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.
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.