Just for clarification, I never advocated riding a piece of crap. My winter bike is an older Giant mountain bike from the lower-end of their line. Definitely not crap, but it's not the holy grail either. I've just decided that for me, I don't ride the bikes I value the most during the winter.
I realize some people ride the same bike throughout the year and it works for them. For me, I prefer to leave mine set up for winter and just pull it off the wall when the snow flies. I'm also not going to cry when I hit a big rut and go down and scratch up the paint.
But I agree completely that you never want to ride crap. Life's too short for that nonsense.
