Bike Build – Intro
For the past couple of months, I’ve been building up a new bike as a general transportation bike, as opposed to the racing bikes that I own.
I’m doing this because at some point earlier this year, I came to a number of realizations that left me absolutely no choice – I needed this bike.
My infallible and irrefutable underlying reasons for yet another bicycle:
- I love riding bikes – it’s just dang fun.
- I hate driving – it makes me angry and stressed.
- I ride about 10,000 km a year training and racing, but don’t actually go anywhere.
- I love adjusting, fixing and tinkering with bikes.
- I live pretty darn close to where I work (less than 6.5km and that’s the long way).
- I live pretty darn close to other things (grocery stores, other shops, etc).
You’ll have to agree that this list points to a single, inescapable idea – I needed to build a bike to get around. The two race bikes I have wouldn’t do the job either, being too expensive and fragile to leave anywhere.
I had a great idea of buying a new frame and fork, and pulling together a bunch of extra parts from bikes no longer in service. I would then supplement these pull-offs with a few new odds and ends and I’d be ready to roll in a couple of weeks, tops. And I wouldn’t break the bank building it up.
To put it mildly, this was a great learning experience. I ended up using exactly -one- part off the pile I had and buying everything else new. Some parts I had to buy two or three times as I screwed them up on the first attempt at install. The budget grew steadily and rapidly, but I was already committed. Thank the Bike Gods that I have such a wonderful and understanding wife!
Next post will have the build details and some of the things I’ve learned putting this thing together.
Here it is just a few steps from completion!
New Bike
Tags: bicycle, surly crosscheck, transportation