Grant's 54.5cm Homer (74cm saddle height)

I live two miles from work if I go direct, and it's flat. Riding a flat two miles at a casual pace is heavenly and fun, good contempletive time, but if I'm going to enjoy riding hilly trails and longer rides, for example, I have to ride with a certain amount of intensity for a few minutes a week. The 2:24 you see there is the cumulative time for two hillsprints on a hillier way to work this morning. The first one was 1:25, all on the bike...and the second one was 0:59, and that hill I ran up alongside the bike, as fast as I could. It's a way to break it up, and I end up doing that at least twice a week. On my rides with friends and normal commutes and recreational rides, I ride mellow. Whatever.

The polkadots (1) Are a work in progress; (2) Look better from afar. 

 

This is a Tange-made loose ball bottom bracket. It has its advantages, which I won't go into here (but are on the site)...and the nail polish are line-up markes that will tell me if the lockring or adjustable cup come out of adjustment. It isn't necessary, but I did it in the old days, and it always made sense to me. You have to be OK with marking up your stuff.

Some (meaning I) say RapidRise is the only way to fly. I usually use the NEXAVE (which we have), but on this Homer, heck, I had an XT and there you go. It doesn't work better.

 

Above: Experiment without explanation. I didn't know Will would shoot this.

 

Same but compressed. Again, I didn't know Will was shooting this. I tuck in the strap.

She's a beaut!

Ditto. I am in "my nail polish phase."  It worries me a little, for reasons that are none of your business and you might not even want to hear, but here: When I was growing up, my mom painted--whatever. Landscapes, seascapes (she was decent to good, she sold paintings...), but she also painted things that ought not be painted and that aren't improved by ye olde application of paint. Stovetops, sinks, toilet seats, brick fireplace, my dartboard, driftwood, and rocks. She was a terrific mom with this quirk. I don't think a penchant for "painting the inappropriate" is in my DNA; it's more likely that I became desensitized to it, in kind of an accidental exposure therapy. And here I am, with no qualms about polka-dotting pedals, chainrings, stems, seat posts. It came to me late in life, tho, and I like the idea of nice bikes with polkadots. Over and out on that.

 

LordAlmighty, Will--enough! This is a fine-looking pedal, though, and I got a PR on it yesterday.

Will is employing the old shutterbug's trick of using keys to stop the rotation of the wheel. This is an amazing bike. I may eventually put Albastache handlebars on it, but it's been years since I've had a drop bar bike, and for the steep climbs I do to and from work, well, I'm off the saddle a lot, so the position is still fine. I would NEVERAGAIN opt for drop bars on longish flat rides. But...I have six bikes, and I like variety. This is a super duper bike, I really like it. The slight drag of owning RBW is that I think if I overenthuse about a bike, it'll come off as a sales pitch or something. The thing is, I identify as a bicycle rider much more than as my role here, and I like to be able to whoop it up over a bike that I really like. I like all the bikes (if I didn't, we wouldn't make them). But it still feels somewhat uncomfortable to say it.

The red smudge on the crank arm is on the plastic I've had on there about 3 weeks now, because it's so clear that I didn't realize it.