Month: July 2008

While my Mon­goose gets me too and from work depend­ably, the thing is so heavy and bulky that rid­ing it into the wind is a real bitch, espe­cial­ly since I can’t even pre­tend to ride the thing in an aero­dy­nam­ic fash­ion, it’s a mountain/road hybrid after all.

When I was a kid I had a sweet bike, with a big fat back tire that was per­fect for lay­ing a nice thick piece of rub­ber down when I skid­ded out. The only prob­lem was that it was red, white and blue, and not a very aes­thet­i­cal­ly pleas­ing design either. So I took the thing apart, paint­ed it black and sil­ver, wrote a name I’ve since for­got­ten on the top tube, and basi­cal­ly pimped it out for an 8–10 year old.

Now I want to do the same, but this time I want to build my own road bike. This biggest obsta­cle to this project is that I’m no bike geek; I don’t know what brand of frame to look for, who makes good rims, gears, shifters, brakes, etc. The learn­ing curve will be kind of steep if I’m to get any­where with this. The biggest help for this will be the few folks I know who are hard­core cyclists; Lou, Jeff and Andy, I’ll be on y’all like Mama Cass on a ham sand­wich about this, once I’ve got the ren­o­va­tions under con­trol.