I have an 8.3 I bought the last week of December. It is my first post-childhood bike. I absolutely love it.
I bought it to be the 'one bike to rule them all' for me. I started doing some road type biking (up to about 25 miles), started scoping out some trails, and got fenders and a messenger bag to do commuting with. It did all those things just fine for me.
On memorial day I had an accident on a trail and was off the 8.3 due to wrist issues until yesterday morning. Between buying the DS and now I ended up buying my wife a 7100 off craigslist, the one condition to the deal being that I bought a pair of them, one her size, one close to mine. While off the DS I spent a bit more time on teh 7100 which I was using for learning mechanical skills and doing some experimentation on. I decided to dedicate the 7100 to family/commuting type stuff and moved the fenders over to it, put a rack on it, and am working on panniers for it now.
I decided to take the commuting off the DS as I felt it and I were having a bit of an identity crisis trying to get it to do everything. Now I'm going to use the DS as my 'do everything sporty' bike. I'm looking into some 32c tires to replace the Bontrager H5's it came with. Every time I've gotten into anything other than road or dry hard dirt the h5's have been pretty worthless (my accident was on a sandy trail). Along with the 32c tire for road use, I'm looking at some 29er tires for the trail stuff. If all goes to plan I'm going to try to build a wheelset in the fall to put the 29er tires on so that I can just swap out the wheels between using it on the road and using it on the trails.
Probably too much info there, but I really do enjoy my DS, although it has been rought not being able to ride it for a month. I have ridden with roadies, but keep in mind I'm a newbie clyde getting into this to get in shape, so the roadies were either keeping it easy, or not fast to begin with, or a bit of both (as I'm sure they would claim). The only other person I've been on the trails with is my son, but we've had a decent time, and we are looking forward to doing more of it when I'm fully recovered. That is if we can find a trail easy enough for me!
