It started when I was scrolling facebook marketplace for a road bike that was a size smaller than my first, which I’d only purchased a few months prior to commute to work. I have yet to meet or read about someone who used a bike size calculator and got the right answer, but I’m sure it happens. The internet is wonderful and wicked.
I’m still riding it a year later and have almost adjusted, but it’s still just too big. A retroactive nod at bullies who called me numbnuts. Playing the long game I see boys.
I came across a decently-priced slick silver little number and in the distance heard the sputtering and rumbling of my obsession engine turning over. By noon it was idling; by 12:05, a bylaw idling ticket.
She was a Cannondale CAAD12. Tight frame, slim tubes, made in 2019 – the analogies have to stop here for legal reasons/statutory cycling. I saw affordable possibilities and a even though that wasn’t going to quite prove correct, I was excited.
To be honest, I kept looking around to see what else was in that price range and size since I already had a thing for thicker tubes (no relation to real life). I kept an eye on marketplace for a few weeks and never saw another frame that had anywhere near the potential of the first. My only hangup at the time was that I really didn’t want disc brakes and this frame had no rim brake mounts. I just wasn’t excited. I wanted this build to be simple, sexy and serviceable (I think that’s a Richard Sachs quote but I’ll get back ya on that). Rim brakes just keep things clean; they flow with the frame, and they’re just chill little wheel lobsters that’ll clamp down and live to 100. I relented and said I’d do my best to make up for having disc brakes and try to find other ways to make this a fun and weird ride – I had no desire to restore the original setup. I know myself well now and I would typically wait around for the perfect option to come along, and if it ever did, it would be after I was already on to the next distraction. Diagnose me with whatever; we’re all somewhere on a spectrum. Ask me about that after we pal around in bike talk tranquility for a while.
Je digresse.
I bought the frame and walked it to the car like a first date, my head so far in the clouds I hadn’t even considered the word compatibility.
Woof.
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