Tuesday, August 4, 2009

My new ride

I have an illness when it comes to bikes. It's never "good enough". I always seem to just slowly creep up until I've created something ridiculous.

For example. I've been trying to build a city bike for some time. I built this guy up a while back. But it was too nice to lock up. I wanted drops. And it got geared out rather quickly. So I stripped it down and sold the frame to a friend.

I decided to build a cyclocross frame. So, I started with a SOMA frame. Which became a Salsa, because they're close in price and the Salsa is so much nicer. And that needed discs.... and on and on. Pretty soon, I'd only spent $1500, but I had something that I absolutely, positively, could not lock up anywhere.

So I re-set and started searching Craigslist for old road bikes. There's a lot of crap out there. And the hipsters are creaming the city out. So I finally found this guy, and I had to have it. Yes, it's not super pretty yet. I probably could stand to have a size larger. But with some minor modifications (new pedals, tires, tubes, cables, housing, brake pads, handlebar tape, seat...that's about it) I'm going to have an almost bone stock, classic Bianchi. Call these the before pictures.

Oh. I'm going to have to completely re-learn how to ride a bike. I just rode it up the street. My quad kills (I did about 10 pedal strokes) and braking is absolutely crazy. But it should be fun.

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