bike preference. whats yours ?

whilst out riding today, i was mulling over in my head all the brand, types, niches, fashions ?? of bike i have ridden over the years.

it has been a very expensive, sometimes pointless, even stupid i suppose, but more than anything it has been a fantastically enjoyable journey.

and i came to a conclusion or sort of, that a 29+ bike is the ideal bike for me, a bike you can pretty much do anything on. i once read somewhere that someone called a 29+ bike a swiss army knife of a bike, and i agree.

in the past 12 month, i have gone from a hardtail with a rohloff, to a 4.8 tyred fat bike, to a 6 month foray on a gravel bike. all good quality, all nice to ride.

today i rode a 16 mile offroad loop, with a good mix of everything, straight from my door. all the other bikes suffered in some way or the other on the loop.

today i rode it on a rigid forked 29+ bike which was perfect for everything.

so for me, after a long varied journey through 40 years of offroad riding, i seem to have found my preference.

sorry if this bores you,but it was in my head and i needed to clear it.

oh, and whats your bike preference ?

I think it’s quite plausible that the bike you rode today just suits you now where your at in life .

It had to rewrite that 3 times as not to sound condescending but if yournout riding having a great time on 2 wheels that in my book is the perfect ride .

I own a fancy endurance road bike, a titanium gravel bike, a very fancy XC hardtail, a 29er trail bike, and a fully rigid 26″ singlespeed. My favourite is whichever one I’m riding at the time. Bikes are great.

today i rode it on a rigid forked 29+ bike which was perfect for everything.

Funnily enough I’ve ended up with the same conclusion…

…29+ Surly Krampus singlespeed, and a geared Stooge (29+ ish).

Great bikes that will do pretty much everything :-)

My favourite is whichever one I’m riding at the time. Bikes are great.

^This^ – horses for courses.

MY Shand.  custom built just as I want.  I swap tyres occasionally depending on the riding so a fast rolling gravel tyre for a long tour, a fast rolling mtb tyre for every day and some chunkier ones if needed.  I want front suspension even on roads. Its an old skool geometry hardtail MTB with a 140 fork and a roholff and swept back bars

I have a fat bike with a suspension fork, a utility bike which is an MTB on slicks with a suspension fork, a hardtail ebike with a suspension fork and a very old steel road bike  all bar the road bike have swept back bars.  The road bike has bullhorns

I see no advantage apart from a little weight saving with having a rigid fork.  I’d rather be comfy even on the road

Depends what / where I want to ride.

I could say my preference is my nicely sorted gravel bike, but that would’ve been rubbish in Switzerland last month. The bike I took to Switzerland would’ve been rubbish last week bike packing across Wales.

I guess I like variety, I just like riding bikes.

There is no bike I have had greater enjoyment from for proper riding than my 2015 Camber Evo.   I’m sure it’s modern equivalent with 20mm more travel would likely be even better.  It’s just very all round capable for my skill and fitness limits.

I am however also really drawn to a nice xc bike and I nearly bought a MK1 Stooge instead of the Camber and that’s still an appealing idea.  I wonder if maybe one of those as well or even both and then I also like my gravel bike but really what I just want is more time to go riding because nothing generates head space quite like a bike ride and all bikes are great except that brown Puch I had once with a three speed Sturmey Archer that couldn’t stay in gear for more than a crank revolution.

It depends who you are and what kind of trails you like to ride. A rigid 29er would be useless to me. It might as well be a road bike.

Depends what sort of route/terrain I’m riding and what I need to carry. I love riding a reasonably lightweight carbon road bike when I want to go far/fast and I can find the right roads. I also love riding my fatbike on beaches, gravel, mud, bog, whatever. Plus I’ve a range of bikes between these extremes so that I can choose according to my mood and preferences.

To paraphrase a lot of that written above, the right tool for the job in hand would be my preference ;-)

Depends what / where I want to ride.

All down to this really. If I am riding just on the road then I don’t want to be riding an MTB. Yes they can be okay and clearly get you around but they are less enjoyable to me on the road than a road bike.

My preference is a road bike at the moment as I enjoy the higher speed and can’t be bothered with getting in a complete mess off road as this year it seems to have rained most of the time. In the few hot spells I preferred the MTB to get off road and away from cars.

For where I live if I don’t want to drive then a road bike is the best option. Unfortunately the drivers seem to have got way worse so it’s not particularly enjoyable any more though. Tried the road bike off road with bigger tyres/lower pressures and hated it for various reasons, so not sure a gravel bike would be worthwhile, I think I’d rather go for a light rigid 29er with xc tyres for the local bridleways.

