Okay, here's a tally.
I have (in descending age order):
Maple, my custom Naked adventure bike
Co-Motion Pangea for heavy touring
Kona Process 134SE dual-suspension mtb
Felt ZW4 carbon road bike
Cramerotti road bike (1989, in the attic)
Miyata 615GT touring bike (1987, needs some work but I keep it for errands since we live in the bike-theft capital of Canada)
Al's bikes:
Dean Torrey gravel bike
Colnago carbon road bike
Devinci Caribou touring/commuting bike
Banshee Rune dual-suspension mtb
Len Legge road bike (1980s, in the attic)
tba--he's considering a new road bike with disc brakes
Plus, our younger son has left one fixie and his cross bike in the shed... So that makes 6+5+2=13 currently here. Do we win?
Sounds unlucky. In our condo, there’s not even a thirteenth floor. Al had better buy that new bike soon. Impressive total though - more than three times what we have.
We have five on the premises presently. Two Bike Fridays that we actually ride for both touring and around town. One 1983 Bridgestone mountain bike that is kept for sentimental reasons, one bright blue 1960s Schwinn kept as cute bicycle decor, and our house sitter's bike of unknown provenance that will be gracing our entry way for the next couple of weeks. We have sold three hybrid/comfort/mountain bikes in the last couple of years that used to be "bikes for guests to use", because now Portland has a bikeshare program. So we've gone from ridiculous to an almost reasonable amount of bikes.
Maybe you could start inching your guest’s bike gradually closer to the door, as a gentle hint.
Scott our ‘Household’ is a bit like defining ‘Tide’. The numbers ebb and flow as cycle commuting children and cycle touring nephew come and go with regular but unpredictable patterns.
That said, I can do a quick tally for the current household. There are ten bikes comprising:
Seven of those ten bikes are mine.
The commuter I ride almost every day.
The most underused bike nowadays is the light road bike. All the others are ridden enough to justify keeping.
Six folders, including four Bike Fridays? Household members without number? Will you take offense if I suggest that you check out The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing?
So, 10 then. Definitely impressive - anyone making it into the double figures deserves notice. Not a record though: the CycleBlaze record remains with the Gaudet household.
Scott believe it or not I am a dedicated Marie Kondo fan which partly explains why we have only 10 bikes with almost half them being folding bikes. I could not master Marie’s sock folding technique, but I’m a whizz at folding bikes.
Also her book inspired me to declutter the garage, so it could easily absorb a couple of folding extra bikes. It was all about feeling the joy. And they were a bargain.
I did recently give away a classic five-speed step through bike, and a couple of years ago sold my first ever, 40 year old cycle tourer after I was Kondoed. :)
Jeez, I look at my wee collection and think that maybe I'm some paragon of minimalism after all...
I have three bikes:
> Thorn Raven-mit-Rohloff, my touring bike, bought in 2013. I financed that with the sale of an ex-comp 1957 AJS 350 scrambler I had restored, a tidy net reduction in occupied weight & space in the workshop.
> Eclipse ti-framed go-slightly-faster day ride/light touring bike bought in 2002, with a changeful cast of rear derailleurs. (Currently, an RD is being fitted which has the "XT" prefix sanctified by G. Smith .)
> Miele town bike, 2012-ish, from the bike-recycling community organization where I volunteer.
(We had a family conversation about another bike, thus: Marcia gets a bit fed up with my lugging the Eclipse to 'Straya when we visit our son and his family. "Why not buy a folder, John?" "Ummm," sez I, "There's an outfit in Oregon which sells some nice ones, but they're USD 3 thou a pop, and my Scots ancestors are pointedly frowning and coughing. Doubt I'd use it enough to justify spending that amount of money. Supply doesn't always create its own demand.")
Other bikes come & go from the basement workshop. Currently there are two in residence:
> Marcia's Norco hybrid (mainly for canalside forays to the Stella Luna gelato café --worth a visit to Ottawa, BTW) is wintering there.
> a donated Giant hybrid which I'm holding for our Syrian refugee family.
Canalside forays to a gelateria! Keep talking, John, and we’ll end up making it to Ottawa yet. Interesting post, especially the reference to your Syrian refugee family and volunteer work. Respect!
I see though that maybe we need to introduce a new standard unit of measurement here for a fairer comparison: the BPC Ratio (bikes per cyclist).
Jacquie’s recent forum post makes it sound like she has dozens of bikes squirreled away at her estate, but she didn’t give a tally. We’re homeless, so we only have room for four: two in use, and two in a bike storage locker we lease from the city. They’re all road bikes: the Bike Fridays when we need a folder, and the Rodriguez/Straggler pair for local use. We’ve talked about getting a third pair, better suited for off-pavement use, but we don’t have room for them without leasing yet another storage unit.
So how many bikes does your household own? Who has the most?
4 years ago