Hi,

As a genuine old guy, I have been away from bicycles for many years. But old guys do better by getting some regular exercise and bicycles are particularly good for that. Years ago I did some regional touring but by far most of my cycling was done as a daily commuter, year 'round through all kinds of weather including sun, heat, rain, wind and snow and for eleven years I was averaging about two thousand miles a year.

Yet every once in a while since then I would think about my riding years and last year got to thinking about that again but then could not stop thinking about that. And so I went online and started looking around at what today's bicycles are all about, and wow, there have been a vast number of changes. The last bicycle I had, for instance, had a six-speed, threaded-on freewheel, back then what were ordinary shift levers are now known as friction shifters and the 27 x 1-1/4 inch tires I thought would be around forever are now practically museum pieces. But at least Brooks B17 saddles are still with us, yay!

I have owned, ridden and am familiar with different kinds of bikes, so I knew what sort of a bike I was most interested in, then I studied and learned about modern bicycle technology and components, then did some extensive shopping online, all while paying attention to the smallest of the many details and I now have a brand new bike, nothing fancy but it is inside and about ten feet away from where I am now. However, while its fork and frame geometry and so much else about it are near perfect, my next activity is to swap out its 1 x 8 gear train and go with a new 3 x 9 gear train. Yet as a delightful surprise, the bike's designers apparently figured somebody like me would consider that sort of a gear train swap and so on the sides near the upper end of the bike's down tube they included not just one but two mounting lugs, one for the bike's existing rear derailleur shift lever AND and an unused one for a customer-supplied front derailleur shift lever. Nice!

But I still do have some questions to ask, please, and so now I am headed off to an appropriate forum here to get into such matters.

Hello and good to be here!