dlawson – excellent thoughts to my original questions. I have been leaning Ripley (if I can find it), as it seems you can bike it up, bike it down, and the sizing for me leaves no questions of sizing up or not.
Local trails being XC focused does hang me up a bit…I do like PRing climbs, and it would be tough to spend thousands to get slower…but I imagine that’s mostly a function of, well, me (and tires), and I’m confident that I’ll be more comfortable and have more fun.