Month: July 2012

The Frame Arrives

My frame has arrived, and it is as beautifull in real life as it is on the pictures. Behold

Beautiful isn't it

Here are some pictures of the unboxing

A large box indeed

And what's inside it?

Along with the frame came some grease/paste for mounting
Great

And some free samples of gels and energi drink from SiS
Freebies

That’s service indeed. Thumbs up for bike-zone from here. I can only recommend doing businnes with them. Speedy and thorough answers to your questions and then these little surprises when you receive the package.

Also in the box was two star nuts, so no need to buy that

yes it's my hand and yes it's dirty
One surprise though. The headset bearing cups were not mounted, they came in a separate plastic bag. After some googling and looking at YouTube I came to the conclusion that this was a job for the local bike shop. Sure I could go out and spend another 70 € on a headset bearing cup press kit or maybe attempt to build something myself but it just seemed stupid to spend that amount of money on a tool that I’d probably end up using only once, and about the build something myself idea…good one! I wouldn’t know where to start! So off to the bikeshop I went, and sure enough, they were able to fix it in no time and I ended up paying about 25 € for the operation…cheaper than 70 €, and done properly.

Here is the headset bearing cups, installed and greased up
Headset bearing cups installed

Now to wait for all the other parts to show up.

Building a Bike – Selecting a Frame

OK, to build a bike the most obvious part you’ll need is – in my eyes – the frame.

I’ve spent quite some time on the internet looking at cross frames. There was one brand that kept popping up. A Belgian company called Ridley which makes some pretty fine bikes (used amongst others by the Belgian Lotto Bellisol pro team). They had some fine cross frames which was also recommended around the internet, so I narrowed my search down to a Ridley X-bow and a Guerciotti Lyra, mostly because it was cheap(ish) and asked the clever people of feltet (a danish site about everything cycling related, with a superb forum filled with friendly and knowingly cycling aficionados) about their oppinion. Their suggestion was to go with the Ridley frame, and so I did.

However, during my research I found out that a new 2013 model of the X-bow frame was to be released sometime later in 2012.

Here is the 2012 frame
Ridley X-bow 2012

And here is the 2013 frame
Ridley X-bow 2013

On the one hand I was eager to get my “build a bike” project started. On the other hand the 2013 frame was just sooo much prettier. I mean, just look at it! Black instead of white, and then there’s the rainbow stripes. No they have no practical useage, no I will not become a world champion by riding on a bike with rainbow stripes, yes I am familiar with rule 16 but still, they just look so damn fine on that bike.

So…I decided to wait. I had contacted the shop bike-zone.dk where I intended to buy the frame, and was promised that when the owner heard anything about availability of the new 2013 frame, he would contact me. This was late May and so I waited impatiently…until last week where I got a message from bike-zone that the frame was in stock now!

So I ordered, My height is 179 cm and my inseam is 81 cm which converts to a medium X-bow frame. And then I just had to wait for the postman to show up…but that is the subject of another post.

Cyclocross

I admit it, it makes no sense at all, but…over the last couple of years the idea of getting a cross bike and start riding some cross in the winter has started to grow on me.

And why does it not make sense you might ask. Because, this is Denmark, no one here rides cyclocross anymore. It’s either mountainbikes or roadbikes. Furthermore, I’ve never ridden a crossbike, so I don’t know if I’ll actually like it, or if this is just a fad for me.

But, when looking at videos like this one

I’m hooked! There’s just somthing about cyclocross that looks fun, and at the same time cool. I can imagine myself driving around in the forest behind our house in the winter, covered in mud, jumping on and off the bike, running up hills with the bike on my neck, crashing a great number of times, having a taste of metal in my mouth and a pulse over 175 for an hour and enjoying it, I might even start humming OK Go.

So…I have decided that this autumn and winter, I will try out cyclocross as a way of staying fit over the winter.

And…to raise the stakes further, I want a home built cross bike, meaning that I will order the parts and then assemble the bike myself.

And…while we’re at it…why not write posts about my progress on this blog, just to make some use out of it.

So there we go. A home made cross bike, to be ridden by a guy who has never ridden cross before. This should be fun. I can not wait for autumn to show 🙂