If you're coming down to Glentress next month you can play on it all weekend. It's a good bike, but Kaiser's Kona Unit 29er feels rather special, although that's based on 5 minutes of car park shenanigans.
It's an 18", about on the borderline for me size wise, but it had quite a long top tube and I didn't want any bigger.
Anytime you want let me know Always keen to convert someone Spend a bit of time looking around the mtbr 29er forum lots of good ideas. I tried to convince velo he needed one of these but I think it would be up your street too.
Salsa Fargo
NOT the prettiest bike in the world but amazingly versatile. If I didn't think with a few bits and bobs I could get the Kona doing almost the same thing I'd have bought one by now.
Quite possibly, 29ers are not the preserve of normal heighted people. The only prohibiting factor at the moment is cost, not really mainstream enough to be cheap
They're the same as 700c so you can run fat road tyres, hybrid, cross and 29er specific. Most of the popular 26" sizes are available and not really at a price penalty.