fewer.
Sadly, my garage is now under a ‘one in, one out’ policy, so I think I might be waiting some time.
And road bikes do count, so nerr.
Nicely timed article.
Last three rides I’ve been on were on an 11 year old bike I just go back from a six month loan. Before that it was unloved and trashed in the back of the garage after two years of cummuting – brakes and seatpost seized which both required many hours to fix… anyway… it was awesome to be out with an old friend again (although she still has some very difficult to fix issues due to the age).
I’d been planning to sell it on but now I’m not sure. I was planning to downsize and “perfect” this year; but different bikes have different personalities, and older long term owned bikes simply have so much personal history. Difficult choices ahead I think.
It must be a tough life trying all these new bikes and equipment (and reviewing them obviously). I find I’m still tinkering and tweaking the set-up of bikes I’ve owned for many years… there are always improvements to be made.
I could do with a more recent bike,, after the heady days of being almost famouse whilst designing bikes for Marin and whyte i find myself with a stable of interesting bikes, well they would be if it was 2001
but now i hanker for something a little more up to date
In the Big picture, every bike in the stable counts BUT (and, as Pee Wee Herman once said, “everyone has a big But”) NEVER in my life have I looked at a road bike and thought, “damn, that bike is the Donkeys Mitts!” IOW-they all look the same to me; mingers one and all. However, pretty much every Mountain Bike and BMX bike will stop me in my tracks.
I have one bike (and a hybrid for town but hybrids definitely don’t count) and that is lovely. So I only need a hard tail and that would be a perfect stable.
What I really need, of course, is to ride more and that’s more certain than buying a hardtail. 🙂
[i]Amusingly the thing that gets us most excited here at the office is a box of innertubes, everyone always needs innertubes.[/i]
???? Time to move on, boys. Granted, one or two for emergencies etc, but really?
I have only got between 8 and 11 bikes at the moment and
I have space for about 20 so have to take all the large/xl bikes as a job lot…