Spinal Tap Moment

Those of you who have known me for a while know I'm a real cheapskate when it comes to the parts I ride. Reaching as far back as the Colnago Master I rode in undergrad, most of my bikes have been put together with parts from used bikes I've purchased and flipped over the years. I've been known to buy a complete bike just for the headset or brake calipers. Which explains the Chris King Ti and Zero Gravities on my current ride. Sure, it may take 10 or more buy/sell cycles (no pun intended) before I can complete a project, but for me that's half the fun. Granted, it also makes my house look the Yellow Bike Project Annex, but I'm OK with that too.

Anyway, that's all about to change. Dating woes and an unexpected windfall led to a little retail therapy recently... It's a new Campagnolo 11-speed Super Record gruppo. Yeah, I know, it was a very Fred thing to do. Again, I'm OK with that. Buying the parts is one thing; let's see if I really end up using them. You should probably know I purchased Campy Record and Chorus 10 gruppos on clearance earlier in the year, but couldn't bring myself to actually install and sully them. I ended up selling most of it on eBay.

As it stands, I'll still probably sell the Super Record brakes and crankset, as I like the Zero G's better and prefer a compact crank for the hills (see wussification rant in the last post). So if you need the finest Vicenza can offer, give me a shout. The ceramic bearings used for the cranks are suppose to be like buttah. See Competitive Cyclist for a nice review of the new 11 parts.

• Book update: finished the preface and Chapter 1, Rev 2. Chapter 4 is next.


• Debate update: After a lot of slicing with Occam's razor, the net result is nothing, zippo, a draw. Biden seemed more accessible, Palin seemed more together (despite her winks and folksy delivery that I loathe). A bazillion web sites out there are doing their postmortem, so I won't bother adding anything more.