My biggest worry is toe overlap, to be honest. I am relatively small, but I have disproportionately large/WIDE feet and like to have my cleats back a bit from the ball of my foot, so toe overlap exists on my road and CX bikes. On the road bike it's really not an issue, but it can be on the CX bike. If I had it on a 29er that would likely be a deal-breaker for me.

Not sure when I'm going to be able to test ride. It's sort of a non-issue until we can figure out how to budget for this bike, anyhow. DH sort of wanted a new CX bike (right now his CX bike is an old franken-biked Trek hybrid), but he does already have a road bike, a mtn. bike, and a fat bike. I have sort of lost my somewhat-too-small mountain bike to my 11 year old son, so I'm really down to just a road bike and a CX bike. And it doesn't really work for a family of 3 to only have 2 mountain bikes, especially when all 3 of us are looking at doing a 6-12 hour mountain-bike relay race in Aug. (DH would be on a 12 hour team and DS and I are thinking about doing a 6 hour team if we can find 2 others).