Steel Porn

[Cataboo]

Well, you can always dress up bleh green or boring brown with accessories! I did that with red ones to dress up my boring black bike... although, I still want a red bike like Tulip's.

I have the opposite problem on that pacer - I've got a 130 mm stem on it to give me the top tube length I need. That bike, especially with the fenders, has a heck of a lot of toe overlap. The rawland looks like it'll be close enough to "red", have the top tube length I need, and probably fix my toe overlap issues from looking at the geometry. They only have the x-small left on their website which will fit (I might have preferred the small) & I've been hemming & hawwing about it for like 3 months now... Because I either need to get expensive brakes so that I can run 700c's with it, or buy 650b wheels to use the brakes that I already have. Not to mention all the other build costs...

And, while I'm not thrilled with the surly's fit... I do love that bike even though it likes to pitch me into the ground at every opportunity. It's the first bike that I really got to build up and 'play' while I did it. My road or mountain bikes are built with the best components I could find cheapest - so they really don't have that much personality.

[eofelis]

Here is a 41cm Gunnar Sport frame I won on ebay. It is a custom that was done for someone else, but it also happens to be my size too. I got it for 1/4 of the original price. (I paid ~$250.) This one has 700c wheels. The smallest Sports usually have 650c wheels. The ride quality of this little bike is outstanding. It has a fork from a Surly Pacer. I'm going to get a Waterford/Gunnar steel fork and probably have the bike repainted eventually, the paint job had some dings in it.