kikay

my bike of more than 10 years. made of columbus tubing. framed by ave maldea (i only knew of this fact a few days ago). campy dropouts. a sprinkling of dura ace and ultegra parts but started life with 105s. do you remember the biopace? i had one but i had it replaced with what you see here.

the wheelset is new except for the hubs. vetta sl saddle with ti rails. she still has 7 speeds. oldie, i know. i'll be replacing that with 10-speed components if/when i get the extra money. the components that need to be replaced would be the read derailleur and hub, the brake levers and downtube shifters. the rear dropout spacing is already 130mm so i don't need to cold set the frame. thank god for small mercies. i do not have any immediate plans of replacing the cinelli stem and handlebar. in the meantime, she's riding pretty well so i have no real complaints.

she has patiently brought me up to tagaytay and back. we've been to a pretty fast paceline at qc circle at one time but got dropped just as quickly. not her fault.we've been in baguio just to bike around but the thin air and my lungs just went as far as two kilometers. i even got lost going back to the hotel. no. i didn't climb up to baguio. we rode a van going to and from. i've ridden her to work from españa/makati for a couple of years also. and once in a while we just hung around picc or cartimar.

lately, we've been trying to tackle some hills and we've slowly improved. she's still willing and able to go up those hills but my thighs and knees are, at times, simply not up to it.

i want to give her a new coat of paint though. have the old coats stripped to metal but i'd still choose black. that's the way she started and that's the way she's going to be. but maybe some chrome in some parts. that would be nice.

next purchase would probably be a new speedometer. a simple one. i basically just want to know how far we've ridden. let's see within the next few months.