First off, here's Chris' new roadie. Full SRAM Red, DT 240 wheels, optional zoot suit (not pictured), the works. Plus some really swanky Forte brand pedals and bar tape (wow, is that stuff crappy...)
It fits me almost perfectly. I'm really, really tempted to steal it. But Chris already paid for the darn thing. Doh.
As nice as the Red parts are, the amount of waste packaging that I threw away while building the bike up was *astounding*. Here's the best part - every single part has a little cloth/satin baggie with a drawstring. "What's this?" I wondered to myself - "spare parts and screws? How thoughtful!" Then I opened the baggies, and discovered that, yes, they are protecting...
THE USER'S MANUALS
Yep, it's made of paper. It's not in any physical danger from anything but water or fire, and the bag is susceptible to those same things. Every single part comes with its own baggie and manual. Nice.
Now, in my opinion, if you can afford a $3500 custom bike with a full Red grouppo, you *probably* own a computer. And you probably also could, like, use it to look up the user's manual info online, if you wanted to. I also imagine, though, that most of the folks riding this kind of stuff are either hotshot mechanics, or having the bike built up by a hotshot mechanic, so they'll probably never even look at the manual anyway.
Bottom line: I put almost 10 pounds of cardboard, paper, and plastic in the recyling today. What a waste. Shame on you, SRAM.
5 comments:
I think SRAM was thinking, "you put your weeeeed in there."
DROOOOOOOL! I want one...next year...
I f'in HATE excess packaging! At least cardboard can be recycled...
boo on excess packaging.
curious, what does the fully built bike weigh?
Steve - we (somewhat inaccurately) weighed it at approximately 16.5 pounds. But the scale being used left something to be desired, so there's a plus/minus of about half a pound there.
-Walt
I recently built up a Red equipped bike as well and was equally astounded at the packaging. The first thing I opened was the cassette and thought "Ok, I can see storing the 11-26 in a bag while you ride the 11-23." But upon finding a bag with the cranks, I was dumbfounded. How can the bike business lay claim to being "green" when they generate all that garbage? The FSA carbon bar came in a fancy drawstring bag too which in no way protected the bar in transit so why bother?
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