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not saying they don't look cool but this person has like 10 bikes that are all exactly the same bike

It turned out fine tho and I'm not really sure I can be bothered to buy a new derailleur and set it up again so I might have an SSMTB for this summer.

I finally fixed this sometime last month? but the post where I broke it says 5 months ago so it definitely went as predicted.
It spent much of the summer carrying things/friends and also getting crashed in the course of it, all in all has been a great investment considering the initial cost wasn't much more than a set of good tires for my road bike.

New derailleur not only has the advantage of looking cool but also of having 32t capacity so I got a new cassette at the same time.
I had been planning to take it out on some dirt roads in the mountains in Izu and camp a couple of nights but shit happened and now it's too cold for the sleeping bag I bought specifically to do that. Oh well, maybe next year.

I also got the new tires for my fixed bike but then almost immediately put risers on it.

This is basically because of one ride around the beginning of august that I thought would be fine but which absolutely destroyed me.
Since I had been riding much more consistently this year I decided to look at my data and see if it was just a bad day, and on doing so I discovered that since starting to ride consistently and with purpose I have been getting steadily slower and worse at climbing.
This is the exact opposite of what was supposed to happen.

I can only assume I was consistently riding more than I was able to recover from, but I was never riding a crazy volume and if I need more time to recover then I would have no time left to actually ride the bike.
This discovery did not inspire me to figure out a better way to train or change up my life or anything it just made me sad and so I've only been riding riser bar bikes around the city for the last 4 months

Anyway I rode my road bike for the first time in ages yesterday and remembered how much I like it.
Unfortunately I discovered not only that not riding properly for 4 months doesn't help your fitness (seriously I'm the slowest I've ever been it really sucks) but that the freehub is completely 100% fucked now. And although I have a replacement the old one is absolutely not coming off.
Current plan is to get a new hub and rebuild the wheel, then see if I can build up some fitness again over the winter. I would like to get back to doing this shit:

If it doesn't work out this time tho I'm probably just going to accept that I don't have the time to get good at riding and give up, at least until I get sick enough of everything to quit my job and go live on no money in the countryside.

I also put drops back on my fixed but it completely fucks me up now, I need to put a bigger cog on till I get my legs back at least a bit.
Oh and I changed the chain for an Izumi Kai I bought for no reason at all in the summer, it does feel quite nice tho.

I like long stems but I think 500mm is too much even for me

nice, gumwalls and classic bend bars complete this look

same era shamals and bartape/saddle on the opposite side of the color wheel to the main frame color
@Ordinata is right it's the only way

.

you take 1d6 psychic damage as you are violently flung back to 2009

(yeah i know this frame wasn't out then but still)

yeah this is sick, makes me want to go out and ride (around the city with a track bike and risers)

toilet graffiti

some people who preferentially grind on their right run a left hand drive setup to stop the drivetrain getting banged up on rails/ledges

i also had lhd because i think it looks cool but that's probably not the main reason at the olympic level

that seems like a nice pace for 100 miles fixed on your own (with rain and punctures and cunts, even)

I think I understand what you felt about the "purely numerical goals" or at least have been somewhere similar before, but what else are we to do with our time on this earth? It seems the ride had meaning for you, or you wrote some nice words about it either way so probably worth it!
But having been in a same-ish or at least vaguely related place with how I approached taking my bike out before, I've also found that I'm able to chill out more now, because I know that I am able to tough it out if I really want to. I do still have to tell the wind to go get fucked tho sometimes (often).

Anyway, even if we forget all that, this is absolutely some straight hardman riding, well done. And you even got an excuse to take a day off work?

Yeah, this is correct I as far as I'm aware

Negs have a shiny side and a less shiny side and the shiny side is the one that is the right way round, as seen from the macro lens.
You can apparently get slightly better results by shooting the other side (back side) and flipping it, or even better by blocking all extraneous light with a just the right length tube that goes from the lens to the neg, but... it's an extra step/more money spent in the process of sharing my photos with people on the internet, so I don't.
I reckon you are all cool enough to get the intent.

i "scan" the same way and just do what @sohi said, i think it's an advantage of using digital camera + macro lens that you can work with the negs like this

i also have to cover the rest of my light source to get decent results with my current setup, but it did't make a big difference with the camera/lens i was using previously so results may vary?

this neg was scanned badly to begin with but it's a lot better just after setting the black/white points

I actually bothered to sort out the saddle position on my mtb, which turned out to automatically fix the other problem I had with bar angle. Feels great now, after getting it right I rode around 30 - 40km just enjoying the city at night. Then yesterday it was way too hot and I didn't feel like climbing hills, so I thought I'd try doing a long ride on the mtb and go and look at the sea.

Unfortunately while going up a steep hill on the way out of Tokyo my rear derailleur did a thing.
Fortunately I literally just this week bought a multitool with a chain breaker on it, and swiftly converted it to single speed.

Unfortunately I forgot I have biopace chainrings and measured the chain at the wrong point.
It turned out fine tho and I'm not really sure I can be bothered to buy a new derailleur and set it up again so I might have an SSMTB for this summer.

