rideorglide

Absolutely -- and am interested in how folk balance these things.

For me it's a case of balancing out road/mtb/surfing/windsurfing/family and family riding/ riding or surfing with friends/and sometimes even golf -- with an often 60+hr work week. These days I try NOT to stress too much over the decision, whatever it is.

Partly subconsciously I let the prevailing conditions for each sport/mood/time of day/serviceability of various body parts / home repair/ work, help me make decisions -- kind of going with the flow...

There are definitely trade-offs:

On the plus+++ side, when I bought my wife an MTB (Jamis Dakar), she loved it and got into MTBing, and she loves that.

Our kids who are between 10-12 come with us, even on technical trails, and that's priceless, even if it's a battle to separate them from Warcraft III. Generally they have a good time, with what is a challenging, sometimes frustrating sport.

For example, I know they will never get out and ride before 11 am, so if it's going to be too hot, I will ride road in the early a.m., or maybe surf, and be done with it. Sometimes an early am surf (2 hr round trip can be fitted in before taking the kids MTBing). Or there are times when they/we have ridden MTB several weekends in a row and need a mental break from things becoming too routine.

Sometimes various bikes -- road or mtb -- or the surfboards collect dust. Right now, it's the windsurfing equipment, since it's the most time-consuming, difficult to load, logistically difficult, window-of-opportunity sensitive sport to fit in. I got 15 years under my belt, and have learned not to get crazy every time the trees start to bend a bit. For my low-impact sport, The road bike is the most logistically easy sport, since I can ride from outside my door.

The biggest downside is having less time to do other sports with friends, and eroding skillsets and performance benchmarks. I definitely am motivated to improve performance, but it's not always possible if the body won't allow, so I try to keep my primary focus on doing outdoors things with the wife and kids, and having fun.