it is never complete

Posted on October 6th, 2009 by Robert

As a full fledged, card carrying member of the bicycle community (however niche I may be), I am required to purchase new bike parts and accessories at random. No bike is ever really complete. There is always something you can do to tweak the ride/feel/look. They are black holes threatening to spaghettify your wallet.

2010 Ultegra Shifters

Mafac toolkit - sweet

I have long been unhappy with my saddle. Like a masochist, I rode through more than one season on it anyways. It has always been just “meh” for my butt. I loved the leather over the long distances, but it was never properly shaped for me. I tried a few different saddles and couldn’t quite nail one down. The Brooks was the best of the mediocre (for me).

Now that I don’t rub/rock a saddlebag on my bike, I am free to choose something without hooks on the rails. I am giving this Selle San Marco Regal a shot. It has a nice classic look, weighs less than half of what my brooks did, and seems pretty comfortable so far. I rode it on that painful Alps 200K and my butt never questioned the change. In fact, I’m pretty sure this is a keeper. I’m hesitant to call it a win until I ride it 300K+ though. Still, at the very least, this will go on one of my other bikes. I really love it so far.

My second purchase was a new pair of Ultegra shifters that I’ve been eying since they were first announced last year. They were just recently released and the timing couldn’t have been much better. My handlebar bag used to make running Shimano difficult. They had stubbornly stuck with the shifter housing that shoots off of the inside of the unit before this year. Now the housing runs cleanly underneath my handlebar tape without any need for odd jury-rigging.

Lastly, Kent Peterson was nice enough to hold on to a Mafac toolkit for me at Bike Works in Columbia City. I didn’t have any appropriate wrenches for my “new” Mafac brakes that were light enough to take with me on the road. This set one ups that by adding metal tire levers on the other end of the wrenches. Perfect!

Coming soon – More impulse buys! I don’t even know what yet! They will be impulsive though!

9 Responses to “it is never complete”

Daniel Rearden • October 7th, 2009 at 11:11 am

Best saddle ever. Well, for me anyway.

Dr Codfish • October 7th, 2009 at 7:58 pm

Faster than a Speeding Bullet:

Some people move to the ‘improvemnment’ mode faster than others, but I have noticed that there is no ‘perfect’ bike. You can ask anyone, the person who just got their first hybrid bike with those gearshifter things on the brakes’ or the person who is riding their third or fourth custom made frame. Within an unspecified amount of time (year max) if you ask them how they like their new bike, they‘ll usually rave it: “Best bike I’ve ever had!”, on and on with the superlatives. But then subtly ask if there is anything that they would do differently, change, modify etc, and you almost always hear something like ”If I had it to do over again…” or “The only thing I would change would be …”. You are right; There is and always will be something. And the corollary is, the NEXT bike, will be your last bike.

PS: Gotta respect saddle advice from someone named Rearden!

Steve • October 7th, 2009 at 9:00 pm

Butts are like snowflakes. Each one unique and… Maybe that’s not quite the right metaphor. Anyway, I hope you like the Regal. It’s always been one of my favorite saddles… to look at. Alas, my unique snowflake of a butt doesn’t like them as much.

So true about the never ending need for just one more tweak to the bike. Ask Peter White. At this moment he’s trying to figure out how to spend some of my hard earned cash that just came his way.