Objectum Sexual

Alright, so maybe I'm not on a par with that Erika Eiffel, but I took Betty out last night on her maiden voyage. Conditions were less than ideal; It was pissing rain all day and the roads were wet, but I had this yearning desire deep in my loins to ride her. (That didn't sound too good.) Really, I was tired of slogging around on my cross bike for the last 1000 miles and it was time to feel what 13.99 lbs. felt like under me. Yeah, that was the weigh in sans computer. It's almost embarrassing to admit. Had I the dinero for some superlight carbon tubulars, she'd probably be in the low 13's.

In lieu of the weather, I stuck close to home so if I were to get caught in a deluge, I'd be 10 minutes away from home at most. On my first circuit of a nearby lake, I was immediately taken by the frame's responsiveness- so responsive in fact, that the bike doesn't feel like it's under 14 lbs. You step on it and it goes. There is very little (if any) energy lost. Watts in=>mph. Not to sound like I work for Cervelo PR, but the R3 SL is like the perfect marriage between man and machine. (Gee, maybe I do suffer from OS.) You see, for one man it might be blasting a golf ball 300 yards with his $1000 driver. For another, it might be the perfect lines in his lawn afforded by his $5000 zero-radius lawn mower. For me, it's ripping up 5% risers at 20+mph on my 14 lb. Cervelo.

I believe there is something to this man and machine thing. I can remember when I was a kid and I had to shovel snow with a standard issue flat shovel, no less. The thing weighed 15 lbs. as it was made out of cast iron. Our driveway was as big as three football fields. (Hey, I'm prone to hyperbole from time to time.) Honestly, though, a six inch snowstorm would take 3 hours of shoveling. And my father, being as anal as he is with things, "wanted to see black" when he got home from work. Great, so much for building snow forts. So, as you can imagine, the time to completion increased exponentially with snowfall amounts. I can remember shoveling out storms that were up to my shoulders (you know, the storms were big in those days) while seemingly every other resident of our street had a snowblower. I can't tell you how many times I wanted to run across the street and throw my cast iron 15 lb. shovel into the impeller of my neighbor so that they would know my pain. But I forged on, the years passed, and "character" was built. Fast forward to winter break of freshman year of college. A good snowstorm hits and to my complete surprise, there, sitting in the garage, is a brand new 8 hp Ariens snowblower. Hmmm, I guess because his little serf was away at college, it was time for Dad to "join the revolution". I mean, afterall it was 1991. Anyway, Dad's at work one snowy January day, so I'll be a good son and snowblow the driveway and sidewalks. It literally took 1/6th of the time it used to take shoveling and I probably expended 1/20th of the energy. Dare I say, it was almost fun. Well, Dad gets home to freshly snowblowed driveway and for some reason he's not as pleased as I thought he'd be. He seems almost deflated- almost as if he was a kid that was looking forward to going to the circus only to have the big top burn to the ground the day before. Ok, maybe not that extreme, but as an 18 year old I didn't get it. I do now. Sorry, Dad, for spoiling your fun.

So Betty is a pretty sick machine. The bike just feels solid. Being a lifelong (3 years) Shimano-ite, I have to say I like the Sram Red group as well. It has no small chain ring trim but I don't think that will be a problem as I never used it with my Dura Ace. I get a little FD rub in anything bigger than 34x15 but if I need another gear, I'll just chuck it in my "big" 50t ring. The 34x28 was perfect as a minimum up my little 20+% tester hill. For a bike as light as it is, it never felt squirrelly. How they were able to design a frame that responsive yet able to hold lines is beyond me. (They're called engineers, Alex.) It goes to exactly where you point it- and in a hurry. I wonder how much of that is the HED Bastognes ($600 steal new, ebay), I highly recommend if you're looking for clinchers. Not to get all Star Warsy, but when I get Betty going over 22 mph, she starts to emit this sort of TIE fighter-ish howl kinda like what you hear here:

I'll have to rename her Darth but I guess that would then make me an objectum homosexual. Is that possible? The ride was going well until I had to ride back home all bmx-style knees to chest and get the allen key to tighten seatpost that had dropped almost 2 inches. Rookie mistake not to go out with it. Did a hot lap of the lake to see just how fast Betty/Darth is. Ended up PRing by 15 seconds despite wet roads and me not feeling so hot. Nice. So yeah, for lack of a better way of saying it, Betty was literally ridden hard and put away wet. I don't think "Darth" is going to work.