I’ll always have a soft spot for the good old-fashioned road bike:
That’s because even here in the biggest city in West Greenland, a road bike will carry you swiftly and efficiently to places where you can at least pretend you’re deep in the country:
Also, just because it’s called a “road bike” doesn’t mean you have to ride it on the road:
At the risk of repeating myself–oh, who am I kidding, I’ve been repeating myself on a daily basis since 2007–the sense that road cycling is somehow insular or elitist is one of the biggest misconceptions in cycling. The majority of the population does not have ready access to mountain bike trails or miles and miles of gravel roads, but pretty much everybody lives on or near…a road. And pretty much any road bike made within the last 60 years will do. Just put on a pair of 28mm tires and you’re in business:
Or, if it can’t fit 28mm tires, just use 25s, don’t worry, you’ll be fine.
A related misconception is that road bikes and road cycling is stuffy, uptight and conformist, while “alt” cycling is diverse, creative and original. Is it though? I’d argue that no approach to cycling is any more or less original than any other, and the bikes and riders at an “alt” cycling event look just as similar to each other as anybody–and I don’t mean that in a bad way, either. Groups of riders tend to look similar because they use the stuff that works for the type of riding they do, that’s all. This is why roadies wear Lycra bib shorts and PNS jerseys, and “alt” cyclists carry film cameras and use wide bars.
And they all use wide bars.
Here’s a bar so wide he had to stand across the street to get the whole thing in the shot:
Here’s one so wide he couldn’t get the whole bar in the shot at all:
Here’s a rider explaining how he literally can’t hold onto both grips at the same time while riding:
And here’s the latest Grandpappy LaDon’s Ultraromantical Seven-Foot Wide I-Look-Like-I’m-Pretending-To-Be-An-Airplane-While-I’m-Riding Bar:
It takes 75 yards of tape to wrap and it announces to the world that you store your bike in a barn because you can’t roll it through normal doorways.
By the way, if you ever need to repel a group of angry “alt” cyclists, just hold up any chainring larger than 42 teeth:
It has exactly the same effect as flashing a crucifix at a vampire, which is why I wear one around my neck at all times.
In any case, even though I have essentially no desire to own a modern road bike, given my aforementioned soft spot I’ll still click on something like this just to see what’s happening:
Just as “alt” cyclists think they’re highly original because they each opt for slightly different shades of Newbaum’s, road bike enthusiasts increasingly suffer from the delusion that they need different types of road bikes:
Seriously, how are there so many different types of road bike? There should just be “Best All-Around Road Bike,” and “Best Budget Road Bike.” THAT’S IT.* And no, I’m not saying there shouldn’t be a “Best Electric Road Bike” at all–it’s 2026 and e-bikes are a thing whether you like it or not–but at the very least there should be a totally separate round-up of Best E-Bikes and “Best Electric Road Bike” should simply be a category within that.
*[Actually, there shouldn’t even be “Best All-Around Road Bike.” There should just be “Best Road Bike.” The “All-Around” is implied for reasons I’ve already established.]
As for the “Best Budget Road Bike” category, I was once young and shopping for a road bike with a limited budget, so I like to see what’s available for those people today. Here’s what they chose:
I’m totally unfamiliar with Cannondale’s offerings these days, but it looks like the least expensive CAAD14 is $2,499:
Setting aside my old man prejudices against dick breaks and hidden cables and stuff, that seems like a reasonable choice. Of course knowing what I know now I’d tell someone today they should consider a Roadini or something, but that’s not what I did 30 years ago when I was shopping for a road bike, and while there was technically no such this as a “Roadini,” Rivendell did already exist at the time. In fact I would up with pretty much that Cannondale, only 11 CAADs ago:
Though I guess it was a couple notches below 105 component-wise, and while my memory is hazy, a look at the specs reveals the drivetrain was a 36/46 crank with an 11-24 rear cassette. So basically they’d figured out someone shopping for a road bike in this price range didn’t need the 53×11, but they hadn’t yet figured out that they might want a gear lower than 36×24…though I guess in those days you would have just gotten a triple.
I also don’t remember the price, but $800 sounds about right. That was a lot of money to me at the time, and two seconds of Internetting suggests that’s the equivalent of about $1,600 today–less than that CAAD14 with Shimano 105, but about the same as this bike, which is probably a more apt comparison:
The biggest difference between this bike and the one I bought 30 years ago isn’t the price, which is basically the same, or even the tech, which is mostly the same apart from the dick breaks. The biggest difference is that 30 years ago Cannondale was an independent company making its bikes domestically, and today it’s one of many brands owned by a holding company and the bikes are manufactured overseas.
Anyway, like many people at that stage in life I didn’t really have any disposable income, but fortunately riding a bike doesn’t really require any, so that’s how I spent most of my spare time–riding alone. And I must have been pleased with the bike because I had two more CAAD-whatevs after that one, though over time the gearing got taller and the parts got more expensive. But really the brand of bike and the country of origin was incidental, and it was the shop that sold me the bike that eventually invited me to ride with them, and to race with them, and ultimately gave me many times my money’s worth in terms of experience and relationships.
Now I’m back to riding alone, but unlike those days I have a few more bikes and a lot more happy memories. Hopefully whatever they end up buying, today’s budget road bike buyer looks back just as fondly one day.