Yesterday morning I got a call from RBW telling me my new 60cm Betty Blue Cheviot was ready to ship. Wooho!!! I got the confirmation e-mail from RBW, but no e-mail from UPS, which usually comes right away. This morning I "miraculously" had a 2 hour opening in my schedule and called them at 9:00AM before they opened. Will picked up the phone, confirmed my frame hadn't yet shipped, so I told him I'd go pick it up right away. I'm flying to Moscow on business tomorrow evening, so the chance to get the frame, build it up in the afternoon and take it for a ride tomorrow morning was too good to resist.
When I arrived at RBW, I was able to also see the other two colors. They have assembled a gray Cheviot and had an orange frame on the counter. Here is my completely subjective evaluation: I was very tempted by the gray frame when I saw it on the photos, but that Betty blue is so unique, that I opted to keep it. Additionally, the Rex is silver, so I didn't want the Cheviot to be too close to it. To my surprise, once assembled, the gray frame sort of disappears. It's much prettier standalone than built; you'd never look at it twice sort of feeling. Apologies if I'm upsetting anyone, this is just my personal assessment. The orange turned out not to be the bright orange of the original series, but a matte dark orange, sort of "brick" orange-like. I have a weird response to the orange frames, but I didn't like this one. I've been attracted to bright orange frames, but feel I'll tire very quickly of the color. The Betty blue, enhanced by the cream, is just fantastic. I have to say that it's much prettier than the actual Betty, which had red accents. I haven't yet compared them side by side, as I took the Betty frame to my office to be able to ship it from there when I sell it, but the blue Cheviot is just incredible. One detail that the new Cheviots have, is that the brake cable braze-ons on the top tube were moved lower, to about a 5 o'clock position viewed from the front. While this change may be a bit nicer for the side pull brakes, it means it's now not possible to route the cable to run a rear Paul centerpull. So I installed the Tektro brakes. I also got a Chocomoose bar to test, but can't quite figure out how to install the reversed thumbie shifters on the inside of the bar without swapping the left for the right, and also a quick test left me a bit "unsure" if I like them, so I installed the cockpit I had on the Betty that I really like: Ahearne bars with the shifters on the quill of the stem. I've just spent all afternoon building it up and am almost ready. No fenders yet, all that work will take place when I'm back home a bit more than a week. Will take it for a ride tomorrow morning and report back with photos. Oh, I'm going to run the Compass 44mm Snoqualmie tires to test. Clearance for those tires and fenders may be a bit reduced, so I may end up running the 38mm Barlow Pass tires. I'm running those on the Atlantis and like them very much. Stay tuned! René -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
