Good points to remind us about. Next you could look at your bike, many bikers don't ride much and the time factor becomes more important than mileage. Gas, oil, batteries and tires do not store well! There are some best practices for taking care of these items. Really important for the 1-2,000 mile a year riders or those that park the bike for 6 months at a time. BTW, some padding in helmets can be refreshed or replaced, adjustment pads are available too.

It definitely depends on where you live. Gear is expensive everywhere, but gas and bike upkeep parts can be incredibly affordable if you daily your bike. The amount of money you spend on gas to distance traveled can easily offset the amount of money you spent on gear within a year, if you ride a lot. A city two towns over has gas selling at $4.90. Gas in the city I live in is $3.85 right now. $891 a year in gas in that other town. If I only ever got gas in my town, I'd only be spending $700/yr in gas. That's a difference of almost $200. Compare that to most car's annual gas costs, which sit around $2,000/yr. In my town, that means I have $1300 to spend on gear before that gear is no longer "worth" the expense of riding a bike, and seeing as most gear lasts more than a couple of years (Assuming you dont go for a slide), I'm not totally on board with the 'it might not be worth it'. I think the biggest difference is that with bikes, your expenses tend to happen all at once right at the start. With cars, they're smaller expenses happening every 15,000-20,000 miles, on top of that gas expense. I wouldn't argue that biking isn't an "expensive hobby", because it is, compared to many other hobbies, but if you're to compare it against other modes of daily transportation, that being a car, it's not even a fair comparison. Bike wins 10 out of 10 times. I think there are enough "long time riders" on the platform to anecdotally claim that throwing away gear you go down in is not required. AdoboMoto for example, has a race suit that he's gone down in two or three different times and it's still something he wears today, because it's still in the same shape as it was when he got it. It's a different story if you spill gasoline on yourself.