Thanks for all the advice. Stem is definitly not adjustable. Riding on the sidewalks here is heavily frowned upon, particularly since Cary has been very aggressive about being bike friendly. Also, the hill is right in front of a middle school, so seems to have a lot of bus traffic, pedestrian traffic and quite a few automobiles moving unpredictably as kids are darting in and out of the passenger seats. The road cyclists that climb the hill actually take over the lane they are in rather than riding to the right. The more I think about it, I've only seen folks on slick road bikes climb it....I'm definitly not the only person walking a bike on the sidewalk.

mconlonx and no1mad, thank you for the advice. I liked the FX....the second and third rides were better. I'm hoping they'll have the correct size of neko built in the next couple of days. The guy at the shop said I'm not easy to fit (long legs, short torso and arms) so it's been interesting.

BHOFM - I'll toss it up on another scale tomorrow. Not like a medical institution doens't have ample scales. The one I used is a digital that goes the the hundredths of a gram, though I tend to read in pounds. As far as I know, the tires have never had stop leak in them. I keep them at 80psi. That does include rack, lock, seat bag, handlebar bag. actually, you all are making me doubt myself...so I took the home scale outside. I weight 172.2 without the bike. With the bike the scale reads 218.6. Maybe my math is off there somewhere. I am obviously not claiming to know much of anything about bikes....but I am decent at reading scales, and I'm not sure why I'd bother to report it heavier than it is.