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Comment by reaperducer | Hacker News Reader

Similar thoughts cross my mind every time I'm passed by a cyclist with a $2,500 bike wearing technicolor corporate spandex.

When I was very young, and about a third my current weight, I rode my bike from Montreal to Vancouver with a bunch of friends.

They all had the latest $500+ touring cycles. I had a brown $99 generic bike from Toys R Us.

We all got there at the same time. And since my bike was far less engineered and precise than theirs, mine broke less often and could be repaired much easier.

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YMMV when it comes to bikes. About 3 years ago I bought a cheap bike from Canadian Tire, and on the first day riding it to work, both pedals broke off.

Did both pedals break off at the same time? If not, how did you keep riding with only one pedal? This sounds like the beginning of a great story!

One pedal broke off, then I tried riding with one foot on the crank arm, and the other on the pedal. A couple seconds later, the other pedal broke off.

Apparently it was a pretty common issue with the series of bikes.

It's like most things, buy the literal cheapest item you can and it'll probably be shit. Buy something in the lower middle of the price range and it'll probably serve you well for most uses. With bikes, that's probably $300-600.

Having had mostly cheap bikes before, I finally ponied up the cash for a decent bike. Not a racer or anything, a not too expensive ordinary 8-speed flat bar city bike, with a good aluminum frame, fenders, luggage rack, good ergonomics and quality Shimano components.

Compared to the cheaper bikes I used to ride, the difference is night and day.

You don't have to go crazy, but you should spend enough to get good quality.

Having had mostly cheap bikes before, I finally ponied up the cash for a decent bike.

After the trip, I got into serious long-distance cycling for a few years, and bought a real road bike. You're right, it was night and day.

Totally agree. A good bike is so much more fun to ride.

To me a good bike is one that fits and is properly maintained.

"The best bike is the one you ride."

A good bike will generally have quality components that last for a long time, and can eventually be repaired or replaced.

When I used to commute 10 miles on bike every day I started out with fairly cheap bike. It worked fine but then I got an opportunity to get a better bike for very good price. Having better brakes and smoother gear shifts and a lot of other details made my commute much better. there is certainly a point where spending more doesn't make things better though.

Another thing that makes a night and day difference: set your saddle height correctly.

So often I see people on bikes with the saddle set so low that they can't get any power from their legs.

They must all think, wow: "biking sucks."

Your seat should be set high enough that your leg almost straightens at the bottom of the stroke.

I unsure got to a bike shop and ask them to help you.

Nothing wrong with riding on a cheap bike of course, but your latter statement doesn't really ring true to me.

The "extra" money into more expensive bikes may partially be marketing/name brand but most of it either goes into making things lighter or stronger (and sometimes both). A real touring spec bike will tend to be on the heavier side (at least, compared to race bikes) but be much stronger than a typical bike. They really are pretty robust. I don't know if your friends were just unlucky and you were lucky, but it might just be sample size, as you'd really want to measure this over much longer times/distances.

I have friends who pretty much always ride cheap bikes due to losing them semi-regularly in the city. The main differences between them and more medium-price bikes seem to be: poor brakes and clunky shifters, and occasional catastrophic failure of components (i.e. not repairable without replacement). Oh, and they tend to be heavy.

Then you were lucky.

I would definitely not recommend people ride across the country on a BSO (bike shaped object, often found in department stores).

Having had good bike and cheap bike, it was difference. Major one. Speed and distance difference was considerable and so was durability.

Your friends were unusually unlucky in their choice of bike, or you was unusually lucky.

Instinctively, that seems like a rather long way to bike at an age where one gets a bike from Toys R Us. I admit, though, that I've never particularly looked into the bikes on offer there -- as far as I was aware, they were limited to toy plastic tricycles and the like -- so perhaps they simply had a larger selection than I would have expected.

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