The Maiden Voyage

As per the standard, the blog is prepetually behind. The G-star has been complete and ridable since mid-July. And what a beauty:

A close up of the chromed out drive train.

The first outing was to the July 19th Sunday streets in the mission, which was basically a cluster of people and riding a bike was almost impossible (although the caravan of Xtracycles transporting the portable dance party was pretty phenomenal). The second outing was a short loop around town to work, to show off the bike, and across the bridge.

The first proper ride was yesterday. I had originally planned to do a ride of the headlands loop and paradise loop, but when I ran into Danno and all the Mission Cycling folks waiting to depart at the bridge, and I was convinced to do their ride: SF to the Cheese Factory. About 80 miles all told.

I definitely wasn’t the fastest rider, but there weren’t too many climbs where I was the last to make it to the top. With that, a picture courtesy of Danno at the Cheese Factory:

Some nice vintage steel — an Eddie Merckx, a Colnago, and a Guerciotti. Steel is real. Beautiful.

Also, spandex:

Here’s the line of mission cyclers on our way back. I’m the jerk in the back without the cycling jersey and the backpack full of random tools in case something on the G-star decides to explode.

Hubs

First point of concern? Hubs. I’m going to build up the wheels, so I’d like to have these a bit earlier. Since I want my wallet to properly hemorrhage money, I will attempt to get mostly period appropriate Campy components (ok, so I also want the bike to be gorgeous). That means C-Record. Enter these bad boys:

Somewhat of an impulse buy on my part, but the prices wasn’t too bad and they’re in good condition.

One advantage of getting period specific stuff – the spacings are correct, i.e. no cold setting required. The rims and spokes will be among a few modern components (likely Mavic Open Pros with DT Swiss or Wheelsmith butted spokes). Need to find those as some point, but that’s the least of my troubles.

And then there was a frame…

What happens when you watch eBay for lugged steel italian bicycle frames for a while? You end up buying one…. at first it was going to be an orange 1989 Olmo NOS frame, but then there was the Guerciotti. Not too many miles, lighter steel than the Olmo, internal cable routing, and I’d actually ride it since it wasn’t untouched out of a box.

Now to find all the other pieces… Welcome to the bicycle addiction.