Hobby gear and efficiency

Everything else
21

I’ve dabbled in lots of hobbies, and my general guideline is to do some research and then get something that 1) doesn’t cost so much that you’re going to miss the money and 2) provides you with an acceptable beginner/baseline experience.

Like, I wanted to try out digital art. So I looked around at the drawing tablet landscape and found a well-constructed tablet that integrated well with GIMP for a hundred dollars. I can swing that in a month if I plan for it, so I went with it. It was a horribly failed experiment, but now I know digital art isn’t my thing.

On the other hand, I bought a little MIDI controller and the cheap license for Ableton for about 150 a few years ago. That is a hobby I enjoy, so now I can make a smarter decision about when and how to expand my equipment and spend more.

22

Audiophiles are crazy. That is all.

23

Hobbyists only really become annoying when they try to tell others (well, me is all I really care about) that their way is the ‘right way’. Doesn’t matter if it is the $5k super-techie bike dude or the guy yelling “I ride a thrift-store Schwinn with fenders and have just as much fun as they do!”. They’re both right, as long as they are having fun their own way.

I may return to biking some day in the near-ish future, having pretty much laid waste to my knees in 30 years of rec-level over-30 soccer. When I do, I know I will want to buy a bike that is sufficiently decent that the investment itself will keep me doing it until it becomes ingrained. Nothing to do with snobbery - I just know the limitations of my own psyche. I will wear spandex shorts, though. Not much of a fan of chafed thighs. Spandex shorts are a thing for a reason (unless you’re some sort of holdout for wool, I guess).

24

It’s a stupid anecdote perhaps but i’ve become accepting that literally people really are different and that what works for… well, you’d think wouldn’t you that what works for one works for all, but that just isn’t the case. Cognitively we all have different tolerances for risk, different thresholds for loss, different capacities for learning, different degrees of drive and motivation.

So i was driving with someone and told them to turn down a road that i normally took but which they never had - it’s a path that makes sense to me. A few minutes later her ran into a metal pole and jacked up the side of his car. Outside of his well worn routes he was a fish out of water.

Sometimes when i’m hiking with someone just the act of talking to them causes them to slip (indirectly) - it’s only when they are the one initiating conversation can they handle hiking and talking at the same time, because that’s just their brain being the thing it is.

Sometimes the tortuous logic and paths that people are compelled to follow w/re to repairs, or relationships, or personal improvement, or whatever, are those that fit their own predilections, no matter how “good” on some objective level my advice seems to be. (This is after all the entire career model of Dave Ramsey, getting financial advice through to people who find themselves unable to be rational).

That’s why when it comes to hobbies i think the best you can do is point people in the right direction. Sure a $1,500 bike is, apparently, par for the course, but here for ex., i think it is far easier to just start with the decision of Road Bike vs Trail Bike vs Mixed Bike and worry about high-grading later.

25

A bike is an investment in your own health, and an investment to try and motivate yourself to go on bike rides.

Sure there are $10 bikes that might work fine, likely with some repairs or a new back wheel. There are also $100 bikes that work fine as-is, though they will tend to be heavier, older, and prone to failure (for example, it comes with 12 year old worn tires or gears that hardly shift).

Many people who want to try cycling want to do so cheaply, and don’t have any bike-mechanical skills or tools, and are really only semi-motivated to give it a try. This is a recipe for failure. What happens when that old tire flats on the first ride, requiring a 9km walk home? The person gives up cycling forever.

Alternatively, the person who is already a cyclist, could buy that $10 bike and get good use out of it. Because he has the situation and knowledge to fix it up and use it appropriately. People that live downtown and need a cheap bike to get to work and back, or an activity.

People suggesting a $300 used bike are doing so from an informed position - that the best way to get into it, is through a solid low-cost base. A used aluminum bike with decent parts, which is still nothing special.

I actually accepted a free bike for my daughter. It looked fine, and seemed to work ok. I shouldn’t have accepted that free bike, because a POS bike is worse than no bike, for a little girl. It weighed more than her, and the pedals seized randomly when pedaling forward. It was a low-end bike bought from a big-box store perhaps 8-9 years ago.

So I get to feel guilty for bringing a bike to the dump (again, I don’t want to put it on the street for another little girl to get turned off cycling for life). And then went and bought a proper used bike. It cost $160. For a 5 year old. It’s aluminum, and the brand is Giant.

