Quote Originally Posted by Grog View Post
Just to relieve SK for a moment here...

Just become your girlfriend is, well, a girl, doesn't mean she needs a women-specific bike. Actually, women-specific bikes are just different frames, with different measurements, and a lot of marketing. What she needs is a bike that fits, no? That will depend on the length and size of her various body parts relative to each other, of her ease on the bike, etc. Just because she has not ridden in a while doesn't mean she'll be into comfort or low-traffic or racing or something else. This suggests playing it safe in getting a "simple", not too expensive first bike, yet good enough (avoiding cheap, frustrating components if possible), giving her chances to experiment and to decide what she really wants for her second bike.

I understand that doing things yourself might be a big difference in cost in the end, especially if you have parts at hand, plus: you're pouring a lot of love in the project which I am sure will be noticed but I would suggest getting help from people who know their stuff about fitting, and getting her as involved as possible in the process, so she really feels that it's HER bike, and it really fits like it's meant for HER (not for the "generic woman" out there, whoever that is).

Thanks for doing this, we all wish we had a special person building a bike for us.

ETA: Although at this stage I'd rather build one myself.
I've been to a couple of shops around me and have yet to find one with great knowledgable service. Most of them don't carry many womens frames and most don't carry mens frames small enough for my girlfriend to try. They tell me to go home, do my research on the internet to figure out what size would fit her and then they can order the bike for me...

My experience so far has been worse than that of buying a car. Stores would rather tell me what I should buy instead of sell me what I want. The worst part is some of these sales people don't seem like they know anything about bikes at all. I understand that these people are trying to make a living but when they try to tell me things like "oh, swapping out ultegra components for 105 won't save you much money" or persistently try to sell me a race bike for a girl who hasn't ridden a bike with gears, I get a little offended and would rather build my own bike.

You are 100% correct in me not wanting to get her a super nice bike but not a total crap bike. This is why I'm looking for a low end frame with medium range components. This way if the frame doesn't fit or she wants to upgrade I can just swap out the frame and I won't lose a big chunk of change.