Thanks everyone - this is valuable and conflicting advice I think I would really just ride the thing for a month only and then upgrade to the beast. I was afraid I would get responses in the flavor of "Buy what you need for when you're touring now instead of later" - sounds like a good idea as well - but I wouldn't know where to start. I went to this bike shop and had a relatively bad experience with a guy who was about to sell me a bike that was too small - told me he liked this one better out of the two and then the next day said he liked THAT one better out of the two - I need to get some real education about things - for what it's worth I have found a used 20" framed bike that I'm going to go look at right now. Says he bought it 4 years ago used - he has tons of bikes - and says that it's in good shape. $125 mongoose (not from Target):
http://losangeles.craigslist.org/sfv...605329821.html

thanks for all your help - I thought I would be turned off by the whole "shopping" experience - but I'm still thumpin on this.