Further to yesterday’s post, I’m still feeling indignant about this bike:
It just seems to me they basically retrofitted a disc brake road bike to work with rim brakes, which is a rather roundabout way of going about things when the rim brake bike had already been more or less perfected.
I mean couldn’t they have consulted a company with with rim brake road bike fabrication expertise like…
…Firefly?
[Liberated from here.]
Like, couldn’t they have just made that but with medium-reach brakes?
I know, too easy. Also, objectively, of course I get it: what’s the point of being a custom bike company if you don’t dream up and build hot rod bike projects every now and again? It’s just that, as the self-appointed President of the Rim Brake Road Bike Preservation Society, it offended my brittle sensibilities, that’s all.
Also further to yesterday’s post, I included this photo in it:
[They made me wear those clothes, I’d never have chosen them…and yet I kept them and wear them regularly, because they were free. As for the facial hair, I have no excuse for that. Same goes for the leg hair.]
I enjoyed riding that old hunk of plastic way more than I thought I would, and even though I returned it to Classic Cycle over three years ago now, I still think about it sometimes–though I never think of asking for it back and giving it the JBARA* treatment like this one got:
*[Just Buy A Rivendell Already]
I do like how they preserved the original Campagnolo hospital bed urine thingies:
[Holy crap, Ben’s Cycle really does have everything Campy!]
The Vengeance Bike actually had one, too
But I removed it almost immediately because I was scared to drink out of it.
Meanwhile, I’ve been spending a lot of time on my own medium-reach brake road bike recently:
Please note that what some of you have been mistaking for a “bad fender line” or an “abysmal fender line” or even a “vomit-inducing fender line” is in fact the result of many hours in the wind tunnel, and that this configuration actually improves air flow and minimizes turbulence.
No, I just can’t be bothered…even though it kind of bothers me, too. But it doesn’t bother me quite as much as I can’t be bothered. So I don’t bother.
As for the brakes, they’re Tektros:
Not the prettiest, but they work perfectly well. The Shimano brakes I had on there before were a little nicer:
But Ben’s sent the Tektros along with the new drivetrain I got from them last year, presumably because they’re similarly black and angular:
The R7000 stuff is also not the prettiest (you could even call it ugly and I wouldn’t argue with you), but it represents the very last mechanical-and-rim-brake road drivetrain from Shimano at the Dura-Ace/Ultegra/105 level and it works extremely well:
In fact, you know that book OJ Simpson wrote, called “If I Did It?”
Well, if I got a really nice road frame–like dream bike material, say a Richard Sachs–the R7000 stuff works so well I’d even consider putting it on there.
But like the murder description in “If I Did It,” my obtaining a new Richard Sachs in addition to the one I’m currently riding is merely a hypothetical scenario.
Wow, that is eerie. The AI even came up with the subtitle by itself! However, I hope Joe Bell never sees that paint job, because if he does he’ll feel like Enrico Pallazzo watching Frank Drebin sing the National Anthem:
And nobody should have to suffer through that.
