Bike Heaven

I was a little tempted to head out on the single speed Schwinn for a quickie, but wound up thinking staying off the bike would probably serve me best.

I'm having fun with the build, and am taking it slow. The big project for today was measuring and cutting the carbon steerer. You get it wrong and there's no putting it back. Measure thrice cut once.
Taking measurements from my existing bike I built the headset. Surgery on a broken clavicle about 8 years ago is now starting to give me some arthritis pain (getting old sucks) so I added an 1/8th of an inch to my measurement, which I hope will take a little pressure off my shoulder. Then I scored the steerer tube, with a knife, at the top of the stem. I removed the fork and placed masking tape around the steerer over the mark I scored.
I pulled out the old miter box and hack saw, held my breath, and started cutting on the short side of my mark. The result was a nice clean even cut.
It wound up being a perfect fit.

I'm building it with all D/A 7900 and got both derailleurs, brakes, bb and cranks on. Cabling and white bar tape might get on tonight still, but I doubt it. 7900 cabling is a little different than 7800. It's more like Campy where both cables run along the handlebars.

The view from my balcony through the front triangle is of the greenway.

This photo shows the truest color of the frame.

I got the frame from Orbea for $550.00 as a warranty replacement for an aluminum frame that cracked where the seat tube, top tube and seat stay meet. All the 7900 components are from Nashbar and Performance for about $1600.00. Stem was $170.00. I already had the saddle, bars, pedals and Ksyrium SL3 wheels. A new computer and bottle cages will round it out.

I thinks it's a pretty good deal. I estimate this bike would retail for around $7500.00 and I'm into it for about $2500.00.

Also, I took the D/A 7800 I had on my old Orbea and put it on a new 2008 Cannondale CAAD9 frame, which is turning out to be a great bike.

I'm in bike heaven.