Buying a brand new bike should be a special experience. If it all goes to plan then you get exactly the bike you want. You get it when you want, in your choice of colour, with accessories that suit you. The sales team treats you like royalty, ply you with coffee and even let you pick the registration. Sign forms, pay money and there it is; waiting outside the shop, gleaming in your choice of colour waiting like an obedient Labrador for you to give it the inaugural trip. It’s like an exciting first date after ticking the boxes on an internet dating site.
Your relationship is just starting to flourish. Over the next few trips your bike allows you extend the rev limit, and you begin to find out more about each other. Tyres bed in, controls come to hand more naturally and you find where you like the screen, levers and footrests. You know each other so well, their little foibles, what you can get away with. You’re going serious now, where friends get used to seeing you two together. Your bike may now have a few thousand miles on it, but they’re your miles and you’ve done them; together.
Buying a secondhand bike on the face of it is a less romantic, if cheaper experience. Most of the time you need to learn to compromise. You may find the type of bike you want, but you really wanted a red one and this one is yellow. Will it do or will you always see it as second best? It’ll have too many miles or a couple of scratches, the tyres won’t be shiny and new and someone has fitted some accessories that you wouldn’t have chosen. For some riders not knowing what the previous rider was like bothers them. How did they treat it? Where did they go together, did they warm it up in the morning? Will I ride it as well as its previous partner? And what possessed them to fit anodised purple footpegs?
But occasionally, just occasionally you find the bike for you. You fall head over heals in love. It could be the colour, the spec, maybe a limited edition or just unusual. It could ignite a memory, or a dream. It can actually feel more satisfying than buying a brand new bike, because you saw each other across a crowded showroom and immediately there was a connection. A spark. You think it looks beautiful and it is thinking you will look after them. There are no tick boxes here, it doesn’t matter whether it has a good sense of humour, smokes like a trooper or likes Morris dancing; fate has brought you together and you’ll deal with any baggage.
Those who restore classic bikes or build specials get the best of both worlds. It may start life as somebody’s old bike but by the time they’ve hunted down the right parts, restored, modified, polished, painted, lightened and bodged it, the bike becomes an extension of themselves. It’s even more than a relationship, they don’t need to get to know each other; they are each other.
I’ve tried all the above routes to find my perfect match. And as with most other routes in life I’m starting to realise what’s important to me in a bike. So one day I’ll start with a previously loved secondhand example, modify, tune and adapt it to suit me and finish it to such a high standard it will feel like a new machine. I’ll have found the perfect match. One day.
Matt Hull
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