Congrats on picking out a GREAT bike and happy birthday to you! What a terrific gift to give yourself! I have a Ruby Comp and I absolutely love it. I tried many, many road bikes before deciding on the Ruby. It has a wonderfully smooth ride. Although I have Ultegra components, I'm sure you will get used to SRAM in no time. My boyfriend went with SRAM on his Specialized Tarmac and has no issues. We are both older, me 58 and him 62, and really enjoy the ride quality of Specialized.