I read an article about a guy that bought a $2,000 e-mountain bike for his 6 year old son. The result is his son is ADDICTED to cycling. The e-assist makes him feel like a super-hero. The boy joins his dad on some fairly serious mountain bike trails, and he can keep up. It’s an awesome activity, fun for them both. He also makes a point that he isn’t particularly wealthy, but decided to try this and invest in his kids interest in cycling as an activity.

Guess that’s all I can post about it for now? Could go on…

26

I appreciate your reply but the quote above is just completely foreign to me. The concept of buying something to guilt myself into a hobby seems crazy. I’d much rather buy the used bike that was $250ish new and see if I want to get into biking. Which is my attitude to most hobbies.

I might be making too much out of this but what is your reasoning behind using the word activity? Do you mean caring for the “bad” bike as an activity in and of itself (sort of like restoring cars) or are you separating a bike riding activity as distinct from cycling?

I don’t want to single you out but in some ways you have given the more polite version of the attitude that prompted the thread. I’ve described my interest in biking. It fits the “people who live downtown and want a cheap bike to get to [errands] and back”. Yet you dismiss that use case assuming I must want to do more and give a highly exaggerated warning.

27

Not so much to guilt yourself into riding more, but to have a decent enough performance that it isn’t a suppression on motivation. I also did mean ‘activity’ as in that there is some enjoyment for some people in riding a $10 bike, but that doesn’t mean it is a good idea for most people.

Your interest sounds like a fair approach, really. One of the mantra’s of cycling is “it’s all good man”. Others are just trying to be helpful, in that your average guy considering cycling for the first time in a long time, well, getting a decent bike is probably a good way to go. If you get into it, great! Maybe there will be a fancy bike in your future.

Not sure we need an anecdote but it’s like you’re saying a $100 used gaming PC is all you need. Maybe, but others on this forum will likely recommend you spend $400-500 to dip your toes. You can reply that your $100 system gets 60FPS at DOTA and that’s what you want to try. It’s all good, that might work for you, but it doesn’t make the others wrong either.

Good discussion though - it applies to my other hobbies I’m always considering too.

28

I think it’s true that if your goal is to see if something is fun for you and interesting to you, then there will be a price floor for many hobbies that if you go under, you don’t actually learn if you like the thing, since the experience at the super cheap level won’t even resemble the better level except superficially. Not sure where that floor is for biking but my guess is north of $100 in my experience.

But everyone will be different too, since everyone focuses on different things. And you won’t know until you do it and then you may not know if you’re under your own floor.

Now I’ve made myself sad.

29

You can get a perfectly decent new bike with Shimano components for ~$300 from bikesdirect; steel frame but that’s probably what you want for tooling around town anyway. At the same time, I understand scott123’s position: If you want to maximize the likelihood of a good initial experience for someone who doesn’t know bikes, you spend the money to get fitted with a good brand bike at a bike shop. It shouldn’t be $1500 though, unless you have money to burn.

30

I get this a lot with parents and guitars. They buy their kid some unplayable piece of crap because they don’t want to spend the money because the kid might not like it. So they get the piece of shit that doesn’t get played, justifying in their mind why they didn’t get a slightly more expensive one.

31

That’s a great comparison.

Especially these days it’s easier than ever to get a competent instrument than 20-30 years ago. My first electric guitar was a cheap piece of shit and even if I played the hell out of it, it was frustrating. Spend a little bit more and get something with reasonable tuning stability and better than trash can hardware and you have an infinitely better experience.

It’s hard enough to learn to play without having to fight the instrument the entire way.

That doesn’t mean you have to go insane, but having a garbage guitar is like having a car that you have to check the oil and tire pressure every ten miles.

32

And it makes a lot of sense then to listen to the people who are in the hobby too (on aggregate maybe, to avoid individuals with just bad ideas). They are going to have a good idea of what is the difference between garbage and something worth it and maybe even be able to help you out with finding it at a good cost.

I had a Walmart mountain bike given to me by a family member and was trying to ride it for exercise. It was complete garbage but I didn’t know it. I did maybe 4-6MPH on the thing and was exhausted riding it. It looked fine. But it was a steel frame with garbage components, so it was heavy as shit and inefficient. Then a biking group my brother was a part of offered me a used but well-adjusted aluminum frame Giant with good parts for $200 (after I got the first bike crushed by a car that wasn’t looking my direction when they were turning). The difference was astounding. I immediately jumped up to 12MPH (hey, I’m still fat and slow) and started enjoying my rides.

33

I get into new hobbies constantly. Each year I get a 5K bonus at work and use that money for the hobbies.

I was into telescopes for 3 years…bought and sold something like 25 scopes…different types, sizes, etc…but I only used my bonus money for that …could never use regular pay.

