Thank you for the nice comments :) I do have another part to the finding a bike story. My first post was a bit long so pared it down.
When the Appaloosa build came out, I saw the pictures of the butternut frame and was blown away. But I was extremely happy with my Soma and had no justification for buying another bike, particularly for the kind of riding it was designed for. When I understood that my Soma was not viable here, I looked back to RBW to see what they had in stock because I knew I wouldn't last long without a bike. They had a 2016 butternut frame in my size. I called because I had questions regarding max tire clearance and the projected weight of the bike (I am a small person and have to carry it up three flights of stairs). It was the afternoon of July 3rd, I called, and it was picked up and I heard "Hello, this is Grant." I almost dropped the phone. I did not expect him to answer. I had called RBW from time to time regarding questions and checking on orders and had dealt with Will or Mark. I told him how much I had enjoyed my Soma and all the compliments I had gotten over the years, even from the carbon fiber crowd and explained my current situation. He was super nice (a lot of the staff had left early for the holiday and that was why he answered the phone). He had all sorts of questions, not only about bikes, but about my job, my move, random stuff. He wanted to know if considered the Clem. He said they also had really wide tire capacity and they were expecting a new shipment. We went back and forth regarding specifications and I kept on going back to the Appaloosa. There was a point that he saw where my heart was and that is how I ended up with my bike. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
