Im not sure where you got the idea that I’m trying to convince everybody on the Internet of anything. I do enjoy riding my bike. If I didn’t enjoy it, I wouldn’t do it. I’m not sure why anybody who had a choice would continue to do it if they didn’t like it. Presumably most BF members have a choice. Probably everybody who has replied
to this thread so far does.

Riding a bike IS a good activity. It’s stimulating and engaging. It’s good exercise. Working on bikes, collecting them, restoring them, racing them - all good activities.
I don’t preach to people about living car free or cyclocommuting. I don’t preach to people about anything. But I will put in a good word for the bike whenever I get a chance. What anybody does with it is their choice.
I DO want more people to ride bikes, whether that means commuting, riding the greenway, riding the trails, or whatever. It’s a good activity. Most people around here wake up, hop in the car to go to work, sit all day, drive the car home, and then sit inside all evening. Riding a bike is an easy way to get outdoors, get a little exercise, build a little skill. If anybody likes it a lot, sure, I’ll tell them whatever they want to know about cyclocommuting or living car free. But I don’t try to talk anybody into it. And I don’t count myself as some sort of elite or hardcore cyclist because I do live without a car and ride my bike 2+ hours a day. I do it because I like it and it’s good for me. I don’t like it every day, but on the whole I still enjoy it a lot.
I only want for others to be able to have the good things that I have, whether anything bike related is involved or not. It’s called sharing, and it doesn’t make me less sharing the more time I spend on the bike. I understand that’s not the case for everybody. I understand it even better after posting this thread.
Not everybody likes to share. Maybe not everybody has the capacity. I dunno.
It’s not surprising to me that people cut one another down. It’s not surprising to me that people disparage entire groups of other people. Humans have been perfecting hate and fear and narcissism and envy and all that good stuff for thousands of years and a bike ain’t gonna undue that. There’s no cyclo-salvation to be had. I guess for me, the bike - whether riding it or working on it or whatever - it’s one more thing that I can say I have in common with another human who also does. But I tend to look for similarities between myself and other humans over and above differences. I don’t understand how people have positive relationships with other humans by focusing on differences or things they don’t understand. And as I said earlier, I doubt that they do have positive relationships, and so I count myself lucky that I do for whatever reason.

Since I’m feeling sharing, I’ll share my latest bike. It’s a mid-90s Trek Multitrack. I think these bikes make great machines for just about any type of biking, or several types.
It’s comfortable, stable, has tons of gears, will fit a 40mm tire without fenders, or a 35mm with them. It has strong brakes that are easy to adjust. It has 2x bottle brazeons and eyelets for fenders front and rear and a rear rack. Parts are cheap to replace/upgrade and easy to find, it’s easy to work on and it’s very customizable. I bought mine from a guy in the neighborhood across the street for $25. I embellished mine with drop bars because the factory riser bars were causing me some pain in my wrists and lower back after about 30 minutes into my commute. It handles very nicely with them. Fenders because I ride rain or shine, and the roads are filthy.
I wouldn’t recommend it for racing, or heavy off-road use. But I think I might tour on it, it’s certainly enough bike for greenway or trail use. I’ve seen some people make gravel grinders out of them. And it’s very good for commuting. I took it on some gentle single track and it seemed like the bike knew what it was doing better than I did. I bet someone could make a decent cyclocross bike out of maybe one of the lighter Multitrack variants - maybe somebody already has. This one with the hi ten frame fully decked out and loaded with my typical commute load is probably 40-45 lbs. But it doesn’t feel sluggish or hard to handle.
If this provides a frame of reference, the vast majority of my riding miles have been commuting, and that only for a year, and commuting exclusively on vintage drop bar road bikes. I would estimate around 6,000 miles total including recreational rides over the last 5 years. I’ve owned and ridden a few mountain bikes and a couple 3 speeds and I guess half a dozen vintage road bikes but this is my first hybrid. I got it 3 weeks ago and haven’t touched my other bikes since. Weather has been a factor, though.

