Originally Posted by
That Linux Guy
I would totally recommend this to anyone looking for a nice, budget-minded road bike. One of my favorite things about it is that it's a modern bike with classic styling. I get compliments on it from college kids riding older 70s and 80s road bikes or cruisers (the heart of Gainesville is University of Florida, so there's a large cycling community here and tons of kids ride bikes), to the spandexed-out A-riders riding Carbon/DuraAce bikes. It's a great bike to ride. I think of it as kind of a sport-tourer. I wouldn't take it to a semi-pro group ride and I wouldn't take it on a multi-day tour. However, it's perfectly in between both of those.
Definitely sounds like a good category for the commuter, except...
The one thing I dislike about is the tire-size options. The bike comes with 700x23c tires and the frame clearance doesn't allow for anything much bigger. I was barely (and I mean BARELY) able to squeeze full-coverage fenders on it and not without 3+ hours of work/fine tuning. Without the fenders, the biggest you *might* be able to go is 25c. If commuting on thinner tires isn't suitable to your area then I'd pass this bike for something that allows for some fatter meats. The other thing is the bike feels a bit awkward when loaded down. I had the same rack and carried the same daily load (one pannier, >10lbs) on my old mountain bike and the bike loaded versus unloaded wasn't as significant as it feels on this bike. I noticed a difference in bike feel by just bolting up the empty rack with nothing on it. The frame has rack/fender eyelets but I don't think the bike was designed with these things in mind. You can make them work, but other bikes handle these things better.
Yeah, I'm a little spoiled in a few regards. My bike takes weight well, it seems, though I don't have panniers; I have a crate synched to the rack and put my backpack with books, clothes, lunch, and occasionally my laptop in there, with bungies. For some time I was strapping my backpack itself to the rack, but that was frustrating and ungainly, so I wanted a more abstracted container. Definitely precious little room for fenders on the Allez, while mine has copious room.
Still, I'd like to move up from the DT shifters, but maybe that's just a result of BF-induced awe.