Orbea, Giant or Specialized?

[sgtiger]

MauiRockHopper, welcome to TE! The best of luck finding your new bike.

Question: if you buy a bike from somewhere other than your LBS, can you ask for a discount because the seller won't have to service the bike for 1 year? Seems like the LBS always throws a 1 yr service plan in when you buy a bike from them, so if you are from out of town the selling shop should discount you for the unused service you will pay your LBS for.

Nope, sorry! The offer of the one year service is to get the purchaser into their shop on an ongoing basis with the idea that once they're in the store they might purchase other items. That and the service may be free but the new parts for the bike are usually not free, sometimes discounted though, if you should decide to swap out a part to fit the bike to you better. Their percentage of profit on a bike is not that great compared to all the little items that they sell (tubes usually have the highest percentage mark-up). Plus they want a chance to earn the shoppers loyalty so that they'll go back to that shop for any future servicing even after the service plan expires.

[Jallora]

Is it true the Orbea wants to climb up the hills by itself? That sounds like a good feature!

I don't know about climbing the hill by itself, but climbing was a breeze compared to my old bike. I hit the hills for the first time this weekend. The first big hill was a little bit of a struggle for the last little bit because I tried to do it in my big front gear. Stupid me. I just finished the hill standing up. We ran into a guy at the top of the hill that had just climbed up pushing his bike after he wrecked at the bottom. His leg had a very deep gash just below the knee and was bleeding pretty bad. I'm not good with blood, so my husband stayed and used our first aid kit on him to get the bleeding under control. I rode ahead a couple of miles to meet the ambulance at the next entrance to the rails to trails route we were riding. There were a bunch of hills on the way, but I had so much adrenaline pumping that it pretty much flattened the hills out for me if you know what I mean. I met the ambulance, told them where the guy was, and then I got back to them only about a minute behind the ambulance. I was ready to head back to the car and call it a day by the time they loaded him up and headed to the hospital to put multiple layers of stitches in his leg. His poor bike was trashed too.

I can tell you that my husband doesn't have to worry about dropping me much anymore. In fact he said he has to push really hard to feel like he's giving me a workout. He hopes to upgrade to a nice carbon fiber bike like mine at Christmas. I'm glad I upgraded first. His current bike is better than my old one. If he had upgraded first, he would've been board riding with me on my metal beast.