Well, it's cabled up and indexed now...
Which means I more or less have a functioning bike to ride. Almost 6 months to the day from purchasing the frame.
There a still a few little tweaks to make, however.
The rear brake is far from perfect (or all that effective!); the shifting isn't as smooth or as consistent as I'd like, and the local bike shop (god bless them) put the Tri-Dangles on backwards when they checked my work over and adjusted the shitty first attempt I'd made at setting up the brakes.
Anyway, there are still a couple of small things I'm waiting on for finishing touches, which should arrive any day now. At which point I either need a new phone with a better camera, or a friend with a real one to come through, for the finished bike photos. In the meantime, I've been taking the bike out most mornings on a nice little four mile loop near the house; a two mile road climb, followed by a blast down the canyon and back out through the neighborhood (downhill all the way)...
It's hard to put into words, and too late in the evening for me to even try, just how happy the above makes me. Building and now riding this bike is one of the most rewarding and gratifying things I've ever done.
It might be simple and easy to some, but it's not to me. And getting it even this close to being finished means more than I can adequately express.
Especially because I couldn't have done it (absolutely no chance) without this place!
So thank you all. Truly.
Anyway, a couple more detail shots out in the Californian sun:
And I'll leave this update on one of those aforementioned finishing touches, which arrived just this morning:
Some Nitto EC-02 bar plugs. Which are perfect I think. And a very good shout from
@sunympholepsy!
One more helping hand, Etc.