Thanks for the info about spoke washers. I had heard they were a good idea but could not figure out why. Now, I get it.

I thought about finding and building up a different frame and having a second bike, but my wife already scoffs at the number of bikes and projects I have- I don't think it would go over that well.

The Rock Hopper *does* have horizontal dropouts (that's how its currently fixed gear). I realize that respacing will man that the dropouts are no longer parallel, but I can fix that fairly easily by cold setting them. My main thing is that I want to make sure this is a good idea before I go bending my frame with a 2x4.