I’m now into synths and have bought and sold 13 of them in 1 freaking year…but only with the bonus money and obviously selling one’s to try others.

My wife spends hundreds on shoes and complains when I buy another 1K synth but then I gently remind her that my hobbies are not hurting our bottom line, that I can sell them and get a lot of money back if we need it…but your shoes and other crap…uh, shuts her up very quickly.

34

You should start a review channel on youtube! Which was your favorite telescope in retrospect?

35

My main hobby for the last 3 years is still bowling. I spend quite a bit on it trying to gain any competitive edge that I can including buying new balls every couple months and trying out different layouts for different reactions on varying conditions.

If you get into competitive tournament bowling, the oil patterns can get drastically different and having an arsenal of bowling balls becomes more important.

Then there are many other areas to focus on if you want to get serious about the game. Having a good pair of shoes where you can change out the heels and soles based on the surface of the approach to get a good consistent slide can be a big deal, especially if you go to a new house with tacky approaches and like to slide, or encounter more humidity or other environmental effects that cause it to be different than what you are used to. These replacement soles and heals can run $15 a piece and you probably want 3-5 of each.

New technologies (at least compared to 25 years ago), like using tape on your thumb to get a consistent release and using switch grip technology, which allows you to use the exact same thumb insert in all of your balls. Of course you have to have multiple ones of those too of different sizes unless you want to constantly be putting tape in and taking it out to adjust for a good fit. Or, the off chance that one breaks or comes out on delivery and gets lost in the pit for eternity! These can be up to $15 for the outer sleeves per ball and $25 per insert.

So, between balls and tape and using the new kinesiology tape, which I have gotten used to as my wrist gets weak with my old age, and it easily adds up to $2000 a year. It is probably similar to golf, though, in that upgrading to at least a solid performing ball with a good fit and your own shoes is a huge jump on potential scoring as opposed to grabbing a house ball and shoes. Somewhere in that $200-300 range should get most people that are serious about it started.

Another thing with the new stronger coverstocks is that they wear out fast, or can, and take maintenance themselves. Many ball manufacturers recommend resurfacing every 20-30 games and even doing a full restoration every 40-50 where you soak them so the oil is removed; strong coverstocks pull oil off lane and into them and need to be rejuvenated every so often if you want to keep their performance up.

It has certainly changed quite a bit since the 1980s when I first got serious with the game.

36

I thought about the youtube thing but generally dont spend enough time with anything to really put it through it’s paces.

For wow moments, a 14" Orion Dob gave me some fantastic views of some globular clusters while living in a bad red zone. As great as the views are and those big dobs are the best for seeing deep, you have to deal with weird sitting/standing positions with them.

I also love my 9.25" Celestron SCT. Very sparkly sharp open cluster views with that scope.

I had a 7" Mak-Cass that was incredible on the moon…I just sat there for 2 hours mesmerized…but it was a good seeing night and the scope was collimated well, so that all helps.

I should have loved all the doublet and triplet refractors but they just dont go as deep even if the stars are usually sharper and more pin point.

I live in a green zone now and will probably get another dob, a goto version, as I now can really see deep.

37

No offense but I guess I should leave the thread because I don’t have any hobbies!

I’m half joking but half serious. I have an off brand bike frame (but probably aluminum) with off brand components. I have been averaging around 8-10mph as a guesstimate (I haven’t been really tracking and the beginning and end of every ride is through a neighborhood). On the other hand I’m enjoying the rides so I’m fine.

The people “in the hobby” are pushing a level of the hobby that I don’t want at this time as if it was the minimum. I probably wouldn’t mind except that my level of hobby seems to fall into some mental black hole that no one discusses. I understand; if I’m satisfied with my gear and level of engagement I’m not going to buy more stuff. The mental processes that @TheRockSal and @Kelan describe are completely foreign to me although I’ll admit that none of my “hobbies” have even focused on competition so gaining an edge is not a big deal.

Edit to add - which brings us back to my original post. The Reddit thread wasn’t on biking but my “I’m satisfied” attitude is an example of holding back the hobby because I’m not putting more money in by seeking innovation and advancement.

38

It is fair to add that I do not take bowling as a hobby personally, but just trying to explain how it can get expensive if you want to gain a competitive edge, and that may be what this thread is about, or at least exploring how much to spend to feel comfortable at least. I have always taken bowling quite seriously while many do not, but to realistically gain a reasonable performance level, if you explore that, a certain level of equipment can go a long way. And if you are doing it for joy and to do well, like biking, it can certainly help!