Labor of Love

It is the new year and I have a head cold. One of those nasty hack your brains out, eat pharmaceuticals and struggle along through misery colds. This has curtailed a lot of my cycling plans but has not kept me from my mission to tear down the old shed and put up a new one. Imagine having a head stuffed with cotton and secured with a hard hat. Two questions go through your mind; “Is that beam going to come down like the walls of Jericho?” or “Is the stud bunny going to pee on my head while I’m down here?” It’s a cliffhanger, ain’t it?

Much more fun is the rebuild of my beloved Co-Motion Espresso. Seven years ago I ordered my dream bike, an artisan made, fillet brazed steel racing bike. Most people at the time were getting carbon fiber bikes. They still are. In fact many of the people who were buying bikes about the same time I was have bought at least one new bike since. We are not talking WalMart bikes either. A new racing bike, top quality, starts at about $5000 and only goes up from there.

Carbon bikes are trendy, light, expensive and fun but where’s the soul? Sure you can buy the same bike Lance Armstrong won the Tour de France with, but do you think he really cares? Does anyone at Trek even know your name? When I was considering my Co-Motion I was told that if I bought a Lightspeed or a Merckx everyone would say cool bike and that would be it. If I got a Co-Motion they would say what’s that? and I would have to show them every Saturday.

Well it is true. Most of the carbon crowd has know idea what I am riding. The brand conscious riders don’t even see me as a tiny bip on their radar. What I have that they don’t have is a bike with a soul. I have met everyone who has ever worked on my bike. The person who designed it and did the fillet brazing is an old friend, Dwan Shepard. He took me around the factory and introduced me to all of the people who built my bike from tubes to shipping .

So what is the labor of love? I have completely stripped the Co-Motion down to the bare frame and I am painstakingly cleaning, polishing and upgrading. The whole bike will get a nice coat of carnuba wax and be buffed to a blinding shine. There will be a new crank, new brakes and a shifter rebuild. The bike has been very good to me for over 50,000 miles. It should be just as good for another 50K. That’s what you call soul.