First ride review: Schwinn Sidewinder from Walmart 20.6 mile ride. - Page 21 - Cycling Mob: Road Cycling, Mountain Biking and More

01-06-2005, 07:52 PM

GPSBlake wrote:

> Just curious, how much does an LBS charge to fix a flat?
$4 while you wait.

--
Andrew Muzi
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Open every day since 1 April, 1971

01-06-2005, 07:54 PM

On Wed, 05 Jan 2005 19:35:08 -0600, Pat wrote:

> That's why you see parents hauling their little
> kids
> : in their cars to the park, where they drive around little electric cars.
>
> Wow! I actually saw this in a local park: the mother was walking slowly
> behind a 3 year old boy who was driving a battery-powered "jeep" over the
> grass. He was getting NO exercise at all!
>
> Pat in TX

It's the norm here in Nashville. Morbidly obese kids practicing on these
toys until the day they turn 20 and get a real scooter because their feet
got amputated because of diabetic complications.

Sad and disturbing.

01-06-2005, 07:54 PM

On Wed, 05 Jan 2005 19:35:08 -0600, Pat wrote:

> That's why you see parents hauling their little
> kids
> : in their cars to the park, where they drive around little electric cars.
>
> Wow! I actually saw this in a local park: the mother was walking slowly
> behind a 3 year old boy who was driving a battery-powered "jeep" over the
> grass. He was getting NO exercise at all!
>
> Pat in TX

It's the norm here in Nashville. Morbidly obese kids practicing on these
toys until the day they turn 20 and get a real scooter because their feet
got amputated because of diabetic complications.

Sad and disturbing.

01-06-2005, 07:54 PM

On Wed, 05 Jan 2005 19:35:08 -0600, Pat wrote:

> That's why you see parents hauling their little
> kids
> : in their cars to the park, where they drive around little electric cars.
>
> Wow! I actually saw this in a local park: the mother was walking slowly
> behind a 3 year old boy who was driving a battery-powered "jeep" over the
> grass. He was getting NO exercise at all!
>
> Pat in TX

It's the norm here in Nashville. Morbidly obese kids practicing on these
toys until the day they turn 20 and get a real scooter because their feet
got amputated because of diabetic complications.

Sad and disturbing.

01-06-2005, 07:54 PM

On Wed, 05 Jan 2005 19:35:08 -0600, Pat wrote:

> That's why you see parents hauling their little
> kids
> : in their cars to the park, where they drive around little electric cars.
>
> Wow! I actually saw this in a local park: the mother was walking slowly
> behind a 3 year old boy who was driving a battery-powered "jeep" over the
> grass. He was getting NO exercise at all!
>
> Pat in TX

It's the norm here in Nashville. Morbidly obese kids practicing on these
toys until the day they turn 20 and get a real scooter because their feet
got amputated because of diabetic complications.

Sad and disturbing.

01-06-2005, 07:57 PM

On Thu, 06 Jan 2005 21:52:13 -0600, A Muzi wrote:

> GPSBlake wrote:
>
>> Just curious, how much does an LBS charge to fix a flat?
> $4 while you wait.

Is that plus materials? Or are you guys the velo-saints of Madison?

BTW, do y'all stock those groovy slot cleats for Look drilled shoes up
there at Yellow Jersey? I heard a rumour on the internets...

01-06-2005, 07:57 PM

On Thu, 06 Jan 2005 21:52:13 -0600, A Muzi wrote:

> GPSBlake wrote:
>
>> Just curious, how much does an LBS charge to fix a flat?
> $4 while you wait.

Is that plus materials? Or are you guys the velo-saints of Madison?

BTW, do y'all stock those groovy slot cleats for Look drilled shoes up
there at Yellow Jersey? I heard a rumour on the internets...

01-06-2005, 07:57 PM

On Thu, 06 Jan 2005 21:52:13 -0600, A Muzi wrote:

> GPSBlake wrote:
>
>> Just curious, how much does an LBS charge to fix a flat?
> $4 while you wait.

Is that plus materials? Or are you guys the velo-saints of Madison?

