Back On 2 Wheels: Love The Ride

I wasn't planning on buying a new bike. Especially this early in the season but destiny or fate (aren't they the same, really?) had other thoughts.

Technical stuff here...

Sully and I have been talking about doing a race in mid April (minor detail, it's only 7 weeks away). I figured I would get a new bike in March again or sometime around then. I started looking at the Trek Superfly 9.8 which was the bike that had everything I wanted, perfect. Done and Done. One little, minor detail, they wouldn't ship out till June 23, whomp whomp. It seemed unfortunate because I really like Trek and have been comfortable with it for the past two years. I knew going into this season I would need to sell my Superfly, like putting a horse out to pasture, all part of the process. Selling it would require a

new one, not a need but certainly a want. My new shop carries a few other high end 29er hardtail race models and after a quick deliberation of color
and specs I settled on the one I liked. I emailed the rep, again thinking maybe around March, I'd finally pull the trigger. He let me know that they had 2 left. Well that escalated quickly. I consulted Sully as I was looking at a Rocky Mountain model and he used to be a mechanic for their race team. I mainly talked geometry with him and while it's a little smaller and steeper cockpit, it ultimately seemed like a good, maybe even better fit than the Superfly, just because of my baby t-rex arms.

I sent my form in later that day and checked my email when I was home, the form was unreadable so the rep asked me to call to get the information the next day. It was a bit nerve racking, it was a solid 14 hours that those bikes could have gotten snatched and been gone forever. I would have been back to square one. I called the rep first thing in the morning and he emailed me later that afternoon to let me know that my name was on the last one. YES!

A few days later one of the guys was asking me when my bike was going to show up. I told him it posted to my account earlier that morning so probably by the end of the week, maybe even the early part of the next. I ran in the back to get something and came out to FedEx standing there with my bike box. Ohhh Dang!

"Oh, hello there!"

Sully showed up about an hour after I sent him a picture of the box. "Why don't you have it built yet?" I looked at him skeptical because he knows my mechanical abilities. "Uhh because you weren't here..." added with a big grin. He told me to bring it home that night and he would build it.

I opened the box soon after that, one of the owners stopped by and wanted to see it, so couldn't really say no. Plus I was curious to see if the highlighting color was yellow or green (the catalog picture doesn't do it justice). I was pleasantly surprised with the color, charcoal with highlights of green and blue. Oh dang! That's going to match my shop kit so well! Mary Claire is going to be sooo proud of me, I thought.

Good thing one of us knows what they're doing!

I took it home that night and Sully built it up for me, he wouldn't even let me bring him dinner to do it. It was a pretty quick build, we're still waiting to set my measurement to it to mimic the Superfly, or make minor changes. We talked