Link to list of bicycle-related blogs and the Fixed Gear Bike

I just added my blog to a listing of bicycle-related blogs.

I need to change the stem on my fixed-gear bike and take a photo of it. It's beautiful in its cheapness. I haven't shown it to any bike nerds like myself yet. I'm wondering whether they'll overlook it because of its cheapness and because no one has heard of it: Krystal Mark IV. It's made in Japan and has cheap high-tensile tubing with stamped dropouts. Those are signs of a junkyard bike. However, it has a few qualities that make it interesting -- the best of which is the nice ride. It has a long top tube (56.5) for such a smallish frame size (53 ctt). It's pretty old. I bought it for $5 at a Goodwill store. It had SunTour Barcons on it and I wanted a set. I intended to throw the rest of the bike away.

It also had randonneaur bars and a 165 mm alloy, SR crankset. I stripped the parts and let the frame sit for two years. A couple of weeks ago, I built and fixed gear bike using a Benotto frame, which is for sale, and then swapped the parts to the Krystal. The Benotto was too small even with a 130mm stem. The long stem made it ride very strangely. I hated it. The Benotto used to be built up as a time trail bike. With the aero bars it rode nicely, but not drops.

Anyway, I really like the fixed gear and I really like the bizarre old frame I built it on.

Speaking of getting fixed, shortly before building a fixed-gear bike, I got myself fixed. It's a story in itself that I'll tell another time, but one issue to be aware of with an operation like a vascestomy is the that hair regrowth is very uncomfortable. I'm sure everyone's story will vary, but that's the most interesting issue from my experience that no one warned me about.