When I went to pick up my bike from the shop yesterday, I found that they hadn't installed the tires they had shown me when I was there before. "Yeah. We were out of those." the guy said. "So I gave you these cheaper ones." ... As if I might not have wanted to reconsider getting new tires at all. He went on to say they were also cross training tires and that they would give reduced rolling resistance, blah, blah, blah. So I went ahead and took the bike, but it left a bad taste in my mouth. Whether or not the tires would be good wasn't the issue -- it was having something substituted for something worse without having been informed about it, to discover it myself without being told about it, and then to have the guy act like I shouldn't care.
It seems to be a common problem in this area: a lack of good service from retail stores. Retailers tell you you're being a bad person if you don't shop locally, but they treat you like dirt when you try to buy something. Alisa went to see if a store had a book she wanted. They told her they didn't. Period. She asked if they could order it. They sighed and put in the order saying it would be there in a week or two. A week or two? You could get it the next day from Amazon. When it arrived, the book was defective -- the signatures had been improperly cut. When she showed it to the clerk, they were uninterested. The worst part is, you can't seem to get good service wherever you go. I've been to every one of the local bike shops and have been unable to get consistently prompt and friendly service. Several of the shops are too busy -- you'll have to bring it back in a week or two or never. Partly, it may be in inability to get good staff, but part is simply a lack of effective leadership on the part of the owners.
After I got the bike home, I took it out for a spin -- just a short ride up Pine Street and East Pleasant back to Amherst and then went to Barts for the 
Amherst Esperanto meeting. The new tires are great and seem to reduce rolling resistance a lot -- it felt like added 3 or 4 mph onto my regular riding speed (although I probably need to check my calibration of my cyclometer to make sure it hasn't changed the circumference of the wheel significantly). Unfortunately, It looks like it will rain all weekend, so I'm hoping to get out for another ride today. I'll aim to do one of the rides I've done regularly in the past so I can make a detailed comparison of whether I go faster with the new tires.
StevenBrewer