new bike v1

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Here's what happened next:

After my bike epiphany in Austin, I came home to begin searching out my new exciting road-ish bike. I mentioned this whole deal to my business partner and pal Bob, and he said he had an old Schwinn frame I needed to check out, which I could use to build up. I went by and took a look. It was a Schwinn Tempo, a nice late 80's upper/mid-level Schwinn roadbike. I took it over to my friend Chris, who was working at a shop for a look. I had mixed a record for him several months before, so he was the most bike-ish person I knew. He generously offered to put together some parts for me, some of them at a nice discount and to set the bike up for me.

About a week later he had all the stuff together, nice parts. Here is what it ended up being:
-Sugino cranks and BB
-Shimano Tiagra brakes
-Velocity deep-v wheels
-Panaracer tires
-Nitto stem and bars
and so forth.

It was a nice ride. I discovered a couple of things while breaking it in. 1) I don't like the bars lower than the seat. I know this is de-riguer for the city bike crowd, but I'm old! We set this bike up with dropped bullhorn bars and the stem was already a pretty good downward angle "7" type deal (I can't remember how the degrees work), so further down was a bummer. I'm an old man. So I had to swap those out for regular bullhorn bars. Also, gloves are a big help with wrapped bars, I had always had cushy grips before, so hadn't worn gloves in a some years.

I also added a rack to this bike, which took some doing since it didn't have any braze-ons for such a thing. I had to use some rubber grommets through the triangular holes in the dropouts with some fender washers and wacky hardware I ordered from McMaster-Carr. It kind of worked, but was not too kind to the paint on the seat stays/dropout area. I learned from that experience that if you want a rack, get a touring frame!

Here is a pic shortly after Chris set it up.



I was enjoying this bike, but I quickly started understanding a bit more about frame sizing and realized that it was not a great size for me in the long run. I was already crazed for scouring craigslist for bikes, so I figured I'd just keep my eye out and see what happens.