My retro throwback bike is finished. Over the Christmas break I picked up a lightly used Cannondale Beast of the East frame, same year but alternate color to the one I owned back in college. I built the bike with retro NOS parts, including DX derailleurs and XT hubs from Shimano, but with a twist. I fitted the rear hub with a modern 9 speed hub body so that I can use modern gearing. Shifting duties are handled by Dura Ace 9spd bar end shifters with Paul Components Thumbies so I have that thumb shifter experience. Wheels are the Velocity Deep V blacks that I picked up at Chainwheel Drive in Clearwater on the cheap. I've always had an addiction to retro bike parts and I've been collecting them for some time, but this is my first dedicated retro bike. Beast done, next up...Klein Rascal!
I'm not very happy with the 8 Speed cassette on the blue EWR. The last two low gear cogs just seem to be hugely separated ratio-wise from the rest of the gears. I may have to make a more concerted effort on the cassette purchase there...something I've never really done or even considered paying attention to before!
The day was otherwise pretty much a wash (Pun!). Nothing but raining and clouds all day. I walked with the family early, and the baby had a blast in her bike carrier with the new jogger stroller attachment I picked up. The jogger is much easier to walk with than a traditional stroller. I always thought joggers were pretty moronic and just another lame-o thing that the magazines try to push on new parents, but I'll give the jogger experience a thumbs up, although I don't see myself jogging anytime soon! We did finally handle some potting issues and lawn maintenance stuff. After debating an addition for as long as we did, we found that when we finally did determine that we weren't interested in spending a load of dough on adding on, we had done a good deal of neglecting our exisiting yard.
All in all, a very pleasant domestic weekend. Oh, and we turned a perfectly good bottle of Chianti into sangria ...which was very nice.
I'm not very happy with the 8 Speed cassette on the blue EWR. The last two low gear cogs just seem to be hugely separated ratio-wise from the rest of the gears. I may have to make a more concerted effort on the cassette purchase there...something I've never really done or even considered paying attention to before!
The day was otherwise pretty much a wash (Pun!). Nothing but raining and clouds all day. I walked with the family early, and the baby had a blast in her bike carrier with the new jogger stroller attachment I picked up. The jogger is much easier to walk with than a traditional stroller. I always thought joggers were pretty moronic and just another lame-o thing that the magazines try to push on new parents, but I'll give the jogger experience a thumbs up, although I don't see myself jogging anytime soon! We did finally handle some potting issues and lawn maintenance stuff. After debating an addition for as long as we did, we found that when we finally did determine that we weren't interested in spending a load of dough on adding on, we had done a good deal of neglecting our exisiting yard.
All in all, a very pleasant domestic weekend. Oh, and we turned a perfectly good bottle of Chianti into sangria ...which was very nice.
2 comments:
"Potting issues"??
So is the addition dead?
Yes, dead...for 5 years or so. We just aint comfy with the idea of spending that kind of money in the current housing market. I know we're in a weird way adding to the market woes by being conservative, but the little monster dictates that priorities be adjusted to ensure our long term comfy-ness, and not our short term garden tub pipe-dreams. Ya dig?
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