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Art_Davis
Explorer
Feb 19, 2014

Bike Recommendation?

I am looking for a bike to ride around on here in the Fortuna Foothills. Picked up a Schwinn Point Beach Cruiser 7-speed (Made in China on the post!) from Walmart. Piece of junk, so took it back.

Guess I'm going to have to lay out a few more bucks.

What would you recommend? It's been a long time since my cycling days, but I want one with a decent seat, something I can sit upright on, with more than one speed. I've heard good things about Trek.

And can you folks in Yuma recommend a good bike shop? Some place I could take it when the derailleur or brakes need adjusting.

Many thanks.
  • I think Trek and Giant provide the best value without getting into bicycle esoterica, manufacturing for several price levels across the whole spectrum of bicycle types and applications. Find a dealer who will order from the catalog.

    However, you can expect these two brands to be manufactured in Asia, as they are Asian companies, and as with U.S. brands, lower cost models might be manufactured in the PRC. Just as Buicks, Jeeps, Hondas, Toyotas, Fords, VWs, and Audis are manufactured in the PRC to the standards of the parent companies. Trek and Giant are two companies I expect to hold their global manufacturing partners to corporate standards.

    I do have a Chinese manufactured Schwinn Tandem Cruiser, and I am quite happy with the manufacturing quality. The choice of components was a good fit to the price (relatively low). Too bad my legs are to short, to get on it at my age.

    My everyday bike is a Trek City Bike, ordered with frame size to fit my unusual body dimensions twenty years ago. It works as well as it did the day I bought it. At that time, Treks came from Taiwan.

    If you buy a $100 bike, you get a $100 bike. If you buy a $500 bike, you get a $500 bike. If you buy a $5000 bike, you get a $5000 bike. Unless you happen to live in China, where you might buy a $100 bike for $20 (I did, and sold it before I left). I should have followed the lead of one of my colleagues, who spent about $1500 for a half dozen bikes, China and Taiwan manufacture, that would have cost him at least $10,000 had he bought them in Norway as imports. Shipped them home as used household goods.

    Just generally:

    Get a bike that fits your body. Once you get past the discount store models, frames come in different sizes, measured along the seat post. This is a critical dimension. The other fit is length, and that one is more about style/purpose, different lengths for different markets: comfort bikes, road bikes, city bikes, mountain bikes, trail bikes all differ in dimensions and thus riding position. They guy at a good bike store can help you figure it out. Looking at a bike rack at WMart, you don't have a snowball's chance in H...

    Get a bike that fits your riding intentions. Not everyone needs 27 gears. Not everyone needs brakes that will pull you down from 60 mph on a 12% downgrade. Not everyone needs to spend $5000 to shave the last four ounces of frame and component weight, most of us will lose that much weight the first week riding the bike. If you know how you want to use it, the guy at the bicycle store can help.

    If beyond a certain age, and a casual rider not needing the optimum ratio of frame stiffness vs weight, consider what we call here a "Girls Bike" with a step through frame. When I was in China, and bicycles were in use as everyday transportation, this was not called a girls bike or women's bike. It was the old people's bike. Young people of either gender rode what we call the boy's bike. Old people rode the girl's bike. When nobody is wearing skirts, it is not about fashion, it is about agility, stepping on and off. In Beijing and Shanghai, people were making the frame style transition at age 40-50.