With a $1,500 budget, the case could be made to get two bikes: a road bike and a mountain bike. My preference would be to get a road bike costing $1,000 and a mountain bike costing $500, though the case could be made to either flip those figures or split the cost down the middle. (With my proposal, you'd have a slightly better road bike than a mountain bike.) With close-to-entry level versions of both bikes, you'd be able to sample the best of both worlds. After a few years, if you wanted to explore either world more fully, you would have a better sense of what you liked.