I am looking to finally replace my old beautiful, faithful beast, a Schwin Varsity. It has roughly 35-40 years on it and tons of miles, but alas I am looking to move to something new. I have looked at the big box stuff and have the experience of my kids destroying every bike I have bought them from the big boxes. My kids as far as biking are no where as abusive as I was to my varsity, but they fell apart quickly. As a result I am thinking of paying up for a bike. I have been looking at Trek's in the hybrid and mountain bike category. I am not looking to race, although I have been working on mileage running, biking and swimming with a fantasy of doing full triathlons, but I can buy that bike when I commit to that goal, if I do. I do however enjoy going on trails with the youngest, but road is my main target. I don't have a problem with working harder if a mountain bike is the best bet, as I also look for the workout, and those bigger, softer tires definitely increase workload. Let the bike wars begin.
At first I thought you were about to say your wife. Brother R-in, sounds like you might be satisfied with a hybrid, or if you want to spend a lot of money then you might want a light weight mountain bike. BTW---Your last name wouldn't be Tintin, would it?
My wife and I recently had our bikes stolen by some thugs-in-training in broad daylight in front of a busy farmers' market kind of place. No fear as juveniles - they're on tape, there are witnesses, and it happened close to a security guard station. F'in punks - I hope they enjoy fresh air and my bikes now because sooner or later they're headed for prison. Anyway... I replaced my Trek 4500 mountain bike with a Trek 7.4FX. I am going to replace my wife's Trek 7.2FX WSD with the same thing or maybe a 7.3 or 7.4. The current model 7.4FX is $800. It has a carbon fork which absorbs some shock but doesn't have all the extra weight of a suspension fork like you'll see on a mountain bike. I'm going to use this as my city bike and it's also fine for light trail riding - rails-to-trails/crushed limestone/hard-packed dirt. I got tired of the heavy mountain bike in the city and switching tires if I wanted to go on a long ride. I will probably get another one next year and keep big tires on it. Just for laughs, check out the Surly bikes web site and the Pugsley model. http://surlybikes.com/bikes/pug_ops There are quite a few of these on the streets where I live. Why, I don't know but I think after riding one for a year, you'd have thighs as big as tree trunks.
Good advice, and they were locked. Unfortunately, the cable lock didn't stand up to their bolt cutters or whatever they used (it was a heavy cable, not one of those with the diameter of a pencil you sometimes see). It was a busy place on a Saturday afternoon so I figured a cable lock would be fine. From now on, it's U-locks only and I've seen some bikes with U-Locks plus a heavy cable. Takes away some of the fun when you're hauling around several pounds of extra steel, but these are the times we live in... On an upbeat note, the OP might consider putting his Varsity up for sale on Craigslist. A lot of hipsters like to buy those and convert them to fixies.
You need to decide whether you want to go hardtail or FS. Hardtails are my preference (much lighter) and I have world class trails outside my front door. Next decision is frame material. Pick two of three; strong, light and cheap. I have a Moots Rigor Mootis and an Otis Guy titanium. The Moots is spec'ed at ~19lbs and the Otis around 18lbs. The downside is that both bikes run >$5,000 as equipped. The wheelsets alone are over $1k. Carbon fiber is similarly expensive and not a good option for guys over 200lbs. Aluminum bikes are the norm and are rigid. You can get a reasonably light build (<23lbs) for under $1k. Rocky Mountain cycles are a great Canadian builder. REI has some decent low to mid-end bikes and the return policy will allow you to try the bike w/o risk.
Full suspension porpoises on hard uphill climbs unless you can lock out the rear shock-- be sure to have the capacity to lock out the rear shock and buy used from your local bike store or Ebay-- you can get some mad deals when bike maniacs build custom then need money fast--- surf PS-- leave carbon fiber to road racers-- its too brittle for hardcore offroad <iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/UcHk2--rwbA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>