After giving it some thought I've decided to get a CX bike. Reason being is I'm about 15 minutes away from the All American Trail at Ft. Bragg. It's a 21 mile long unpaved path of hard packed sand, 10-15 feet wide. I ride it on my MTB but I could hammer on it much better with drop bars. You can ride 42 miles out and back and it's like being on a road in the woods with no cars at all. There's also some unauthorized singletrack, and I can't imagine who cut that ahem I have extra wheels I can throw on it for road rides in the rain, fenders will be no problem and I don't care how trashed it gets. There's a few good deals on CL right now so I'll probably have one pretty soon. Looking at these right now: