Dazed and Confused

"Paul D" wrote in message
...
I posted a thread yesterday, entited; "stressed and depressed", because
that's
just about how I felt trying to come to some sort of a decision about
upgrading
my bike.

Today, despite quite a few people posting advice, and a definite flow of
knowledge in my direction, I am just as stressed, and even more confused.

Nothing I've ever tried to buy before; hi-fi's, computers, cars, flats,
houses,
has left me feeling so helpless in the face of such an array of
conflicting and
disjointed information.

I'm seriously thinking about giving up cycling, and using either the car
or a
pogo stick to get around.

Years ago, when I were t'lad, there were three sorts of bikes: men's
bikes,
women's bikes and racing bikes. It was, for the most part part, clear what
you
wanted.

Now, if we ignore folding, electric, recumbent, trikes, choppers and
crutch
rockets, we are still left with:

Mountain bikes (with and without suspension)
Road bikes
City bikes
Shoppers
Tourers
Hybrids
Comfort bikes

12 years or so back, when I decided to start cycling again, I just bought
a
cheap BIKE. No qualifier. It was almost exactly the same as a BIKE would
have
been when I was a child, except it had derailiers, with which you could
usually
get 5 out of 6 ratios to work at any one time, which was a BIG improvement
on
the 2 out of 3 you could get with a Sturmey Archer.

Nonetheless, I LIKED the bike. It was plain, and it did what it would have
said
on the tin, had it come in a tin. It was very plain, it gave me no
trouble,
never needed repairing and hardly ever even got a puncture. It was used on
roads
and tow paths.

After 10 years, moy £109 bike started to show its age a little. The
handlbars
moved in directions they shouldn't, the pedals showed evident bearing wear
as
did the rear wheel. A spoke went in the rear wheel, and before I got
around to
getting it repaired, a half a dozen others decided that they were going to
give
up their unequal struggle as well.

So I went along to my LBS (not knowing that abbr. at the time), and said I
wanted to buy a bike. "There they are", said a pleasant chap, and I had a
look.
Given that I'd just broken a bunch of spokes, I thought I ought to go for
something with bigger tyres and stronger wheels, and suspension (and a
third set
of cogs for going up really steep hills seemed a good idea), so I picked a
bike
that was within my budget (I thought that as I'd been perfectly happey
with my
(£109) bike for ten years, and the "budget" models were stil £99, spending
double what I had before should get me a pretty reasonable bike. I'd heard
of
people spending £3,000 on a bike, but you get nutters in every sphere of
human
activity. You can spent £60,000 on a hi-fi amplifier if you like (although
I
somehw doubt that you'll enjoy your misc more that about 5% more than you
would
with a £600 one - if that).

Anyway, the chap asked me if I wanted to sit on it, so I did, and my feet
reached the ground, and my hands reached the handlebars, so that was OK.

The tyres weren't inflated, so I couldn't ride the thing, but what would
that
have told me anyway. Well, it would have told me the gearing was wrong for
one
thing. I had assumed that if you went from two rings to three, you would
get a
slightly higher top, and a slightly lower low. WRONG! The lowest gear
allows for
climbing vertically, but the top was lower than on my previous bike, and
that
was too low going downhill, or with more than about 5 kn of following
wind.

Still, apart from that the bike was OK. With the seat and saddle at the
top of
their available range, it fitted OK. I could certainly go faster on it
than I
could on the previous one (unless I was going downhill, or had a
significant
following wind). Brakes were good!


However, now I started to really enjoy cycling. I didn't want to become a
racer,
but I did enjoy going out for an hour or two, and cycling fast enough to
be
breathing hard, just for the hell of it. I started reading rec.cycling,
and
learned a few things (or, at least I thought I'd learned a few things). I
realised that I was going to have to upgrade the bike again , to correct
the
gearing problem, and get a frame more suited to my height. No great hurry,
though.

Then, a week or so back, I had a few problems with the bike, and decided
that
now might be the time to get a new one.

And that's when my problems started.

Firstly, I find that even spending £350 will only get a "budget" bike, an
attitude I quite frankly find absurd and pretentious - especially
considering
how many years of pleasure I had from my £109 BIKE bike. Any amount is a
budget,
and I think, quite honestly, I'll stick with rest of the population and
consider
anything over £250 an 'expensive' bike, and anything over £500 as
'specialised'
(or "nut-job" as someone I mentioned the existence of £1000+ bike to,
refered to
them).

Secondly, although I want to spend, probably 98% of my time on the road, I
don't
want a "road bike", because they refer to drop handlebar bikes that I
would call
'racers' (the sort that are ridden by people who have special dispensation
(not
mentioned in the highway code) to ride fast on pavements and go through
traffic
lights at red).

And it seems that because I might want to go on a tow path occasionally, I
might
need a mountain bike. This I find odd, because a) the tow paths I've been
on are
actually in better condition than some of the road surfaces I have to use,
and
b) it's quite unusual to find a tow path on a mountain, given the
difficulty of
finding sloping water in a usable canal.

Seriously, though, I can't seem to get a handle on what actually makes a
bike a
mountain bike.

I thought it meant an extra strong frame, probably suspension, the
availability
of extra low gears, stronger wheels, and perhaps disk brakes for
clearance.

Quite, honestly, an extremely light frame is probably wasted on me. I
don't mind
putting in effort if I'm going up a hill. I find that far less
objectionable
than fighting against the strong headwinds that we get so much being on
the
coast.

I just want something that is strong, reliable, and has a sufficient range
of
gears to handle going up or down hills. Oh, and I'd like to actually have
a
chainring set where the gears change EVERY time I move the lever, rather
just
when they feel in the mood for it (or, as happend a few weeks ago, refuse
point
blank to change up, despite cycling the lever five or six times, then, in
a fine
show of petulance, the chain suddenly deciding they it *would* like to
move
accross, and making up for it's previous slothfulness by bypassing the big
ring,
shattering the chain guard and jamming solid {little bugger hadn't noticed
that
we were only 100m from home, though}).

The funny thing is, I'm now so confused I don't know whether to up my
budget to
£450 (the Ridgeback Supernova looks to be a really nice bike), keep it
where it
is (where the RB Velocity looks good), or reduce it to £100, and just get
my
current one upgraded (the LBS says it's possible).

And, whilst I'm talking about LBS's - well, perhaps that's another thread.



Gosh - I didn't find it quite so hard.... I just bought a bike and went
cycling..... :-)

Graham