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@Fox
As much as I love my Neil Orrell it isn't really that practical. I got fed up of using zip ties or P-clips to bodge mudguards on, which then fell off or broke. And the lack of bottle cage bosses is an issue: I've destroyed too many bottle cages when the rubber strap on bottle cage mounts from Decathlon slipped round as I was riding over rough ground (or those nasty brick ridge things that are used to slow down speeding bikes on canal towpaths).
If I was going to replace it then something with more sensible geometry made sense too: ideally audax geometry but if not at least road not track geometry.
The only way I'd get an audax geometry fixed bike would be custom, which is out of the question at the moment as we're planning to rebuild the back of our flat in September, so it had to be OTP.
Looking around there were surprisingly few options. I narrowed it down to the Pearson Touché/Once More Unto the Breach, or a Condor Tempo.
I'd sort of decided that the Tempo was my favourite because it was steel, but they are also £599 for frame and forks, which seemed like a lot of money. And I couldn't really bring myself to pay £499 for the Pearson either, especially as I was a bit meh about the paintwork, which is any-colour-you-like-as-long-as-it's-blue-and-white. I kept my eye out for a secondhand 54cm Touché but every single other size in the world came up, except 54.
Just as I was sat thinking how I wished I could time travel back in time to buy a black Touché or a Tempo for the prices they used to sell them for, an eBay alert popped into my email for a new Pearson Touché, direct from Pearson's (they were clearing out old stock) for £299.
So I snapped one up:
I quite like it in the flesh. Although I've never ridden an aluminium bike, so this may all go horribly wrong.
Hopefully not. It has been nicknamed Hinault because it is black and white so looks a bit like a badger.
It also looks pretty darn similar to my road bike, but I can live with sort of matching bikes :)
In fact that's fitting because I love riding that so much I plan to build this up in quite a similar way.
I knew I wanted wide rims, and I always slightly regretted selling my Mack hubs, but knew if I got some again I'd want low flange and ultralight.
So when tomsvoboda decided to sell on his Macks on archetypes from his cursed Roberts build I snapped them up.
I'm going to need some 'traffic purple' to match that traffic purple stripe, I know.
I was thinking maybe I could add a little traffic purple band around the seat tube next to the little white band:
Although this will make it look like a Rapha Condor team bike from a few years back.
Maybe not such a bad thing?