As a general all rounder I think a 29″ hardtail is pretty decent for where I usually ride MTB and other places in the UK, though with all the jump trails that have popped up locally recently I do sometimes think I’d be better off with smaller wheels still.

I mean, who even has just one bike!!

29er Trail/Enduro full suss and a 29er steel hardtail tick all the boxes I need.

For me right now it’s the one I have, a Chinese 100mm FS bike for doorstep riding with an icky back in my 50’s.

Surly Krampus Moonlit Swamp green is lovely though.

Currently have five

Old 90’s steel Kona HT, that I hardly use and if I do only for the pub, but I’ll never sell it

26″ steel PP Shan that doesn’t get much use – sweet up now with a rack and bags with the intention of a bit of bikepacking just to make use of it. So far only done gym/shops. There are much better bikepacking bikes out there, was just making use of a redundant bike. It’s barely worth selling or stripping

180mm FS ebike. There are now better, lighter, bigger range bikes or there, but it does everything I want well enough

Ragley Big Al 29″ HT. Absolutely brilliant bike for 99% of the stuff I ride and don’t often feel that I’d need to be on a FS instead

Boardman gravel bike. That I like as an out and out gravel bike. Don’t want an iteration of a 90’s MTB, I already have that.

So, if I had one more bike, it would be a trail/Enduro FS – currently thinking of a Stanton Switch9er

I wouldn’t want to whittle it down to one bike, but if I did, it would be a hard choice between the Ragley and the ebike, but both would stay exactly as they are.

Starting from scratch, I’d probably just have a 160mm FS

A rigid 29er would be useless to me. It might as well be a road bike.

Well, I’ve ridden my Stooge at BPW, etc. and there’s a guy called Matt who has won enduros on his, so I’d say it’s the rider not the bike that’s the limiting factor ;-)

When I do uplift, my full sus is excellent.

However for self propelled riding I prefer my 29er hardtail.

Well, I’ve ridden my Stooge at BPW, etc. and there’s a guy called Matt who has won enduros on his, so I’d say it’s the rider not the bike that’s the limiting factor ;-)

The standard STW, self congratulatory, mildly insulting comment took longer than usual to arrive. You needed to use the phrase ‘skills compensator’ to get full marks though.

I have a Stooge, it’s bloody brilliant and a lot of fun to ride. My only issue is now is the beating it gives you if you try and ride rougher trails. It’s hilarious for a while but starts to take its toll on the body. I’ve toyed with selling it to be honest but can’t bring myself to do it. Guess its a keeper.

I got a short travel Orange Stage EVO earlier this year and I have to say I love it so can’t say there’s any one bike I prefer.

If someone held a gun to my head I guess the Stooge would be the one.

The standard STW, self congratulatory, mildly insulting comment took longer than usual to arrive. You needed to use the phrase ‘skills compensator’ to get full marks though.

Blimey, thin skin much?

Maybe I worded it badly, but I wasn’t saying you’re a bad rider, just that people can ride all sorts of bikes on all sorts of terrain.

Modern short travel 29ers (“downcountry / agro-XC etc”) are the high-water mark of my cycling journey. I can do everything I would personally ever want to do on a mountain bike with one bike.

Trail riding? No problem. 70-mile epic? Just change the tyres. Pootle round the local park with the family? Never over-biked.

If I had more time to drive further afield then I could probably justify a supplementary longer travel trail bike ( 160mmish), but it wouldn’t get ridden much.

Loved my DH bike last weekend, loved my 120mm Flaremax last night. I love em all!

my jones spaceframe singlespeed with fat front, or one of my custom ti  stooge singlespeeds, or my silly light niner carbon singlespeed, or for days when I want all my wrongness in one bike, my silly slack and long double bouncy geared Pole  monster.

The but the best answer for me is what ever bike I’ve chosen for that day, and the next mad thing I’m designing

Definitely a gravel bike for me, I love riding off road but frankly these days I don’t really enjoy anything gnarly at all and what I can ride on my gravel bike is mostly the limit of my enjoyment level, i also like riding on the road and the gravel bike can do this very well as well, so for me it’s the ideal bike. All that said though I still want more than one.

Both my 29″ Yeti ARC and my 27.5″ Spesh Enduro are more or less perfect for what I need them for. I could maybe go faster X-country on a slightly more thoroughbred XC race style hard tail, and a 29er Enduro bike might offer a slightly better ride, but honestly I don’t feel the need to change either of them.

I’ve ridden 6 different bikes in the last 7 days. They were all my preference for that particular ride on that particular day.

Commuter bike because it earns me money.

Gravel bike because it goes almost everywhere and further than the mtb.

