The bella is a, uh, beautiful frame like most other titanium frames are when built by a skilled company. The parts are good, not great, but will suit the wife perfectly fine for her leisurely style of cruising. I itch to strip the thing down and toss SRAM Rival or Force on it, but she has banned me from touching her bike! I did manage to convince her to change the saddle and seatpost to a Fizik Vitesse and Thomson Elite, respectively. I also sneaked a pair of carbon water bottle cages on when she wasn't looking:)
I bought the Cannondale 29er on clearance last week quite impulsively although the idea of buying a 29er had been thoroughly researched beforehand. I was originally going to get a Niner One 9 and build it up over the next few months, but the price was right on the Cannondale, and the lefty fork is very nice, so what the heck, I got a complete bike. I'm going to strip the bike down to the frame and fork, and rebuild it with parts of my choosing, though. Right now it's a tank, and not really ideal for being competitive against other SS'ers and, even worse, geared riders (which is my primary target this year:)) I'll be racing the Wilderness 101 and Shenandoah Mtn 100, and perhaps a few more in the NUE series, and I hope to be highly competitive.
The Redline was cleaned right before the pics. It was filthy beforehand. It's been a dirty beast this entire winter, and Sunday was it's first bath. Unfortunately, it'll get dirty again tomorrow and probably look even worse than before I cleaned it due to the snow and salt covered roads. It's had a day of reprieve from the roads, but it's time to live up to it's name, and haul my butt to work on the morrow. The Redline 925 is a great bike albeit stiff riding compared to higher end frames and forks. I recently upgraded the cranks to Dura-Ace 7800, and must admit I felt a significant increase in stiffness over the previous setup - RPM something or other no name cranks. I also dropped, literally, a pound of weight. Yes, I have a digital scale to obsess over the weights of all my bike parts, and to assess whether or not they are worthy of being mounted on such and such bike.
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