Originally Posted by
mschwett
An interesting variety of responses ! The most common seems to be, perhaps, wider riding conditions/terrain/situations than I personally prefer, so, a wider range of bikes. It does seem that most bikes get ridden far less than each of mine, so all the relatively frequent maintenance issues (chains, pads, rotors, tires, cassettes) are spread out over way more time. And finally, I appreciate that sometimes things are just nice to have, to look at, to tinker with, and perhaps if i had more space and time I’d have a lot more bikes. But i know they’d all be really, really similar, which goes back to the first point about terrain type and riding purpose.
i realize I’m also the same about cars, having driven the same two seater for ages until the arrival of a child forced the purchase of a car with a backseat. It’s not that i didn’t think trucks or jeeps or big cruiser sedans weren’t cool, it’s that i preferred small and light and fast most of the time, so i drove small and light and fast all the time.
Someone long ago at the beginning of my career said “when in doubt, make a graph”. I keep yearly mileage of my bikes and have since 1988 when I got my first bike computer. I won’t put out all of my bikes but of the current fleet of 9 bikes, here is the graph of their years in my fleet (multiplied by 100 to show on the graph) and the total miles on each
The amount of usage kind of depends on the utility of the bike. My Moots YBB, for example, was purchased to be a bikepacking bike. I ride it sometimes as a mountain bike but, mostly, I use it for short trips (80 to 150 miles) on a semi regular
My Dean is one of my older bikes but it is just a fun bike with very little utility. Since I can’t carry much on it, I don’t ride it all that often. It’s not one that gets used for commuting, for example.
This one (Philll) gets ridden a whole lot. Its wheel size is about the same as my wife’s 650C bike so I ride it with her. And it is fun to ride and much more useful.
Ah, my embarrassment. This is a great mountain bike but I just don’t ride it. It’s the mountain bike version of the Dean above only it gets used less.
My Cannondale T1 is a bike that may sit for a couple of years and then it gets ridden for a whole bunch of miles at once.
My Dean mountain bike gets ridden a lot on various terrains and commuting (makes the commute more interesting).
This one is at my daughter’s house. We get down there a couple of times a year and it gets ridden only a few miles at a time.
This Cannondale T800 replaced a Salsa Las Cruces that I used for many years simply because I got tired of the color.
My Cannondale Tandem is relatively new and I do have to ride with someone else.
