Got eh N+1 bug but need something "cool".

I got it. I got the itch and I need to scratch it. No, not more cow bell, well maybe more cowbell under the right circumstances..... I don't know what kind of bike I want. Well, that's a lie. I want a MTB and a road bike. It's the sub-kind and, most importantly, the BRAND that is tripping me up!

I want to ride my MTB by myself, for the most part, or with other guys just out having a good time. I have a really old Diamonback that was the first (and only ) brand new adult bike that I ever bought. It was pretty much retired and replaced by a clapped out Gary Fisher Advance which I have been beating into the ground lately. But the miles of neglect are starting to add up and it's starting to need thingsthat are adding up in cost. Spending a bunch of time and or money on a clapped out old Fisher that I could re-invest in new-tch is bugging me. But what to replace it with? 26er or 29er? I "know" I want a hard-tail. And that's where the story ends. I have ben facinated for years at the concept of "Hybrid" nbikes but can see no actual need for them. I'm thinking that if I go 29er that's close enough hat I can put some slicks on that bad-boy and call it a Hybrid for a ride or three and get that out of my system. Plus, I'm a sucky MTBer. So the 29er will be better over obsticals and stuff. 

On the road side things turn different. I have a perfectly servicable Tricross Triple. It's Fine. Low level parts and super nont-flashy (it's Flat Black for crying out loud) and with all it's racks and fenders it's decidedly NOT sexy.I want to start riding with other people though to push myself and all that jazz. I KNOW that I'll be the week link and the slow guy and all that but I want to ahve a reasonable expectation that the slowness is coming from me and not the bike. I want a Roadie! I don't need one and roadies are expensive! Maybe a used Le Mond would fit the bill

Where the problem comes in is that I want something....cool. I know that the Treks and Canondales of the world are cheep, readily available and reasonably in-expensive but they are boring as heck! I want something.... else. Something interesting, different, unusual yet competent and "good". The Fisher is sufficiently un-Trek like I guess, but new Fishers ARE Treks. Yech! How about a Surly or an Independant Fabrication or something from an Italian Road Bike maker or some small shop in the USA? Sure, if money were leaking out of my pool instead of water. It ain't.) OK Surly isn't that expensive but I think you get the point. 

So, if YOU were looking for a reasonably priced, COOL road bike or MTB what would YOU be looking at?

Tried the twenty-niner thing today..

Not for very long. I have long been curious as to what all the 29er fuss was all about and I finally went out and touched one in the flesh. What did I think? Meh. It was a Gary Fisher.... no. Wait. It was a "Trek"  Mamba The Gary Fisher brand has been reduced to a stencil of his initials some where on the frame. It's a sad day. I didn't like the blue and white color. The kid said that they had black. OK. I thought that the price marked on the bike was fair. I took it out for a spin. The first thing that I noticed was that it was BIG! Compared to the 26 inch MTBs that I have ridden over the last twenty years (poorly and infrequently: i still consider myself firmly a beginner) I though the the bike was too tall, the wheels took up to much space and that the bars were too wide. It handled slow. Even with the much-vaulted G2 Geometry it was a slow steering kind of thing. Maybe, for a 29er it was a scalple bit compared to a G2 26er... not so much. It was just plain slow. Push the pedals and... nothing. Now, I am certainly no racer but even to me it was plain that the 29er would take more to get going and stopping than a 26er. In fact, stopping kinda sucked. It sucked SO much that I asked the sales kid if the breaks were set up to be delivered or if they needed final adjustments. He assured me that they were ready to go. And they might have been, but they weren't ready to STOP! They were mechanical disks though, maybe that is a reason that they sucked more than rim breaks? It's funny though, because that was the one part of the experience that I had a pre-conception of superiority about. There definitely, definitely definitely DID find superior about the big-wheel. It went over obsticals that would have stopped the 26er dead in it's tracks, or at the very least required the use of "skill" to surmount. It was OK. I'm not sure that I would buy one over a 26er though. Bike for bike that cost more, weigh more and are less fun to ride. They do scale yellow curb stones better though!