Well, I got in some 4 rides on the Novara. Yea, I'm slower, by about 6 or 7 minutes each way. Expected. I can feel the tires spin up due to the extra weight there. But being 35c and having a steel frame just made it absorb the potholes and metal DOT plates. Sand was no biggie.

That's the good. The bad? Maybe not bad, but I gave that mustache bar 4 rides and I just don't like it. I've got an MTB riser bar in the garage, so I put that on, then went to shorten the cable housings and...

I should have guessed. The brakes felt a bit mushy, but I chocked it up to the extra weight on the bike being harder to slow, and this being my first cable disk brake bike, was not sure how it should feel. When I went to shorten the cables, I discovered that the REI idiot who assembled the bike used derailleur cables for brake housing. If anyone here likes to self-wrench as I do, please remember- never do this. Brakes use higher cable pressure than shifting, and require the housing that uses the flat metal that wraps like a barber pole around the inner sleeve. That housing can be used for shifting in a pinch, but will increase resistance so may impact shift quality. But using the shift housing -bunch of lengthwise stands- for braking is dangerous. The pressure will make the strands bow out (mush mush) and they can fail - make your brakes fail - when you really need them.

So I replaced the housing, of course. And the mushy brakes became just wonderful. Now the bike feels like a nice cro-mo rigid mtb. So I ordered up a wheelset from PROWHEELBUILDER, nothing fancy but over a LB less than what is on the bike now and will be using a Ultegra 12~27 that I have in my spare parts bin. Heck, I might even throw a 11~34 on the original wheelset and some cx or 1.8 29er tires for trail riding next summer. That should be fun.

Oh- and i took the truck to work the latter part of last week, as I don't trust the pre-holiday drunk drivers.