I'm appreciative that folks here are both polite and willing to be open minded about all things
interesting about biking.

BTW, one of our LBS wanted to sell me a Specialized Roubaix CF frame with Shimano 105 series gearing setup and
for $2100 and I went to a local TREK LBS that buys "last year's stuff" from the TREK warehouse and cobbles together
road bikes and the one I have was $988 (with Ultegra gearing but 10 cogs rather than 11) which got an OK from the wife. I can spend more for upgrades but I notice that many folks here do well by stretching their dollars rather than throwing money at a problem.