Engineering is the Best: The New Ride

Barring a miserable job/life that you can't bear to think about, I can't imagine any reason to go bicycling in the winter in New York. Being fortunately without either of these motivations, my bike laid in disrepair during the cold months. At the end of last season I'd discovered that somehow the spline-spindle interface of my cranks had partially sheared on the drive side, owing in all probability to my massively strong left thigh (this is only partially a joke, I imagine a lightweight component like a Dura-Ace track crank was not designed to sustain braking forces for two years) which left my bike unsafe to ride.

I intended to take this opportunity and rebuild my bike with a freewheel, since I was getting sick of the proliferation of fixies without brakes and their invariable association with hipsters (right now you can hear Darwin laughing in his grave), but the real motivation came a month ago when my friend tricked me into signing up for the Westchester Jarden Triathlon, an Olympic distance event: 1.5km swim, 40km bike, 10km run. I hate running almost as much as I hate swimming. The reasonable thing to do would be to invest in some gears for the bike. Then I figured, I'm going to shoot the moon anyway, I might as well go all out and do the bike portion with one speed.

So, here's the plan: I'm really attached to my frame, so that stays. The saddle and seatube also stay, given there's nothing wrong with them. The bottom bracket is fine, having just replaced it in the fall. The front rim, a Mavic Open Pro is in great shape, and I've got a Mavic Open SUP (an older but still good rim) in storage that I'm going to use instead of the CXP22, which I currently have. Everything else goes.

The rear wheel is an Ultegra 10 speed hub laced with 14/15 DT Competition spokes 2X to the Mavic Open SUP. On it are a bunch of spacers, and a Surly 14T cog.

The front wheel is an Ultegra hub laced to the Open Pro radially with DT Revolution 14/17 spokes. I didn't mean to buy black, but I'm in favor of supporting the local bike store and they have a spoke cutting machine, but only had these spokes in black so I paid a small premium but whatever.

My old front fork was a clunky steel thing, and the headset bearings were about to die, so I figured as long as I'm upgrading the fork I might as well put in a threadless headset. Pressing the bearing cups into the frame was a bit of a chore, but with a few clamps it worked out.

Then I discovered that the stupid steerer tube on the Nashbar carbon fork (not the lightest I know, but it was a bargain on sale) was too wide at the base to accept the crown race, so I had to spend 20 minutes sanding it down so it'd fit.

This must have made my office look pretty strange from the street.

I'm going to be training all summer in Italy, so I figured I might as well be patriotic. It could also be that I got the handlebar tape in a bargain bin for $5. The computer is a simple Cateye model, and while it doesn't have a Cadence meter, who needs one when you've only got one gear? The handlebar is a Profile Airwing, and the brake levers are Syntace space controls, which were just on sale at Colorado Cyclist.

The cranks are Ultegra doubles, with a 53T front ring. This is a pretty insane gear ratio, but again, we're going to shoot the moon here. The pedals are also Ultegra.