Flutterby™! : New bike 2006-03-08 22:50:56.593397+00

New bike

2006-03-08 22:50:56.593397+00 by Dan Lyke 4 comments

As I mentioned, I bought a new bike. It arrived Monday, I've probably put 45 miles on it so far, and I love it. 2005 Cannondale Six13 with Dura-Ace drive train and brakes, TruVativ Carbon Roleur cranks and Easton Tempest II wheels. I tried to find a place to take a picture on today's ride, but the light was always wrong, so here's a pair of badly backlit shots on our deck.

One regret so far is that I got a VDO C2DS computer, and I'm having a hell of a time getting the speed pickup to work right. I should have just gone with a wired Cateye Astrale 8 or over the top to a Garmin Edge 305. I'll have to go back to Sunshine and talk with them a bit, see what my options are.

However, for as far as I can trust said computer, the bike was rock solid at over 40 MPH (and a 140 cadence, I'm still getting used to only two front chain rings and once I'm a stronger climber will have to investigate different ratios there...) coming down White's Hill today, the ride is smooth, the shifting flawless, and... yeah... I'm actually quite happy that you have to add weight to it to make it race legal.

Nice ride. So what does it actually weigh, if you have to add weight to make it 'race legal'.

Just measured. With the bike computer, mid-range pedals, and water bottle cage mine is (to the limits of my bathroom scale) somewhere between 16.8 and 17 lbs. I guess I bought into a bit of hype, because it appears that race legal is 15 lbs, so Cannondale's marketing must have been for the $8k (new) version of this bike, so you'd have to change out some components to drop the pound and a half. Or maybe just clean off the few mud spatters and go for lighter tubes and tires...

At any rate, since the last time I bought a road bike I believe I remember being excited at getting the thing under 28 lbs, this is a huge change.

Whoah. Just did a search for reviews of the Garmin Edge 305 and battery life would be a killer for me. Scratch that, maybe I should built a mount for my handheld GPS for those times when I'm not shaving ounces.