This is why us 40 somethings all take up road cycling. Less stress on the body but the gear and exhilaration is still there. MTB is still very tempting but the falls are more frequent.
Falls aren't any more frequent riding XC than on a road bike. I'm about to turn 40 and I much prefer the flow of good singletrack over tarmac any day.
- Sharing roads with fast heavy vehicles at speed.
- Lycra.
- The expense. A good road bike seems to cost ~10× more than a great skateboard or longboard (but about the same as an electric longboard).
- Friends who've had big crashes on the road; intuitively it feels like it should be safer than mountain biking, but I'm not so sure.
I don't road bike but AFAIK the cheapest way to have a bike that weighs one pound less isn't hyper-expensive materials but diet based weight loss about a month ago. In the spirit of the old weight lifting joke, or maybe wisdom, that illegal steroid use might make you look like you have an extra year's lifting experience while causing significant medical problems, and in that context the medically safest replacement for illegal steroid use that gets you to the same place without any medical danger is simply to start lifting one year earlier, and a lot of money is made in the market convincing people that patience is not an alternative.
Carefully plot your routes.
> Lycra.
No need for that bs, a t-shirt, jeans and good shoes are all you need.
> The expense. A good road bike seems to cost ~10× more than a great skateboard or longboard (but about the same as an electric longboard).
You can buy great used bikes for relatively little money. I just bought a top of the line roadbike that's a bit older for $200 which I used regularly, another for $150, which I converted into a hometrainer:
https://jacquesmattheij.com/trainification
Don't fret about the quality of the bike, until you reach competition level it is totally unimportant. I regularly pass people on much better bikes with all the goodies and just yesterday I in turn was passed by someone in at least their sixties on a bike that was much older than mine and I wouldn't have been able to catch him no matter how hard I tried. The bike rarely matters.
> Friends who've had big crashes on the road; intuitively it feels like it should be safer than mountain biking, but I'm not so sure.
I've crashed pretty hard about 2 years ago. It was my own fault, riding a recumbent on a regular road. Still, I got lucky, broke my leg badly but nothing else.
If you do go for competition cycling then maybe it is worth it to you to spend the extra $ but for the most part it seems to me that people just love to have an excuse to spend their $ to look like they are professional athletes.
Their bellies usually tell a different story, but fortunately for them lycra seems to stretch really well ;)
The only time I've had chafing issues was when doing a circle around the 'IJsselmeer' in one day. That was bad. But I was also peeing green and out for the count for the next day so enough time to heal up :)
Just need to find somewhere to store a road bike along with the skis, skateboards, snowboards, and mountain bikes now…
Another thing, if you're shopping for bikes is to check for new-old-stock, sometimes you can get crazy discounts on bikes that are only one or two years old thanks to the 'fashionista's' who wouldn't be caught dead on a bike that isn't of the latest model year and in the latest colors.