How to Pick a Bike

Video Transcript

KEVIN LIVINGSTON: Hi, I'm Kevin Livingston here at Mellow Johnny's Bike Shop in Austin, Texas. We're going to talk about choosing the right bike for you. To get started, the best thing would be walk through those doors, look for one of the professionals, one of the floor reps working, start getting their feedback. A couple of things they probably going to ask you to get started are: What is the purpose of the bike? What kind of cycling do you do? Is it a bike that's going to be a commuter bike to get from home to work over a short distance or is it going to be used on just from short trail rides or on the road, off the road? Are you going to be mountain biking? Are you going to be road cycling? And finally: Are you going to be competing? Because you may come in wanting to get a bike at a certain level but knowing six months later you're going to be already out of that bike by sort of what your goals are with riding. So again really important is fit. Next step would be purpose of the bike. Here we've got some roads, some competitive--more road-style bikes. You can see with the drop, the handlebars, more narrow tires, very light. Moving over here, we've got some what they call hybrid bikes. These are bikes that have the straight handlebar much like a mountain bike. You're seated a little more upright, a little more comfortable position. You've got a wider tire than on the road but you still have the same-sized wheel, the 700-sized wheel, as a road bike but again not as aggressive position. You could ride this bike with this tire on a crushed gravel trail or just as easily keep it on the road. If your focus is off-road, then you've got to consider a mountain bike. A mountain bike is going to have--you could have what they call a full suspension which is a fork on the front, the shack fork and also a rear suspension. This bike is what they refer to as a hard tail because you don't have suspension on the back but you do have it on the fork. This bike over here would be an example of full suspension. You've got a fork with suspension and also the rear has a suspension system for extreme terrain. Again another type of off-road cycling sort of in between competitive is called cyclocross, and that--you're going to have a bike that looks more like a road bike, your traditional bike, more aggressive with the road handlebars. But if you look, you'll see that you have more clearance with the special brakes and a knobby tire and a little steadier construction so it can take the rigors of off-road. Cyclocross is a sport growing in popularity that there's a lot of dismounting, mounting and some running, running uphill, some different obstacles. But again, this looks more like a road bike. Here we've got some cruiser bikes. Now these are going to be more for, exactly that, cruising, cruising around town, maybe a short jog to the store to grab something pick it up or maybe just to kind of cruise around and sightsee and just sort of get out, fresh air, enjoy a little bit of fitness and have a great time. Fit and the building of bikes has come a long way. Now they're creating also women-specific designed bikes to accommodate the different sizes. Really you've got generally the women-specific will have a little bit shorter top tube but be similar in size to a men's bike, just for a better--just from the studies they've done and get all the data they've gathered on cyclists that they can build specific frames to help accommodate really everyone across the board.