Which Is Best Between These Hybrid Bikes? Available In Los?

[Ahnsahn]

I know that it's tall order to find someone who can help you with this depending upon where you live, but I found it to be money well spent to pay a professional to do a "bike fitting". It takes some of the guesswork out of figuring out what size of a bike you need and how it ought to be setup. Basically a bike fitter is a bike tailor who will take some measurements off you, interview you about your injury history, talk to you about your cycling goals, watch you pedal on a bicycle stand, and tweak things on the bike setup such as seat height, handle bar height, pedal cleat for/aft & angle, ad top tube length (if you don't already own the bike). Usually it's a one or two hour process. Ideally it would be done before you buy the bike so as to avoid making expensive mistakes when picking the frame size & style but it can be after you have the bike too. I paid some French bicycling guru in Singapore a couple of hundred dollars to do that for me and it made more difference to my pedaling efficiency than spending $2000 on a new bike probably would have. A really good bike shop will include a professional bike fitting as part of the purchase price but it's getting more & more rare these days to find a shop that takes that sort of thing seriously. Most shops, it seems, will just have you stand over the bike and see if the top tube hits your crouch and then tell you to take the bike out for a 5 minute test ride in the parking lot. That shortcutted method is the way the shop where I bought my Cannondale did it, but the fortunately the size of the bike turned out to be close enough to correct to be tweakable into range. But I did end up riding for a long time with the bike very poorly setup.

....that would really be cool - a closely customed fitted bike, just like tailor made clothes! I would be locked into the '55' size of that (only remaining and very nicely discounted model) 2008 Specialized Crosstrail Pro, but will definitely remember to keep an eye open for a 'professional' customize bike frame measurer - especially if I have to order a bike.

Edited May 25, 2010 by Ahnsahn

[OriginalPoster]

I know that it's tall order to find someone who can help you with this depending upon where you live, but I found it to be money well spent to pay a professional to do a "bike fitting". It takes some of the guesswork out of figuring out what size of a bike you need and how it ought to be setup. Basically a bike fitter is a bike tailor who will take some measurements off you, interview you about your injury history, talk to you about your cycling goals, watch you pedal on a bicycle stand, and tweak things on the bike setup such as seat height, handle bar height, pedal cleat for/aft & angle, ad top tube length (if you don't already own the bike). Usually it's a one or two hour process. Ideally it would be done before you buy the bike so as to avoid making expensive mistakes when picking the frame size & style but it can be after you have the bike too. I paid some French bicycling guru in Singapore a couple of hundred dollars to do that for me and it made more difference to my pedaling efficiency than spending $2000 on a new bike probably would have. A really good bike shop will include a professional bike fitting as part of the purchase price but it's getting more & more rare these days to find a shop that takes that sort of thing seriously. Most shops, it seems, will just have you stand over the bike and see if the top tube hits your crouch and then tell you to take the bike out for a 5 minute test ride in the parking lot. That shortcutted method is the way the shop where I bought my Cannondale did it, but the fortunately the size of the bike turned out to be close enough to correct to be tweakable into range. But I did end up riding for a long time with the bike very poorly setup.

....that would really be cool - a closely customed fitted bike, just like tailor made clothes! I would be locked into the '55' size of that (only remaining and very nicely discounted model) 2008 Specialized Crosstrail Pro, but will definitely remember to keep an eye open for a 'professional' customize bike frame measurer - especially if I have to order a bike.

I guess that the only way to get a truly customized frame would to buy a frame from a job shop that builds custom frames. There's plenty of people that will do that for you, but their bikes cost megabucks. What I did was sort of a Cheap Charely option, I went to one of those guys after I already had the bike and pled for mercy. He wound up making pretty radical changes to the bike setup compared to what I would have dared to do on my own (for instance, raising the seat by almost 2 inches, raising the handlebars a little, and moving the cleats on my shoes a lot forward). It seems like that's just not the type of thing that you can judge for yourself. I had that fitting done about a month ago and now when I ride I feel stonger every day, but before that (while I might have felt pretty proud of myself nonetheless) I had pretty much plateaud-out.

Edited May 29, 2010 by OriginalPoster

[Ahnsahn]

I guess that the only way to get a truly customized frame would to buy a frame from a job shop that builds custom frames. There's plenty of people that will do that for you, but their bikes cost megabucks. What I did was sort of a Cheap Charely option, I went to one of those guys after I already had the bike and pled for mercy. He wound up making pretty radical changes to the bike setup compared to what I would have dared to do on my own (for instance, raising the seat by almost 2 inches, raising the handlebars a little, and moving the cleats on my shoes a lot forward). It seems like that's just not the type of thing that you can judge for yourself. I had that fitting done about a month ago and now when I ride I feel stonger every day, but before that (while I might have felt pretty proud of myself nonetheless) I had pretty much plateaud-out.

....I should be so lucky here in LOS! But I did just put in the order to get that discounted '08 Specialized Crossstrail Pro model along with extra tubes and (4) of the 700x45c folding tires that come with the bike! I'm hoping to have it shipped later this year with the household goods of a friend.

That Fargo Salsa XT that I like has 99% of the features I want (no front wheel shock, though I can live with its handlebars)....but my size is priced $600 more than the Crosstrail Pro!