So if not every bounce hits their nodes, they can't?
As far as we know. That was their strategy 5-7 years ago - you can't catch them 100% of the time, so catching them in random occurrences is good enough. Many people think they're safe using tor for browsing illegal content, but lose their anonymity when they say view an image or video they downloaded on tor using an application on Windows that connects to the internet when viewing it. Most media players look for metadata in online databases every time you play something, so that old dl can connect you to you not being on tor.
what would you recommend instead?
There really aren't any better options than creating your own relay network.
Well, I wasn't thinking of doing illegal stuff, but probably what I do is already illegal in places. I remember reading about Tails a while ago, but that seems to entail a way higher level of inconvenience.
Well, if all you are doing is web browsing, Tails isn't a bad option. Probably a majority of people could live their lives using Tails and not notice a difference. It doesn't really protect you from too much if you are using a compromised network though. IIRC the actual way they caught the creator of The Silk Road was because they were able to link an older post on stack overflow that had his personal email, which was edited less than a minute after it was posted to remove the email address, but it was already too late.
That was probably completely irrelevant, but just keep that in mind when considering privacy on the internet.
So if not every bounce hits their nodes, they can't? That sounds fairly good to me. The inconvenience of regularly using Tor for low-bandwidth browsing is minimal, and I think it's worth it just to help build momentum in privacy focussed technology.
Using Tor is better than giving up - and if you're not giving up, what would you recommend instead?