Well, it's true that any bike can be pressed into service as a commuter but most bikes weren't designed as such. In particular, standard bikes are almost extinct today (which absolutely baffles me) and cruisers, while plentiful are not exactly ideal. They tend to weight an awful lot, are not as manueverable, and are built primarily for form rather than function. On top of that, most of the bags that either come with bikes or added after market are tiny. If a person wanted to do their family's weekly grocery shopping it'd take 5 or even 10 trips to get it all home. It also looks like the cruisers with the smaller engines are often cam'ed for high rev'ing performance without low-end torque and have surprisingly disappointing gas mileage.earwig wrote:I am kinda confused about this thread... any cruiser/standard with a smaller cc engine <1000cc with some saddle bags (hard or soft) would be plenty practical... no?
If I came across a cruiser in good shape for a really good price, I'd go ahead and use it, but they don't tend (at least around where I live) to be found at good prices. I'd sure like to find, though, an inexpensive, reliable, easy to maintain bike that can carry enough cargo as to be useful. I'm mostly baffled by the apparent fact that there aren't many others that share the desire -- that bike buyers are almost exclusively entertainment oriented rather than toward practical transportation.