BTW, do y'all stock those groovy slot cleats for Look drilled shoes up
there at Yellow Jersey? I heard a rumour on the internets...

01-06-2005, 07:57 PM

On Thu, 06 Jan 2005 21:52:13 -0600, A Muzi wrote:

> GPSBlake wrote:
>
>> Just curious, how much does an LBS charge to fix a flat?
> $4 while you wait.

Is that plus materials? Or are you guys the velo-saints of Madison?

BTW, do y'all stock those groovy slot cleats for Look drilled shoes up
there at Yellow Jersey? I heard a rumour on the internets...

01-06-2005, 08:18 PM

On 6 Jan 2005 11:09:42 -0800, "StaceyJ" <[Only registered and activated users can see links. ]>
wrote:

>It would be interesting to see the dealer prices for both of those
>bicycles - my guess is that they're close to the same. I can recall
>reading in some trade industry rag (don't know which one) about LBS
>guys going to big box stores to buy the new stingrays (still in boxes)
>at full retail price, and then assembling them and selling them for a
>markup.

That may have happened, and they very well may be regretting it now.
I will note that every bike seller I've checked in this area, without
exception, is having a clearance sale of the bikes they did not sell
in December, and in most cases their shortfall was apparently pretty
dramatic, so the Stingray wasn't the only thing that wsn't moving. On
the other hand, that particular model appears to have been a
significant retail disappointment. One of the Wal-Marts has so many
of the Stingrays left over that the store is having trouble stashing
them all; I overheard the district manager discussing the unsold units
with one of the store's employees, and the impression I got was that
for that item, pretty much system-wide, Wal-Mart is stuck with
inventory that it's not sure will sell in any reasonable period of
time.

Unsurprisingly, I have yet to see a Stingray on the street. During
the Xmas rush, Wal-Mart was asking over $175 for a bike that pretty
impressively failed to capture the attention of the *kids* who should
have made up its principle target market, and in a recessionary
economy, that's a stiff price tag for something that didn't have a lot
of widespread demand. I think the lack of popularity is partially due
to the Stingray not getting the right kind of promotion, but in my
opinion the failure also reflects a mistaken assumption by Pacific
that the nostalgia craze for things like old Mustangs implied the
existence of a market for *this* kind of bike.

What Schwinn and the retailers who are stuck with those Stingrays
completely missed was that first and foremost, the nostalgia craze
itself is mostly an adult thing, and the kids haven't bought into it
the same way; if something's obviously inefficient and not very
useful, they're likely to ignore it. Second, for the folks who *are*
into the whole nostalgia kick, this Stingray is an aberration; it
doesn't echo the *bikes* of the '60s, it echoes the *motorcycles*, and
that's not what I'd call a formula for an instant hit. Had they done
a little research, they'd have noticed that over in the
motorcycle-enthusiast areas, the chopper is not at all an
up-and-coming thing; a few are around, and a few get built, but by and
large the motorcycle market that outgrew the choppers in the late '70s
and '80s has not returned to them.

Of course, Pacific could have more accurately aimed at any actual
nostalgia-driven demand by more closely copying the real
fashion-oriented bikes of the era; a 20" kid's frame with a banana
seat and chopper handlebars. I doubt that they would have done so,
though, for precisely the reason that those bikes went off the market
in the first place. I still recall the product safety warnings that
were published relating to the fact that their heavily-rearward
seating position gave the rider an unacceptably high risk of doing a
wheelie and dumping him on his head...and I'm sure Pacific's lawyers
reminded them of those old findings. To their credit, I have to say
that the current Stingray is a much better design in certain respects
than the old banana-seat 20-inchers were...but it's still, in the
final analysis, just a goofy exercise in impracticality.

I will note, however, that while I haven't seen any in use, at least
one Stingray must have been sold in this neighborhood. Last week, the
guy in the nearest lbs related that he'd just had an inquiry about the
availability of a 22" tube; when he expressed perplexity about what
that would be used with, I told him about the oddball-size wheels on
the Stingray...and his reaction was "Why do these people do that? It
doesn't make the bike any better."

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