roccobike

Is Raleigh, NC area the best? Not sure, but it's got to be way up there.
A benchmark of the quality of cycling in any area is how popular it is. Are there bike shops in the area. I drew a 30 mile circle from my house on a map and counted the number of bike shops. The number reached 20, REI and Dick's don't count.
It's easy to see why. The climate is such that year round cycling is possible, with warm weather cycling possible from March to October. Want mountains? The road mountains west of Raleigh in the Durham area will challenge the best riders. Want flat, fast riding? East, in the Clayton area is flat and loaded with backroads in lttle traveled farmland area. Want to ride a mountain bike? The county supports several MTB trails including one of the funest trails around at Harris Lake, and a couple of really difficult trails a few mles south in Sanford. And if you pro style MTB rides, there's always Pisgah a couple hours away. Want a nice flat rails to trails? The American Tobacco Trail is 27 miles long linking Apex to Durham. There's also the Greenway and Umstead Park.
Best around, maybe, maybe not, but it's certainly up there.

StanSeven

What's funny is so many cold places appear. Even Colorado which is mentioned several times has long periods of cold and tons of snow.

roadrunner2012

sloar 

thats funny because i was going to post my city as one of the worst, about 40 miles from you. no bike shop, and i think im the only one in the whole town that can ride more than 5 miles at one time. riding in central indiana is very boring, especially if you ride solo like i do. farm after farm nothing but fields. the only good thing is i see about 5 cars in a 30 mile ride.

spacemanz

roadrunner2012, where is that? Awesome pics there. Seattle isn't half bad, when the weather's decent.

PeregrineA1 

I will second Raleigh, after spending the last three years there.

You did forget one additional criteria....craft brews. Another reason Raleigh should be on the list.

rruff

I agree... climate is pretty important. There are many places in S CA... Thousand Oaks listed above would be great. Climate near-perfect year round... so long as you stay away from the smog zone.

Where I live (S NM mountains) the year round climate is a little more varied but still great. Avg high of 50 in Jan and usually sunny. Avg high of 82 in July with occasional afternoon thunderstorms. Dry clear air... great roads to ride... light traffic... plenty of climbing.

We have none of the other things on the list though...

Savagewolf

Salem, Oregon is a pretty good place to ride

Thriving bike culture

• Enthusiasts : Plenty
• Shops : 4
• Mechanics : Probably a lot more than what are employed by the shops
• Builders : At least one, and a whole bunch of them 60 miles away in Portland
• Painters : More geared towards autos, but if you need it done you can go to Portland for that as well
• (Manufacturing) None that I know of in town, but Portland has places such as Chris King.

Riding

• Clubs : Salem Bicycle Club in town. Multiple other clubs in nearby cities.
• Beautiful scenery / country roads for longer rides. : Absolutely. There is some amazing scenery in this area. We have it all and what we don't you can easily get to.
• Good conditions for commuting by bike : The buses are all equipped with bike racks, the city is actively trying to make cycling a bigger thing, multiple routes you can take to anywhere.

Events

• Competitions : Oregon has OBRA (Oregon Bike Racing Association) that has events all over the state in road, MTB, and cross.
• Exhibitions : Another trip to Portland will get you this.
• Shows and swap meets : Portland again.

Why not just say Portland? Because it's a big city. For the bike related things that you want to see there, you can visit just when needed. Otherwise, Salem has more than enough of the big city things to get you by. It's in a central location to several cities that constantly score well in bicycle friendly locations (Corvallis, Eugene, Portland) and some of the rides out here are just amazing.

Shp4man

Well, as a San Diegan, I can say that here, cycling is a year round activity, plus we have a fairly good bike lane system (not perfect) and pretty much every kind of riding you could want- lots of great on and off road rides. The cagers are somewhat less hostile than other places I've ridden in, though they can be unbelievably stupid at times.
Last weekend, there were so many cyclists on my favorite route, the Bayshore Bikeway, that you had to calculate closing velocities when passing slower riders, or groups of riders.

roadrunner2012

Random shots around PHX

dgodave

Durango CO is pretty legendary. For good reason. All the bike culture stuff thrives. The only thing missing is a huge variety of road rides. You can end up doing some of the same favorites over and over, even though they are lovely rides.
.
Also, you are close to the UT canyon country, which offers a whole other experience.
.

gaucho777 

For what it's worth, that photo was taken around 10am on a January morning, and I started the ride in shorts and a short-sleeved jersey that day. It really was warmer than the attire of those soft SoCal'ers would lead you to believe.

zoobaby

Likely going to upset some natives...

There is a reason that Colorado's front range is so popular. It doesn't snow as much as you think. You only hear about the big storms that happen a few times a year. What you don't here is that the day before it snowed 2 feet, it was 65+ degrees with clear skies. Literally this year we have gone from near 80 degree weather to 8 inches of snow in 36 hours. The other thing you don't hear, is the roads are clear the day after the storm.

There are also some brutally cold days, not going to lie.

dyander

It seems most of us like what we know, and I know I don't like urban riding even if it is bike friendly. Rural Northern California is great for MTB riding and a few spectacular routes for road riding, but I end up on the same routes week in and week out. After 20 years I still miss Central Pennsylvania; lots of quiet beautiful roads and all the terrain choices you need to challenge your legs. You have to travel for all the bike culture and all, but I'd rather just ride.

pastorbobnlnh 

Jon,

I was reacting to the OP's question in the same way. Scenery was my first choice followed by terrain, with a final criteria, traffic congestion. I was thinking Northern New England and was not quite as geo-centric as you.

