the blog at eric moon dot net

It took me a while to decide on which parts to hang on the Cross-Check frame.  My Kuota Kalibur Tri bike runs with Shimano Ultegra 10sp and my Serrotta Legend Ti rolls Campy Record, also 10sp.   I really wanted something different for this bike, so I decided on a single speed and/or fixed setup.

I had a bunch of parts that I was hoping to move over from Ivonne’s trashed Softide.  Some nice Dura-Ace cranks, a Mavic bottom bracket and a 105 brake set with calipers and levers.  It soon was very obvious that ‘cross bikes don’t do calipers, so no go there.  The Mavic bottom bracket is a special one that is used for stripped threads.  If you don’t have stripped threads, it requires some major machining of the bikes bottom bracket that I was unwilling to do, and the cranks, well, the cranks would be usable, I suppose, but I ended up getting a crank & bottom bracket set, so those didn’t make it either.

That leaves a set of 105 brake levers that I could re-use. I also had a new set of drop bars that I had been saving for who-knows-what that came in handy for this.

Read on for the list of major parts I’ve put on…

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As mentioned before, here are some of the details of what is going into the Great Transportation Bicycle of ’08 (man, I need to come up with a better name for this bike).

It all starts off with a solid frame.  After extensive research (ie, surfing the web and reading reviews), I decided on the Surly Cross-Check.  Try to look beyond the picture of the balding dude with the hot pants and half-shirt on Surly’s web page and focus on the frame.

The Cross-Check is a steel cyclo-cross bike, has a hanger for a rear derailleur,  semi-horizontal dropouts for single speed or fixed gear use, braze-ons for fenders and …  Well you can read the details on the page above.  If you’re not a bike geek, all of this boils down to : it’s a rock-solid frame and fork with lots of versatility in how it can be built.

Mine is black, of course.

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:

1. I love riding bikes – it’s just dang fun.
2. I hate driving – it makes me angry and stressed.
3. I ride about 10,000 km a year training and racing, but don’t actually go anywhere.
4. I love adjusting, fixing and tinkering with bikes.
5. I live pretty darn close to where I work (less than 6.5km and that’s the long way).
6. I live pretty darn close to other things (grocery stores, other shops, etc).

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