I'm 18 years old and will be heading off to a fairly large state university in the fall. Anyways, I was thinking that it would be nice to have a bike to get around campus on.
That being said, I started watching the Tour of France last year and basically fell in love with watching races. My friends think I'm crazy for finding bike races exciting, but thinking things like soccer extremely boring. Oh well. To each his own, right? Anyways, the point of this was that I was thinking about getting involved with the racing club at my university as a recreational thing and I figured it would be a good way to stay in shape and avoid the Freshman 15. [At this point, I'm rather healthy... about 5'5 and 115 lbs. I did cheerleading throughout high school, so I need to keep doing something to keep me active.]
I've read through a lot of threads and most people post on here with listings off of Craigslist that they found. However, I went on Craigslist and the websites of some local bike shops, and I have absolutely no idea as to what bike I should look into. I don't even know where to begin. Basically, all I can gather is that I should get properly fit for a bike, but that's about it.
As far as a budget, I definitely want to stay cheap, but I also know that you get what you pay for. My mother bought a bike a couple of years ago from Wal-Mart, and basically we can't ride it now, because the handle bar slips and becomes loose. (We can't figure out how to repair it, but it's really dangerous to be riding and then all of a sudden, your handle bar falls and is basically no good anymore.) I have about $500 that I could spend, but I'd really, really rather try for less, and looking around Craigslist, it appears that I could spend less on a used bike, but I'm not sure if it would be a good bike.
So, any help at all would be greatly appreciated. :-D