A few years ago, as the local mountain bike organization -- to use the term loosely -- was getting more aggressive about building engineered trails, one of their spokespeople would say that developing the trails would attract "people with more disposable income." This spokesperson does competent work with a tractor and a chainsaw, but doesn't depend on them for his very survival. He has always seemed like someone who doesn't have to worry about his personal finances, if you know what I mean.
"Disposable income" is another way to sort people and sift out the undesirables. Whoever they are, they have failed to measure up as potential customers. That's the only yardstick that matters in the US economy.
Bicycles started out as luxury goods way back in the 19th century. Manufacturers were surprised at the volume of sales driven by working class customers who scraped together the coin to have a mode of transportation that extended their shoe-leather cruising range and didn't require oats, hay, water, and shelter, not to mention veterinary care and eventual body disposal. Someone who lived in a boarding house could probably find a place to shoehorn in a bicycle. And bikes were built to last back then, because manufacturers mostly didn't know any better than to make something as solid as they could, and build their reputation on quality rather than marketing. Disposable income wasn't an automatic weeding system.
Most of us would prefer not to ride an ordinary, with its tall wheel -- usually the front -- and tricky handling. Nor would we gravitate to an early model of safety bicycle, with its single fixed gear and substantial weight. But the vehicles evolved rapidly into lighter, more nimble machines still built to withstand the challenges of rough roads and long distances. From their beginning, they evolved from the simplest form, without even pedals, adding each level of complexity a bit at a time to preserve the durability of simplicity while improving comfort and handling. The best of them were relatively expensive, but standards changed slowly enough that a hobbyist or someone who merely appreciated the craftsmanship and ride quality could buy a high-end bike and ride it for decades.
As Wolfeboro shifts to summer mode, I scan the vehicles using our parking lot and the people getting out of them. The vast majority of cars parking in our lot at any time of year are not there for us, and seldom for any other business in the complex. They're poaching to go downtown. With the coming of the second home crowd and their guests, the value of some vehicles can exceed the value of my house.
Disposable income is here to visit. Biking draws a fraction of the participants it did in the 1990s. The seasonal residents and visitors bring with them fashionable bikes in road, gravel, and mountain categories. Sometimes they even bring them in. Overall I see fewer people than in the 1990s to the very early 2000s. When people come in and say the town is busy I want to ask them if they were in a coma from the mid 1980s through 1999. The crowds have definitely shrunk.
Mountain biking thrived because people wanted to ride away from the roads. It died because the industry pandered to the tech-obsessed stunt performer demographic and let prices get out of control. Riders might have had other reasons to cut back on their bike use as well. The transition was blurred by the surge in road riding that bridged the transition from the end of the 20th century to the first decade of the 21st. The industry had to re-learn how to make enticing entry-level road bikes and fill in the mid range. But then riders discovered everything that had intimidated and discouraged them about riding on the roads, and the numbers flaked away.
Various forms of road bike hinted at the possibility of the gravel category. But once cycling broke up into very specific categories, prices had to creep higher because no one was making it up in volume.
A cyclist in any category will be disposing of a lot of income to play at all, multiplied by the number of different category bikes that rider chooses to use. Tubeless tires and DOT fluid hydraulic disc brakes use highly perishable fluids that can damage the systems in which they are supposed to work. Regular maintenance draws a certain amount of money. Or you could wait for the tires or brakes to fail completely and then pay to clean up the mess they've turned into. Or quit cycling at that point, or just buy a new bike. Hard to say where you'll get it or who will work on it by that time.
I asked AI whether working in a bike shop was a good job. It basically said "no." It mentioned the chronic low pay, seasonal work load, and the suicidally thin margins that shops have to live on. I asked it how much the tools would cost for a rider to work on their own bike and it gave me a range of $30 to $1,000. It had more details about specific options, if you want to get into fixing your specific suspension system for instance. You will also have to hope that you can get parts when you need them.
The disposable income crowd is a competitive club. You're welcome to try to keep up. If you can't, they won't miss you.
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