I don't like shopping, and I like my clothes to be comfortable. -- Norah Jones
I'm seriously looking at buying a tri-specific bike. (I know - I've mentioned it a couple of times before, but I mean it this time.) Since I'm looking at doing longer tris as a regular activity, it makes sense to get a good bike for that purpose. Unfortunately, there are just so many choices -- even in my limited price range -- that I'm not sure where to start. I've been asking for advice everywhere I can think of: my brother & sister-in-law who ride, my Facebook friends who do tris. But even the information gathered is overwhelming.
The biggest issue is fit. The bike has to fit right or it won't make me faster and it will be terribly uncomfortable to ride. Problem is I'm a fairly small person (at least height-wise) and so bikes are not just laying around for me to test-drive. I am looking into getting a pre-purchase bike fit. This means that a person who is trained in bike fitting would take all sorts of measurements and tell me the geometry of bikes that will work best for me. I didn't like geometry in high school - I'm not good a visual thinking. Thinking of bike geometry hurts my head too. It would be so much easier if I could pick it by color. :-)
On top of all this, I really don't like shopping. As much as possible, I do all my shopping online. That's a little tricky with bikes - I can buy a bike online, but I need to make sure it fits, either because I've been able to test ride one or because I have learned my geometry. One reason I don't like shopping is because I want to just buy something and be done with it. Window shopping holds no interest for me, and I feel like this whole process is a bunch of window shopping. I realize I'm getting ready to make a really big purchase and I need to go into it slowly, but it's starting to make me nuts.
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