Choosing a bicycle or Emotion over Reason

How do we chose things? Depending on our time, and the importance of the purchase, this process may vary substantially. Dish-washing liquid. Probably a nanosecond of thinking, before we remember all the Sunlight adds and then chose that.
What about a bike? Two wheels, a frame, gears and breaks. Should be simple. Choose your brand and go. Well, not so fast. You see, once upon a time you could get a cheap bike for $100 and an expensive one for 5 or 600$. Now add another zero or two and you’ve got the picture. Furthermore each brand has created a whole range of price points and different models that could make car manufacturers envious. A relatively new bike manufacturer, Felt, has been around for 10 tears as its own brand hand has around 30 different models. Now that is a lot of choice! However they only really make 4 or 5 different bikes, and the differences in each line end up being about components and grams. Yes, grams. The less it weighs the more it costs. A lot more! We have the subtleties of the (marginally) different groupsets. Nice word, groupset, for expensive breaks and gears. And bike manufacturers are out to stir your emotions. Because if reason had anything to do with it, 95% of cyclists would realise that going faster has all to do with the engine (body, legs, lungs) and little to do with the chassis (bike). Certainly there have been advances; bikes are lighter than yesteryear, stiffer, better gears, more aerodynamic… bit it’s still the engine that pushes it along. And there is nothing more sad than seeing a fat guy on a Colnago. Our reason tells us this, tells us that spending $4000 on a bike is ludicrous, let alone $8000, especially since the “latest” technologies will be eclipsed in next year’s model! But cycling marketing departments know where we are weak. In our emotional response. If they can stir that, then reason has little hope in calming you down, making you think rationally, and buying the $1000 bike instead. Which is still expensive in my book. I mean, aren’t things supposed to get cheaper as you make more of them? But that’s another discussion…