Is this a worthwhile deal?

[DismalScientist]

@cvcalhoun 90042 wrote:

Honestly, I keep being told I want a road bike, but I’m mystified as to why. The advantages seem to be:
1. It goes faster. But I don’t want fast. Heavy and slow = safer, and I want safer.
2. It’s more efficient. But if what I’m trying to do is burn calories, more efficient doesn’t seem better.

Meanwhile, I see huge disadvantages to a road bike. I want to be able to ride as upright as possible, so I can see the scenery and what’s ahead of me, and to minimize pressure on my wrists. I want wide tires that can handle the rutted mud of the Georgetown Branch Trail, or the snow and ice of a Dc winter. I want a bike that is sturdy and rarely needs servicing. I want a bike on which I can carry groceries, or pull a bike trailer. And I want a bike I can afford both to buy, and to get parts for as needed.

OK… I have to respond to this.

Light and slow is just as safe as heavy and slow.
If you really want to be inefficient, just underinflate the tires.:rolleyes:

Upright riding: I understand this and this is why I recommended a flat bar road bike. Wide tires: It takes them. Sturdy and doesn’t need servicing: with the exception of some racing bikes, I’ve found that almost all bikes are sturdy. Any bike with chains and derailleurs, and rim brakes will require roughly the same amount of servicing. Carrying groceries and pulling a bike trailer: With a rack for the groceries, you could do both. Parts are pretty standard for most non-esoteric bikes and are readily available.

People often mistake the term road bike with racing bike. A survey of forum posters would probably indicate that most commuters use non-racing, drop bar road bikes for every day utilitarian biking.

(I bought my flat bar road bike specifically for mounting studded tires for winter riding because of its upright position, which I don’t prefer for normal riding.)

[dkel]

@cvcalhoun 90042 wrote:

Honestly, I keep being told I want a road bike, but I’m mystified as to why. The advantages seem to be:
1. It goes faster. But I don’t want fast. Heavy and slow = safer, and I want safer.
2. It’s more efficient. But if what I’m trying to do is burn calories, more efficient doesn’t seem better.

Meanwhile, I see huge disadvantages to a road bike. I want to be able to ride as upright as possible, so I can see the scenery and what’s ahead of me, and to minimize pressure on my wrists. I want wide tires that can handle the rutted mud of the Georgetown Branch Trail, or the snow and ice of a Dc winter. I want a bike that is sturdy and rarely needs servicing. I want a bike on which I can carry groceries, or pull a bike trailer. And I want a bike I can afford both to buy, and to get parts for as needed.

A touring bike might give you all of these things, but with the benefit of drop bars for varying hand position. I looked into touring bikes when I was shopping for my new commuter, and found they have an upright position (for a drop bar bike; not quite as upright as a hybrid), are heavy and very sturdy, and have relatively wide gearing with a very low range for long climbs while heavily laden. They also should take wider tires for stability. May be worth a look…

[cvcalhoun]

Drop bars are exactly what I want to avoid, as they put me in a less upright position.

The flat bar road bike has some theoretical appeal. But, don’t I just end up paying extra (and money is, alas, in short supply) for a lighter bike which won’t actually be noticeable once I add heavier tires, load the thing up with cargo, etc.?

[dkel]

@cvcalhoun 90072 wrote:

Drop bars are exactly what I want to avoid, as they put me in a less upright position.

Not necessarily true. With spacers or a higher stem angle, you can be just about as upright as you want to be. I’ve seen some touring rigs that rival my hybrid for upright position. Also, don’t knock it till you’ve tried it.

[TwoWheelsDC]

@dkel 90073 wrote:

Not necessarily true. With spacers or a higher stem angle, you can be just about as upright as you want to be. I’ve seen some touring rigs that rival my hybrid for upright position. Also, don’t knock it till you’ve tried it.

Also, interrupter levers allow you to ride on the top bar for even more uprightness.

[cvcalhoun]

But I’m back to the question of what is the advantage? If I’m going to overload the bike anyway, a light weight for the bike itself becomes unnoticeable. The benefits in terms of muscles used seem to depend on riding in a less upright position, which I’m unwilling to do. So what am I paying money (that I really can’t afford) to get?

And it’s not a question of don’t knock it until you’ve tried it. Even to try it would be a huge financial deal for me, so I need to understand why that could possibly be worthwhile.

