New Bike Rider

[kaykatz]

Interested in the Giordano Brava Hybrid to cruise around the neighborhood. Is this good for a newbie?

[CharleyFarley]

(04-04-2020, 09:54 PM)kaykatz Wrote:  Interested in the Giordano Brava Hybrid to cruise around the neighborhood. Is this good for a newbie?

I would say it's good for a newbie, good for most people, probably. Hybrids are a blend of road, mountain and touring bikes, so I don't see how you could go wrong. You can modify it to suit your tastes as you develop experience. For me, I don't like straight bars, so I usually change them for more swept back ones. A wider saddle if you find the original is very uncomfortable, but discomfort is something we all deal with in the beginning. Fenders if you will riding in the rain. You don't have to do all these things at one time.

I had a Schwinn hybrid and didn't like the twist gear shifters so I swapped them for levers. I did a few modifications to it and turned a piece of junk (it was a new bike) into a good bike, a bit at a time.

I can't leave a bike alone, and love to modify to suit my taste. I bought a new cruiser a couple of months ago and have already swapped the handlebars for narrower 24" ones instead of the original 28" bars. Swapped the twist shifter for a lever shifter. (Once you've used lever shifters you'd never go back to the twist type.) Also put fenders on it after getting mud up my back. And changed the freewheel (the cluster of cogs on the back wheel) for one that didn't have a radical bottom gear that was way too low. Changed the saddle, too; the original was like a tractor saddle, way too wide for me. It's good if you can do your own mechanical work. There are plenty of videos online to teach you how to do just about anything on a bike.

Made a lot of changes to my fat bike, too. I love to work on bikes.