The past six months have been pretty good, health-wise. I'm recovered from the surgery, and I ride my bike 2-3 times a week. I started out getting winded and sore muscles at less than a mile of riding, and now I'm up to about 15 miles without much problem. I ride a cross country mountain bike, not a road bike, so that 15 miles is probably the equivalent of 35-30 road miles. I don't ride on city streets, there are too many people out there who drive like I do. :-)

I've found that the same sort of prejudices occur within the biking community as in other groups, except maybe a tad more extreme. If you don't spend a lot of money on a bike, then you aren't taken seriously. I have yet to find much difference between the Walmart bike I have and other, more expensive bikes, such as my Specialized Camber. I've looked, and there is no verifiable information on the net that would suggest that expensive bikes last longer than inexpensive ones, or that they are faster, more comfortable, or handle better.

About the only conclusion I could draw at the moment is that the people who buy less expensive bikes may be not as "into" biking, and thus don't keep the bikes maintained as well, or that they tend to lose interest after a while because of family, etc.