24/5/07 My New Bike

Firstly apologies for the self-indulgent nature of this article, but like most people when they get a new bike, I like to show it off! It also doubles as a confession / apology of sorts to my long suffering wife, for a situation that many of our customers will find themselves all too familiar with!…

 With our first year under our belts and no signs so far of imminent bankruptcy, I decided that with the summer approaching it was a good time to treat myself to a new bike. I’d been riding all our demos over the last year, and the one that suited my riding best and I enjoyed the most was the Nicolai Helius CC, so that was the obvious one to go for. As a custom build it also gave me an excuse to spend lots of time planning the build and putting it all together, which I’ve always enjoyed – so the project was underway.

A tense negotiation process for a budget was then undertaken with my head of finance, but Sarah finally gave in when I agreed to use as many of the spare bits I already had to keep the cost down. That’s probably my last clear memory, as with dull inevitably things then rapidly spiralled out of control, in a haze of giddy ‘shiny new bits’ excitement.

It started when I put aside a pair of the silver limited-edition Minnaar Formula brakes we had in stock. Along with the silver anodised frame, suddenly the aesthetics of the bike would have been ruined with my old bits. This justified a silver Chris King headset, which in turn required matching silver King hubs. A silver Race Face Deus stem then followed, and finally the silver Deus chainset to complete it. With magpie-like glee I surveyed my wares. With all those new bits though, it wouldn’t make sense to put on old bits, so one thing led to another and suddenly there wasn’t a single old part left – oops!

Reeling a little from the guilty pleasure of it all, I reassured myself that there were sound justifiable reasons for each of the parts, and started putting it all together. Then as a final flourish, at the last minute I switched from X9 to XO mechs and shifters. Ostensibly for the added performance benefit, but admittedly probably mainly because the red detailing on the logos matched all the other stuff better. And they make a much more satisfying clicky noise.

I guess it’s probably worrying and reassuring in equal measure that after a year of standing the other side of the counter, I’m still a sucker for shiny bits of bike kit. Much to my relief I still also really enjoy building them, especially when it’s my own.

Put more importantly, how does it ride? Well, it’s the best bike I’ve ever ridden, but then I was always going to say that!

Dan