It's TGR. Shoulder seasons are this boring.

The question is, how committed are you to reliability and longevity over high tech, light weight and all out performance? Because if you're committed enough there's the Rohloff with a belt drive on a...

Is that your professional opinion as a bike put-er togetherer? Repacking and return is not great, but easily worth it not to be stuck with a bike I don't want. Don't know your friend's details, but...

Jenson and Evo have very nice return policies. I'd want that stuff spelled out beforehand.

Obviously deciding which of the various sizes to order is usually not too hard and most consumers could get that right going mail order from a chart. So minimal value there. The unknown in buying...

Not disagreeing, but what do you expect the shop to do for that sale that a mail order house doesn't? If the bike shows up and doesn't fit do they keep it? What if there's a test ride fail?
...

Here I was thinking it was just the DB dealers around me that didn't want to stock something until it was sold. Kind of curious how many test rides these shops give out when someone finally does...

I let those guys dissuade me. Their attitude was both distracting and difficult and I've been to a lot of demo events but I've ridden more SC bikes provided by non-SC companies than by their demo...

...all except the bikes, I guess. Which was sort of the question of the thread.

FFS. I know you're new here and all but come on. The Rog is fine in small doses but don't start trying to get into the finer details of his style and experience. Don't open that door. It only leads...

Agreed on the full squish. If you're not racing your only hard tail should be your road bike, in whatever form it takes. If you are racing that's probably still true. Sure, you should get one that...

I blame Special Ed for years of bouncy bikes that supposedly offered some improvement over single pivot designs but in fact sucked and made sucking seem normal.

Ever ride up a hill next to an...

Your love of your own equipment is well documented, Rog.

I am doing a lot of riding on a bike with a Horst-link like that Nukeproof and it's a hell of a fun bike (at speed anyway). But I'm not convinced that I'd look for a Horst for long term use. Either a...

Toyota of bikes?

I'm sure it goes without asking, but they weren't stocking a Release in another build level, were they?

Don't know about Mazderati, but I have a lot of Diamondback dealers around me, although none that stock the Release. They make their money on other DB bikes (bmx?) and have been around for quite a...

The good news is that there isn't one "Toyota" because there are several. The list of brands to avoid might be shorter. The nice thing about the Release is that it gets you into the newer standards...

Yup. Post pics of new bike soon OP!

That really does seem to check all boxes unless OP is looking to avoid SRAM for some reason. If wanting to work with a local shop just find one on DB's website, call em up and tell them what you...

Yeah, I keep thinking of what it would take to keep using a bike for that long and it always comes back to fixing your own stuff. That said, my wife's town bike is her old mountain bike from 1998 and...

I was actually thinking more along the lines of "will these take?" But it's a valid point that if you're doing whatever to keep a bike going for 20 years a slightly less optimal shock might be fine...

I believe the guy I spoke with said they were using metric sizes, but I may be wrong. At any rate, he was slightly inebriated but adamant that their shocks could be replaced easily. I'd live with the...

I believe Cannondale has finally moved away from the proprietary shocks this year (rears, that is). I kept an old Lefty Max running mostly by rebuilding it myself, which was never too awful. And I...