Originally Posted by seely

Gary Fisher's series of 29" wheeled mountainbikes would be a good choice for you. The wheel is more proportional to your height so you aren't sitting a foot above the wheels like on a conventional 26" wheeled bike. There's also the rolling advantages of the 29er. I think for $1200 you can get the XT equipped Dualsport 129 or 229... forget which is the upper model... but in anycase it comes setup as a "dualsport" bike, but can be 100% mountainbike with a tyre swap. I'm not sure if GF makes the Supercaliber or any other MTB 29er anymore but thats something to look into.