Not "New Bike Day" Yet....

I'd planned for today to be "New Bike Day" but apparently that's going to be next week. Oh well. I'll still have it built by my birthday the following weekend, which was my goal from the first place.

It's a Fuji Tread 1.1 Disc. My first brand-new bike as an adult, and my first bike with disc brakes, aluminum, or carbon fiber. It'll be my first bike that I'll be the first person to ride, as I'll be doing my own assembly. HEY GUYS, I'M GETTING A NEW BIKE! EEEEEEEEE!

When I started working in a shop last August, there was immediate envy. To tell the truth, as I was riding more through the summer (no job & the only free fun seems to be riding, so.....) and Ka-Zam Gigantor is showing his age. There's some work I need to do to match him up with my current riding ability.... besides needing quite a number of parts replaced from wear. I've been riding 47/22 with cruiser bars (and 27 lbs even though it's stripped down!) for the last few years and it's time to stop spinning quite so much.

Going from that gear ratio to having any selection at all is going to speed me up immensely, so having loads of speeds wasn't one of my concerns. I set a budget and a timeline, then began looking and asking. I love the look of Ridleys, but I wanted mounts to install racks for touring without having to use those little metal loops I've always used. The only other thing I worried about much was having drop bars. I'm planning on installing some bars with a 4° splay and I want to be able to move everything off the original bars but the tape. Bam.

I briefly flirted with the idea of getting a Charge Plug with Shimano Claris, but someone clued me into the employee ordering system. So I started looking at the various catalogs, found that ASI had updated theirs most recently, and settled on the Tread. Bam. It's even under my budget by enough that I was comfortable moving the timeline forward a couple of months. Happy birthday to me!

First opportunity I'm going to spend extra time at work doing the assembly, then at absolute minimum install a rack (which I've already tested with one of my panniers, natch) and a female-specific saddle. I'll be tweaking things around for the first few rides, and then Gigantor's going into retirement while I take my time repainting and rebuilding.

What can I say? I've got a lot to look forward to with this... doing some work, riding something brand new, and not worrying about breaking down too much... and then there's disc brakes. That'll be new too.