I posted this looooong reply yesterday that seems to have vanished. Grrrr! Those computer gremlins.

Thank you SO much for all of your wonderful responses. I'm going to need to save up my money for another bike aren't I?!! I love all of the enthusiasm here (and the enabling, too). For touring and riding around with the kids I have my eye on a Surly Cross Check... but that's a little bit away... Is fall when there are sales on bikes? For now I need to figure out what to do with my shoes situation. I hate the white shoes... who thought that making white biking shoes was a good idea?

I went to a different bike shop yesterday and the guy I got seemed very knowledgeable. He showed me some different bikes (the cross check being one of them and seemed to think it was fine to go with a mountain bike shoe even if it was a road bike whereas the other store didn't seem to be so keen on that) shoes and pedals (though I feel like I need to do that actual buying at the place that did my first ones since I'm having problems with the shoes and pedals bought there and I don't want to be out money. I hope they'll offer an exchange of some sort so I'm not stuck with bad shoes AND pedals. They'll likely want to try adjusting things first. Right? Although I may completely go back to my toe clips too if all this cycling shoe stuff and the hotspots don't work themselves out. I'm totally cool with this. I just want to go riding!)

I didn't know what a mixte was so went to look it up on Wikipedia! LOL! Yes, I can see something like that in my future to... which leads me to ask: how do you store all of your bikes?? I am running out of room in my garage (my son has one, my daughter has one, my husband has one, we have a double child Burley trailer, and soon two trail-a-bikes, not to mention the other garage detritis like balls, scooters, garden equipment, lawn mower, etc. LOL!) and can just see the look that my husband's will give me when I tell him that I envision getting another bike. He had a hard time when I can home last week with the trail-a-bike (and we need to get another one as well in the next month or so for the other child!). OY! Any good garage/bike organization arrangement that you can to share??

Thanks again for all the great input! I hope the shoe stuff works out. I'll keep you posted! And thank you for making me feel at home here already!