as an adult bikes were for me a bonding experience between my dad and I. I used to long distance hike/backpack, Dad used to cycle, we joined the two and started doing bike tours, a few days long to a few weeks.

When my bikes broke my dad, being the engineer that he is fixed them. I never learned.

Later in life, about 2007 i bought my first house with my wife, had no time to wrench on cars and motorcycles, and started buying old bikes in order to learn to wrench on them instead, ride them for a bit and/or flip them. Rebuilding a bike takes much less time and space than a vehicle.

I did that for a while.

I've owned up to 20 or 30 bikes at a time because of this, but these days I only own about 8 or so, all get ridden, and only a few are "vintage". Each bike is purpose built for a specific range of activities.