Not to drive everyone nuts, but I've decided on Pro PLT Ergo bars and the Thomson Masterpiece for my seat post. I was ready to punch the "purchase" button on Enve Carbon bars, but just then my wife says to me "will those bars survive a crash?" And my answer was, "I don't know." I've had 3 wipe outs in the last year. Three were minor, where I was negotiating a sidewalk edge next to really soft dirt (my area is a desert) and the front wheel got stuck. I fell sideways each time and impacted the bars pretty heavily. Another crash was pretty significant. Not sure any carbon bars would not have cracked at some point. Thus, I decided to go with aluminum. Blasphemy, I know. But I don't want to go through several sets of $400 bars every few years. That, or maybe I should just learn how to ride a road bike properly. As for the seat post, the mechanic at my LBS (young, smart gal) advised that she only recommends Thompson posts (Masterpiece) and that she's never run into any binding issues with carbon frames. She believes our dry atmosphere has something to do with it. She also recommends a light greasing, although that appears to be counter the the accepted orthodoxy as to aluminum seat posts in a carbon frame. I'm almost there with all my parts. I'm having a hgeck of a time locating a new Force E1 RD in short cage. I can only find the medium cage version. I may have to get the prior Force version, as there's lots of short cage offerings all over the web. As an aside, I just received my Force E1 crank set. Really super nice. If I had to guess, I'd say that it's the equivalent of a Dura Ace offering. Really impressed by SRAM's stuff!