MREJ wrote:Two great bikes there. How do they differ in performance?
Not a whole lot different in most cases, except that the Trek feels more nervous in its handling, while the Giant feels like the Mercedes-Benz E-Class of bicycles, steady as she goes but with hidden talents. You can really hustle it through corners with a lot of confidence, but then you've got one as well, so you'd know what they are like.
When you get in the hills, you see the difference. The Trek is over 8kg according to the scale on my Prepstand Pro, the Giant (an SL3) tips in at about 7.6kg according to that with bottle cages on and all that stuff. And of course the gearshifts are way different. The 105 is quite different to the Di2 on the Giant. The Di2 is just click click click and the shifts are very dependable all the time. That helps out of corners too, though me getting better is also part of that.
I haven't really ridden the Trek since I got the Giant. But the Trek has sentimental value, it got me into this whole game when I did my typical jump in the deep end throw caution to the wind approach. You have to remember, before I got into this, I didn't ride a bike since I was a young kid. Didn't really do anything much at all in fact, and by a few years ago I was headed towards 90kg, which is bad. As you can probably guess (and from the avatar), I'm not that weight anymore.

The Giant got its first work on it on my part, the black bar tape replacing the white stuff, and the saddle was swapped from the Trek.
Cesscargo: Very tidy construction there - looks extremely well finished.
