Hello all,
First, let me apologize for my utter newbness to the modern world of cycling. I've done some searching and have picked up bits and pieces, but thought I'd lay out what I'm looking for here and seek guidance. If this thread is a beaten dead horse, link me! Links to other posts are helpful! I have yet to visit a local bike shop but hope to gain more knowledge from the interweb before I walk in the salesman's door.

As a young fellow, I burned the back roads/trails up for hours a day. Older and much larger, I'm looking to get back into some riding. Pretty big guy, 6'2-3", 250# and working on cutting that down.

Price range. I wish I could keep this to 500, but what looking I've done it seems it will be tough to get a quality piece in that range. Anything much over 1200 or so will push it down the wish list, but I'd rather wait a little longer and not wish I had a better tool later.

Use. While I'd love to have a fully rigged mountain bike, reality is the majority of my riding will be on pavement, hard pack, gravel, and narrow trails. This is where I need the guidance and why I've arrived at the "hybrid" forum. Reality is likely 45% pavement, 35% unimproved roads/trails/gravel, 20% more technical/mountain rides if I had a piece that'd do it all efficiently. The idea of a lockout front suspension would likely be for me, I think??

So this is where I'm at. Any suggestions on things to research or directions to look from the educated folks would be much appreciated. Anything I need to know to look for when sitting on bikes at the sales shop would help the cause. Also any features that are must haves and why. Brands to steer clear of or to stick to, Trek, Giant, etc?

Thanks for any other advice as well.

this might be considered heresy around here, but that 20% technical trail combined with your size and weight says full suspension mountain bike to me.

re: lockouts, a lockout rear is more important than a lockout fork, and really with today's suspension geometry and quality air shocks like the fox float series, the lockout isn't that big of a deal, having suspension will teach you to pedal smoother

Take a look at a Specialized Crosstrail Disk. Sounds like it might fit the bill and the price is near your range.

https://germantowncycles.com/hybridbi...osstrail-disc/

Welcome both to Bike Forums and back to cycling! I'm still pretty new to all this, too, having come back less than 2 years ago after roughly a 40 year absence from riding a bike Love it and now if I'm not riding at least 4 days a week, I feel like a slacker. Ha!

Here in the States, Treks seem to be most prolific followed by Specialized. I do not have any hands on experience with any other brands besides those two. You cannot go wrong with either.

Your first big decision is do you need something that can handle a mountain bike trail with rocks, roots and other obstacles. If the answer is yes, and you also want to ride the roads, a dual sport, with a front shock, is what you need. If you decide you can stick to roads and packed gravel or dirt trails, then a hybrid with no front shock is what you'd want. My daughter wanted the former and we got her a Trek DS which I can definitely recommend https://www.trekbikes.com/us/en/bikes...ort/ds_series/ In my opinion, moving up the DS line, it's worth spending to get the best model you can comfortably afford. Your local bike shop ought to give you roughly 10% off the prices listed. The big bike chain stores may not, but the truly local mom and pop stores will. Look at the dealer listing on the Trek site and find the closest dealers in your area and shop around. Also, all bike shops are not created equal when it comes to staff and customer service. Some are in it for a buck and some are in it because they love, live, and breathe bikes. Hopefully, you can find one of those! If you decide you don't need to be able to ride mountain bike trails, look at a hybrid like the FX line https://www.trekbikes.com/us/en/bikes/town/fitness/fx/ Those lines kinda equate to the Specialized Crosstrail https://www.specialized.com/us/en/bik...use/crosstrail or Sirrus https://www.specialized.com/us/en/bikes/multi-use/sirrus

Along with your bike, you'll definitely want to get a seat bag to carry a spare tube and patch kit. You'll need some kind of frame pump or CO2 to air up your tires after a flat. It WILL happen! Depending on your tires you may need one or two tire 'irons'. You'll likely want a tail light of some kind and it you think you'll ever, EVER be out at dusk or later you should also get a head light. Get a pair of gloves. Fingerless for warm weather. With fingers if you'll be riding much below 60F. Glasses help to keep wind and bugs out of your eyes. Oh, and you'll need a helmet. Those are the essentials.

Down the road your going to find that cycling shorts really do help with butt pain and comfort and are a necessity for longer rides. Biking jerseys are great for being seen and the three pockets on the back are invaluable for carrying energy bars or gels, maybe a pump, pepper spray for the dogs, spare glasses, and trash from the energy bar you just ate You may want a mirror. I like them and have tried both helmet mounted mirrors and bike mounted mirrors and prefer the latter. Most harder core bikers prefer helmet mounted.

Down the road you can start playing with saddles, grips, handlebars, pedals, and all that other stuff that makes it fun and customize your ride to suit your particular tastes and desires. It's SO much fun! Enjoy.

Guys,
Thanks for the replies. Already very helpful. I hadn't read much about the crosstrail. There is a dealer close by for each here in town, so I'll be checking out both brands.

Rocks, roots and more obscure obstacles would be more rare. Having the ability would be nice though and open up some more mountain trails around here later that I have friends that ride from time to time.

Most of these units I'm looking at have fork lockouts, the Trek having a remote lockout on the higher versions. I'm assuming they've figured this out and locking out the suspension, even without a remote lockout isn't a tedious task?

Thanks again.

That is profoundly bad advice at that pricepoint. But yeah man, you need a mt. bike. Hardtail though, unless you really know what you are doing you should not buy an inexpensive dual suspension.

cheap suspension is awful, good suspension works well but is expensive. all of it weighs more than non-suspension.

I'll ride any sort of smooth hard pack on my non-suspended hybrid with 700x35 tires. even slogged through some fairly deep mud puddles on relatively level terrain. rocks and roots? no thanks.

indeed, I wouldn't consider a full suspension bike much under $1200 MSRP. I'd want to see something like a Fox Float rear shock, double pivoted 'anti-bob' geometry. strong wheels with quality hubs and rims, deore XT drive train, and a fox or similar fork. mountain bikes that are ridden hard need a lot of maintenance, you /will/ be breaking $$ parts and such, and most folks upgrade what broke to better

This is the conversation I need to hear.

So the mountain bike platform to support my size? Hardtail or quality full suspension? I assumed my desire to throw in some rougher rides would drive towards a suspended bike as opposed to the hardtail. How far out of the 1200 price bracket is quality full suspension? Is the real answer that there isn't a one-sized fits all platform?

Thanks for walking me through this folks.

Yep. Get a decent $800 hardtail. Doesn't matter which one. Drop another couple hundy on a set of wheels that are set up with slick tires.Another couple hundy on helmet, shoes, shorts etc. Full squish bikes add weight and complexity. They are awesome, but I ride rocky, northeaster singletrack on a hardtail.

I Think $1200 s about entry level for a full susp, but it would suck for 80% of your riding and leave you over budget for all the other crap you will need.

as an older out of shape overweight rider, I found full suspension hugely improved my enjoyment of rides on the local trails until I decided I wasn't going to do any more mountain biking as the crashes just hurt too much. when I was younger I did all kinda mountain biking on hard tails, but that requires a lot of standing up. riding carefully on smooth hardpack, a hybrid with 700x35 tires does me just fine.