Washout

Friday's Breakfast Ride/Critical Mass double session was the highpoint of a weekend washed out by biblically foul weather.
Saturday dawned miserable, as forecast, so I headed for the shed to fettle the Roy Thame.

Lacking 5/32" balls for the Campagnolo Pista headset I wasted most of the morning cleaning up a Stronglight A9 before I realised that it's stack height is too high.

Mid-morning, the postie brought a pair of standard-reach Gran Compe brake calipers, which saved me from swapping my last pair of Superbe brakes off the fixed wheel Ritchey Breakaway.

The Superbe seatpost and SR Royal stem got some red paint applied to their flutes and cutaways, while the deraillers spent a morning in the tub of degreaser to soak off a the mung of three decades.

A detour to the component dating page of the Vintage Trek site suggests that my random assemblage of Superbe parts is from 1977-78, about the same vintage as the frame.

The band-mount shiftlevers are probably from the early 80s, and are not necessarily an indication of true progress unless you like complexity for its own sake.


Late Saturday afternoon I abandoned the idea of riding the Okoroire mid-Winter Fun Ride on Sunday. Torrential rain alone would not have kept me away- I rode in it last year and in 2005, but adding gale force winds to the mix seemed excessive.
Having ridden Okoroire the last six years, I guess I'll have to compensate somehow later this year.

With no ride to go to, I forged ahead with the Roy Thame on Sunday, installing a mix'n'match Sugino bottom bracket, followed up by all the other components bar the headset.
A pair of white NOS Olimpic lever hoods were wrestled onto a set of Superbe brake levers, and rummaging in a box of unsorted junk produced a brand new set of whiteCateye plastic bar tape, easily the most awful bar covering ever, but totally appropriate for a 1970s short distance TT weapon.
To maintain some colour coordination CT-B has promised a matching white Turbo saddle, and red brake cable housing is on order.