2 much ti

[No. 22]

I keep meaning to review my Sabbath Aspire, bringing together all the bits from other posts and fleshing it out into a PROPER review (or as proper as I'm capable of). Instead I'm going to celebrate serendipity.

Serendipity is my custom built steel frame having a fault and my getting a refund to finance what I really wanted but had been afraid to buy: more titanium.

Serendipity is ordering the small because they were out of medium and discovering small fit my medium (5'9") frame fine.

Serendipity is accepting that I'd have to get something with vertical dropouts and lucking into a magic gear – which, chances are, wouldn’t have happened with the medium.

Serendipity is this gear being the right one for this frame's geometry: it's slightly lower than I'm used to and had been hoping for, but the old ratio likely would've been too high for hills.

Serendipity is discovering that a steerer had been cut unevenly, rearranging the spacers to set the stem 5mm lower in what I assumed would be a slightly uncomfortable but temporary measure, and finding this was an even sweeter spot.



One way to get a horizontal top tube:


Slacker


Is that thin blue line in the headset trying to tell me something? Should I have opted for a bold splash of colour instead of those plain ti spacers?


Boring cap


Poetic cap



Paying it forward

[No. 22]

Spotted on Facebook:

[No. 22]

I was a little young for its heyday.


Random groovy baby, not me

No, we're talking this –







[Cackle from off stage] Where's your serendipity now?

My first thought was NO MORE TI – except for its twin, and you'd better believe those will be the most closely watched dropouts ever. Only 9 months into a 10 year warranty, what are you gonna do?

I quickly decided I was ready for steel (again). Spa's Audax Mono looked good, perhaps with a few dozen fewer spacers please. This guy sold me on black paint.

Sorry, this guy.

It was half the price of the Aspire, so the rest would have to be repaid in parts. Parts I didn't need. That was one problem. Another was that I was less than enthused about the standard singlespeed 120mm dropouts, much preferring being able to fit regular sized road wheels.

It didn't take much to talk myself back into ti.

My main concern, aside from wondering how they might react should this happen again,



was that they were out of my preferred size – it turns out that "currently unavailable" meant permanently unavailable. When they sell their last Aspire, that's it for the Aspire, folks.

The next size up had the same wheelbase, and surprise surprise, the same length chainstays, so my magic gear would still work.

They hadn't given me grief over any of this, only showed surprise that the crack didn't occur on a weld. I did have to pay postage both ways, which irked, but I guess they couldn't bring themselves to send an invoice with all those zeroes and not tack that on.

The frame arrived yesterday. Rides beautifully.

Once again
I'm a fool
for the ti

Pardon me
if I'm sadly mental
and can't say goodbye
I should be angry
should be angry as a bee
should I cry

When it's gone (again)
I will dream a little
dream and say why oh why

Once again
I'm a fool
for the ti

. .

Having two nearly identical best bikes is the best decision I've ever made.