Mellow Velo

Not much to say about this really. Its a Velo Orange headset from the ever amazing Freshtripe. Purveyors of all things shiny and nice. VO are an American company and seem to do very well on the conversion/touring/vintage market and as soon as I got rid of the XL Fire Eye I knew this would've been the next choice. 

Obviously wanted a Chris King, but never ever had a problem with Headsets both expensive or mid-range, so can't justify the £99 price tag for a name.

Frame now been resprayed. Headset fitting tomorrow. Yay.

Back In Black

Wasn't amazed at the colour choice for the Long Haul Trucker, so I had a quandry. Wait for the 2011 models and hope for a change or take the frame up to armourtex and have it resprayed.

In the past Surly have done some nice colours for the LHT, however the stock colour for 2010 is Blue or Black.

Now, I've never liked black bikes. They're too commuter-ish. And although the blue is nice, my MTB is blue and I fancy a different colour.

Still, I wrote to Surly:

Hey there,

I'm very much into building up a LHT but not too enamoured by the colours, so I thought I'd ask what the 2011 colour scheme might be if there's a colour change.

No worries if not, I'll just get the frame resprayed.

And they replied (probably wondering why I'd spelt colour wrong):

The 2011 LHT will look just like the 2010 – black and blue all over (again).

No color change is in the works. Warm up the powder coater.

Thanks,

Eric Sovern

Surly Bikes

So, seems like I may be off to Armourtex. Now, what colour shall I go for?

I've bought the frame

Finally ordered a 58cm 700c Surly Long Haul Trucker frame and will build it up very slowly (mainly due to space restrictions in a London flat). I shall endeavour to tell a story of all the parts I buy and the trials of putting it all together. All the workings out and maybe co-erced decisions made by anyone following this blog.

I'm being helped along the way by 2 friends who both work in bike shops. One for general advice on putting together a new bike (I've made 2 rat bikes in the past which are both excellent, but I doubt I want to whack in my new headset with a hammer etc :) and another who'll be showing me how to build the wheels.

Once the bike is complete then I can start telling the stories of the actual rides. Which hopefully will include a nice trip to Norway or maybe Northern Spain.

Until then, I hope you can benefit from my journey of putting it all together.

THB