Since I'm stuck with a running injury, I need want to ramp up my bike buying project. I also need to confront my wife's opposition/doubt about (unnecessarily fancy & expensive & dangerous) bike buying. Or maybe I should just bypass them? Or I could blame her for causing a running injury.
In any case, what are the cost points here? We have bike, 2x pendals (basic and clipless), bike shoes, helmet, power meter, ANT+ bike computer(+GPS?), trainer (i.e. indoor bike set-up). And a hitch for my car and the associated bike rack.
So lets list costs.
Bike: from low to high cost, the range is, taking Cannondale as an example, most brands have very similar price points, CAAD10 105: $1,500, CAAD10 Ultegra, $2,150 & SuperSix 105 $2,150, Supersix Ultegra $3,200 and CAAD10 Dura-Ace $3,200.
Power Meter: there are two obvious choices. In order of cost they are PowerTap Comp $600, wired power meter that also needs to be installed (with some costs for installing into a rear wheel), PowerTap Elite with wheel goes fro $1,000-$1,150. Next up, a crank based power meter, what I want, is Quarq, which as far as I understand the pricing, goes for $1,700 or so, but I'm not sure I understand their pricing (i.e. what crank compatibility requirements and cost for a potentially new crank are), the range seems to be $1,500-$1,900.
ANT+ bike computer costs range from...I see costs adding up.
So on the cheapest side we have CAAD10 105 and the PowerTap Comp with a wheel for maybe $2,500. Plus teh additoinal costs that get me to a bit over $3,000, excluding hitch and bike rack costs. I don't want to dump the power meter, but there are no additional cost from waiting to add it later (say as a Christmas present, with the bike itself counting as a brithday present).
More later...