Get Thyself together!

First, a rant!

It's like I'm saying something, but not really.

This morning I get up (at 3:30a.m.) and make my 30 minute drive to the pool. When I get there I'm greeted by a sign that says "Closed for Veterans Day - will re-open at 5:30a.m." What the crap. Veterans Day was SUNDAY. I'ts F*n Tuesday. Nice Holiday hours there 24/7 365 Globogym. I mean I'm all for celebrating Vet's Day but jeez... I've got laps to do. So, I drive myself back home and proceed to continue working on the "projects."

/Rant.

On to the important things. The CAAD8 is almost complete! It might just be an early Christmas Miracle. We've run into a small snag, in that I do not have the silly Cannondale Specific Bottom Bracket cable guide (D'oh!) however it's an easily remedied (albeit $10) problem.

This thing... a tiny headache.

So, that means that all I really lack is FedEx delivering that piece and I'm ready to finish the build! The paint turned out with a couple of runs, mainly because I used a rattle can of "Flat" clearcoat that turned out to be crap. I could have brought it back down and re-bought the stickers, but instead masked them off and used some good old DuPont paint/clear to clean it up. Not perfect unfortunately, but good enough for my winter/crit bike.

What we started with

She's not much of a looker... but we'll fix that.

and here's where we are today. (Ignore the fact that my garage is a mess)

Spider Man floor mat!

Replaced the fork that was cracked with a Reynolds Ouzo

Decals turned out great!

I'm getting VERY antsy for the first test ride. Hoping to get it finished by this weekend! Here's the breakdown for this "budget" build.

-Frame: CAAD 8 (used) - $250 (also included headset, seatpost clamp and derailleur clamp) as well as a cracked Slice Fork. Slowtwitch Forums
-Fork: Ouzo Pro (used) - $50 Craigslist
-Bottom Bracket/Crankset: 105 Shimano (used) - my parts bin
-Groupset: Microshift WHITE (front, rear, shifters, cables) - $261 Ebay
-Brakes: Nashbar Jail Brake - $35 Nashbar.com
-Seatpost: Felt Aluminum - my parts bin
-Saddle:  Nashbar R2 Saddle - $20 - Nashbar.com
-Pedals: Shimano R540 (white) - $34 - Nashbar.com
-Bars: Scott Anatomic Drops - my parts bin
-Stem: Bontrager Carbon (ooohhh)Xlite stem - my parts bin
-Chain: Nashbar x10 chain (pro-tip - it's just a KMC) - $35 - Nashbar.com
-Bottom Bracket cable guide - $10 - Cannondaleexperts.com
-Tape: Lizard Skin - $35 - LBS
-Bottle Cages: Bontrager X lites - $32 (2) - LBS

+ $75 worth of Rattle can paint / paint stripper / sandpaper / clear 

- Total - $872.00

Of course that's considering I already have a set of wheels/helmet/shoes and all that garb. If you were to replace the things I had available with purchases, I'd guess you'd add about $150 for a decent (tiagra - 105 level used) crankset/bb and probably another $50-$100 on the other pieces depending on how nice you wanted to go.  (Bars, seatposts and stems are all excessively cheap if you don't mind aluminum) A set of basic training wheels and tires would set you back another $250 or so. That would bring us in right at $1400.00 if we came from the ground up. It's easy to see why building a bike isn't any cheaper than just buying one (although this guy is built to MY spec and not a factory... and plus, this was way more fun.) especially if you don't have a garage full of extra parts to pull from.

Nonetheless, I'm excited. I'm especially interested in giving the Microshift set a spin. It feels extremely nice in my hands, so high hopes.

On a more depressing note, the Scott is taking it's sweet time to get stripped down. In all fairness I've been focusing my efforts on the CAAD the last few days (I need a road bike up and running!) but now it's time to redouble the efforts.
Here's where the Scott sits (hangs) right now.

You can see the white paint being a pain in the @$$ where it is thickly coated.

It looks worse than it really is, but it looks pretty bad :)

Naked carbon on the head tube. If all of the bike's carbon was only so nice. Sigh :(

Unfortunately, Scott didn't do me the service of giving the bike a final "beauty" layer of Carbon fiber. That means it's got some pretty ugly area's (even before you count all the filler they used.) in it. Also, a few area's of wrap have came undone (where they meet) after removing paint. It'll have to be re-epoxied and possibly re-wrapped (depending on how paranoid I get between now and doing it) This is certainly going to be a full winter project, but I'm hopeful that it'll turn out well. It kind of has to, if only just to get back at all the people who said I was crazy for stripping it down in the first place!

And finally, there's always room for a little training talk. In this case, very little.
I'm running...
...and running...
......and running......

The evil clown laugh is now stuck in your head. Hey, I'm a nerd first, triathlete second!

My mileage both swimming and biking are still pretty low (actually, fairly embarrassingly low come to think of it) and my running/diablo3 mileage are growing :) I can't say that I miss them all that much at the moment. It's been a while (years) since I could say I'm injury free at the end of a season, so it's prime time to work on my running. Hour long commutes to and fro the pool can take a back seat for a while and I can enjoy a little extra R&R. If I can get the CAAD together this weekend maybe I can even escape from the "dungeon" to do some outdoor riding.

My Pain Dungeon, with 3/5 fans visible. Some work gets done here.

And alas that's all the time we have for today. As the cold weather creeps in I'll leave you with warm thoughts. As always, thanks for taking the time to read and share!

Goodbye Warm Weather! Hello Hoodies.

-Christopher Morelock