At the risk of sounding like an ass: It doesn't matter, just get one that's the right size.
I understand why you ask, I'm very much the same way (unless you're asking just because you're curious). Some times I decide that it's time to make a change, and I start to look for thing I can buy to facilitate the process, exercise equipment, kitchen aids, clothing, essentially attempting to buy into a lifestyle. The thing that made me notice was when I started getting into minimalism, and I started to look for "minimalist things" I could buy... That sort of highlighted the absurdity of the idea.
Bear in mind there's still a bike shortage right now. Something that fits your body and is comfortable is the most important thing. I'm 58 and an avid cyclist, but realized that my body just doesn't like road style bikes, so I actually dismantled my fancy Trek road bike and built something that was more comfortable to ride.
For me, making it easy to "just get out and ride" is the key thing. Even if it means less exciting rides. I don't have to get into special clothing or put my bike in a car and take it somewhere.
I also enjoy the outdoors in general. I treat it as a way to get away from technology for a while, so I'm into simple things like hiking, walking, cross country skiing, etc.
Buy a used road bike off Craigslist. Look for brands like Trek, Cannondale, Specialized. Even their vintage models (80s and 90s) still ride very smooth and can be around $150-250. This way, if your bike gets stolen or you simply don't ride enough, you're not too much out of pocket.
This. I have a Dawes ultra galaxy about a decade old. It has an unhealthy amount of duct tape around it which seems to put people off. I saw someone think about stealing it and choose something less cranky looking.
A simple one from Oggi, nothing too fancy. disk breaks, 29" wheels, front suspension. but it doesn't matter. The single most important thing is having an adequate bike seat for your anatomy and an aluminum frame which is not too heavy.
The expensive stuff gets important if you're a competitive person.
Yes. Get whatever bike fits you. And I love my Tern [1] foldable bicycle. It folds into a bag which I can take anywhere in my car or on the bus or train and bike when I get there.
Funny, I have been looking at Tern too (as well as Riese & Müller). Do you use it in the city as well? Which one do you have? How often do you really fold it up?
Alternatively, I've got a Brompton and I love the thing to bits. It folds in 30 seconds or less, small enough to put under a table at a coffee shop. They're incredibly well-built, and parts are easy to find. You can even get electric conversion kits.
I had a Brompton for about two years but did not like how it felt riding it to be honest. The rather weird six gear box thing and lack of disc brakes (especially in rain and winter) was also not that amazing
Buy a bike with matching frame for your height, with good double suspension, e.g. with front and rear RockShox or better, and raise the handlebar to a comfortable height. Your back will thank you.
Install all safety systems: front and rear bike lights, mirror, reflectors, use helmet, reflectors, wear reflective jacket, etc. You must be visible at the road at all times. (I use no helmet, because I'm trained to fall properly, but I recommend to wear helmet until you fall at least 10 times.)
Ensure that your legs are working for the full length, by raising the seat as much as you can, to avoid problems with joints. I'm raising my seat so much, that it feels like running, because I press pedal with toe instead of whole foot. Otherwise, you will have powerful legs, but weak foots, so you can break your heel just by running. (I did).
If you ride in winter conditions, lower the bike seat until you can reach the ground with the tips of your shoes instead, so you can reach the ground quickly when the road is slippery.
Bike will make your legs strong and healthy, but your upper body will require additional training. AFAIK, the best way to keep the whole body in good condition is to combine biking with swimming or sport dancing. (I use biking + ballroom dancing). Ballroom dancing also improves situation awareness a lot: I never had a collision with somebody else after few years of ballroom dancing.
Ensure that your legs are working for the full length, by raising the seat as much as you can, to avoid problems with joints
Raising your seat isn't the first step: first make sure that you're pushing the pedals with the balls of your feet, not close to the heel. I used to get terrible knee pain during prolonged bike rides as a kid, and nobody could tell me why.
It took me many years before I finally figured out what I was doing wrong: if your feet are too far forward on the pedals, you effectively lock your ankles in place, and all propulsion must come from your upper legs through your knees. If you can bend your ankles, you have two joints and three sets of muscles to share the load. This gives you better range of motion and less muscle strain for the same amount of propelling power.
If you ride in winter conditions, lower the bike seat until you can reach the ground with the tips of your shoes instead
What does trained to fall properly mean? Are you absolutely sure there is such a thing? I doubt that there is, because the human neck is not strong enough to withstand many kinds of flat falls (just watch FailArmy for a while), and assuming you can prevent a flat fall during an accident is a bad assumption. Assuming you can avoid a head-first fall is a bad assumption, and assuming you’re not going to be struck by a car is a bad assumption.
Have been biking many decades, fallen more times than I can count, and am as trained to fall properly as one gets, I think. I’ve had two falls in the last decade that would have put me in the hospital without a helmet, and one that may have killed me - head collided with a rock at high speed, but I had a good helmet and walked away. My belief is the opposite - that my need for a helmet has only grown the more skill I have. As I’ve gained expertise, I ride faster on average, I’m in traffic more, picking more difficult routes, riding in a wider variety of weather and conditions. All reasons to
Falling safely is a motor skill. The way you "learn" it is by doing it, repeatedly, until your body starts to react in the right way. This is a problem for an adult cyclist on a road traveling at speed. There are consequences to falling. Many of us, however, have had enough experience during our youth on "single-track" to have racked up many falls onto soft ground at low speeds. That certainly helps to a certain extent.
Unfortunately, physics sometimes can present challenges that no human can adapt to regardless of practice. If your bike comes to hard stop when traveling fast enough, your body is going to do an "endo" and your face will impact the street in a matter of milliseconds. This happens before you can put your hands in front of your face. It can happen faster than your body can respond to the stimuli telling it that an crash is happening.
