New bike adventure: my first (real) ride on my new Synapse!

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Okay, I shopped around and found a pair of reasonably priced shorts. Thanks everyone for your advice - I'll give it a try. Just posting to give an initial experience of the Synapse. Hopefully this can be of some help to someone who is in the market and is considering this model.

Little bit of background: This is my first road bike - I've had mountain bikes in the past, mainly to get around during college. I knew next to nothing about road biking but I love speed and how sleek the bikes look on the road. I plan to ride as a new hobby and alternative to tennis and I don't intend to race.

First things first: I love my Synapse! I rode over some pretty bumpy terrain on a wooden bridge and over some rougher patches but I was very comfortable overall. Of course, if you're riding over those kinds of surfaces you're going to feel the vibration. However, I can't compare to an aluminum version since I hadn't tested the alloy one over such bumpy surfaces to tell a difference.

I totally botched shifting gears to go uphill with the Apex...I didn't push in far enough and ended up going to a smaller cog...defeating the purpose entirely! As this is the first time I've had a bike where the gears actually...shifted, I will need to ride and shift around more to get the feel of it. Next time I should be ready to tackle that hill again. Once I had the gears in a useable state, I felt that climbing up the next smaller hill was not a problem.

I really thought I'd be dead tired and sore the next day but aside from my *ahem* derriere, I felt perfectly fine. I loved going downhill. It was kind of scary and I had to partially hold onto my brakes the whole time but it was exhilarating. Such a thrilll! From my perspective, although the Synapse is marketed as a plusher, more relaxed bike, it can be wonderfully speedy. Hopefully it will be even faster once I've gotten stronger. Can't wait to go riding again this weekend, with padding this time.

I started out intending to buy an alloy bike. I was set on trying a Felt Z85 or F75 from the specs, and wasn't keen on the WSD versions. I was bummed to find out that I didn't fit on a 51 Felt, and therefore couldn't test ride any unisex Felts without ordering. The ones I tested that stood out the most were the Ruby Elite and the Supersix 105. I think I tested the Ruby Elite, the first carbon bike I tried, before going to another store to try the carbon Synapse. I loved the Ruby - it was super comfortable from the get go, but I couldn't stomach the high price tag for it.

I really liked the Supersix but it felt a little too stretched. Perhaps I would have bought it if a smaller size had been available for me to test, but then there was the Synapse...sitting right next to its Supersix sister. I liked the Synapse because it was a comfortable stretched feeling and it could be fast when I wanted it to be. I was also able to confirm a price match to get $600 off. This was a huge factor in me caving in to buy a carbon bike. Since the 2013 models are in, it may be possible to get some pretty sweet deals on the 2012s.

Road bikes start off at a much, much higher price point than I'm used to, I'm still trying to get over the fact that I paid way more than I'd originally planned, but well...I bought into the whole carbon thing, got a great deal, and didn't want to be enviously eyeing a new bike all the time.

Ugh. I ramble. If you managed to read to the end, thanks for your patience