Should be easy... right? If you want something cheap you go to Target if you want something a little more durable you go to a bike store. But nothing is ever that easy.

Good luck trying to comparison shop
No two bike stores in your area will have the same brand let alone model of bike making comparison shopping almost impossible. You also won't find any "bike shop bikes" available online for sale or even a mention of the cost. So this means this must be a cozy agreement between the manufacturers and the bike shops. All this sounds like a great deal for the manufacturer and the bike shop but it's bad for the consumer. This undoubtedly keeps the prices nice and high and make research from the comfort of the home PC very hard.

But don't get me wrong I think it's great to have a local store for this kind of product. But is it really necessary to go to these lengths to protect the stores?

You saw a bike from where?
The other problem is the snobbery. Try asking a bike shop about a bike that is sold in a big box store. They won't be too complimentary. But aren't there only about 3 companies that make the components (Shimano, Suntor, SRAM I believe) for all bikes? I don't think there are many companies that actually even manufacturer there own frames. So how much worse can they be? I know they must use the lower end of the manufacturers lines but this doesn't make them incomparable.

So what did I do?
When we first decided we wanted to try biking we started out with some nice cheap ($100 each) Huffy mountain bikes from a big box store. After a couple of years of a reasonable amount of use we traded up.

We budgeted $300 each that compared to what we previously had seamed like a big step to us. We were disappointed when we visited our local bike shops to find that this would only get us one of their most basic bikes.

What we really wanted was the flexibility of a hybrid bike that has the riding position of a mountain bike but many of the components from a road bike. That would be ideal for our mostly paved trail riding and occasional light off road riding (despite being told at one store they were for old people).

However $300 doesn't get you a "real" hybrid bike but a comfort bike. We found the riding position of comfort bikes too upright and the suspension too soft. They didn't feel like serious bikes to us that we could use for getting fit but more like something to cruise around the neighborhood.

Specialized Crossroads Comfort

So we went for hard tail mountain bikes instead (no rear suspension) but with tires that have a center road ridge. We found good quality hard tail mountain bikes (Diamondback Sorrento) for $300 available at one of our local bike shops.

We very much enjoy our bikes especially once we picked up some nicer seats from www.nashbar.com But of course we don't ride them nearly as much as we should.