For my recent 40th birthday, my wife surprised me with a bike shopping trip! After visiting around 12 different stores in Sydney, and having no luck finding something in my size (I'm 2m tall) we found a 2017 Giant Defy Advanced 2 in stock.
Purchased it, bought it home and proceeded to ride as much as I could. I put on some crank brothers candy pedals I had spare from my spin bike, and ordered some white R540 pedals and appropriate road shoes (similarly to the bike, none of the shops in Sydney carried a size 49 road shoe, although lots had size 50 strangely)
It was fantastic to ride and a revelation compared to my 2005 Giant Alias MTB (with kid seat on the back, and toddler installed, it's about 40kg vs 8.8 for the Defy)
5 weeks and 330km in to ownership, I was riding along the Windsor Road bike path, when I heard a crack noise (like when you step on a stick) and something hit me in the left calf. Well, that turned out to be a piece of carbon from the seat tube
Needless to say, I was pretty devastated!
Uh oh by
CaffeineAU, on Flickr
It's not meant to look like that by
CaffeineAU, on Flickr
Fortunately, the bike shop was very helpful, Giant's lifetime frame warranty came to the rescue, and just over a week later, this was the result:
Bike! by
CaffeineAU, on Flickr
It's a matt back / orange 2017 Defy Advanced 1 frame, which I gather wasn't offered in Australia. I'm very happy with it. I've done just over 200km on it in the last week and a half, and it's amazing
It looks a little strange with the white pedals, but I can live with it