Thanks, I appreciate your input...but too late. My new bike is on its way to be delivered today. And your advice echoes pretty much everything I've read. But my LBS owner was rude and he wasn't interested in answering my questions if I wasn't interesting in spending at least $700. I am a little confused as to how much bikes have changed that it is so much more complicated to buy a bike now than it was 30 years ago. Yeah, there are a lot more different bike styles, and you have to pick the type of bike that fits your needs. But why is fitting a bike so much trickier now? When I was 15 I bought an okay 10-speed from a store like K-Mart for $80. The bike was really too big for me (I dug it out of my dad's back yard this weekend and tried it out for size, although it is thrashed), but I wanted a guy's bike (that was just a teenager coolness thing) and it was my sole transportation for the next two years. It worked fine. I rode it everywhere and don't recall suffering in any way for having an ill-fitting bike. I don't get why it has become such a science.
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