So I thought that I might introduce myself. Long story short, I've been riding bikes for a fair while now to develop an interest in something a bit different. I have a love/hate relationship with modern bikes and decided a long time ago that a lot of people end up spending too much money on bikes. I find people who spend £5000+ on a bike with no purpose to be people who enjoy an unnatural largesse towards themselves. I've also become more and more of a retro grouch over the years. Given I'm in my mid 30s now, it wont be long until I have a walking stick anyway. I digress.. How did I get here? Dunno anymore...
Most recently, I had an idea I wanted to start spending money on a throw back bike. I had a few things in mind including a 1998 Bianchi Mega Pro XL, or a 1998 Once TCR. Unfortunately I had a hard time finding any of these bikes in good condition in a 54. For a time I even looked at a CAAD5 but unfortunately it had, had a hard life and suffered some galvanic corrosion. I didn't really want a carbon bike of that vintage which tended to rule out Treks such as 5200s and 5500s without spending some time double checking that there was nothing suspect in a frame that old liable to killing me.
I came across a low mileage Trek 1500 SLR it had around 6000miles from the original owner in 2007. An older gentlemen bought it and kind of shelved it after riding it once in a triathlon. 2007 was the year Alberto Contador won the Tour De France and the only standing Team Discovery Channel record.
It came to me looking a bit like this:
My brother is a full time bike mechanic so we set about doing some work on it which kind of led to this point where we stripped it and decided to start drilling some holes in the frame.
Which led to the installation of 6770 DI2 derailleurs
And then this happened where we decided to drill out the bottom bracket.
And we installed an internal seat post battery.
Then hung it up on the wall when it still had a 6600 groupset.
Which kinda led to this for a few months.
Then I got bored of the stem being the wrong colour and shape. I also wanted a 7800 11-28 cassette and 7800 chain rings, at the same time I fitted a Bontrager RXL stem which at this point has led to this.
Its been a long ride but I'm not quite done yet. Its in need of a more suitable seat and the set back seat post will likely have to go also. 2007 was part of a time period where they hadn't quite figured everything out yet. I'm also yet to decide how heavy I want to go into this and whether I want to bother with trying to shave off the cable stops at this point.
