A bit of background: grew up shredding the north shore on 90’s/early 00’s hardtails, spend my 20s on roadies in group rides and condos, now approaching 40 and looking to find a do-most-of-it bike:
Daily commute: (20km round trip, mostly city streets with some very light gravel)
Light train riding: (kids are getting into riding cross-country style single track, my enduro bike is not really fun on these at those speeds)
Bikepacking: this is aspirational, and realistically I’m not going to be doing fully-loaded off-road long rides, but we are talking about shorter weekend trips (sub-100km round trip)
I’m very unlikely to do any gravel racing on this, but will absolutely take it off-road on fire roads/double track/single track on a regular basis, and will commute on it daily.
I’m in the market for a steel bike with lots of mounting points and clearance for big tires – which of these bikes should I choose, assuming all three fit well:
Kona Sutra: https://morebikes.ca/products/copy-of-kona-2021-sutra
Brodie Elan Vital 2: https://www.thebikegarage.ca/brodie-elan-vital-20-desert-sand-w-black.html
Marin Gestalt x10: https://reckless.ca/products/marin-gestalt-x10?variant=43564297682991
by mldsmith