New DeSalvo Road bike...

Hello people of earth and beyond.

I have taken countless hours today rebuilding and tuning my DeSalvo road bike instead of riding since it was too cold. Instead, I brushed the dust and cat litter off the rollers and watched Old School until the point where Frank the Tank is in the Trust tree and talking about really cool new underwear that he doesn't even know about.

Now I am making a permanent, and devastatingly important mark on the world wide web with this great post about some used road bike. This is what a sad Japanese man does on an exciting Saturday night. There is nothing sadder than a sad Japanese man.

But I digress.












A little history. I had Mike at DeSalvo Custom cycles build me this frame about a year after I had the cross frameset built. I really like his work and I am very glad I was able to order a road frame from him.

I bought this maybe back in 2004. It is hard for me to remember now. The geometry/graphics design work is another Brewer/Katsumi collaboration. One would not believe how many countless hours (Precious Graduate Student Research Hours) were wasted at Q-level discussing the merits of a masked decal, over a cup of double espresso. The graphics are totally trick. The colors are dark metallic blue, light metallic blue panels, and masked logos. In hindsight, I think the bike would have looked even better if I had used the light blue as the main color and the dark blue for the panels. The tubing is Columbus Zona steel, and the seatstay and the chainstay are ovalized and shaped, and the downtube is what Columbus calls MegaDowntube, translation, super heavy but super stiff. The fork is 1.125 inch and have panels too!
























I come from riding a really stiff, and race rocket-C-dale. I loved that machine for its efficiency, but after a 2 hour ride, my hands were totally numb, and I thought it was a really ugly looking bike. On the other hand, this bike is about 2 pounds heavier at around 20 lbs., but it feel really smooth, possibly because the micro as well as the macro vibrations enter the two pound fork, never to be seen again. I think this bike would look so trick with some deep dish carbon wheels. I hope to be very good to this bike and not leave it out in the elements.

I took the parts off the Hampsten Mudpig and put it on the road DeSalvo. The cross DeSalvo is somewhere in the basement but missing a seat and post.

Serious Dillema...

I finally worked enough overtime and liquidated all of my assets to buy a new Zank in a Pearl Hup Blue "Grouppo Compacto" Edicion'
(This is a completely Premier item, and only 5 will be produced worldwide).

BUT, should I get a cross or road frame?

My dilemma is such. I would really like to have a really well built custom road frame, since I don't currently have one, but since its a Zank, I feel like it should and must be a cross frame.

Why can't I be a wealthy English Country side gentleman who needs not deal with such peasant like decision making?

ALSO!!!!

Recently I have been romantacizing about a truly Petite bourgeoisie lifestyle. My current dream is to move out into a much smaller city and living a quiet life as a man whose earnings come from the crafts created from workings of the hand.

Pictures like these get my blood boiling. (Japanese dudes making a sword)



Next year, I hope to take some basic metal shop classes as well as plumbing, electrical, and also accouting classes. My goal in the next ten years is to have my own super high end Plumbing/Electrician business.

Back in Love with the DeSalvo Cross Bike, all over again

It is amazing how changing that one thing on your bike, in my case putting on a Zac Daab Speciali All Ivory Arione, can completely change the look of your machine, making you fall in love all over again. (Thanks Zac! Also for the matching white Hup kit!)

In all of its years (since fall of 2003) the DeSalvo has never looked this good, and has totally come through during a pinch time when I lost my main machine.

I am not sure exactly how I chose the DeSalvo. I remember sitting in the Krieger computer lab at Johns Hopkins during the summer of 2003, pretending to do serious graduate level research in materials science, but instead looking at DeSalvo's homepage and frantically writing him an email about getting a custom frame built.

Working with Mike was such a pleasure. I knew that things would work out right away. I was, as usual, a bit of a pain in the ass and asked him to do all kinds of new things like using a cursive decal, custom head tube logo, and other such things. The frame is a TIG welded steel frame using columbus Zona and Thron tubing. The downtube is a Mega Tube or something with a very fancy name. I totally dig the straight blade 1 inch fork!

For a steel frameset it is actually very light, the whole bike weighs in around 19 pounds.

Dura Ace lever. It is only 8 years old, and has been switched around on 12 different bikes.
Still works perfectly to this day.

Scratches on the Desalvo...

I was thinking about getting it resprayed, but decided not to. I love this paintjob.

Hup Bibs

I have two pairs of totally worked, really used Hup Bibs in Medium if anyone is really desperate for HUP clothing. They are free.

My baby is back from the dead...

After sitting in my dank basement for 2 years after I unintentionally "Integrated" the seatpost to the frame, I had the nice guys at Circle A cycles in Providence fix it for me. I have not seen it yet, but I am very very excited. Now I just have to find out where I put my fork. It may be any where.



Thank you to Brian and Chris at Circle A Cycles. Another reason why I would like to move down to Providence!!!