I'm still having some trouble working out the fit on these bikes, and I'm starting to get depressed all over again. The Elite has the higher bottom bracket, and so does the Cross Check, but the Aurora does not, as far as I can tell. I know that affects sizing because the length of the seat tube will seem shorter than it is on a road bike, but it doesn't seem like it would change the actual distance my butt needs to be from the pedal to give me a decent pedal stroke.

I have a hard time working out in my head how the seat tube angle factors in, and I really wish I could just test a bunch of these bikes. On a road bike, a top tube length greater than 525 is really hard for me to manage, at least without using a really short stem, which I do not want to do on this bike. (That's a dealbreaker.) But I have longish legs ... on my 53cm road bike I have a very tall seat post with a lot of setback. So I am worried about going with, for instance, the 50cm Aurora, because the effective top tube length is 535 (too long for me, most likely) and I'm not sure it's going to be tall enough for me without pushing me even further back (with a setback seat post). The seat tube angle is 74, as opposed to 75 on my road bike, and I gather that buys me about another centimeter. But that doesn't seem like enough.

The 47cm Aurora has an effective top tube length of 513, which I think is probably too short, and I think overall that bike is going to be too small for me.

The 49cm Elite might be better ... it has different geometry, with a 74.5 degree seat tube angle, and the effective top tube length is 525. The standover height is about three inches higher than the 50cm Aurora and closer to what I think of as my size. (I know standover doesn't mean much, but it's at least a ballpark on the sizing.)

Arrrgh. I think this is just going down the same path that I went down with my road bike and I am not going to get a good fit. This is why I ride mixtes. My husband is now suggesting that we just put gears back on one of my mixtes and say to hell with modern bikes, and I think I am going to agree with him.