[americancyclo]

Trying it just means taking a test ride at your LBS

[DismalScientist]

You will pay somewhat more for a lighter bike, but perhaps not the premium you would expect. I generally don’t troll LBSs for bike prices, but instead go straight to the web. I think the best deal out there at this time is a 2012 flat bar Terry Symmetry for $400.
http://www.bikesdirect.com/products/terry_womens_bikes/symmetry-flat-womens-road-bikes.htm
This is only $100 more than cheaper hybrids on the site. I don’t know what sort of deal one can get at an LBS.

On trying it, that’s why I suggested test riding my wife’s bikes, although it sound like you might be tall enough to test ride mine.:rolleyes:

[mstone]

@cvcalhoun 90076 wrote:

But I’m back to the question of what is the advantage?

The advice seems to be coming fairly prematurely, unless I missed some stuff. Where do you plan to ride? How far? How often? Do you ride only in fair weather in daytime, or in the rain or dark? Do you plan to carry things on the bike? Groceries and such in their own bags, or packing things up specifically for the bike? Advantages and disadvantages depend very much on how the bike is used.

The reason there’s so much of a bias against the seat & fork suspensions is that they tend to add a good bit of weight, soak up a good bit of efficiency (from pushing the suspension up and down) and don’t really add much comfort (people tend to buy them because they look at the suspension and assume it must automatically feel better). Suspension can be very important for mountain biking–but its purpose is as much for safety (keeping the wheels from bouncing off the ground) and to avoid breaking the bike as to feel good. At this point it’s getting really hard to buy a bike on the low end of the market that does not have some kind of suspension, mainly due to customer perception, to compensate for the fact that people tend to over-inflate their tires, and as a way for the manufacturers to add relatively cheap bling to what’s otherwise a simple machine. (And especially at low price points the suspension is generally not all that functional.) All that said, you’re the one riding the bike and if it works for you, go with it. Also, you sometimes need to make compromises to hit a price point, and the front suspension hybrids are produced in sufficient quantity that you can sometimes get reasonable deals fairly cheaply.

[cvcalhoun]

But I’m back to the question of whether a lighter bike helps if I’m going to add a bunch of cargo to it. The difference between a 25 lb. bike and a 35 lb. bare bike would be a lot more noticeable than the difference between a 65 lb. bike (including cargo weight) and a 75 lb. bike. And that’s something a test ride won’t test.

[cvcalhoun]

Yeah, this is what I’m questioning. I ride daily, in good weather and bad. I ride at least once a week on the Georgetown Branch Trail, which is mud, ruts, and gravel. I ride a lot at night. I carry a lot of random stuff, from a purse to a granddaughter.

A Trek 7200 has worked well for me for a long time. So when people say I really should get a road bike, my first question is why — what advantages it would have for me (not for some random person) that would warrant the financial burden it would be.

@mstone 90083 wrote:

The advice seems to be coming fairly prematurely, unless I missed some stuff. Where do you plan to ride? How far? How often? Do you ride only in fair weather in daytime, or in the rain or dark? Do you plan to carry things on the bike? Groceries and such in their own bags, or packing things up specifically for the bike? Advantages and disadvantages depend very much on how the bike is used.

The reason there’s so much of a bias against the seat & fork suspensions is that they tend to add a good bit of weight, soak up a good bit of efficiency (from pushing the suspension up and down) and don’t really add much comfort (people tend to buy them because they look at the suspension and assume it must automatically feel better). Suspension can be very important for mountain biking–but its purpose is as much for safety (keeping the wheels from bouncing off the ground) and to avoid breaking the bike as to feel good. At this point it’s getting really hard to buy a bike on the low end of the market that does not have some kind of suspension, mainly due to customer perception, to compensate for the fact that people tend to over-inflate their tires, and as a way for the manufacturers to add relatively cheap bling to what’s otherwise a simple machine. (And especially at low price points the suspension is generally not all that functional.) All that said, you’re the one riding the bike and if it works for you, go with it. Also, you sometimes need to make compromises to hit a price point, and the front suspension hybrids are produced in sufficient quantity that you can sometimes get reasonable deals fairly cheaply.

