Originally Posted by
tjspiel
That's exactly right. With a drop bar riding on the hoods puts your hands a few inches in front of the handlebar clamp. On a flat bar your hands are about even with the clamp or slightly behind it (since flat bars are often swept back at least a little).
So when converting to drops, you'll typically need a shorter stem in order to compensate. This might change the handling of the bike in unpleasant ways. On my bike it seemed to work out fine but I doubt a professional fitter would find my setup to be very ideal.
And converting a bike to drops would also require replacing the shifters, and road bike shifters can be one of the most expensive parts on the bike. And installation costs money to, unless you know how to do it yourself already, which it doesn't sound like you do (and replacing certain parts requires certain specialized bike tools, which also add to the expense).