I got the Jamis Nova to have a good climbing bike for Hawai'i's steep mountain roads, with tough high spoke count wheels, room for fenders and large "touring" tires, to handle touring loads, broken pavement and "off road" conditions. It's also the only bike I have that's the proper frame size for me. I plan to use it for long distances, exploring local roads (in Hawai'i that means climbing mountainsides), and some light off-roading. I removed the stock "road bike" racing crankset and Tiagra front derailleur, and installed a "mountain bike" 44-23-22 crankset and SRAM Xgen front derailleur to get proper climbing gears. It takes some trim adjustment on the front derailleur cable to move from the lowest gears to the highest gears, due to the incompatibility between "road" and "mountain" components, but that's easily accomplished. I eventually intend to replace the carbon fork with a steel fork with disk brakes. The thin tube Reynolds 631 steel frame is very noodly and flexible.