Originally Posted by
seenoweevil
The longer chainstays should give a little more clearance and help prevent your heels from scrubbing against your panniers when you get them. As far as having to get a new bike if you go to drop bars - for the cost of the individual items you need to make the transition, you could easily buy a good used bike with drop bars and save yourself the hassle of changing everything over. Plus, the geometry of the bikes will be a little different and the ride quality may never be quite comfortable for you. Of course, all this is dependent upon your individual tastes and the fit you prefer. I personally love the Jamis steel frames and they get good reviews as far as I remember. Enjoy your new bike, whichever way you go!
Thanks for the advice. (Also, by way of the heel clearance issue, I'm not particularly big: 5′9.5″/174 cm, 156-ish lbs/11.2 stone/71 kg. I might not need to worry about my heels, regardless.) Guess I really ought to make a concrete decision about the handlebars
before I take the plunge.
...Agh, so many things to think about. I guess the first thing is to actually try out some of these bikes. Would be nice if these bike dealers had more space to test them out on. I wonder if they could just hook it up to one of those trainer-majigs...