The coming deluge

China has 1.3 billion people. About one fifth
of the world's population.

They are rapidly learning how to build motorcycles.
Starting with small dirt bikes and ATV's.

Soon the Pacific will be crowded with ships
bringing containers full of cheap dirt bikes
to our shores. One or two models have shown up
in the big dept stores, but this is only the
first trickle of a deluge.

Some people on this forum have raised the issue
of spare parts. This is irrelevant. There are
no spare parts. Your bike breaks, you simply
discard it and buy a new one, like a Bic lighter.

It's the Dawn of a new Era: Disposable Dirt Bikes.

Sunday afternoon you decide to go riding, but
you don't happen to have a bike at the moment.
So you drive to the riding area and meet a perfect
stranger who has quit for the day and is about
to load his bike onto his truck -- you ask him
if you can scrounge it and he says, 'Sure',
it being less effort to give the thing away
than haul it home.

You're out on a trail and you break your clutch
lever. No problem. Within a few hundred yards
you will find at least one abandoned Chinese
dirt bike. Simply scrounge the lever off
that one.

At the end of the riding season someone goes
around collecting all the cast off bikes littering
the landscape and returns them for a deposit
refund. The wrecks are crushed and returned
to China for a refill, where they are melted
down and cast into new parts.

Soon the alloy used in the pistons, the rings,
the frame, the carb and the wheels is all
the same pot metal. So weak it will break if
you kick it (so don't).

Abeea-abeea-abeea-- that's all, folks!

Sean_Q_

On Sat, 03 Mar 2007 07:18:54 +0000, Sean wrote:

> China has 1.3 billion people. About one fifth of the world's population.

<snip>

> Abeea-abeea-abeea-- that's all, folks!

Good one!

I guess there is an advantage to China not being required to abide by
Kyoto after all.

- Nate >>

--

"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds,
the pessimist fears this is true."