Best Bikes anyone?

[FLV]

Just wondered if people have a best bike that they put away for winter.

I have put my best bike away but I like it, so I'm going to get it back out again and just put up with maintaining it

[voodoo_simon]

Mountain biking certainly not and this will be the first year that I will for the road, don't want the salts messing up my frame and it can't take mudguards either.

I ride my best bike in rain or whatever, but not when the gritters come out

[ScotRoutes]

I have a number of bikes of various designs.
They each have their strengths and weaknesses.
The thin-tyred road bike isn't particularly suited to the winters round here so likely won't be ridden until the weather improves.
The fatbike is pretty much ideal in the snow.
I'll probably be riding the fatbike more than the roadbike over the winter.
I don't have any crap bikes that I'll be riding just because it's winter.

[ton]

only ever owned 2 bikes at once. 1 for touring/road and 1 for offroad riding.
tried to get away with one, but it is too much faff, swapping tyres, guards on and off. 2 is perfect.

[Moder-dye]

Same here, 1 road bike, 1 off road, so both get used depending on what I'm doing. I am looking to get a second set of touring wheels for my road bike though as my current ones are only 20 spoke and I'm no lightweight especially if I add gear.

[whitestone]

Three bikes (plus one undergoing the change) - road bike, commuter and MTB. The commuter gets used as the road bike during winter so you could say that the roadie is put away but it's actually set up on the turbo so it doesn't get a rest.

[Zippy]

Used to, these days I just have bikes and I'm lucky if I have more than one fully working at a time!

[slarge]

I've never sold a bike as they tend to be worth next to nothing after a few years use, so they have accumulated and been turned into different types - so whilst the best road bike has been taken apart to clean and polish (and upgrade a bit), the rest are ready to go. They are all brilliant (except the frame that is waiting to be repaired).

[benp1]

Motorbike is tucked up warm

Push bikes get ridden all through the year. But I love that the rigid single speed can get used for local muddy blasts and just dropped back in the garage without any guilt (as opposed to my Solaris where I feel very guilty, not that it makes me clean it)

[ctznsmith]

2 bikes:
- 1 single speed which now sports touring tyres for nipping the 6 miles into town/to the station/to the pub.
- 1 with gears which is my 'work bike', tourer and MTB. In a couple of weeks I should have seperate work/touring and MTB wheelsets so no tyre swapping faff (and hopefully tubeless for off road)

The geared bike takes a serious beating all year round, but that does give a good excuse to replace the worn/broken bits regularly.

[FLV]

Interesting. Less puting away going on than I thought.

I have 3.5 bikes.

Crosscheck - rarely gets ridden at the moment.
Short travel Full Sus thingie - Its been put away for a bit, but is coming back out

The 1.5 consists of
Salsa El Mar frame
Krampus frame
a set of rigid and a set of sus forks that works with either,

No room to have both built at once.

[Cheeky Monkey]

I have too many bikes but take a similar approach / excuse to slarge There's also a bit of zippy's approach (only a few of many work).

I CBA with keeping ones for "best" though. Most I might do would be not to use the FS in really clarty stuff because it's a PITA to clean.

The idea of polishing a bike boggles my mind

[mountainbaker]

I've got 3
- CX bike, which has road tyres in the summer, and 40c gravel tyres on over winter, it gets the most miles and least care
- Custom Ti 29er, did TD on it and been running it singlespeed since I got back, again, barely gets washed, sometimes I oil the chain
- Very Expensive long travel enduro bicycle, I haven't used it for a year. Not worth selling as it's 26" and the industry bullsh1tters have ruined the resale value.

[FLV]

Interesting to see out of 40 votes, only 6 people keep a 'best' bike out of the grim weather. I thought it would be more.

[Alpinum]

This year and next are a bit different to the last ones.

Without going through all the bikes in the garage;

I've got myself a dead cheap ssp bike to take me through winter, commuting (60 km the usual route, about 50 km of it's off road) and daily business. My other bike I used for stuff like that was my BMC Speedfox 29 (now Fourstroke). I want to get another year of riding out of the Speedfox and thought it'd be cheaper to get a low maintenance bike for all those trips during winter, where my fat bike's out of it's true range of use. Come spring I'll probably still be commuting with my ssp, but on rough stuff the Speedfox is just so much more fun.

So somehow I do have a bike I call "my winter sl*t" and have invested some money in my Speedfox and made it more trail capable (tuned fork, big discs, magic mary), as I've sold my long travel trail bike and won't get a new one before summer.

So I have all but one best bikes.

[ZeroDarkBivi]

I have most of the parts of an all-year round, low maintenance touring machine, but somehow the components have failed to assemble themselves even though they have been in the garage for ages.
Travers Ti 29er Frame
Travers carbon fork
Rohloff/Dynamo wheelset
Jones loop bars
various other bits, apart from the 'new' Rohloff anti-torque mount (don't want the ugly old bar thing).

Really want a Lauf fork to complete the low maintenance package, and have a true all terrain ride, but I can't afford £750 on this novelty, and trying to find the light version (<70kg rider) second hand is almost impossible.

[PaulB]

I have best road bike and had planned not to ride it over the winter.... I did buy an old Claud Butler Dalesman for the winter but I can't get on with it (It's an original 1992 model complete if anyone is interested). So have fitted Crud Mk2 mudguards to the road bike and will use it until the snow comes.

Then there is the mtb, short travel xc bike, used for everything, love it for long rides or fast rides. As my son has taken some time off racing so I am using his HT race bike which is a hoot 17.5lbs of speed machine, and I might have to find a replacement for that.

Would like a CX bike for the winter to save the very nice road bike and would like a HT lightweight for bikepacking and faster jaunts to save the fs.

Paul.

[Charliecres]

Stooge SS - gets ridden all year
Buzzard - gets ridden all year
Reign - gets ridden in the Alps or on uplifts, very little at home
Swift - bikepacking trips and when I get the urge for getting the miles in
Road bike - sits in the shed moping
Station bike - used every day
None of them are for best. I tried that and it's silly.

[jam bo]

I've got a 'least worst' bike, does that count?

I don't get sentimental about bikes, buy them s/h, ride them until they snap or fall apart and then repeat.