My default will probably always be a hardtail, but I do love my full suspension bikes. Starting with rigid bikes and then on to hardtails when I got in to mtb, a hardtail always feels like this is what started it all and will always have a special place in my collection. Modern 29ers are capable of everything I need them to do.

Steel or titanium tubes. Bike type dependent on riding type or sometimes not. And a happy, wagging tail. Metaphorically speaking.

As the proud owner of a “skills compensator” I can indeed confirm that it lets me get away with stuff that my hardtail would not. It’s also amazing how capable a modern geometry hardtail can be and what you can do on one if you choose. As mentioned in another thread, you do tend to get battered though.

I love my Trek Remedy. But over the winter I got one of the CRC special hardtails. I rode it over winter given all of the slop that we had, and then unexpectedly still ride it for when doing longer rides on the moors which I have come to love. It is more than capable on the trails I rode my remedy on too. It’s now got me thinking that less is more and it’s just being out on a bike with mates and riding that matters more than WHICH bike.also makes me wonder why I spend £2k+ on a bike when a hardtails at half the price would do…

I mean, who even has just one bike!!

I have had just one bike for most of the last 25 years and ride it on road and off road. The bike that made most sense was when I had CX bikes.

I currently have two (an old road bike and an old rigid MTB) which does make sense but would still rather just have one so may get another CX bike instead.

@whyterider93

I love my Trek Remedy. But over the winter I got one of the CRC special hardtails. I rode it over winter given all of the slop that we had, and then unexpectedly still ride it for when doing longer rides on the moors which I have come to love. It is more than capable on the trails I rode my remedy on too. It’s now got me thinking that less is more and it’s just being out on a bike with mates and riding that matters more than WHICH bike.alsomakes me wonder why I spend £2k+ on a bike when a hardtails at half the price would do…

Exactly the same story here except with a Stumpjumper Evo rather than a Trek Remedy.

I mean, who even has just one bike!!

*waves*

Sweet spot for me seems to be a 29er, with about150 mm rear, 160 mm front. Not a full-bore enduro bike by current standards, although I ride a lot of enduro-style trails on it (and, obviously, you could happily race an enduro on it). Not such a monster that longer rides and/or somewhat mellower terrain become a slog. My version of just-a-mountain-bike.

With limited opportunities to ride, I’m after the best compromise for the range of riding I most like to do, i.e. Scottish enduro honeypots (Dunkeld, Aberfoyle, Tweed valley, etc), big days out in the Highlands or the Lakes, the odd uplift day (Inners, Ae, BPW) and trying to be less-shit on jumps.

If time and money were no object, I’d absolutely have a tonne of bikes, possibly even a Stooge.

For me it depends on the trails I enjoy, mostly rocky Peaks, Lakes etc so a 150mm travel fs. Since I got old and slow a fs ebike allows me to carry on throwing myself down rocky chutes for a few more years.

I still love riding round the woods, towpath pootling, bimbling etc and have bikes for those days but them rocky trails are what excite me so my fave has to be my ebike

Isn’t this just the old “if you could only have one bike?…” question just pitched a little differently?

My answer (for the last couple of years) would be a gravel bike with 700x40C tyres that can cover local On/Off-road loops from my door or multiday loaded up trips and all sorts of riding in between.

For a good couple of decades the default answer would have been some variation on a HT. But despite having owned various MTBs over the last 30 odd years, they’re beginning to interest me less and less. I’m not sure if that’s just me, the changing nature of “MTBing” or a bit of both.

Bike No1, which is perfect for everything I want is a 200/165(or 172)mm fs, Mullet DH/Enduro/Trail/XC bike, which I’ve done 950 miles and around 140,000 ft of elevation on since getting it on the 24th of May.

Bike No2 is a 130mm 27.5 hardtail, which I’ve probably done a couple of hundred miles on this year.

Unless it’s very flat and/or in a fast group, I will ride bike #1 as a preference.

It’s a sort of twisty question, this, because my absolute favourite type of bike is your standard big trailbike/small enduro bike. It can do pretty much anything, and you can specialise a little bit with parts swaps, wheels or tyres, to make it excel at even more. IMO we’re in an absolute golden age of “do it all mountain bikes”, that expression always used to be an admission that you just don’t really “do it all” but I could take my Aeris downhill racing or do a Ten or do the west highland way and finish off with a run down fort william, it’s as at home on a trailcentre or a tweed valley enduro track built by an actual lunatic or I can pedal it around my local stuff in the pentlands or (just now with my busted hands) spin it along the railway path. I can’t make an argument for anything else.

But. My favourite bike is my fatbike. It’s shit at everything and I love it.