It’s nearly the end of 2025, and It’s time to buy a bike.

If you don’t own one already, it is of my opinion now, more than ever, that it has never been a better time to get into bike-riding.

Notice how I didn’t say “Cycling”, i said “Bike Riding.” I say this because the word “Cyclist” often carries with it quite a burdensome stigma with it which scares people away from getting into riding bikes.

When you think of a Cyclist, you think of the men who ride their Bianchis or Cervelos, clad in Lycra, usually in a peloton of between two or perhaps twenty other riders, all pushing themselves to the extreme limits, trying their best to min-max their watts and their 5K time on Strava. They cut off drivers, they weave through traffic, and they’re mad because you broke their aero or cut them off or whatever.

Think about it like this. You do not become Daniel Ricciardo the second you get behind the wheel of your 2008 Toyota Corolla, and indeed most people do not consider themselves to be racing drivers, yet somehow this image of a Cyclist being a person who solely focuses on performance at the expense of people who also use the roads. I want you to get this idea out of your head and solely focus on the idea of just enjoying the ride.

Bikes have first and foremost, devices for transportation. There is a world of difference between my Model 3 and say, a Gen 3.5 Formula E car. Even though they share similar types of components, motors, batteries, charge ports, et cetera, they are machines designed for entirely different purposes. Just as old mate’s Cervelo is a machine built for the Tour De France, my (now former) Giant CRX Two is a bike designed for just getting you places at a modest speed, and in relative comfort on the PSPs or on footpaths.

So why am I suddenly getting back into bike riding all of a sudden? Well, ever since the Armadale line reopened, i’ve really grown to enjoy riding my bike around, especially since Perth has these wonderful things:

This is a Principal Shared Path, or PSP for short. Think of them as highways for bikes and pedestrians. They’re paved with a specialised asphalt designed for bikes, and are meant to be used as a thoroughfare along corridors normally designed for car traffic. It’s these beloved brown roads that make Perth a surprisingly good place to go bike riding, making the idea of swapping out a car for a bike extremely palatable for certain journeys

Now of course, you can’t go everywhere in the city by bike just yet, in fact there’s still some gaps in the network that I feel can be addressed, (Reminder to myself to place a link to that article if and when i go ahead and write it, lol) but it has helped me to fall in love with bike riding once again.

…and I’ve got a pretty good reason why.

So, why am getting back into riding again?

In short, because the Internet sucks.

I have made many, many posts on this blog about how the social internet has done extreme amounts of damage to our collective psyches. We’re giving so much of our attention, time and most importantly, monetisable information, to these faceless tech companies, that we as a collective are starting to feel the burden of it all. Social Media is starting to be a place that’s no longer fun or interesting, it’s turned into yet another place where capitalists are trying to convince you to buy things that you don’t need.

There’s little wonder why things like DVDs, Blu-Rays, iPods and records are coming back into vogue. Some people want to be able to enjoy these things without the burden of advertisers clogging up their experience. Hell, i’ve had to modify YouTube so much with browser extensions and settings tweaks to make it a usable experience, that it barely even resembles YouTube anymore, and that’s before the horrible new search system they introduced that tries its damn hardest to force-feed you engagement-driven slop instead of the content you actually want.

So, instead i’ve opted to just get a new hobby, or rather reinvigorate a couple of old ones.

The truth is though, I’ve always done this. When I was little, my parents would only give me at most, an hour a day on the Playstation, before they’d kick me off it and force me to go outside and ride my bike. My parents made a habit of always trying to move into houses that are within walking or biking distance to a park when we were kids, because they knew the importance of going outside, scraping your knees, climbing trees, riding bikes, etc. Was to your health. It’s also what got me into RC, too. I made little RC Tracks in my backyard for my Fighter Buggy RX. I drove my Baja King in the park across the road from my house. That sparked a love for RC cars which I still have to this day.

Realising this, in 2025, a time when we are more glued to our screens than in any other point in our history, it’s important to be able to unplug for a while, and actually go and enjoy the world for what it is. It’s not constant bickering and arguing between different political sides, it’s the wind in your hair, it’s the ringing of bells and the clicking of freewheels. The world is actually quite wonderful when you choose not to bombard yourself with the woes and worries of the most anxious, angry and agitated individuals in your society.

And that is entirely what I was so keen for, until this happened.

