I’ve been reading this thread with considerable interest. I’m a new lurker on the 50+ forum (fully qualified at 54). I’m one of those folks that has owned a bike pretty much constantly all my life, but I haven’t ever been what would be called an avid rider (i.e. real hobbyist). When I was young I road all over because I couldn’t drive; later I road (some) for fun and exercise, but not avidly. For a long time I had an old Schwinn road bike (Super Sport?) that I KNOW didn’t fit worth a darn. This was probably a factor in not riding more.

About 12 years ago or so my wife and I traded in our old bikes for a couple of Trek Navigators (comfort bikes). These we tooled around the neighborhood on when the weather was fine and that was about that until two years ago when I decided to start riding to get into better shape. I put several thousand miles on the ol’ Navigator and dropped over forty pounds (yeah, you can exercise on any sort of bike, and adjusting the diet helped too). But just recently I decided to kick my riding up a notch and get a road bike.

After trying out a number of bikes, road and hybrid, I came upon a Trek Pilot 5.0 that was decidedly more comfortable than others I’d sampled and on sale being an ’07 model. Soon the deal was struck, but I didn’t haggle in a fitting, though the dealer talked about it and suggested that I should partake for about a hundred bucks. At the time I sort of mentally brushed it off and focused more on some other things I thought were important. Now I’m starting to think I’ll spend the hundred bucks after all since what he described sounded more like the ‘art’ fitting than the ‘science’ fitting that doesn’t involve talking to the rider. Then there’s the question of clipless peddles, cleats, shoes, etc. I don’t want to hijack this thread so will ask that in a post of its own.

Jim