Originally Posted by
exile
All kidding aside you might want to look into used road bikes. I think they would provide better gearing, multiple hand positions, a more aero position, a relatively faster ride, and depending on the bike, attachments for racks and fenders. I would probably stay away from the more racing oriented bikes but rather look at cross bikes, sports touring bikes, and the like. You mentioned some pretty large cities in your original post, but i'm confused as to why you think they won't have a good selection?
The new bike selection will be great in the bigger cities locally the options are Trek, Specialized, Giant and Jamis, but the used market (at least person to person) seems to move to fast for our ability to make it to the larger cities. If we get lucky we might find the right bike on Craigslist, but locally that isn't happening, the CL here is very slow.