You (and/or your dad) could ride a bike like this for a long ways. It's only $150 (on Portland, OR C-List) and just shown as an example:
My first bike was a Trek 1000 (road), that was about 4 years old and only cost me $275.
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"The older you do get, the more rules they're gonna try to get you to follow. You just gotta keep livin', man, L-I-V-I-N." - Wooderson
'14 carbon Synapse - '12 CAAD 10 5 - '99 Gary Fisher Big Sur