pure joy...with a few questions

[Irulan]

no need to pay someone to adjust your brakes.
Get out your handy set of allen wrenches. Get a copy of Zinn and the Art of Mountain Bike maintenance. ($25) There are diagrams in there to adjust the reach by bringing the levers closer to the handlebars, and the angle that the brakes leversl sit on the handle bar. The second adjustment is just a matter of loosening the allen screw, rotating the levers ( usually down) in increments unitl they feel more natural.

As for where your seat is, that is a matter of preference, and bike geometry. The classic XC race position is that the seat is an inch or two above the handle bars, but there is so much room for variation that there are no correct answers. More importantly, is the seat height correct for you, and is the handlebar height and stem length comfortable? With the seat lower than the handlebars, that gives you a fairly upright, recreational position which is fine for just tooling around, but not great for more agressive, technical riding.



I.