I find myself in the strange and not unpleasant situation that Mrs Hooter has a keen desire for a new bicycle, in this particular case for road and touring. After several hours of joyful togetherness sitting on the sofa with laptops looking at various purveyors of fine cycles, we are at a loss as to what to get. Happyness has turned to frustration and the root cause is that she doesn’t really know what she wants…
This is what we have so far:
1) It needs to be light
2) Take mudguards and a rack for light touring
3) Have a good spread of gears for riding flatland and hills
4) Disk brakes are prefered
5) Worst of all, it has to …. “look right”. Most cyclo cross and many touring bikes for instance do not “look right”. Any bike from a good value place like Ribble or On-One/Planet-X does not “look right”. She’s read that a Cotic Roadrat is heavy. Expensive racing bikes of course “look right” but do not meet criteria 2,3 and 4 above. Anything smooth glossy and white does “look right”, especially white rims 🙄
She quite likes the Genesis Croix de Fer, but the gears are too high. There’s a Jamis bike at Evans, but it’s sold out in her size. The Decade Tripster looks like an option, but she says it only “looks right” with white rims – and getting 29er disc wheels with white rims does not seem to be cheap.
So STW massive, what other options are there? Please help!