Originally Posted by
Mr. Beanz
My opinion, I'd stay with a mountain bike. You can swithch out the tires. Knobbie tires for dirt and gravel which are wider with tehm little knobs on them made for trction in the dirt.
SOme might say go with a hybrid which is half road bike and half moutnain bike. But many opinons say that the hybrid doesn NOT do any one thing well. I'd say go with the mtb and a set of each tire type.
Now if you want to do long distance 50-100 milers (which most riders end up doing), go with the skinny tire road bike.
I'm ALMOST with Beanz on this, but given the kind of riding you've described, I'd lean toward a hybrid or a cross (short for cyclocross) bike.
I have a roomful of bikes, from full-on mountain bikes to full-on road racers, but the one I use as much as all the others combined is a Rivendell Atlantis. It's sold as an "all around" bike, and it is, but if it weren't for marketing, it would be a hybrid. With just a tire change, as Beanz recommended, I've ridden it on pavement centuries, long tours and on fairly technical gravel roads and dirt. If you don't want to change tires, you can get spare wheels (easy to swap) or use a slightly fatter tire, like Panaracer Pasela, and get decent performance on all surfaces. You do give up a little at each end, but a hybrid or cross will be stable, fairly fast and more versatile than either a roadie or a mountain bike. FWIW, my wife was an infrequent rider for 20 years until she tried a friend's hybrid. Two days later she went to REI and bought one, and she's been riding 24 miles round trip to work two or three days a week since.
The "go shopping" advice is excellent, too. Go to two or three bike shops, tell them your budget and what you want to do and see what they say. There's no better way to learn.