Some Assembly Required.

No ride today... Just some housework, repairs, and such. A little work on the garage door to make it work smoother, fixing a chair, stuff like that.

And assembling a bike. At least a little bit.

First, I took a bike frame, one that I've had since September, that I've been itching to build, and I piled bike parts around it, like so:
The Austro-Daimler frame and Tange fork I picked up in September, Tange Headset, Nitto Technomic stem, Tiagra brakes, Silver downtube shifters, Tiagra front and rear derailleurs, and SRAM PG-950 11-26 cassette. Not all of these will be going on this time around.

First, the rear brake:

Then, after some... judicial tapping with a hammer and some blocks of wood, the headset was installed, thus joining the frame and fork in blissful smooth-spinning marriage:

The front brake joins the party, after drilling the back of the crown out to accept the Allen nut:

While I was installing the shifters, Jack took Su out, and distracted me with the laser in the snow:

The weather is the main reason why I didn't ride today... I wimped out. Windy and sleety/snowy.

Anyways.

After Jack, Su, and the laser went back inside, I finished the downtube shifters:

And to finish things off for tonight, the stem:

As it sits, it's nowhere near complete, but it's starting to look bike-like... and I'm not ashamed to say I can stare at this for hours:

I held off on the derailleurs until I have gears and cables to work with. And before I do that, I need to paint the crankset I have so it'll match the chainrings and the rest of the bike. It's black right now, silver would look so much better. The rear wheel needs to be re-dished and trued, as well as new bearings, before I install the cassette. The bottom bracket needs to be rebuilt, and I need the proper tools for that. And obviously, there are more parts to get.

Now, it's not a whole lot of work, what I've done for tonight, but I took my time for two reasons. Firstly, because threaded headsets, forks, and downtube shifters are all fairly new to me, despite being old-school. I just don't have much experience with them, so I wanted to make sure I did everything right.

Secondly, I've been dreaming about building this frame up since I got it, and now that it's actually happening, I want to savor it.

All that said... it's hard to wait until I can ride it.

Mileage: zippo today.