Maybe next year. I’m sort of waiting to thrash the wheels I have before I replace them. It seemed to make sense to upgrade wheels and drivetrain from 7 speed to 9 at the same time and add dynamo then too. Would 10 speed be cost prohibitive on an all weather nasty road sort of bike? I went through 2 derailers in the last year, but it’s not like they were new when I put them on. Sand and road grit just shreds stuff though. I think it’s a factor for lots of folks who go internal gear. Cleaning my drivetrain every day - ain’t gonna happen. I think the mudflap on the front fender will help. Maybe a lot.

Fastest and cheapest doesn’t mean best.

It it takes almost 3 times as long for me to get to work by bike as by car.

But it is cheaper.

Its better for my health and overall well being. I have a better attitude when I am riding vs when I’m not. It gives me time to think, to be inside my own head. I’m far from the only one to feel this way.

Working on and restoring bikes for me is the same type of satisfaction as working on and restoring cars, or musical instruments, or furniture. I’m not alone in this.

I don’t evangelize car free living or commuting by bike, but I do enjoy it.

I don’t visit living car free forums or sites anymore. I did for a while when I first started thinking about it and for a while after I took the plunge. But the conversation usually turns political and people talk pretty nasty to one another. Same with advocacy and safety, the forum and other sites. If one really wants to be “entertained”, take a look at some of the online discussion about infrastructure and vehicular cycling.

To me it seems paradoxical that the ones who most loudly preach LCF are the ones who act the most unhappy, sort of tightly wound. It hasn’t been an unhappy experience for me. Challenging, yes, but not unhappy. It’s been pretty fulfilling actually. But from my own experience, I wouldn’t - COULDN’T - recommend it to everyone. Not because I’m better than them or that I have something they lack or because I’m a “hardcore” cyclist. Because I like to ride my bike a lot, AND it’s good for me, AND I appreciate the cost savings. And it’s something to be proud of, something I’ve put a lot of time and thought and work into, and sometimes pain, and I enjoy the results. I get used to the honking and close passes and objects being thrown at me. I don’t mind dealing with people asking me “aren’t you cold?” The same people ask the same questions over and over again and I answer them the same way. It is what it is. I’ve never talked anybody into doing it, and I’ve never tried. My wife is talking about getting a car. That doesn’t bother me. In the last year, there were probably 30 days when I felt like I didn’t really want to ride my bike to work, and most of them I just wanted to have a couple tons of steel between me and the other cars. Or heat a couple of times would have been nice. She gets a car, out the window goes any “badge” for living car free. This causes no problem for me. I don’t lose any identity. I don’t have any identity wrapped up in my transportation. If anything, I probably just come off as a really clean homeless guy with a nice bike. I don’t care.

I empathize with LCF folks because I also live without a car. We share the same struggles. We deal with disgruntled motorists. Spending much time on a bike around speeding traffic and abusive drivers can be anxiety inducing. Some people have no choice but to live car free, but you tend to hear less from them on the Internet than you do people who make the choice. Same with bike commuting. There are places where it’s absolutely normal to ride a bike everywhere. So normal that there’s no need for them to talk about it on the Internet. But those places generally exist outside the USA, which is the majority of where BF posts come from. I don’t think it’s fair to label LCF folks as conspiracy theorists or accuse them of trying to start a cult. Nobody should be surprised to find that sort of behavior on a cycling discussion forum, not even one as well moderated as this one.

I have an acquaintance in town who emigrated from Scotland in his 50s who never drove a car, always biked, and still
does here, just about every day. His commute is 19 miles one way, and he does it rain or shine, or ice. He’ll take a ride from his wife sometimes, but he puts in just as many miles a week total as I do, often more. I would bet that if his commute was 12 miles like mine, he’d rarely get a ride from his wife.

This is mostly rambling, but it’s my thread.

I sort of felt like 8 was enough but the price difference between 8 and 9 speed stuff is minimal, at least I thought it was. May as well have another cog if it’s free. But I haven’t looked in quite a while.

I’d probably upgrade crank at the same time
to a 24/34/42 or similar. The 38t big ring is pretty low. I don’t run out of gears commuting but I have used the 11t cog and the 32/38 jump is a little soft, almost like shifting one cog.

Edit: you know how much less it costs to buy a new MTB triple vs a road triple? A lot.

If Sheldon Brown was an LCF advocate, I’m not aware of it.

I learned more about bikes from his website than any other single source.

Thank you. Yeah, the Alivio stuff actually looks really good. Looked up some prices, even less than I expected.