How did you choose your bike?

[jenxxs]

mtkitchn, as you're shopping around make sure to try bikes with different choices of wheel size. You'll find that some manufacturers choose to put 700c wheels on their smallest WSD bikes - I think both Bianchi and Specialized fall into this category. Others change to 650c wheels for their smallest sizes - Trek, Cannondale, several others. Then there's Terry, which does the 24 in/700c combo. Each of these choices has different advantages and disadvantages. You can get comparable standovers and top tube lengths in all of these types, but the geometries are distinctly different.

[Mimosa]

My very first bike was a Giant, I didn't know any better and couldn't afford any better. Still it suited me fine during my first 2 years.
In those 2 years I saw more brands and I grew to love a brand called Duell. There were handbuild frames made at a local factory and my club bikeshop was one of his dealers.

Now that I am on the look out again I choose to do it differently. I spend my time looking through forums, looking at pictures of other bikers to see what brands they were riding and looking for webpages of professional bikeshops within an hour cardrive from me. Then I made a list of top 5 brands/types and started looking for shops that were selling them. If I found a shop then I went in to have a closer look and a chat to see if the guy helping me made me feel at ease. There have been times that I walked out of the shop vowing that I would never put one foot in there again, some guys really can talk you down. Eventually 2 brands were left of which I choose the one in my signature because the guys from the shop actually listened to me for a change and were happy to explain things to me.

[velogirl]

Okay, my first "adult" bike I bought because I was on a blind date (matchmaker.com) with a guy who told me to get a Trek 5200. Little did I know at the time that he got a referral bonus from the bike shop.

Seriously, I had been riding on my 12 year old Specialized Hard Rock and training for an AIDS Ride. I had been riding about five months and had already done a few self-supported centuries on my 40-pound bike. I did some research and decided I was going to spend as much as I could afford ($2,500). I narrowed it down to the Trek and a few others.

So, I went into the shop the date recommended, rode the Trek 5200 and another bike around the block, and picked the Trek.

I've come a long way since then.