The clubman now resembles a bicycle. It has two tensioned and trued wheels, brake levers, front brake caliper (I need a concave washer for the rear), bottom bracket and crankset installed, pedals, and a seatpost with a saddle. I'm waiting on a 19 tooth track cog, a pair of white Zefal leather toe straps, and a set of Williams chainring bolts. Tomorrow I'll do some texting around to try to find the 44 tooth chainring one last time before I install the original 46 tooth.
For some reason, presta tubes with insanely long 48mm stems are all that anyone is stocking in shops right now. Not everyone has aero rims, and that huge stem is not only unsightly, but with that amount of length, it creates a bit of noticeable wheel vibration at high speed. There used to be a British company that made stem counterweights which mounted to the pair of spokes opposite the stem. Brilliant idea; probably noisy after a few hundred miles since nothing stays put on a bicycle wheel with tens of thousands of load cycles per long ride. The service manager at my LBS ordered me a set of SKS Bluemels B45 mudguards which I'm going to be painting white with some automotive enamel for fiberglass panels. I'd use epoxy paint, but it can flake after it really hardens, then gets cold and that mudguard flexes. I need to remind myself to pick up a set of road brake cables, and knurled axle washers, next time I'm at the bike shop. I think my next task will be to put rim tape on the rims, mount a set of Panaracer Gravel Kings, and set it down on the floor to get the sizing right before I settle on the handlebar angle and lever position.
It's getting white mudguards, white cable housing, and white bar tape, just as the racing version of this bike would have been delivered, though the bar tape is padded Newbaums, not the white plastic stuff which seems to last well beyond the handlebars its wrapped around, oftentimes.
I have one more choice to make, and it may be an albatross while I ride this bike as a fixed gear / single-speed; I need to decide if I am going to put a Sturmey shifter on the bar, just inside and below the right brake lever housing. This is how these bikes would have been set up with the trigger shifter accessible from the drop, just behind the brake lever. I want to do that before taping the bars, but I'm also not going to be riding a 3 speed hub for quite some time. Perhaps I'll just leave it off until I really dedicate the bike to an internally geared hub.
I've been reading a bunch of the fixed gear threads on bike forums, and it's not just a bunch of hipsters, in fact there is a thread for 40 y/o + riders, and there are some monsters on there. One guy carries a chainwhip and lockring tool, along with extra cogs, so he has the ability to re-gear his wheel when the terrain changes; and he's in his upper 60s. I have nothing to complain about when rolling a 46/19, while this dude is pushing a 46/12 around the hills of Oregon. This rider said that riding a century on a fixed gear is like manually digging post holes nonstop for 8 hours, when it comes to the upper body workout. My upper body is mostly slender and not as strong as I'd like it to be, for sure. I am a spinning, seated climber and I can really push when I want to. I need to stand up and pedal more. Some folks on that thread are pushing greater than 72 gear inches and more than a decade older than I am. I just need to get back into shape!
I can't wait to take a ride out to Valley Forge on the Schuylkill path; once past Manayunk, it's about 10 miles of path-only riding, no car traffic. It's also the zone where the crowds disappear because it's far enough from Philly that a rider needs to really mean it. Last time I rode that was in 2009 on my Vitus 979 with a bunch of teammates riding carbon bikes that weighed more.
Phil