I wasn’t wholly planning to be offline – and off bike – for quite so long. Plans were stymied by life in general and lack of road bike in particular: the red thing suffered from a dinged hanger in late October and consequently had about two functional gears.

Obviously, I should have had the hanger fixed. But … I had a new frame on order, with an anticipated completion date of January. So, given winter, and the existence of a mountain bike and all that, I decided it wasn’t worth the palaver of getting the hanger fixed (it’s steel, part of the frame – not a separate piece that can be swapped out).

Yeah, well. I collected the frame yesterday morning, early – actually, collected the whole thing. The red bike was the donor for the parts for the new frame. Yesterday was not, in case you haven’t checked the date of this post, in January. Custom geometry and custom paint takes a while longer than planned, it seems. The bike is gorgeous – but custom paint means a little too identifiable and so no photos here. I went for a shakedown ride at lunchtime and it performed fabulously – entirely worth the wait.

That ride also allayed some fitness fears: I have been averaging about 15-16kph on rides for the last year or so post knee-stuff and was trying to chalk that up to riding on the mountain bike, on a flat bar hybrid, and riding with some groups who don’t go fast. I was still a bit worried, as some of those rides had still been on the red (gravel) bike. Lunch ride yesterday was almost 22kph, without trying, with a detour for scenic photos and a chunk along a mixed use path. So, yeah, fitness not quite as kaput as I had worried and … bikes make quite a difference.

Back out on the road, back onto the turbo (the problem with the gears made it difficult to turbo as well – I use a roller-type turbo, which needs gears for most things). The October 200k may not be entirely out of reach. The 100k I had planned for last weekend was, of course, a DNS.