Originally Posted by
CrankyOne
Those may be recommendations and certainly good to do but the reality is the vast majority of people, likely over 9 out of 10, ride them until something breaks and then take them to the bike shop. The average person in The Netherlands rides about 85 miles per week and I'd guess, other than a tyre or frozen cable, take their bicycle in for maintenance less than once every 10 years. And yes, at this point things are in poor shape so definitely a good cleaning, new chain, oil in the IGH and oil in the cables. Possibly an IGH rebuild. And we'll see you in another 10 or 20 years.
Sounds accurate to me; OTOH in the big Dutch cities bike theft is a huge problem so folks ride junky bikes for commuting & have little incentive to do maintenance. A friend who used to live in the Netherlands said that many folks have a second nicer bike for recreation/touring. In the best-seller book
The Happy Hooker, (Dutch) author Xaviera Hollander wrote that she oiled her bike chain, I was impressed, heh.