well, my old bike probably had a couple of reasons for being softer. first one is that i probably never got it to go fast enough for a bump to hurt. second is the huge fat knobby tires, third is the fact that i was never that vigilant about getting air into them. the whole thing was a lot like driving my old volvo: not completely gutless, but with a kind of stately delay effect in anything you want it to do. for the generic object it is, i guess it was pretty sturdy really.

i rode the coda home in the dark so i couldn't see any rough spots coming, and carrying enough backpack weight to make all the ones i hit really count. there is a bit of suspension in the seat of this one but maybe it needs breaking in? and maybe the saddle needs to be lowered and tilted forward a titch too so i can save myself by standing up a little on the rough spots. i get so sick of people dropping the saddle all the way down that i may have overcompensated there. it was um, making its presence felt. and those are some SKINNY tires! at this point i don't mind the harsh feeling though. see how it goes with a little more time.

funny about the cypress, jeff. that was the impression i got too, but i thought i was just being a silly eye-candy consumer because it's more of a comfort configuration and it just felt kind of twinkie. the area where i took it out had nothing but 40-degree slopes in either direction, so i did quite a lot of gear changing. first it wouldn't go into the biggest ring, and then the chain came off and jammed between the cog and the guide - twice. i put that down to riding it right off the floor without the mechanic fine-tuning it, but the coda didn't give me any of that kind of lip. there just didn't seem to be anything about it that was worth an extra $150. only thing i really liked about the giant was the brakes, and i suppose it was also quite a light bike. couldn't really tell because it didn't seem like the kind of geometry where you can stand on the pedals, but that could just have been me being used to the stance for my old bike. never really got to adjust to that because i had to keep getting off and messing around with the chain.