Ah well, you win some, you lose some, I guess.

The subsequent autopsy of the bike lead me to realise, seeing as I’m enjoying this hobby so much, it might be time to actually put my money where my mouth is and go and buy a new bike. One thing i’ve noticed though, is that despite what you might think, a decent quality bicycle is actually quite affordable compared to a lot of things these days.

So… What bike am I going to get next?

Well, As a fella who’s been around bikes all his life, and who’s even had a crack of owning a bike shop, I really like the idea of flat-bar Hybrid bikes.

Cyclists hate ’em, but I sure as hell love ’em. To me they represent the ultimate mix of the smoothness and agility of a road bike, and the controllability and open-ness that mountain bikes give you. In particular I wanted my next bike to be an upgrade on pretty much everything I had on the CRX-Two. Hydraulic discs as opposed to rim brakes. Stronger bearings, more hardpoints for mounting accessories, and the ability to be electric converted (so, no fancy-pants Carbon frames)

I assessed six potential bikes based on their specs, and landed on one that I am liking more than any other, the Canyon Roadlite 7

Ain’t she a beaut!

You might’ve never heard of Canyon Bikes before, but they’re a company that’s actually very similar to another company I keep talking about when it comes to automobiles. In short, they’re the Tesla of Bicycles.

What I mean by this, is that they, unlike the likes of Giant, Specialised, Trek and so on, sell directly to the customer from their assembly facility in Germany. Now of course, their frames are Chinese, pretty much like every other non-boutique bicycle manufacturer on the planet, but their Design, testing, QC, assembly and distribution all happens in their Kolbenz plant before being shipped to your door directly, meaning there’s no local bike shop there to take a cut of the sale, regardless of how small that cut may be.

This is why you can have one of these Roadlites, shipped to your door for less than the cost of what the likes of Specialized or Merida charge for their Sirrus X and Speeder series respectively, yet still have the same level of kit that those two have.

As a bang-for-buck proposition, it’s a great bike, in my opinion. Fully sealed Shimano hubs, an upgraded Shimano Deore 12 speed groupset, fully Hydraulic brakes, a carbon fork, and plenty of mounting points for $300 less than the cost of those two previously mentioned bikes, delivered to your door in a week. They even give you tools to help you assemble the bike.

Now unfortunately the electric version, the Roadlite:ON is not available in my market as they exclusively use UPS Airfreight, and there’s some really tricky regs surrounding shipping batteries on airplanes and such. Canyon doesn’t have a local distribution centre here in Australia as yet, and as such, I’d have to e-convert my bike using a CYC Motor kit or something. This isn’t an issue, as it makes the cost of conversion way cheaper, and with the additional hardpoints this bike has, it makes a conversion a much better prospect if I do decide to go down this route.

So… Should everyone spend this kinda money on a bike?

Well, it depends. As a person who used to own a bike shop, I believe that buying a bike that’s got better componentry is going to last you a longer time. My Giant, for example, was a second-from-the-top model of the CRX product line, and was first purchased in 2008. It took until 2025, and possibly tens of thousands of kilometres of several owners riding it, before it finally broke.

According to the small amount of Googling i’ve done, it cost $1200 all the way back in 2008 to buy one of these particular bikes. Adjusted for inflation, this would’ve been an $1800 bike if it was released today.

So, this basically places the cost of my potential Canyon bike right on the money for what would be considered as a decent replacement. This Giant lasted 17 years before its derailleur gave up the ghost, which works out to an average cost per year of $70 in 2008 money, and $105 per year in 2025 money… If the person who owned this bike even kept it for that long, it is. Then again, I paid $450 for it back in 2021, and that puts it at a yearly cost of $112 before it finally died. Pretty much, bang on the cost per year proposition.

Keep in mind the average gym membership costs $700 a year. So, having a gym (of sorts) that can take you pretty much anywhere the bike paths go, and unlock an entirely different side of whatever city you live in, for a tenth of the cost of a Gym membership per year (longevity depending) is a pretty solid call, in my opinion.

I think what’s important though is that buying any bike, regardless, and actually getting out and riding the bloody thing, is the immense mental and physical health benefits to riding a bike, and unlike say, spending that kinda scratch on an iPhone or a Mac or whatever, you can actually fix it yourself if you learn a little mechanical skills. In fact, fixing my own bikes as a kid is what taught me the skills i needed to run that bike and hobby shop.

