berner

I've been a boat builder, on and off, for most of my life. Most of those boats were custom built and up to 90ft. long and about half built in aluminum. Many of those boats are 60 or more years old. Aluminum is easy to work with, durable and well understood for maintenance or repairs and is quite tough. One criticism I come across is that it will fatigue easily and fail. People who invoke that criticism are not familiar with bendy rigs on sail boats where the mast is bent to an alarming degree to help is shaping the main sail. A fatigue failure is an engineering failure.

My own bike was relatively inexpensive and should it suffer serious damage, it is likely a local welding shop could get it back in running condition but as I said, aluminum is tough and will last many years. If it gets scruffy looking, repainting will have it looking new.

There are those who may feel special because they could afford $10,000 or more for a bike. There are also those who can spend $500 for a lady's handbag or $50,000 for wrist watch or $50,000,000 for a mega yacht where no one here could even afford the fuel bill.