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The idea of a custom bike build is still taking up space in my head, and I am a bad landlord. I was looking at the Surly Straggler frameset, and the Chlorine Dream variant immediately made my heart flutter. It's a vibrant blue-green, bearing some resemblance to Binachi's signature Celeste. The frameset is pretty much impossible to get right now due to production shortages, but it is in production so it can wait until I'm actually ready to build one up (that is, if I decide the Straggler is truly what I desire).
Upon noticing it's similarity to Celeste, I started looking at Bianchi frames, modern and vintage. Modern Bianchi frames, the super high end carbon frames in particular, look absolutely incredible. Although I do not want to anything to do with carbon, and the price of such a thing is way too far out of my range of what I consider acceptable, the shape of modern Bianchi frames and stark black-on-celeste contrasts in their paintjobs make my mouth water.
Recognizing this connection led me to thinking about vintage Bianchi frames. You can probably already guess that this is going in the direction of lugged steel frames. I found that Bianchi stopped produced lugged steel frames around the latter half of the 90's, so I focused my search around that time period. I found a beautifully restored Sport SX frameset that in just the right size to fit me on eBay after some searching. The paint is a little bit more subdued than modern Bianchi paintjobs or the Straggler, but the lugs make up for it. I spent a whole lot of time pacing thinking about whether or not this would be worth the financial outset.
I eventually decided that in no world would the cost be worth it just to have those lugs. Being a vintage frame brings a whole host of problems regarding parts compatibility, and without some modification (read: bending) I would have to use an equally vintage groupset, which doesn't particularly interest me.
There's an interesting aspect to this in that the desire to build a bike should not be forced. If I am having to "force" myself to pick a frame, then it is not time. Only when a frame truly howls at me to let it into my life is it time to take on this kind of project. Despite that, so many other aspects of my ideal bike float around in my mind, they only wait patiently for the frame they should attach themselves to, as the frame is the soul of the bike. The Chlorine Dream straggler comes close. Very very close. It might even become the one after it has spent some time living rent free in my head. I don't know yet.
I wrote in my last entry that my dream bike is little more than a steel frame with the 105 groupset. That's not really true. After publishing that article, my past conclusions about what I want in a dream bike started returning to me. Steel frame and 105 may be the ideal, but it is not at all the dream. I don't know what my dream bike looks like yet (other than a vibrant sky blue!), and like picking a frame it's not something that should be forced. A few points have cemented themselves in place, though. Like a leather saddle, and huge tyre clearance, even if I'm running skinnys most of the time.
I've contemplated some "quirkier" ideas. Some modern frames still have downtube mounted shifter bosses (... like the Straggler ...), and that made me start thinking about some of the fancier brake levers from the single speed / fixed gear world. Such bespoke levers don't exist in brifter (integrater shifter and brake) form, so moving the shifters to the down tube open up some opportunities for further aesthetic customization. I'm not necessarily limited to downtube shifters for this, bar end shifters and thumb shifters are also options, but I don't like the look of those as much.
Last night I was browsing my music library and found an album I remembered downloading over a year ago during class, but hadn't listened to. phenolphthalein, by yeongrak and Disfigured Robot Child when Goruo was a collective. It ended up being one of my favourite harsh noise records I had listened to in a while, with a much darker and more expansive soundscape than a lot of harsh noise which I had listened to prior, and some subtle melodic samples periodically sprinkled in. Really nice, dynamic experience, I would definitely recommend listening.
I found this album originally through Goruo's connection with yeongrak, and originally discovered yeongrak because of the split they did with goreshit titled "safety cuts". Yeongrak is somewhat of an interesting presence to me. They have a pretty eclectic discography, from the anime-sample infused breakcore on safety cuts to the vapourwave of ASCII Girls, and their most recent output... I don't know how to describe. They also have an excellent visual style.
about the deepest i traveled in bed
I preordered the goreshit / Hitori Tori split "Misdirection" on CD. It is the first CD I have ever purchased. It deadass shipped wrapped in a page from a hentai doujinshi. I removed this wrapping carefully so that I could tape it to my wall.
I also finally own a goreshit shirt. I am pretty tired of my hand-me-down dad rock shirts now. The only other artist apparel which I acquired of my own accord is a Merzbow shirt, which I also like a lot. You can see the tanline on my wrist that I got from cycling in this picture. It's a hilariously clean line because I am only ever outside to cycle, and when I cycle I am wearing gloves. Sorry about the disgusting carpet.