> physics sometimes can present challenges that no human ca adapt to regardless of practice.
Exactly, yes. I have a lot of the motor skill you’re talking about (road cycling, mountain biking, dirt moto biking, skydiving, skiing, etc.). And the more I have, the more helmets seem like a good idea.
When I was in school, our trainer was ill, so he was replaced by a craft teacher, which was fresh from the army. He was a soviet paratrooper, so he told us that he knows nothing about training, but he sure that we will fall a lot during our life, so he will train us to fall properly. We did about a hundred of jumps and falls and rolls per lesson, up to 2 meter height, in military style for 2,5 months, up to 1000 falls in total.
When I'm falling, I'm rotating my body to fall flat on the back. I'm wearing a bicycle backpack with thick absorber and protective plate (Wolf Skin, Kite, etc.), so it absorbs energy and protects my back. Bad for backpack and notebook, but good for me.
FWIW, I had a whole skydiving career before I started biking seriously. Drop & roll is not really a viable head injury prevention plan. You’re prepped for a few kinds of accidents with a backpack and trying to roll if/when there’s time, if you’re really lucky, but you’re leaving a mile wide blind spot to many possible accidents that you don’t have control over. Good luck, I hope you don’t have any of those kind of collisions.
Obviously. I’m saying that your soviet paratrooper roll training isn’t going to save your head in a bike crash, I know because I’ve done a whole lot of both. Biking to work is the place where you’re most likely to be hit by a car, and thus not be able to roll and not be protected by a backpack.
Hey I’m not telling you what to do, only pointing out that assuming you have control over physics in an accident is a pretty bad assumption, and that telling new riders that a few falls prepares them for non-helmet riding is dangerous advice because it’s not true.
I don’t know where you live, but we all know the Netherlands is famous for having some of the best bike infrastructure in the world, and also for low helmet use. Still, the chances of TBI in an accident in the Netherlands is 2x higher without a helmet than with. https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/neur.2020.0010
You do you, I’m just saying from my perspective, and from actual experience, the single best thing I can do to prevent a serious debilitating bike injury is wear a helmet. It’s by no stretch of the imagination the only thing I can do, and I like some of your other advice you gave. I just think if you care about slippery surfaces enough to lower your seat, or care about cars enough to wear a reflective vest, a helmet sure seems like a good idea.
I'm from Europe (Ukraine). Yes, I'm totally aware about risk of death in a road incident. After each incident, our bicyclist association does protest near to city administration, demanding more and safer bike lanes.
Our plan to fix it is to make the city safer for cyclist. We are heavily inspired by success of Netherlands: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Boi0XEm9-4E . Situation is improved in recent years. Currently, half of my path to work is safe, while the other half is not.
Helmet is a good idea (I recommend to wear helmet after all), but it has some downsides. We can discuss upsides and downsides of helmet a lot, but I recommend using my OKR instead, when you recommend biking to newbies: «use helmet until you will fall 10 times at least». It's simple, easy to understand, easy to remember, actionable, and leaves no room for doubt.
I see no breakdown of incident number by years of experience in your papers.
Newbies are like toddlers, so they will fall more often and will skew the statistic. Nobody says that walking is a dangerous activity, just because toddlers are falling multiple times per day.
Still, cycling is the safest mode of transportation per km, so, if you want to improve safety significantly, convince drivers and pedestrians to wear helmets first. Cyclist will follow.
I used to work with someone who was an avid cyclist, in his mid 50s, and insisted you didn't need a helmet when cycling because 'if you think about it, when you're falling, you will use your hands to stop yourself - so all you really need is a decent pair of gloves'.
He was totally serious, and I assume the previous poster might also be. It's a slightly bizarre viewpoint, but not that dissimilar - this idea that you should wear a helmet to start with, and then stop wearing it once you're confident that you no longer need it because you know how to fall without it.
> If you're only biking on the road I wouldn't get that, only slows you down.
They will make you feel like you are moving slower, but my bicycle computer shows that I move faster. Moreover, wheels follows ground more precisely, which reduces risk of losing contact with ground. I'm crossing road bumps at full speed, while sitting and continuing pedaling.
> Not sure if you're serious...
I'm serious for both recommending to wear helmet for first 10 falls at least (because newbie is like a toddler), and I'm serious that I don't need helmet (because I'm not a toddler anymore).
Bicycle is safer than walking per km traveled. Are you wearing a helmet when walking? It's dangerous!
I hear you, and acknowledge the strong opinions around Helen’ helmets while bicycling. I usually wear a helmet (I’m in the USA), and for slow trips on known routes sometimes I skip it. If I lived in the Netherlands (or anywhere with a robust bike-commute culture) I might never wear a helmet, because I’m not so fast anymore and I’d be doing known routes at moderate speed.
I lean towards wearing helmets, and support wearing them in cars (I don’t do that yet because of social stigma, though maybe I’ll work up the gumption now that I think about it).
Helmets, and other protective equipment, works, so it may help you to survive many kinds of incidents: road incident, train wreck, fall from sky, etc. There is no doubt.
However, cycling to work is the safest mean of transportation per km traveled.
Nobody will force me to do downhill on a bike without full gear on, because I can fall, puncture my artery, and then bleed out in 2 minutes. One of my earliest memories is: I'm laying on the ground on my back and watching as my bike flying over me, like in slo-mo.
However, I see no sense to wear a helmet when doing one of the safest routine on this planet. I had two road accidents (I hit another cyclist, I hit a safety pole with handlebar when a car in front of me suddenly closed the path for me) and a dozen near-misses while biking in about 40 years. I had much more near-misses in the city (dozens) when walking.
I can understand not wearing a helmet when biking, helmets can also only do so much. just don't fool yourself in thinking that your falling technique is going to save yourself in a traffic accident.
