Oooo, bike shopping is so much fun

Just an FYI, Trek, Fisher and Klein are all owned by Trek. The Kleins have awesome paint jobs but you're not really getting your money's worth as far as specs go. You can get a lot more bike from other brands for the same price. Also, apparently the pivot bearings on the Palomino are not of the best quality and are wearing out relatively quickly.

If you really want to spec your own ride, save up the dough for a good high end frame, that way you can pick out whatever components you want.

Titus, Santa Cruz, Turner, Ventana are all awesome companies that produce phenomenal bikes.

The best bet, though, is ride as many bikes as you can before you decide on what to get b/c they all fit differently. The Kleins have really long TopTubes and Santa cruz has short ones. When i was bike shopping, I didn't care for Giant bikes b/c they had too much of a "tin can" feel to them whereas, Specialized and GT (before Pacific bought them) just felt more solid to me. Kleins were too big and Trek (Fuel 90) was fine but it didn't "wow" me. The Santa Cruz Juliana had the most "plush" feel to it and I really liked that but the TT was just too short for me.

In the end, I finally ended up with a Turner XCE b/c it had everything I was looking for and that was the one bike I never rode . I compared numbers left and right and read every single review I could get my hands on and finally took a leap of faith and couldn't be happier. It fits perfectly.

And, judging by your posts here, you've been around bikes long enough to know that good fit is paramount in enjoying your ride.

**breathe** Okay, that was quite an eyefull I hope you have fun shopping and trying things out. Let us know how it goes!