I was at the grocery store right next to a big box type bike shop yesterday. A woman was test riding bikes when we rolled in and locked up. She was still there but test riding a different bike when we came out of the store. I began to load my 2 kids and 5-bags worth of groceries onto the Big Dummy. The woman came over and was checking out my bike. I struck up some small talk about how the test rides were going, and she complained that her only options were grandma bikes or racing bikes and noted that she really liked how I had my bike set up. She wanted fenders, lights, basket, swept back bars, bags, etc. I didn't want to say anything bad about the shop she was at (I would have a hard time finding a bike that I truly wanted in there) so I suggested that she might ask about a touring bike. I'm not sure the follow up because we rolled out as she was walking the latest test ride fail back into the shop.
On the ride home I debated if I did the right thing by not recommending a different shop. She seemed to know what she was looking for but that shop didn't have it. I could have sent her to a shop that would have had multiple bikes that were perfectly suitable for her. It would have been more about color selection and wicker vs metal basket rather than which of these bikes has the least compromises. Anyway, to address the OT... There are shops that sell normal bikes for normal people who just want to ride a bike. Knowing that those shops exist (whether online or down the street) gives us options. Unfortunately, those options and those shops are outliers in the grand scheme. --Smitty -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en-US. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
