Bicycling

When you are buying a Huffy, which is what Darkangel purchased, you are at the low end of the bicycle market. I remember my teens years, when I was in the low end of the bicycle market and purchased a "Ten speed". It was a high tension steel frame bike, but it had 10 speeds. The problem was I found it was better to use the ten speed to find what gear I liked the most and just stay in that gear. If you shifted gears, it may shift sometime before you had to get off and walked OR found that you needed to undo what you just did.

When I purchased my Cannondale, it was in the 1990 and all I purchased was the Frame. Cannondale in the 1990s had a program that for $300 dollars you could trade in your old frame for a new Cannondale Frame. It was more cost efficient than buying a new Cannondale, so that is what I did. Installed the old junk gearing on the brand new Cannondale frame and started to save money.

When I had enough money I installed Shimano XT components, I heard they were good and wanted to try them out. The first thing I noticed was the gears actually CHANGED when you shifted gears. That NEVER occurred with the previous junk components. Thus for the first time in riding "Ten speeds" I could actually shift gears and the bike would shift gears before I had to dismount. It was AMAZING.

On the low end, entry level bikes that has NOT changed that much. i.e. the components are still crap. Thus Darkangel is better off with a single speed for as a general rule single speeds are set for the most common gear one would use if you actually could shift gears.

Thus if you are spending less then $400 dollars for a bike, go with a single speed, at about $300 for a bike, you start to get into components that actually work. You do not need XT level, any of the Shimano Levels advertise on their USA web cite should be sufficient, but Shimano makes a lot of other components, many of questionable usability. Thus a bike purchased in a Department stores with Shimano Components, may be a good bike or may be a piece of crap. A good test would be are the components the ones advertised on Shimano's USA Web Site? If yes, go with the bike, if no look for something better.

My advice for someone like Dark Angel is to ride what she has for about a year and then upgrade to something better. There are a lot of teenagers who would like a bike, and that is what I would do with the Huffy (but she may also want to keep it back as a secondary bike, it is an option). After about a year, look into Trek made in USA low end models. Trek bikes made in China are NOT up to Trek made in USA bikes, but all of them are upgradable by replacing whatever components is on the bike with newer and better components.

Giant and Cannondale both have good reputation for bikes made in Taiwan (Cannondale were made in the USA, but that is no longer the case) and would be a good choice, but I tend to want to preserve American jobs so I support American made bikes whenever possible,

Just a comment that darkangel seems to wanted to keep her outlay low and if that was the case a single speed bicycle that actually fits her is a good choice. In many ways a better choice then a multi Speed bicycle, till she gets use to biking. When she upgrades she then should look at a multi-speed bicycle.