So I visited 3 bike shops yesteday and looked at the kona smoke (18 in) The seat was simply too low and the bike was way too small for me I have a hard time believing it's actually an 18 in bike.

The shops i visited stocked Raleigh, Giant and Scott bikes. The cheapest bike of All the shops was the Raleigh Sport. The first shop was pretty good but had a terrible selection (only like 5 bike lines total, and 4 used mtb's).

The first shop had the Raleigh Sport at $520 the second shop showed me a fairly nice Giant bike for $950 as their "entry level" bike, and the cheapest bike in the shop was on sale for $650 the salesman there was more pushy than helpful though. The third shop was the most dangerous, as I really really fell in love with the scott bikes. Particularly the Scott SUB 10. Unfortunately, it is double my budget. I test rode a Sportster P4 (that the salesman did a fantastic job of setting up for me) but unfortunately that was also out of my budget by at least $200.

What I felt like was that none of the bike shops really had any bikes IN my price range and I guess that's obvious if my price range is $300-400.

One thing I'm interested in looking at or getting is a Scott SUB 30. On their website they list it at $579 and most of the bikes in store (and at REI.com) were selling for around $100 less than retail. Unfortunately, REI doesn't seem to carry the SUB 30 and I didn't see any at the bike shop that carried it. Is it common practice for shops to order bikes? If I could get the SUB 30 for $470 I'd be sold. But I foresee that maybe being impossible.