I burned the midnight oil in the workshop last night, fitting rim strips, tubes and tires, the 17/19T Surly Dingle on one side of the rear hub, the 17/19T White Industries Dos Eno freewheel on the other. Out came my last, long-hoarded SRAM 9-speed chain from back when I owned a Rivendell with Zephyr cranks, and it all went together quickly. I had to finagle the brake cables just a little bit, and then only after I had run cables did I realize the brake levers were still loose - but I managed to fix all of that, too. On my way out of the shop for the night, I wrapped up the two new rolls of Newbaum's black bar tape so that just the edges showed and shot them with gold metallic spray paint. This morning they were dry, and I wrapped the bars, rewarded with a thin gold bead against the black to echo the remnants of gold outlining on the Capella lugs. I think I'll shellac them this weekend.
I was initially a little nervous about running the Egg Beaters pedals on a fixed-gear, as the last time I rode fixed with clipless pedals one of them spontaneously popped open and I went over the bars at 25 mph - but then I reminded myself of all the times I'd used these pedals in the woods over all sorts of rough and bouncy terrain and they'd never released without a deliberate effort, and I threaded them on, and they were flawless this morning. At 6:09 I set out to ride loops around the neighborhood, knowing that every mile I could pull in and adjust things. I tweaked the handlebar angle, tightened the saddle in its clamp, and three times fine tuned the saddle height (after the first time I knew to carry the 13 mm box end wrench with me!), and tightened one spoke. Other than that, it was perfect.
I want to ride it some more, of course - but the ride is fascinating, sort of like what the Quickbeam I owned for a while c.2004-05 was supposed to be. Once I got the saddle issues mostly resolved (the saddle has issues of its own that I hope I can resolve), I could settle in and enjoy the ride. It's a lot like a racing bike c. 1920, fixed-gear with 35 mm tires and semi-relaxed geometry.
With all that - here are some pix!
