I've previously written about what I think is a reasonable number of bikes.
And yet, recently I've found myself to be the owner of only three bikes. I have some opinions about this.
Let's break it down
This is where I'm at:
- The Road Bike. I'm primarily a roadie. Many people are surprised to learn that Memphis, TN has a great cycling community, and we have organized group rides nearly every day of the week. So, a ton of my riding is on the road -- and while I do the occasional road race or crit, it's mostly road group rides. So, the road bike is my primary. It's my go-to for the vast majority of rides.
- The Gravel Bike. I do like my occasional gravel epic. Unfortunately, in West Tennessee we like to pave over every little farm road possible. Something about getting elected I guess. However, the gravel bike is my backup road ride because I've got a second set of wheels with some Vittoria 34's on there and that's just a fun way to ride on the road.
- The Mountain Bike. Unfortunately this one's still hanging up from over the winter, but I AM getting antsy about hitting my local trails. I've got a new tire, a new SRAM GX Axis upgrade for the bike, and pretty soon I'll be "droppin in" for a lap of Stanky Creek.
So that's it. That's the minimum. I wouldn't want to lose any of those or have fewer, so don't ask me which one I'd get rid of first.
The pros
There are some benefits to just having three bikes: less maintenance, fewer choices about which one you're riding. I made some money selling the other ones.
The cons
I have few choices. Right now the Gravel bike has a crank-fell-off problem, so were I to have any issues with the road bike, I don't have a backup to the road bike. Just gonna get that fixed.
Conclusion.
Three. Three bikes is the minimum. No less.
You need three bikes.
This post was written in collaboration with Claude Sonnet 4.6, an AI model by Anthropic.