If i’ve had a shitty week, or just wanna blow off some steam the bike is the perfect solution to that. Office politics got you dragged down? Bike time. Sick of seeing how shitty the world is through the eyes of the chronically depressed, anxious and online? Hop on a bike and see how nice it is outside. Hungry but don’t feel like anything in your area? Ride to the traino, and go wherever the rails take you.

Despite what car-brained individuals tell you, multimodal transport gives you more freedom by giving you more options than just driving. It allows you to pick what the most efficient way to get to where you need to go is. Do I need to do a large-scale shop? I’ll take the Tesla. Am I just picking up some components at Altronics or something? I’ll take the train to Cannington and cycle the rest of the way.

The more you use a bike, the cheaper it gets. So yes, i can absolutely recommend spending this kinda scratch on a high quality bike. It’ll actively help you to get out more.

I might have to also write an article about why I think Kmart/BigW bikes are a bad choice for budding bike riders, and why it’s way better to spend just a bit more on a decent quality used brand-name bike… But that’s an article for another time to be honest. (Once again, if i do write it, i gotta remember to link it here, lol.)

But there’s one more reason i think, that makes me want to get even more involved in bike-riding.

Bikes help you fall in love again with the city you live in.

I’ve lived here in Perth for 31 years. I’ve seen this city evolve from a small city with big country town vibes, slowly but surely into a city that’s at least worthy of calling itself a city. I remember taking the old Diesel trains to and from the Royal Show and taking the very first Transperth Fastrak (now A-Series) trains from Midland station to Freo when I was a kid. I’ve now seen the train network slowly but surely evolve into a usable, if not perfect, train system that I now use on a regular basis to get me and my bike around.

Seeing these changes from a lot of different perspectives helps you to see how far the place you live has come. You can see when and where it’s evolving. Applecross used to be just a few rich people’s old houses and maybe the Raffles pub. Now there’s towering residential skyscrapers, and mixed use developments there. Midland is on the up and up thanks to a revised urban core built around the new Midland Station. Armadale’s getting a glow-up too in recent years. Things are changing for the better.

From the perspective of a bike, you get to see what the city is like from an entirely different view. Especially if you’re like me and you enjoy Hybrid bikes, which put you in a more open, upright position, you can see so much more of what’s around you. Burswood park is a lovely place to ride, so too is Claisebrook Cove and Victoria Gardens. Armadale is surprisingly bikeable, and so too is Ellenbrook if you look hard enough, and perhaps add a motor to your bike for the hillier bits.

Perth on the back of a bike is anything but bleak and boring. I find that if you’re in a car, caged up and hidden from the world, it gets a whole lot worse. This is why I also think that Perth’s kind of the perfect place to own an MX5 in, too, but that’s besides the point.

Biking will help you learn to love your city again, and if it makes you feel differently, the joy of riding give you the energy to say “Hey, maybe we can do things a little better?” and activate you enough to stand up for better transport and bike infrastructure.

This is why I think the Urbanist movement is growing stronger these days. We have a huge amount of Urban sprawl here, ironically enough i’d argue we have some of the worst urban sprawl in the world, yet time and time again, when certain governments come into power, they tend to do a really decent job of building out the infrastructure to accommodate trains, cars, bikes and pedestrians. We attempt somewhat to get the balance right, and still, despite being very much a car-focused city, there’s plenty of places where you can go car-free, or at least go car-lite.

I have always been of the belief that we should be making it easier for walking, bikes, public transit and EVs to be our primary ways of getting around, in that exact order. Having been to bike-ruled cities like Tokyo, and Train/bus ruled cities like Singapore, I’ve seen the potential of what is possible. For now, i’m enjoying the recreational enjoyment of riding my bike and slowly but surely falling back in love with the city i call home.

Okay, tl;dr, what’s your point?

My point is simple. If you want to get healthier, spend less time online, travel more freely, and just have a bunch of good old fashioned fun, nothing beats jumping on a bike and going for a ride. It’s an affordable hobby, a transformative way to help you get around town, and a fun way to enjoy yourself of a weekend.

You don’t have to don lycra and pretend to be a racer to be a bike rider. You can be like me and just enjoy bikes for what they are. Cool, fun and most of all, affordable. In 2025, now has never been a better time to get into it.

Beano out.