alan s 

Works for commuting, touring, weekend rides on and off road.

Worknomore

Do I get to keep some extra wheel sets? With a wheel/tire swap my litespeed blue ridge does it all, tour, comute, light off roading, and fast club rides. Light and built like a tank, It is my bike of choice with the others gathering dust.

1983

Some of these posts read like this:

blah blah......look at my awesome bike.....blah blah blah.

HardyWeinberg

I started with one wheel, then got another.

tjspiel

Why would you expect this topic to be any different than the majority of other BF topics?

InTheRain

I like looking at awesome bikes!

tjspiel

I vote yes.

Andy_K 

1983

True, true.

79pmooney

Yeah! A man of my heart.

Ben

agenkin

I have only one bike. It's a steel touring bike, and I've been going on up to 180km rides with it, paved and gravel, commuting year round (including in snow), carrying a week's worth of groceries, etc.

groovestew

Pretty easy decision - my Kona Jake the Snake. That poor bike has been grossly ignored the last couple years, but it's easily my best and most versatile bike.

That said, I'd have a hard time giving up my fixie, which is my go-to bike for urban trips.

canadian deacon

Thanks. Full disclosure: I was thinking I could keep the fixed gear and steal the geared bike back.

Tundra_Man 

I currently have six bikes. If I could only keep one it would have to be my carbon fiber Kestrel road bike. It's not very versatile, but I just love every second I spend riding it. Crazy smooth and great handling. I can't imagine giving it up.

I'm not about to muck it up with fenders or subject it to the abuse of winter (that's why I have other bikes.) If that were my only bike I'd wind up not riding on rainy days and during the winter, so that would be sad.

From a sheer practicality standpoint it would make more sense for me to keep my Diamondback hybrid that's equipped with fenders, rack, horn, etc and swap out winter tires. But while that bike is nice it doesn't speak to my soul the way the Kestrel does. So if I can only keep one I'm making the impractical choice.

Thankfully I don't have to only keep one.

Rick@OCRR

Back in '95 when I had to move from St. Louis to SoCal (post divorce plus new job) I did have to pick just one bike and I picked my Mercian Vincitore. It served me well since it was several months before my car and other bikes were shipped out. Great to see another Mercian rider on this forum!

Rick / OCRR

alan s 

So, where is your awesome bike?

RubeRad

Well OP didn't say "if you could buy/have only one bike...", he said "if you could keep only one bike...", which is almost the same as "what is your favorite bike"?

1983

...which is different than "please show off how much more awesome your bike is than everyone else's."

Dial the cynicism up and you'll see it.




Perhaps I am showing my cards as jealous because my bike is too mediocre to compete with others in this thread.


Perhaps I don't even have a bike.


Perhaps I am just a bot...

DogBoy

I'd keep my disc trucker. I'd want to keep my Jamis Renegade, but the trucker is way more practical.

Andy_K 

That's actually one of the things I find interesting about this question. If I could only keep one bike, it wouldn't be the bike that's my favorite. In fact, if I whittled them down one by one the bike that I ride least often (the mountain bike) would be one of the last to go, because it is so much better at what it does than the others. The bike I said I would keep would ultimately win out over the two that are my favorites because it is still pretty good at the things I use the other bikes for. But I guess that's just because all of my bikes are so awesome.

bigbenaugust 

While I love my Bakfiets, 99% of my mileage is without the kids, so I'd keep my singlespeed.
And yes, the Motobecane Fantom Cross Uno is a pile of crap compared to many. But it's my fun bike and it fits me better than the other piles of crap hanging from my rack.

InTheRain

Another reason for this thread... the first two bikes that I bought, were not the bikes that I would choose to keep - in fact, I didn't... I sold both of them. Maybe it's best to buy the bike you would keep first and then buy bike N+1. That is the way that I wish I would have done it. Anyway, maybe we're doing this wrong, we should probably all spend more time thinking about our next bike, huh?

tjspiel

When I bought my first house (a townhouse), I knew it wouldn't be the last house I'd own. The second house my wife and I bought together. It checked all the boxes but in all honesty neither one of us are super enamored with the house itself. We do like the location and we've been there 15 years, but once the kids are gone, there's a good chance we'll buy something else.

You make a purchase based on what you know at the time, what you can afford, and what appeals to you. Getting some miles under your belt may influence future decisions. That's not a bad thing. I think the only time there should be major regrets is if you were to spend a small fortune on a bike you intensely dislike and can't recoup very much of the cost by selling it, or if a bike is such a poor choice that it puts you off cycling altogether.

Andy_K 

I firmly believe that the main purpose of a first bike is to teach you what you want in a second bike.

My first bike (as an adult) was not at all what I ended up wanting. It was a GT Timberline, a "comfort" bike with entry level components and cheap front suspension. I outfitted it with a rack and fenders and it did OK for me, but after a year I knew I wanted something else. My second bike, a 2008 Kona Jake, was great and I used it for everything for years. My only complaint was that I wished it had disc brakes. So the first year Kona made a Jake with disc brakes I bought it, and that's the bike I'd keep now if I could only keep one.

Of course, a secondary purpose of bikes 2 through N is to teach you what else you want for bike N+1.

HardyWeinberg

I think it takes a while for someone to decide what kind and size of bike they work best with, and even if they do settle in on something stable for that, it will still change anyway. So yeah, the next bike is always where it's at!