Quote Originally Posted by redrhodie View Post
Is your fear of using it the city because of theft? Yeah, it will be tempting. I just got a heavier lock for mine, and I only leave it for a few minutes at the grocery store.
Yes, I can put the bike inside over night, but there are times where I have to leave it in the city for a couple of hours. I always lock it up, but the Soma frame is very pretty so maybe it would be too tempting if I would built it with very expensive parts.

wish I could tell you if any of your old parts would work, but I let my lbs do my building for a reason. I do think you could stay within your budget, even if you had to get everything.
I'm a bit wiser already. I could use the wheels but my brakes won't fit onto the frame. But the brakes I need won't cost me an arm and a leg.
My KTM uses a quill stem and that won't fit onto the Soma fork, unless I use their quill-adapter-thing but I think that wouldn't be worth it.
Soma has some nice parts too that are not too expensive, maybe a new crankset would be more aesthetically pleasing than my old one if it fits into the budget.

I'll have to make a list of needed parts to build the whole bike.


They should just call it regular and compact. I keep reading about these companies who are realizing that women don't always need compact geometry, and their answer is to have less of that. Well, a lot of people need a short TT! Men and women.
You are right. My husband is 10 cm taller than me but has the same standover height and a very long torso (which is nice because his jeans fit me ), while my father is all legs and short-torsoed. I also read quite a lot of postings from men in different biking-forums that are in search for a short bike and can only find "womens" bikes for their needs (but find the pink decorations embarrassing ).
It's probably not a gender-specific thing at all.