REI has knowledgeable people and also have a service department. Some offer classes on maintenance, also. I bought one of their brand bikes and was very happy with it.
Go to the websites of a few of the name brands and sheck out the street/fitness bikes.
Some to check out:
Trek 7.1 FX Stagger
Jamis Allegro Sport Femme
Specialized Crossroads
Giant Escape 3 W
The OP didn’t ask for advice about whether to wear a helmet or how much to spend, but someone shouted advice anyway, so I’d point out that if the OP chooses to wear a helmet and wants to buy one, there’s no reason not to scrimp, since the $15.00 one from Walmart meets the exact same impact standards as a $100+ one from the famous brands. No maker is going to exceed those standards because marketing it as such would open them up to liability, and exceeding the standards would make it less marketable in other ways (thicker, heavier, hotter, more expensive, etc.).
That said, some of the cheapest ones, from ProRider, are actually certified to Snell B-95, which is older and slightly more strict than the more common CPSC standard even if they look dorky even by bicycle helmet standards. I recall some of Specialized’s also meet B-95, but the all have a sharp point in back that I’d think would easily snag on something in a crash.
I wasn’t aware the Trek made “fitness bikes now” but one line you do want to stay away from is the Navigator series, which are comfort bikes and too slow unless you ride on a lot of really rough trails. The Fuel series are hard core mountain bikes, and you won’t find one anywhere close to your price range anyway.
You’re right, but there are other benefits to high-end helmets: they are lighter, better ventilated, and usually more comfortable (more adjustments, better padding, etc). These may make the difference between hating your helmets vs. wearing them every time as a habit.
I agree. Buy the most comfortable and least dorky looking helmet you can find, regardless of price. I always had crappy $7 helmets from the toy section at Target when I was a kid and I never wore them. I got in a pretty bad wreck when I was a teenager and upgraded to buying whatever helmet I wanted every two years and I’ve not ridden without a helmet since.
ALSO… unless all riding is guaranteed at all times to be exclusively in bright sunshine (which of course is impossible) LIGHTS. LIGHTS LIGHTS LIGHTS.
I am a nightowl by nature, so I knew going in that lights would be rop of my list when I switched to biking, but really they need to be on everyone’s. I’m consistently floored by the number of my fellow bikers who either have none at all :eek:
:eek:, or the ones they have are so weak and puny they might as well have none.
I guess it’s from being a driver for so many years, but I’m sort of nuts about it. I wear a 900-lumen headlight strapped to my helmet (which allows me to automatically direct the light where I’m looking at all times…seems very no-brainer to me), I have two white lights on my bike facing forward, plus a red/yellow forward, and depending on what’s broken, I have anywhere from 3-6 other red/yellow blinkers all over the back and sides. I also have reflectors all around, more of both on my bike trailer, and my dog goes with me most of the time so he has a human-size refelective vest, a bright red blinker on his collar, and I have white lights on my left pointing down where he’s positioned next to me.
If I ever get hit, either the person who does it did so while having a seizure of some kind, or they meant to.
My neighbor told me I looked like a UFO coming around the corner…
The most frustrating thing I encountered with my old bike, a Schwinn road bike, was that they cut corners on the rims. They were constantly getting bent. I had them straightened by a really good bike shop (more than a few times) so I’m pretty sure they were just crappy rims and or spokes. My Specialized rims have taken some pretty hard knocks and are still straight as an arrow with no adjustments so far.
Point being…you get what you pay for.
Word, on the helmet-wearing. In my only unplanned dismount to , I controlled my fall with my hands, rolled onto my right side and shoulder, and as I slid to a gentle stop in the gutter, the last thing that happened was my head fetching up against the curb. What felt like an almost gentle bump caved in the top and side of the helmet completely!
Any helmet is a writeoff after it gets dinged up – they’re designed to give up their structural integrity for your precious brain – but this was a really impressive amount of damage. I bought a new helmet immediately, of course.
My brain still works great,* thank you.
*some readers may experience different results
My position on helmets and lights is demonstrated by my actions: on a handful of occasions, I’ve ridden a short distance of a few blocks on side-streets in dry weather without a helmet, and the same short distance at night, on side-streets with streetlamps, with my front white light on the fritz. However, I’ve never ridden at night without a working rearward flashing red light, and I got off my bike and walked it on the sidewalk the one time that light was dead at night. As Stoid said, the lights are so motorists in [del]oblivious[/del] charge of a ton of [del]gas-guzzling[/del] machinery can see you. :eek:
Also like Stoid, I’m flummoxed by seeing bicyclists at night with no lights, only reflectors. :smack:
The only time I ever was glad of it I wasn’t even on the bike! I was walking out of my house in the backyard to get on the bike and I tripped over my own feet, and for the first time in my entire life I could not stop myself from landing on my face. I scraped the shit out of my nose and cheek and was acutely conscious of the fact that the bill of my helmet had hit the cement straight on, telling me that if I had not been wearing it I would absolutely have broken my nose and very likely my braincase right at my frontal lobe.