Hello friends my spouse and I are moving to a relatively bikeable town but neither of us currently own bicycles (on account of not wanting to die on a rural highway). I know nothing about bicycles except for how to ride one.
Anyone have advice on what we should be looking for for bikes?
Details:
Spouse will be biking to work most days, about 15 minutes. They have some disability issues though and I think an e-bike would be really helpful for them to make the ride easier.
I will be driving a long distance if and when I get a job, but would still like a bike for around town, on weekends, running small errands etc. Grocery store is about 10 minutes biking, it would be nice to do a good amount of grocery shopping on bike. Hopefully the next place we move I’ll be able to bike to work, in which case I’ll definitely want an E-Bike because I’m the sweatiest person alive, so would ideally want something I could retrofit to an E-Bike if that’s a thing you can do?
In theory (assuming landlord gets back to me) we’ll have a small-medium house in a nice area, so storage shouldn’t be much of an issue. If I need to I should be able to put up a small shed even.
You can retrofit an E-bike, Bafang conversion kits don’t come too costly anymore, but it takes some knowledge of wrenching and will increase maintenance somewhat on beater bikes which don’t usually have parts designed to continually withstand 300W of Power. It’s not going to just fold in half of everything, but everything wears off more quickly. If you know nothing about bikes other than how to ride them this is more of a skill to learn for the future and not for immediate transport situation as of now.
I’d say go with 2 E-Bikes fitted out in some sort of transport cycle configuration, so like front crate, rear crate, permanient panniers under the rear crate. Don’t matter much for 10 or 15 mins of riding to work as per battery but it gives you lots and lots of flexibility to carry shit. Otherwise, one 3-wheel cargo bike and one e-bike might do the trick if you want like car-replacement grocery getter. For E-Bikes it’s important to buy local-ish on account of the motors do need maintenance and it sucks ass having to drive 200 miles to the nearest shop or ship it off.
If you’re in a bikeable town with space to spare for bikes I’d also advise two backup bikes, non-E. Yeah it might suck for a week or two while the E-Bike is in the shop or whatever but at least you got your mobility and if you’re not pressed for sweaty time you can take those and not worry about them being stolen or vandalised too much. The ideal here is mechanically sound, visually disgusting. Don’t doxx yourself or anything but do feel free to send me a DM to look at things if you want an opinion.
If kids are planned I’d opt for low entry bikes / women’s bicycles so you don’t roundhouse kick your offspring in the head. Goes for everything. If not and you are able to mount it, double diamond bikes / mens bikes offer more rigidness and more power to the road from pedalling, albeit if it’s all leasurely stroll-rides you do with the non E-Bikes that’s a nonissue.
A lot of what you want to buy and what parts are on it depend on local availability, honestly. In germany I’d advise you look for something with an internal gear hub, in NA this seems not as common and might turn out pricier in the end than a cassette. If you want to give more info here, I’d be probably be able to triangulate your position better.
With the aforementioned thing in point, most of what sucks about used beater bikes is usually lights, air pressure in the tyres, brakes, all of which are easy to fix if you’re at least somewhat of a handyman so you can get some steals. My old beater bike I got for 50€, put 50€ in parts upgrades in it and then it was super good. Don’t buy anything with a Shimano Nexus 5 or Drum Brakes, those suck ass so fucking hard.
Thanks! I’ll keep all this in mind, may send you things for opinions.