Hello, I have been seriously out of riding for a long time....maybe a 100 miles a year, but nothing steady. My wife had a major brain injury in 2010, which forced my retirement as she needed full time care. Over the past year she has improved and we moved from Ohio to Northern CA for the weather and live within a few miles of a great riding trail along a river. While I still have a MTB in my garage, I would like to go to either a hybrid or some other configuration that can ride the trails. OH, I also like to ride up around Lake Tahoe where there are some steep climbs and some long steep downhills, so I really want to have some disc brakes.

I have been looking around at bikes and the LBS recommended the Felt V85 and Trek CrossRip LTD, but they are both on the pricier side than what I wanted to spend. My initial thought was to stay close to about $1,000. Most of the riding will be on pavement with maybe a little jaunt down a path to see what is there, but no rugged downhill or such as I would use my MTB for that. I did find the Trek 7.4 disc in one of the shops and it seems to be very comfortable to ride, though it is a little lower spec'ed than I thought. I had ordered the CrossRip, (which was way over my budget), but got told yesterday that it would me sometime in Mid March before I would even see a bike...this is leading me to reconsider the deal and relook at my options. Having a suspension front fork is really optional to me as typically ride my full suspension Titus Motolite with the suspension locked out unless I am doing serious downhill stuff....for a 70year old that is...LOL

Is there a good hybrid that has disc brakes and a reasonable set of running gear that I am missing? Flat bars vs drop bars not an issue as I can always put brakes on the center of the drop bars like a CX type bike. But I want to sit more in an upright position like a commuter/hybrid bike. I hope this all makes sense and yes, it is a little confusing to me.