When I was at RIT, I realized I really loved to bike because I was always riding my silly hybrid bike around campus. My friends would get drunk, come over on Saturday night, and want me to go riding with them around campus. It was always a blast, and the combination of loving to bike and having friends that all were in the triathlon club and riding fancy bikes around ended up in my buying a quintana roo private reserve compact triathlon bike. I loved that bike. I loved it more than anything. When Tim and I decided to move out to Berkeley, we weren't completely sure what to do with our bikes. Then, we decided that our bikes wouldn't get us across the country, so we had to buy new bikes for the bike trip. I ended up selling the bike and moving on.
Now that we've been in CA for a while, I've really missed having a sweet bike to take on loooong road rides. Timmy still has his pretty pink carbon fiber bike, and he left me in the dust whenever he rode it. I couldn't really get my mind off of having a quintana roo again because I loved my first one so much. I always found really good deals in bike stores for really good parts and then a few weeks ago I saw a year old Quintana Roo Lucero frame on sale. I bought it without a moment's hesitation. After buying a few parts and gathering everything we needed, Timmy and I slowly started assembling the frame and building the bike. It was a lot of fun, but it involved a lot of clueless nights wondering why a piece of a bike part wasn't depicted in the part assembly directions anywhere. I can't even count how many flimsy plastic pieces we found and had no idea what to do with them. We could never tell whether they were just there so that the bike part arrived to its designation safely during shipping, or whether it had a purpose in the bike assembly. Half of them were completely unnecessary, and the other half were entirely essential. Then, we also had a fiasco because of the internal cabling of the bike! Instead of all the cabling for the shifters/derailleurs and brakes being on the outside of the frame, all the cabling for this bike is inside the frame! The bike came with some tubing and what we were supposed to do was thread the cabling through the tube, and remove the tube after threading the cabling through. What we actually did was yank the tube out. Then we had a lot of fun trying to re-thread the tube through the holes because the entire frame is hollow, and the inlet and exit holes are NOT a straight distance away from each other. We tried a lot of ways to rethread the tubing through, and the final solution was to stick a metal hangar inside of the tubing until 2" away from the end or so, stick it in one side of the bike, use a flashlight to find it on the other side, catch the loose side with the cable, and use the cable to guide the tubing out. It was a pain in the ass. While we were going through this, we also realized that a lot of the cabling would be rubbing on the internal curvatures of the bike frame. This bothered us, so we ended up having to spend a lot of time cutting the tubing to be exactly the length that it would fit inside and prevent cable rubbing. I have never appreciated external cabling before in my life, but hey, the internal cabling is really pretty now that the fiasco is over!! After two weeks of assembling this bike, it's almost done! We have to iron out a few kinks, but look at the final product! Isn't it beautiful?! I can't take my eyes off it. The photograph is a little sad, though, because you cannot see how beautiful the carbon fiber weave is unless you see it in person. All the more reason to visit us!
Now that we've been in CA for a while, I've really missed having a sweet bike to take on loooong road rides. Timmy still has his pretty pink carbon fiber bike, and he left me in the dust whenever he rode it. I couldn't really get my mind off of having a quintana roo again because I loved my first one so much. I always found really good deals in bike stores for really good parts and then a few weeks ago I saw a year old Quintana Roo Lucero frame on sale. I bought it without a moment's hesitation. After buying a few parts and gathering everything we needed, Timmy and I slowly started assembling the frame and building the bike. It was a lot of fun, but it involved a lot of clueless nights wondering why a piece of a bike part wasn't depicted in the part assembly directions anywhere. I can't even count how many flimsy plastic pieces we found and had no idea what to do with them. We could never tell whether they were just there so that the bike part arrived to its designation safely during shipping, or whether it had a purpose in the bike assembly. Half of them were completely unnecessary, and the other half were entirely essential. Then, we also had a fiasco because of the internal cabling of the bike! Instead of all the cabling for the shifters/derailleurs and brakes being on the outside of the frame, all the cabling for this bike is inside the frame! The bike came with some tubing and what we were supposed to do was thread the cabling through the tube, and remove the tube after threading the cabling through. What we actually did was yank the tube out. Then we had a lot of fun trying to re-thread the tube through the holes because the entire frame is hollow, and the inlet and exit holes are NOT a straight distance away from each other. We tried a lot of ways to rethread the tubing through, and the final solution was to stick a metal hangar inside of the tubing until 2" away from the end or so, stick it in one side of the bike, use a flashlight to find it on the other side, catch the loose side with the cable, and use the cable to guide the tubing out. It was a pain in the ass. While we were going through this, we also realized that a lot of the cabling would be rubbing on the internal curvatures of the bike frame. This bothered us, so we ended up having to spend a lot of time cutting the tubing to be exactly the length that it would fit inside and prevent cable rubbing. I have never appreciated external cabling before in my life, but hey, the internal cabling is really pretty now that the fiasco is over!! After two weeks of assembling this bike, it's almost done! We have to iron out a few kinks, but look at the final product! Isn't it beautiful?! I can't take my eyes off it. The photograph is a little sad, though, because you cannot see how beautiful the carbon fiber weave is unless you see it in person. All the more reason to visit us!
I've not ridden it much yet, because I just got my wisdom teeth out on Friday. My jaw is really sore, and I don't appreciate riding because of all the jolts I get. I'd rather just wait a little longer, and really enjoy the maiden voyage. We did bike it to Pam's house though to see if we could tell whether my bike or Timmy's bike is lighter by using Celeste's bathroom scale. Celeste's bathroom scale didn't like us, though, so the verdict is still undecided.
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