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Old 11-29-11, 04:58 AM
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a1penguin
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Find some bike nerds at work or in your circle of friends. Ask them if your local REI bike shop is any good. Ask them for recommendations or help. There's probably a lot of variability in shop quality from REI to REI. It's a chain store and they do no rely on the bike shop to stay in business.

It might help to know what kind of riding you think you'll be doing. Tooling around town doing errands, road riding, unpaved paths, commuting, 2-3 mile rides, 50 mile rides? I remember when bikes came in three varieties: road, mountain and crappy one speeds. Now there are so many different types of bikes. I don't think you'll find a lot of good high performance road bikes at REI, but if you want a bike with relaxed geometry there are probably some OK choices at REI.
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