A few things about bikes that shops wont tell you

There are a few things that every bicycle shop as well intentioned as they may be, may neglect to tell you about bicycles and your new bicycle purchase.

The first big thing that every bike shop wont tell you is to not put a kickstand on a mountain bike. If you are going off road on a bike, it is likely that at some point you will hit a rock or something else and the kickstand will come down. You will at this point in time have the kickstand dig into the ground unexpectedly and you will crash. Kick stands are not that useful of a product anyway, since it is often times just as easy to lean your bike up against a wall, tree or anything else around as it is to put down the kickstand. Bicycle shops just like selling kickstands because it is a high margin add on for them. They sell kickstands for 15 bucks that they are buying for less than a dollar.

The next big thing is that if your bicycle says designed in America that does not mean the bicycle was made in America at all. The bike was still made by machines and workers in Taiwan, China, Mexico or any one of the other countries that makes almost all bike sold today. It may have been designed here in America where engineers thought out the geometry and layout of the bike, but it was made and produced somewhere else. Do not think that if you buy a bike "designed in America" you are helping out factory workers in America.

The final thing is that if you replace your chain regularly, it will save you a lot a lot of money on your bikes drive train parts over time. A worn chain wears down cogs and teeth on gears at a much accelerated rate. If you do a cheap chain replacement somewhere around every 500 to 1000 miles you ride you will be saving all your parts a lot of wear and tear.