Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
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Two months ago I decided to take up bicycling. Thanks for the advice everyone. After determining that as my learned friend @MollieTheMare indicated, the Pacific mountain bike I'd come into was kind of a piece of shit, I went hunting around for other bicycles I could borrow from people, and found myself with a menagerie of old bikes that had been sitting in garages for years or decades now sitting in my garage and being fixed up and ridden around my neighborhood. I've got a 90s Trek hybrid for girls, a 2012ish Trek hybrid for men, a remake Schwinn cruiser, and a Jamis road bike from the 2000s that I quite like but have to keep fiddling with to make work for me because it's actually the wrong size. Eventually I'm going to return all but maybe one of them to their original owners. I'm still kind of figuring out what exactly I like/want/need in a bike, and how to go about finding it.
So cycling mottizens, consider this the "What are you riding?" thread, or the "What bike would you advise someone to buy?" thread. I'm curious what the fine people of this place think is a good bike.
What types of cycling have you done? Which is your favorite?
For a do it all machine you pick something in the middle of the bike gradient, so hard tail/hybrid/gravel. The latter is my preference but is also popular and thus more expensive.
My strong opinions are: Shimano group set or bust (though SRAM owns most the MTB market). Buy once cry once (modifying a bike is way more expensive than getting what you want). Getting a used one from a bike charity in your city is your best bet for <=$300, new for $300-$600, and then used again beyond that.
Why that dip in the middle? What brands should one be looking at in each price range?
The dip is strange but not ironclad. People who are serious about bikes don't spend less than that on them so there's almost no bikes in that range. People getting started buy a $600 bike then abuse it and sell it for $200. Those end up being in worse shape than the older bikes tuned up at a shop run by fanatics.
Ok one more hot take: Brands in cycling barely matter, they really only do the frame (if they do!) and then assemble parts from suppliers. So pick PARTS not brand.
After that you have local store and network presence which is really Giant, Specialized, and Trek in the US. All the bike shops around me are good enough there.
Specialized is a "premium" brand and focused on tech but also means less compatibility. The apple of bikes?
Trek and Giant all have virtually the same bikes for the same price tag. Just go off of sales and aesthetics.
The DTC guys are sometimes interesting. Canyon was an insane deal before tariffs, Obed was a great decision for me, and there's bikes direct which is often selling slightly less attractive and older-component bikes for very cheap from a hilarious website.
Salsa has bike nerd cache and good resale value. There's a dozen of these little boutique brands like that if you go that route.
Surely this would be Cannondale.
There's also Aliexpress if OP feels like a real adventure.
There is in fact an entire youtube channel that is at lest 50% dedicated to roasting Cannondale's Bottom Bracket system BB30. What a world we live in where such a hyper niche topic can have 120K subs.
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