Greetings from St. Louis
 

Well, not St. Louis, exactly, but close: the western suburbs (O'Fallon).

I'm getting serious about riding again after being away from it for several years. In the past, I did quite a bit of road biking then bought a mountain bike and got into that for a while. Sold my last road bike about 10 years ago but still have the mountain bike. I'm looking to get myself a new road bike in the next few months and have been learning a lot from these forums, especially the "$700 road bike" thread.

During my hiatus from riding, I found myself becoming middle-aged and fat. I can't do anything about the former but I'm working on fixing the latter, and biking is way more fun that my treadmill.

hey bransom
i live in belleville and do alot of biking in the area, mostly on roadbikes. my mountain bike has been pretty much hanging on a hook since moving here, since the only place i've ridden is cliff cave park and i'd rather ride from home if possible.
this year i've been doing wednesday night rides with a local group, finding new routes and meeting some nice people. http://babes.rogerkramercycling.org/ is a link to the group. they have a variety of distances with most people showing up on roadbikes, but also on mountain bikes, tandems, trailer pulling city bikes with kids, etc. always someone to ride with and many go out to eat and talk afterwards.
any ideas on places to ride offroad would be appreciated.

Eureka here, we've got decent MTB and excellent road rides on west county (low traffic) roads.
To track the local scene check out -- www.stlbiking.com
Enjoy getting back on the bike.
Encourage someone not in your family to ride with you.

Clipped and Wildwood,

Thanks for the welcome! Years ago, when I first moved out here and it was much more rural, I used to like to bike from home, also: Hop on the road bike and take the country roads through town, up into St. Peters and further north. As the area built up, it became way too dangerous with so much traffic still on the old country roads. I live off Highway N and riding on that became just plain nuts. I think the traffic problem is what initially got me thinking about mountain biking.

Things have changed out here now. There are enough new roads that have actual wide shoulders to make riding from home a possibility again. There's still a lot of traffic but I'm starting to figure out some routes -- short ones, so far, since I'm riding a mountain bike -- that won't get me killed.

Clipped: There is some great mtn biking out this way. Castlewood State Park is one of my favorites because of the variety of trails. It's got everything from fairly serious single-track to flat, fast paths along the river.

Anyhow, thanks again for the welcome. I'll check out both of those links...