I can get some nice clinchers cheap so will probably keep these wheels as is and try and save some cash to build something nicer

I am provable with data faster on this bike (except big hills obvs) so I'd like to get some even faster tires on it

thanks, this sounds like what I want to hear👍

I also read up a bit and braked really hard on the wheel with no adverse effects so I'm going with "cosmetic damage, no risk of involuntary dental reconstruction"
(no legal proceedings will be undertaken against user HK_Berlin even in the likely event of my death)

How worried should I be about this?
It appears to just be the lacquer but I think it was caused by a crash around 2 months ago which put the wheel pretty badly out of true and jammed this side of the rim into the brake shoe as I went down. (As far as I remember it was OK at the time and I've only just noticed, probably because I literally only ride this bike at night)

I have been considering getting new wheels anyway but staying in budget on rims and getting wider and/or tubeless tires looks like it will add about 200g per wheel... if tubeless they'll be faster overall but that weight difference is going to be noticeable and one of the things I enjoy about this bike how quick to accelerate it feels due to the light rims and tires.

I've done some servicing on barnack leicas and it's not so hard*, plus as mentioned there's a lot of information out there. I'm sure you'll be fine.

*admittedly I've never opened one with a slow shutter mechanism which does change things, they're still not too complicated tho

This reminds me I also need to fix the shutter on my leica i... I really miss having it

So I felt like shit today and didn't do my planned route but I was able to determine that yes, I prefer both climbing and descending on the alu bike.
The difference in weight & stiffness is just psychological doping at my level of strength but it handles a lot better on inclined surfaces.
Stem is probably OK, and the drops feel fantastic. Plus the hoods are nice and narrow with just the right amount of flare. I love these bars.

I also bought a frame bag because... I wanted it, and my bar bag doesn't really work on this + I'm thinking I want to carry some lightweight sleeping kit rolled up on the bars this summer.
There wasn't a colour that would work on all my bikes so I utilized lateral thinking and got one that would work on none of them.

In this diagram it is being used to carry two bottles of sake, for which it is the perfect size.
You could also do this with wine bottles if you prefer.

Yes, very much this

I don't remember reading all of your current projects thread before but I definitely have because your Cannondale is pretty much exactly what I envisaged while rebuilding this/imagining future fatter tire bike

Looking really good, I would also want a smaller bag on this bike but otherwise would ride.

What size tires have you got on there?
I encountered some short sections of big size gravel? like that recently and walked them in the end, probably lack of skills but it was really hard to ride on with road tires.

Looks great, how are you planning to build it up in terms of the modern/traditional thing?
Will you try and go for a kind of "classic" look or leave that for the frame and keep it simple with modern components?

so i did this to my other road bike, i was just going to put these wheels and a smaller chainring on but decided it was good timing to change bars as i have wanted to for a while, and that meant a new stem, and so then i put on this old seatpost to match

originally i wanted deda shallow but since trying them on the steel road bike these are my new favourite bars, nitto b105 (actually mod 55 on the steel bike but it's the same shape)

also the freehub is fucked, i have a replacement but not convinced i will be able to get the old one off...

the bars feel a bit high but hopefully will change to just right as i get tired on a ride, going to take it into the mountains this weekend anyway

right now i feel like i want basically this exact bike but with maybe 38mm? tires

So 1 year since the ride that inspired this, holidays have rolled around and I've been able to go away for 4 days again.

This time I set less aspirational targets for my daily milage and it was very enjoyable to be able to finish riding by lunch and have the rest of the day to explore however I wanted.
Actually in the end I only rode about 300km as I realized too late (by watching a guy on youtube ride it on a motorbike) that the mountain pass that was central to my longest day is impassable by bike, at least without proper offroad tires and probably more skill and fitness than I have.

What have I learned?
Well I found a lot more actual unpaved (gravel or dirt) roads than I expected this time, and most of roads I like riding are too narrow and twisty and covered in various debris to really bomb the descents.

So I kind of want fatter tires and I'm OK with not having full on road bike geo. Right now I feel like I want an old cylcocross frame that I could switch the parts from my alu road bike onto, but I will never ever find one my size here. So I don't know.

Also not really related to cycling (except for maybe needing to be able to carry more on the bike) but I slept outside this time but forgot I was going a) north and b) into the mountains and misjudged how cold it would get. So it was great not having to get anywhere on time and be able to change my mind about where I want to go (which I did) but I really need to plan things better. I did no planning or preparation other than vague routes until the day before.

Finally I'm currently sick of riding up mountains with luggage on my bike and I don't have any trips planned where I need to carry much.
So I put the silly wheels back on this bike. I'm going to get a smaller chainring for my alu road bike and maybe change some other parts, and use that for riding in the mountains over the summer.

And maybe I will also find another frame over the summer. Maybe I will go full buyer and get a custom frame. Maybe I will just give up and hike in the mountains (also been doing this recently). My moods are fickle as fuck so I really can't say yet.

user @Rik_Van_Looy doing multi hundred km audaxes on a fixed bike with huge saddle-bar drop and describing it as "comfy"

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