brand new and need a bike. suggestions?

[Nick]

I also went with the Small Santa Cruz Juliana. I love it. It's a perfect fit for me. I had to special order it sight unseen, but the Juliana was worth the wait.

[hooslisa]

....so, i think i've made up my mind.

there is limited availability in the actual bike i was interested in, but i was able to try a unisex 15.5 trek, a 15.5 trek wsd and a 15 wsd specialized.

i was drowning on the 15.5 trek. as much as i wanted it to work, i wasn't postive about it. tried the 15.5 wsd and that was really nice. the 15 wsd specialized was too small.

so, i think i'm going with the trek x-caliber wsd. http://www.trekbikes.com/us/en/bikes..._caliber_wsd/#

anyone have any experience with this one?

i'll probably upgrade components along the way, but for just getting started, i think it will do nicely.

i'm stoked!

[Bikerkippie]

I don't have a lot of experience with Trek bikes, but I do hear good things about them.

I had a look at the components and I will say this: decent frame, great fork (I love my Reba), I'm also a big fan of Bontrager (the stem, handlebars, seatpost, etc).
For this amount of money, I would have loved to see a drivetrain that was a little better (SRAM X7 will do just fine, but the Deore derailleur is a little cheap) and I think Trek should have opted for the Avid Elixir 5's, at least. In other words: the brakes would be first on my list to upgrade, drivetrain second.

All in all, not too shabby! Have fun

[mar]

i would HIGHLY suggest really riding that bike and then a bit smaller one (cannon dale lexi xs, santa cruz juliana xs, or trek lush s) before you do anything. I have a fs cannondale lexi and its an xs...forgive me, i do not have proper punctuation cause i had a bit of spill where i hit a root from picking a bad line on a climb, and the bike fell to the right and i fell to the left. the bike ended up leaning against the side straight up, and me back down the climb about 8 ft! I am in a cast cause the stand over caused me to either get off and shatter my pelvis or fall off. the stand over on my xs canoodle lexi 3 is 27" and it was too big for me and i couldn't emergency get off the bike. and also, ill be selling my bike to get a lush xs...lemme know if you are interested!