Nice sentiments, well said. I bought my wife a Trek madone 5.2 WSD with the hopes that a nice bike would encourage her to to ride with me. Now the bike gathers dust in the garage and I still ride alone (or with a group) but not with the wife.

BTW, nice picture of you two.

You said it Calamarichris! It's wonderful to have your girl riding with you... I got it her into it because of a charityride we did together ( also with five of her best friends ). Besides that, I first gave her my moms old peugeot which I brought back to life, then gave her a faster one and eventually a beautiful c&v bike. So now she has almost as many bikes as I do for several occassions. There's no excuse for not riding along anymore!

Aside from the obvious fact that most of us need atleast a road, mountain and city/erand bike I would suspect most of us are or atleast feel we are upside on most of our bikes so selling them would result in a loss.

It so happens that a day or so ago I was prompted to consider this exact question: If I could keep just one, which would it be? There is no easy answer. The thought process runs sort of like this:

It should be a bike that does all the things I need, i.e. go fast/long for a day ride, handle my commute, go uphill (by itself), carry a load reasonably well. Okay, they could all do that in a pinch.

It should be one that looks nice but one I wouldn't cringe over if it got wet, dirty, or scratched.

On the other hand, why would it matter if it got wet, dirty, or scratched? Because it would be damaging a valuable bike? But if I couldn't keep that valuable one in the first place in order to keep one I wouldn't mind getting wet, dirty, or scratched, then I might as well keep that valuable one. Except that if I was being compensated, which is to say paid, for the ones I'm giving up, it's better to give up the valuable ones. Which means it comes down to value. Is that the best criterion for choosing which one to keep? Of course not!

So I think I'll keep all of them, thank you very much. At least until the reasons for the proposition are clarified.

Gazelle three speed, no doubt at all. But as long as the necessity isn't there, I just gather and gather.. On riding with the SO, my gf of course rides an omabike through to town, but thinks "those weird bars with those clumsy levers" are kind of scary. She likes tandems though, but no room for that atm.

[Looks nervously at teenaged accomplice] "Dude, I thought you said they never card here. Here you go officer..."


Circa 1986 Bud Light USTS Dana Point--first ever triathlon, race or event.

A new Trek 520 touring bike could fit the bill for 90% of riding styles IMHO, but still, at near $1,500 I could buy a lot of classic steel....anyway, I may still do that one day.
https://www.trekbikes.com/us/en/bikes...r-2011_1432000

If I could only keep one, it would be the Koga Miyata; it's the most versatile and the best set up for that kind of duty. Fortunately there is no rational reason to have to scale back to just one!

Wives and tandems are a magical combination...all of the sudden your riding time is also together time, you are riding at the same pace and your wife starts enjoying your hobby with you. I can't emphasize this enough...if you have a wife, and she's willing to be adventurous...buy a tandem.