Originally Posted by RubeRad

Vintage road bikes are just as good as modern for almost all purposes (depending on how you feel about brifters vs downtube), but I highly recommend you try out a modern mountain bike. The technology has made radical improvements since 'vintage'. Hydraulic disk brakes, affordable air shocks instead of coil or elastomer, wider tubeless tires (so you might as well just have a rigid frame like my Krampus), excellent shifting systems with greater range (for instance 1x10 with a 11-44 cassette, a narrow-wide chainring, and a clutched derailleur), not to mention fluff features like dropper posts, remote-fork-lockout switches, etc.