I must say I consider a bicycle designed for adults without a stand to be a sign of incompetence. I simply don't believe the designers who retrospectively foam at the mouth and try to make out that not supplying mounting points for a stand is matter of principle; they're just trying to bluster away their oversight: "Well for f*ck's sake." -- official Surly response; see
http://surlybikes.com/info_hole/spew/kickstands_on_long_haul_truckersPersonally, I think of Andy Blance as a sort of minor god, but even he has two little toes of clay, and one of them is the lack of fittings on his bikes for a stand. The other is welding on an expensive steel bike where there should be lugs. Both arise from the same place as so much unwanted bicycle "heritage" creeping into design with deleterious effects, racing in the wretched Peugeot 10-speed era, whose influence seems ineradicable. There are now only two bikes on my shortlist every year at Christmas when I wonder about buying a new bike, and on the very short demerits list for Thorn the first two items are "Welded!" and "No Stand!" Those have been dealbreakers ever since I started keeping that list in 2002, when there were five bikes on it, welded bikes were still admissable, and "No Stand!" was the top deal breaker. I have zero intention of laying an expensive bike on the ground, and even less intention at my age of bending over inelegantly to pick up a loaded bike. Both are silly things to expect a customer to do. Carrying a separate stick in the luggage, and working with velcro ties (which will last how long before they lose their nap?), is a bodge Heath Robinson himself would reject out of hand.
This entire business of turning stands into the primary evil of touring bikes is one of the great duh-moments of bicycle design, and so widespread as to assume the dimensions of a mass-hysteria, which is why "for f*ck's sake" Surly and others overreact every time the subject is raised. Ask yourself how much it would cost, if you're having your own tubes drawn anyway, as Thorn brags of doing, to have extra-long butts for mounting two-leg standers drawn into the front end of chain stays? The answer is peanuts. This is about either not thinking of it, or reflexively, because of the hanging history of racing bike design, rejecting the few extra grammes, thus consigning cyclists to years of inconvenience for the sake of a few grammes.
It's plain guilt causing bicycle designers to get hot under the collar any time the subject of bicycle stands is raised.
