Re: The Ridley - A fancy, happy time
I guess a person has to identify their perogatives early on when getting into motorbicycling. Is it to be a hobby ? A hedge against $4.00 dollar a gallon fuel which has the average American pouring his pay check into his gas tank each week ? Is he going to be like a "Car Buff" type who enjoys a stable of unique machines....like Jay Lenno ? Or is he going to find a market in it and make a few bucks setting these machines up and servicing them for his teen age buddies ?
In marketing there is a niche called "Vanity" where those with the means can buy manufactured eloquences. Often they are purchased on credit lines. It's likely the only way some will ever get one of these.
I could see a "cottage industry" emerging for those who find themselves out of work doing installations, sales, and services. But before they get into that, they would have to have a shop, established a public awareness of what they have done with their own bike builds and be a bit selective with who they deal with and qualify the extent of their responsibility to them carefully. How many threads have we seen on replacing inferior gasketts, exhaust, intake, & mounting studs, etc ? Anyone who has worked on computers for other people with limited knowledge of them will know the frustrations of dealing with that and likely see a parallel with fixing up a bike for someone who is only thinking "zoom zoom zoom" and later whine..."It broke" !!!
