Groundhog's Day

I am not sure what the deal is for Phil from Pennsylvania but here in the Heartland the day begins overcast with no possibility of any groundhog seeing his shadow. I believe this portends early spring.

I ordered all of the parts in a flurry lasting only a couple of days which resulted in parts arriving in bunches. Here is the Day 1 delivery:The main arrival on this day is the wheelset. They are Campagnolo Protons, a factory manufactured wheelset based on Chorus level hubs. The wheels feature a symmetric 22 spoke front and an asymmetric 24 spoke rear. They came with their own proprietary plastic rim strips and a wheel bag. Also visible is the box for the Look Ergopost2, a full carbon seatpost from the same manufacturer as the frame. In the plastic bag is the bars, Deda 215, 42 cm, with the shallow drops. I also purchased a few tools. Some of these tools I may only use once and I realized it was an extravagance but I wanted to do the complete construction myself and if I wanted to do that I was going to need all of the necessary tools. Here you can see a Park cable cutter, specifically designed for cutting bicycle cables and cable housings. Would a regular cutter have worked? Probably. The brown Park Tool box contains a special tool to assist in cutting the steer tube. In the big white box is one of two torque wrenches that I bought. There are several places on a bicycle where correct torque is extremely important, particularly when dealing with carbon parts. I bought two torque wrenches because you need one for the high torque fastenings like the bottom bracket and you need another for the much more sensitive measurements for the small torque fastenings like the stem.

The stuff that I had read on bicycle build ups before I began all said that the bottom bracket and the headset are the first two jobs. This frame came with an integrated, or already built in headset so I didn't have to do that. It is an FSA by the way, a company that has specialized in parts for ultra light frames and particularly carbon. I didn't have the bottom bracket yet but I had parts and I was excited so I started to build.I had some Vittoria tires that I had gotten a really good deal on on Ebay and every bicyclist always has some tubes around. I got the rim strips onto the wheels and added the tires. By the way, I ended up being pretty dissatisfied with those tires and switched back to Michelin ProRace which I had already been using on my other bike and which I continue to use to this day.

I inserted the seat post although obviously no attempt was made at this point to adjust it. I inserted it because I had it and I soon discovered that it made a useful handle.

The stem visible in this picture is not the stem I bought for the bike. It is just one I had around which I fastened to the steer tube to keep the fork from falling out and also to use as a handle. Day 1 is complete. By the way, doesn't our floor look great?

For those pining to know, when we last checked on FC Nantes they were 6 points ahead of Le Havre but had played 2 more games than their rivals. Since then FC Nantes has played twice and Le Havre has played 4 games meaning that the teams are currently even on games played. Nantes has added zero additional points as they lost both games including dropping a 1-0 decision to Le Havre at Nantes last Monday, the Canaries first home loss of the season. Le Havre has scored 3 victories and a tie for 10 additional points. Le Havre has emphatically assumed first place in the table and now leads by 4. Although disappointed with second after the long run at the top, Nantes is still pretty comfortably in the promotion zone.

Today most of the games of the next round of le Coupe de France are being played. Nantes plays at Sedan. An interesting sidebar is that there is a game at Nantes. A CFA2, or 5th level league team from a town near Nantes, Le Poiré sur Vie (near La Roche sur Yon for those who are familiar with the geography of the Vendée) has survived to this round of the Cup and has drawn a home game against Ligue 1 foe Paris Saint Germain. The small club has taken advantage of the economic opportunity of playing the game in the larger stadium in nearby Nantes.