It’s finally finished.

Well two things, actually.

The white paint scheme (or colourway, for you hipsters) and internal cable routing. I built it up today and took the traditional “first pics” in front of our rustically quaintly painted garage doors.

The white option will be ready to ship to customers in about 3 weeks. But the internal routing won’t be on the frames until 2011, if it’s there at all. Frankly, I’m still on the fence about it: the internal routing has a nice clean look, sure. But it’s arguable if it serves any other purpose. Most of the cables are easy to route except for the front derailleur, which is a real pain in the ass. I can already hear the angry, frustrated voices of bike shop employees trying to build up customers’ frames, calling us to vent and ask advice, in that order. The other question mark is whether it’s better to route the full housing through the frame or just the cables. Right now we have the housing going through the entire frame. Unlike most internally routed rigs, the shifting performance is excellent–perhaps even better than the externally routed Bosberg. But the drawback to this solution is weight, since there’s several more feet of housing running through the bike. As far as problems go, they’re not really that bad–not exactly life or death, jelly or syrup, Roth or Haggar, or other decisions that alter the course of Human history.

In other news: I had the privilege to attend the most ridiculous and amazing cycling-related event I have ever experienced. It was called the Langtown Cyclocross Extravaganza. I didn’t know much about this underground event, so I showed up in full kit ready to race.

That's me taking a beer from the Beer Wench next to Captain Morgan, who kicked all our asses.

Basically, Langtown is a cyclocross race held on a motocross track in someone’s backyard. We started in his driveway, rode out into his street and round the block and then back up his driveway and into the backyard motocross madness. Why is it that when I put on a costume for a race everybody is in normal kit and when I wear a normal kit everybody else is in a costume? Let me tell you, being the only asshole in a kit when everybody else is getting crazy can make a dude feel pretty stupid. If you race hard you just look like an asshole, and if you take it easy you just get beat by a bunch of guys that don’t look like they’re trying. From now on I’m bringing a kit and a costume to every race. Everybody should have an emergency costume.

I faceplanted and got passed by a guy whose costume was striped arm warmers and the word "whore" sharpied on his back.

Anyway, there were four events: “Stock,” which was just a normal race. Beer Laps, which was the same race, but every lap we’d have to stop and drink a beer. Karaoke, which is exactly what it sounds like and involved no bikes. And the Beer Run, which was basically the same as Beer Laps, but on foot, which was probably for the best since everybody was tanked.

I spend all this time training for the bike when I should have been training for the drinking.

That’s all for now. Stay tuned for some pre Interbike stuff.

Party,

Lanolin

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