Originally Posted by livedarklions

We've had this argument before, so I'm not going to belabor it, but I totally disagree with you. Telling someone that most people don't get that stuff until they've actually been riding and have decided they want to do it is actually good and useful information--it might save them from incurring pointless expense being incurred under false assumptions of necessity. And I don't think I'd necessarily tell someone to go get expensive trainer equipment so they can try cycling out in the winter as I don't think the experiences of indoor and outdoor cycling really have all that much to do with each other. So yes, if OP comes back and says "I rode a few hundred miles this year and fell in love with it so much that I want to be able to start next year's biking season with a flying start", I'd probably move onto trainer advice, but if this is a person who just wants to try cycling and doesn't know whether they're actually going to like it, I don't think I'd tell them that riding indoors for several months is going to be a good way of making that determination, and maybe they should wait until spring before they start buying cycling specific stuff.

And that's not even accounting for the obvious factor that this is probably the worst year in recent memory for buying bikes AND home fitness equipment.