<p>I'm going to be a freshman in UCSC this coming fall and I love to bike as a means of transportation, recreation, whatever.</p>
<p>Currently I'm very interested in getting a road bike, having ridden mountain/hybrid bikes all my life, but I'm not familiar with the terrain around campus, so I wouldn't know if it was mostly road or dirt. I certainly wouldn't like having to be constricted to a long road when I could go off into a shortcut trail.</p>
<p>Please share your thoughts on whether one bicycle discipline would be better suited for UCSC Campus/Santa Cruz.
It will be very much appreciated!</p>
<p>I’m definitely a fan of road bikes, but I guess which would be better depends on how you’re planning to use it. If you just want to use it around campus going between classes and stuff, a mountain bike would definitely be beneficial. However, if you’re planning to ride into and around town, my recommendation would be a road bike.</p>
<p>Would it be impractical to try to ride a road bike - “off road” - I mean would it be damaging to the bicycle itself if you were to try going off course with a road bike?</p>
<p>It’s hard to say. You can definitely ride a road bike around campus without any problems if you stick to the paved paths, but I’d imagine offroading with a road bike might not work out. Since the wheels are so light and fragile, you could damage them easily if you hit a rock or something.</p>
<p>I brought both. Used the road bike to get to classes. Used the mountain bike to ride in the crazy technicals and single tracks they have in the forest.</p>
<p>There are a lot of trails you can take, so a mountain bike may be a better choice. I mean, mountain bikes are good both on- and off-road. Road bikes don’t take off-road very well at all. But maybe I’m biased because I love my mountain bike so much. :)</p>