Tarik said: "Making a frame work for you again is the best part about owning a steel bike."
I wholeheartedly agree. And Jim's comment that my desired changes are relatively few for having had the frame just over a decade are a testament to both my self-knowledge as a bicycle rider and Grant's ability to glean that from our pre-build discussions. I asked for a frameset that would "see me out" -- literally. I planned to ride it until I was too old to ride a bike, so I wanted a frame of what Grant called "cockroach durability", weight be damned. He selected slightly heavier tubing for me and designed a frame that offered tremendous flexibility in set-up, including a custom, shorter top tube to account for my typically female geometry. (The frameset is 55cm square, c-to- c.) In the ten years I've had the bike it's been set up as a city bike with three different kinds of upright bar, and for about a year and a half as a tourer with drops, a front rack and handlebar bag. The BB IS a little lower than on the Road Standard of the same era, and I'm happy enough with 700c wheels that I'm not contemplating a change to 650b. Grant's design gave me plenty of room to handle a wider tire, and I'm fairly sure that I just need to get rid of the dual-pivot brakes to accommodate that. The only quibble we had at the time was that Grant was not willing to include a kickstand plate. Instead he suggested I use a rear-mount kickstand. It was early in Rivendell's history and I'm sure that, like me, Grant knows many more things now about what he likes in a bike. We all make progressions and evolutions in our thinking about bicycles, and just about everything else, over time. (That would explain why kickstand plates are practically standard fare on most of Rivendell's frames now.) I've talked with a couple of folks, including a dear friend who lives back east and has done some framebuilding but is not fully set up in a shop yet. It's possible that if none of my Portland connections are available this winter, I might actually ship the frameset to my friend back east if he's amenable, and have cantis and a kickstand plate put on, along with possible bridge-raising if absolutely needed. I hope to have all this done and the bike ready to rebuild by March 1 at the absolute latest. Not sure about paint yet. It's simply not in the budget for me to have the whole frame repainted, not even at a "cheap" place like Brooker's here in town (who charge 100 bucks and whose results get customer reviews that really run the gamut from poor to excellent). I could just Do The Typical Beth Thing and paint over the primered places with almost matching touch-up paint from a bottle and call it good. With the rest of my frameset touched up similarly, and with the few dents the frame now has, this thing will never be a showpiece ever again anyway, and that is really, really okay with me. I'm a fan of beausage. Thanks to all for your suggestions. They help to clarify my thinking a lot. --Beth -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en.
