A little while ago on this very website, I answered the question that everybody wants to know: “How many bikes do I need?”
I’ve just added a new bike to my shed, so I thought it might be fun to look at the principle stated in that earlier article and see how it applies to the bikes I currently own.
Controversially, my thesis discards N+1 as a guide for working out how many bikes you need, and replaces it with the idea that the right number of bikes is one.
So if you want to go road riding, you need one bike, a road bike.
If you want go mountain biking, you need one bike, a mountain bike.
If you want to race cyclocross / go touring or bikepacking / travel with a bike, you get the point.
At the moment, the number of one bikes I have is seven.
A road bike, a cyclocross bike, a dual-suspension mountain bike, a touring/commuting bike, a bikepacking bike, a folding bike, and an e-bike for shopping and commuting.
And the reason that this method holds up to the vicissitudes of life is that even though I have bikes for specific purposes, each of those bikes are actually quite versatile, and can easily fill the roles adjacent to their purpose.
So here we go. A complete rundown of the Briztreadley stable of bicycles, where they came from, and how long I have owned them, and what each one means to me.
I’m going to do this as a series of posts, probably over a few weeks. I probably won’t “announce” it until its all finished.
