Buying a bike in Greece?
- From: Ryan Cousineau <rcousine@xxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 05:03:17 GMT
At the risk of being both unanswerable here and mildly off-topic, my
next vacation will be to Greece.
Thanks to having the very great luck of marrying into a Greek family,
there's going to be a place to stay on the Cycladic island where the
missus and I will be spending most of my time (Syros), and I want to
ride a bike there. Nothing fancy: I'm hoping to go on and off road, so I
suspect I'll wish for a cyclocross bike and a spare set of road rubber,
and settle for a rigid MTB and two sets of tires.
The no-brainer is to buy (um, actually, pull from my collection, really)
a bike here, shove it in a bike box (I can rent one cheaply through my
club) and enjoy I have a place to leave it permanently in Syros. I could
also put one of my good bikes in the box, and bring it back.
Unfortunately, the limitations of current airline travel means there's a
good chance I'll get nailed for an $80+ shipping charge each way,
possibly on multiple legs each way! This could leave me shipping a $50
bike for $160...
I also have the issue of actually moving the bike around. Despite the
fact I'll be going through Athens (and maybe spending a few days in
Frankfurt first) and then to the Cyclades, I will likely only unpack the
bike once I touch down at my home island. Moving a bike box through
multiple airports, onto a ferry, etc...not super! But maybe I can live
with it.
One alternative is to buy locally. Syros would be the ideal place to
buy, but it's about 25,000 people. I have no idea what the bike
situation is, or if there's even a decent bike shop. I'll try to find
out. I really just want to buy someone's old MTB, something I could
accomplish here for about $20 at a garage sale and be happy...but here
is not Greece.
Athens would be acceptable, though I'd still have to put a bike on the
ferry (security?), and get it to the ferry. Also, I have no idea what
the market for bikes is like in Athens. I'm sure the market for new
bikes is much like it is in the rest of Europe (insights appreciated),
but as for the used bikes, all I know is that Craigslist Greece shows
two ads in two months, both saying "wanted: used bike."
A third, very sweet option would be to mail-order a bike from somewhere
in Euro-land, have it delivered to Syros, and be done with it. I even
have local contacts who could receive the machine.
The question then becomes who (if anyone) can ship cheaply to Greek
islands, and what can they sell me? A quick look at Wiggle's website
suggests Greece is one place they don't ship to...others?
TIA,
--
Ryan Cousineau rcousine@xxxxxx http://www.wiredcola.com/
"I don't want kids who are thinking about going into mathematics
to think that they have to take drugs to succeed." -Paul Erdos
.
- Follow-Ups:
- Re: Buying a bike in Greece?
- From: Andrew Price
- Re: Buying a bike in Greece?
- From: sergio
- Re: Buying a bike in Greece?
- From: carlfogel
- Re: Buying a bike in Greece?
- Prev by Date: Re: Recumbents dorky - think again
- Next by Date: Re: Interbike 1897 original ceramic bearings and more
- Previous by thread: Compact Crank
- Next by thread: Re: Buying a bike in Greece?
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
