Let's Try This Again.
Yeah, the scam Moots Vamoots RSL Disc was just too good to be true. It was as close to a future-proof bike as I could get, and maybe I'll get there one day, but I think my original plan of going with yesterday's technology is still sound. I think I'll have just as much fun on a caliper bike, and I can use the several thousand dollar savings to... I don't know... feed my family or something.
Still, despite my financial limitations, I want to ride bikes that have been created by no-shit craftsmen, who are widely recognized for their skill, honestly care about what they're making, and just love bikes. I recognize these guys can be found all over the world, although certain bike-mad countries and regions seem to make more than their share of them. When you get into the world of titanium bikes, the list of builders gets much, much smaller. There's certain skills and equipment required to do titanium well, which narrows the list even more. Then there's the quality of the raw materials... eventually I just decided to limit my search to a few builders.
So, the stink of failure still hanging in the air, I got back to my search. I had to sift through a lot of ads in a lot of marketplaces. A lot of what I found were designed for the long-distance compliance, which I didn't want. I have the Vamoots DR for that. Some were too big or too small, which did me no good. I already passed on Joey Bacala ginormous Litespeed to someone else. No need to repeat that. A lot of them were out of my price range. In the end, I couldn't find a bike that checked off all of the boxes. Life is about compromises.
Then I found a frame. It was older, but perhaps because of this it had a lot going for it (in my opinion). It was built before internal routing and press-fit bottom brackets were all the rage. While it doesn't have the tapered head tube design I prefer for stiffness, with the right fork I think it will be plenty stout. The head tube is also reasonable race-oriented, even with the additional stack height of the external headset. I can swap every part over from my Russian ti frame, saving money on the project. Since that's not my style (saving money), I probably won't. I'll upgrade this or that and bling the hell out of it. I will play with different components and experiment with stuff like how fork rake affects performance. A test bed of sorts.
So, for the second time in as many weeks, I bought a Moots. A Moots Compact to be exact. It was Moots' performance-oriented model before the Vamoots RSL came out, and then was renamed the CR and evolved into a midpoint between the Vamoots and the Vamoots RSL before somebody realized that was too many shades of grey in the model line for a custom bike manufacturer. I figured it was racy enough for me, so I jumped.
I hope I like it.
Fuck.
Still, despite my financial limitations, I want to ride bikes that have been created by no-shit craftsmen, who are widely recognized for their skill, honestly care about what they're making, and just love bikes. I recognize these guys can be found all over the world, although certain bike-mad countries and regions seem to make more than their share of them. When you get into the world of titanium bikes, the list of builders gets much, much smaller. There's certain skills and equipment required to do titanium well, which narrows the list even more. Then there's the quality of the raw materials... eventually I just decided to limit my search to a few builders.
So, the stink of failure still hanging in the air, I got back to my search. I had to sift through a lot of ads in a lot of marketplaces. A lot of what I found were designed for the long-distance compliance, which I didn't want. I have the Vamoots DR for that. Some were too big or too small, which did me no good. I already passed on Joey Bacala ginormous Litespeed to someone else. No need to repeat that. A lot of them were out of my price range. In the end, I couldn't find a bike that checked off all of the boxes. Life is about compromises.
Then I found a frame. It was older, but perhaps because of this it had a lot going for it (in my opinion). It was built before internal routing and press-fit bottom brackets were all the rage. While it doesn't have the tapered head tube design I prefer for stiffness, with the right fork I think it will be plenty stout. The head tube is also reasonable race-oriented, even with the additional stack height of the external headset. I can swap every part over from my Russian ti frame, saving money on the project. Since that's not my style (saving money), I probably won't. I'll upgrade this or that and bling the hell out of it. I will play with different components and experiment with stuff like how fork rake affects performance. A test bed of sorts.
So, for the second time in as many weeks, I bought a Moots. A Moots Compact to be exact. It was Moots' performance-oriented model before the Vamoots RSL came out, and then was renamed the CR and evolved into a midpoint between the Vamoots and the Vamoots RSL before somebody realized that was too many shades of grey in the model line for a custom bike manufacturer. I figured it was racy enough for me, so I jumped.
I hope I like it.
Fuck.
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