I recently bought a cross bike after writing them off for years. Its a steep learning curve certainly – first ride started off on off-camber, rocky (really rocky), slow techy stuff and it was horrific. As soon as I got it onto more open moorland stuff it was quite good fun in places. I bought it mainly as 95% of my riding is from my front door and having something I can scope out trails marginally further afield on before going back on the big bike is a winner. Certainly won’t be ever selling all my other bikes and just riding a curly bar’d oddball road bike but as a tool and something a bit different, its alright. Main reason I sold my SS was that it was just different but ended up riding the same trails on it – this will allow me to explore new ones as well as ticking the ‘different’ box.