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  • Man, I seriously love to build my own bike. But it needs more time than I've got and more knowledge than I've got. So I intend to buy an OTP and build up a custom slice of heaven along the way. But that will take me time.

    I have no shame about my lack of knowledge of bike mechanics at the moment. I spent my younger years drinking, having fun, chasing girls and living my life to the full. Trawling through bike magazines and catalogues was just not on my agenda and I ampleased that I lived my life the way I did.

    I came back to cycling in recent years. And I have loved it. But bike twiddling? I'm too busy with other stuff - it just isn't on my list of priorities. But I definitely have the urge to learn.

    My main criteria are a tough bike that I don't much care about, because it will get dinged with D-locks, clonked against bike stands hurredly, and occasionally sent bouncing up the road as I leap off it while I'm still moving to go and remonstrate with the cabbie who just cut me up. (It shits them up something rotten when you do that).

    If I build a bike with too much love and care and attention to detail, I'll cry when I bend it, or scratch the lovingly polished chrome, or drop it to argue with some nob and find all they got was a flea in their ear and what I got a ruined paintjob.

    Nope, for me, a bike you get OTP is a buy-to-let whore of a machine that you have none of your soul invested in. So you don't care if it gets nicked, you don't care if it gets bent and you don't feel gutted when something goes wrong. THAT is exactly what I want for now. And from what people have said, this is a solid no fuss machine (I'll be looking for black, not the sneeze-wheels version) and put an old set of straight bars on and away I go. I fall in love with how it rides, I can replace everything on it and make it amazing, otherwise, I'll do that to "the project" and just ride this one.

    And for a final word on the weight of this bike, I'm maybe around a stone-ish overweight. So I can save most of the weight of the bike, just by riding the fucker and getting back to being properly fit. I can't see what the big deal is - all those things suit me fine, for where and who I am right now.

    Fuck knows if this bike is any good though. I'll know in a week's time when I have tried one. I may buy one, I may not. It's my money, I'll do what I fucking like with it.

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