For me it’s just that I don’t like having stuff, and having multiple bikes means having more stuff.
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For me it’s like some idealized notion of a healthy non-attachment to a bike (or anything, really) where it does most things I want it to do well enough and the few things that maybe could be improved don’t really matter that much, or aren’t worth the effort for any potential marginal gains. Accepting the imperfection of the bike and not getting caught up in tiny details exaggeration syndrome because dithering doesn’t always make a bike better.
Realistically, though, there’s better things to spend my mental time on (not that I do, lol). I’d probably just end up with “one” bike with a bunch of different wheels, tires, and bar combos.
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The only time in my life I’ve really felt justified owning more than one bike was when I had my commuter/riser’d road bike and my xtracycle. One to get around on, the other for groceries and big stuff.
I’ve done the roadbike + mountain bike + fun bike + cheap thing I picked up I’ll get around to next weekend and it feels excessive. I’m trying to eliminate excess as much as I can.
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No one’s keeping score
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I AM 
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Maybe it reminds us of when we first got into cycling. Most of us only had one bike then. And it was probably a super fun meaningful time. And then we got more bikes and probably got overwhelmed. And we yearn for a simpler time.
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I got into cycling when dad dumped a stingray frame he pulled out of the dumpster and a box of parts he had collected from garage sales and who knows, we rattlecanned the yellow frame black and bolted together the mismatched parts - I rode it till I graduated high school. front and back wald baskets for the paper route. I would have preferred to have had more bikes then too
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minimalism is privilege
if you have the means to hire out specific tasks, you don’t need the tools, clothing, shoes, or knowledge to perform them, just a credit card. a lot of the midcentury urbanism as well as the marie kondo revival in minimalist living centers around owning a small urban apartment that requires little of you, but it also permits little of you. self-sufficiency, in the way that a homesteader might need certain skillsets for survival, isn’t available when you own two shirts and can eat a variety of prepared food on the same block. there’s no space to create your own art or music, but you can easily attend spaces where others’ art and music is performed. others maintain your home, prepare food for you to eat, create goods for you to use.
you inherently depend on the non-minimal existence of others around you to perform your own minimalism
it’s a false equivalence to ascribe those virtues to these men, who are looked upon as simple, shabby, or unfashionable in the same way that women who own one pair of shoes or presumably one utilitarian dress would be out of place at a ‘cultured’ event
women who own lots of clothing are seen as frivolous, same as men who own lots of clothing are seen as dandies, dilettantes, trivial. this is the ‘new money’ level where people acquire everything tangible they need and want because they are not at the place where they need or want very little
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I basically own 2 pairs of shoes, 2 pairs of pants, a button down and a t shirt.
I can go to work and play at home. I do nothing else.
Also I have stretch pants for bike stuff
Luv this. Bikes as a lens for theory makes my brain feel good.
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eh, the antiurbanism here doesn’t sit great with me. You can do all kinds of things, you just hire in specialized experts to do things for you, and they call you when they need the thing you’re good at.
I’m pretty ok with interdependence.
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it’s not antiurbanist to say minimalism depends on the urban network. minimalists can only provide services that require no space, tools, or special gear to perform
you can’t be minimalist in a rural place, not in the same way
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Depends, those primitive survival youtube channels suggest you mostly just need a knife and some slow-moving local animals to make it. Compared to a 1200sqft apartment that seems a lot more minimal.
and of course most people who live in rural areas have all kinds of division of labor and social networks, so it’s not really apples and oranges
it’s definitely not apples to apples between urban and rural especially if you’re comparing a single person who bathes in a creek and kills wild animals with a knife to a city dweller living in an apartment
just a few days ago I visited a friends’ farm outside of Temecula that they are converting from trad ag to regenerative and sustainable— removing water-intensive crops like avocado for low-water crops. they grow a lot of their own food on the property and have a small local community that trades food and goods, so it’s approaching independent but it is by no means minimal due to the nature of operating a farm
an ascetic existence in a cabin in the woods could qualify as minimal, maybe you’re really into reading and writing and need very little at a typical time, but your food still has to come from somewhere. when the roof leaks or snow falls, you need the skills, tools, and materials to fix that or you are privileged enough that you don’t need them
‘minimal’ can mean a variety of things but truly having very little requires a specific set of conditions and a lot of privileged access
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or it means just being really poor
Back to the all important topic of my dress up dollies (bikes.) Owning a bike that is very similar in use & function to a bike I already own makes me feel sad and bad. I feel as though if I own more things than I can movie in one trip of my car I am living in excess. I’m working on these feeling wrt object ownership in therapy.
This thread has galvanized me to slap some 32s onto my Squid (light bike) and keep the 38-42s on the LF (heavy bike.)
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Except when you have deferred maintenance long enough and the day you need to ride that one and the rear brake pads are gone and
Well
Time to ride bike B
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I’m ok with having two of each kind of bike I use a lot- one is always falling apart in the long run
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