I've ridden enough with our BF-C&Vers in the greater Boston and Long Island areas, and family in the Atlanta and Chattanooga areas, to see the huge difference! When I go out for rides here in NH, even in the height of the summer vacation season, it's not unusual to pass less than ONE vehicle per mile ridden (in both directions). There have been evenings in the summer when I've gone on a 20-30 mile ride and only passed 5-10 vehicles.

To me riding in a low population density area, where 99% of the drivers respect bike riders as they pass, plus scenery and terrain diversity trump all the other criteria in the OP's list.

Tom,

Wear more layers!

Good question! I do find riding in snow a challenge, even with studded tires. The other factor is how dirty the bike becomes. Almost an hour is needed for cleaning after each ride.

But once the roads are dry I can ride in temps down in the low 20F and be comfortable. To date I've not missed at least 3-4 rides in a month in over three years.

noglider 

You just made me feel really good. We have a little weekend house in High Falls, which is in the Hudson Valley. We got it in August. The area is gorgeous, but it's pretty darned hilly for my wife. But there are rail trails. But mud makes her nervous that she'll fall. I guess in time, we'll figure out what works for us.

noglider 

Pastor Bob, I have ridden in the winter the last few years, so I know how to dress. I guess winter riding here is worse than it is in New England because the roads are not clear enough. But they're clear enough that knobby or studded tires are not the right choice. Also, since the road is narrower from the snow banks, the high traffic volume makes it nasty.

dyander, you're making me feel like a curmudgeon. Now this area doesn't seem so bad compared with others. I mean, it's not horrible. I was picturing paradise in other places, and I see no place is perfect except perhaps San Diego. I've seen Eugene, and it is pretty terrific. I have a lot to be grateful for!

jonwvara 

Well said, Bob--the relative absence of traffic is huge for me. Funny I didn't think of it before--I guess it's easy to overlook something that's not there.
Winter riding is a challenge, and I don't do a whole lot of it, mainly because I don't like cleaning my bike afterwards. But the advantage of winter is that it makes you do something else for exercise--for me that's cross-country skiing--which helps prevent you from becoming a slightly curved person, which can happen if you spend the entire year hunched over your handlebars.
That said, I'd rather ride than ski.

AAZ

+1
Another vote for Tucson, but wear sunscreen.

Gallo

I consider myself lucky to live in San Diego and enjoy my time on the road and trail.

The beauty of bicycling is it really does not matter where you live because the enjoyment to get out and ride is right outside your front door.

Bicycling reminds me of a quote from Colonel Sanders " Never been in anything but good weather, sometimes it is good and hot or good and cold or good and windy but it is always good"

It is all good

Everywhere I have been that my tire hits the trail or road it has been good.

Popeyecahn

All y'all suggesting San Diego, stop. Don't bother, this is not this place you are looking for, go to OC, LA or SF they have lots of great places up that way. Don't come here, stay away, we have a nuke plant and the TJ river valley. The city won't pay to keep up the roads, this place is horrible, horrible I tell you, NOLA is a dream by comparison...

rekmeyata

Actually I ride solo and I'm fine with it, and I don't mind the countryside. I came from California to here 10 years ago and I do miss the mountains, but at least the traffic is light once you get out into the country which only takes a ride of about 5 to 8 miles from where I live, whereas in California I had to ride 20 miles to get into a area with less traffic and that was still more then here. The one thing about here is there are a lot of very small towns scattered all over the place, so I plan longer rides to go to these towns. This Saturday Ft Wayne is having a big cycling event, offering tours and racing events. I thought it was funny in todays paper the touring events cost $30...$30 dollars for what? I can tour all over this region for free!

We have bike shops here but none are any good. The largest in our town is Summit and they don't carry brands that I like, they carry odd ball accessories (probably due to low wholesale cost over major brands and thus they can have a high markup) that you can't even find on the internet to read reviews about, and they don't carry a large selection of accessories. And their tire prices are crazy high. Then you add on top of that their elitist attitude and it just sums up to a bad shop, yet somehow they were voted one the top 100 bike shops in America? BS!!! Their mechanics are not good and don't take care of your bike, I take my bikes in to a shop about once every 7 to 8 years to make sure I haven't missed anything and they got some sort of chemical on my rear stay decal that dissolved it! I didn't say anything because the bike had weak decals anyways from years of California sun, but they should have been more careful.

There is another new shop opening up here but as of last week they weren't open yet, but I will go in and check them out that's for sure. Already though I don't think the owner knows what he's doing because they've been trying to open since January, and by opening late they missed the spring sales rush. He wants it to be perfect when it opens, well that's fine but he missed out on a bunch of profits by missing the spring rush; he should have opened and continued to work on the store improving it while selling product.

likebike23

Western MA is pretty good also. There is a good variety of riding here from killer mountain biking, to gravel roads, to hills, to country roads, etc. The biking culture is also good. Lots of shops up and down the CT river (I've got 2 shops within 5 miles of my house. There has been good progress on the Columbia rail trail which connects with the Farmington valley greenway, as well as the Norwottuck trail in the Amherst area. And we also host the D2R2, which is a well known gravel road randonnee. And my local shop runs the Berkshire Brevet series. I probably missed some stuff, but you get the gist.

due ruote 

Based on Northbend's posts, I'd say one could do a lot worse than to follow him around the NW.

northbend 

Shhhhhhhh!