Yen- You know that you could have a lot of fun trying out all kinds of bikes?
All you need is a cooperative Bike-store or better yet, a bike company distributor with lots of test bikes. Trek does this in this area.
I do recommend that you try out an upper end road bike just so you know what you are missing if you buy something else. I made my mistakes of buying too cheap. Those cheap bikes were a total loss after a few years. The better (and more expensive) bikes provided more pleasure but got trumped by new technology over 5 years.