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[cyclingfool]

I don’t care if you get drop bars or not. Or if you get a road bike or a hybrid or a mountain bike. My suggestion to you was actually a MTB. I don’t care if your bike weighs 15 pounds or 65. But whatever you choose, I would VERY STRONGLY advise you avoid suspension anything, and I think that’s where a lot of the road bike type sentiment also starts coming from.

mstone summed it up pretty nicely a couple posts up talking about suspension. The best thing I EVER did to my hybrid, the first bike I had getting back into cycling five-plus years ago, was the eventual replacement of the suspension fork with a rigid one. The difference was night and day. 99.99% of the time when you’re riding and you see you fork bobbing up and down it’s doing nothing to make your ride any more comfortable. Instead all the energy that goes into making the fork go up and down could instead be transferred to the wheels in the form of more efficient forward motion. A set of nice, wide 1.5″ or 2″ tires will do more to dampen and smooth out your ride than a suspension fork ever will.

[DismalScientist]

@cvcalhoun 90084 wrote:

But I’m back to the question of whether a lighter bike helps if I’m going to add a bunch of cargo to it. The difference between a 25 lb. bike and a 35 lb. bare bike would be a lot more noticeable than the difference between a 65 lb. bike (including cargo weight) and a 75 lb. bike. And that’s something a test ride won’t test.

Well, I’ve done fully loaded touring on a 30 lb 10 speed bike and a better quality 25 lb 18 speed bike. They handled pretty similarly. The riding was better on the more expensive bike because I had a wider range of gears and the wheels rode better. The wheels on the more expensive bike were stronger, but lighter and had much better hubs. The notion that heavier is sturdier does not always hold, but the tradeoff is higher prices.

Sure, weight differences are most noticeable on unloaded bicycles. How often do you carry loads? You will definitely feel the difference on an unloaded bicycle. I can’t get my wife or daughter the ride the Trek 7300 anymore after riding the lighter bike. Weight differences matter most on the moving parts of the bike, particularly the wheels.

I would think that riding on trails should only affect the choice of tire. Any type of bike that accommodates 28 to 35 mm tires should be fine. Any type of bike without a carbon seatpost can take a trailer. Night riding shouldn’t matter much in bike selection. Any bike with rack mounts should be suitable for carrying gear in panniers.

[ebubar]

I would say a flat bar road bike/hybrid would be a great choice. I’ll mirror the comments against suspensions as everything I’ve seen suggest that the low price bike suspensions are basically useless and only add weight. My additional thought would naively be that they add complexity as well. Why add more moving parts to worry about maintaining? It would seem simpler to get a regular old road/hybrid (like a trek fx since you mention trek).

That’s what I used to ride (on the GBT no less) and I never have had any problems with the muddy and generally disgusting conditions that seem to exist there after rain.

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[cvcalhoun]

The answer to how often I carry loads is essentially “always.” At a minimum, I have a rack and oversized panniers, because I never know when I’ll need to stop at the grocery store while I’m out. And I have my purse, and a U lock, and foul weather gear, and a reflective vest, and extra lights and batteries, and bike tools. And that’s before I add stuff particular to that trip, like scripts and costumes for rehearsals, food for when I’m rushing from place to place with no chance to stop in between, a briefcase with books and papers, changes of clothes so I can do a quick change out of sweaty bike clothes before a business meeting, etc. I don’t do purely recreational rides, and I’m not commuting to an office where I could shower or leave stuff, so I carry a small apartment with me wherever I go.

@DismalScientist 90089 wrote:

Well, I’ve done fully loaded touring on a 30 lb 10 speed bike and a better quality 25 lb 18 speed bike. They handled pretty similarly. The riding was better on the more expensive bike because I had a wider range of gears and the wheels rode better. The wheels on the more expensive bike were stronger, but lighter and had much better hubs. The notion that heavier is sturdier does not always hold, but the tradeoff is higher prices.

Sure, weight differences are most noticeable on unloaded bicycles. How often do you carry loads? You will definitely feel the difference on an unloaded bicycle. I can’t get my wife or daughter the ride the Trek 7300 anymore after riding the lighter bike. Weight differences matter most on the moving parts of the bike, particularly the wheels.

I would think that riding on trails should only affect the choice of tire. Any type of bike that accommodates 28 to 35 mm tires should be fine. Any type of bike without a carbon seatpost can take a trailer. Night riding shouldn’t matter much in bike selection. Any bike with rack mounts should be suitable for carrying gear in panniers.

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