New Bike New Year

It is already tuesday night, and I dont think I have blogged in a few days due to some really busy days. I have been reading some blogs, as I seem to be addicted to them these days. I have also worked on finishing my new bike. I got this baby off of Ebay back in February for $100 . It was broken at the bottom bracket. It was ridden by a multiple time Mid-Atlantic Region state champ, and it cracked due to moisture in the BB. I brought it to Bilinky Cycles right here in Philly. He was able to weld it up and only charged me a shade over $100. He did a great job. Other projects, money and life in general got in the way of me getting this on the road till now. I wanted to have it finished in time for my birthday that was last Friday. Enough of me talking about it, here is the picture of it.
It is built up like this:
Frame: Indy Fab Planet X
Fork: Vicious Cycles road fork
Stem: 3t Mutant
Levers: Shimano
Front Brake: Old school 105 road brake
Rear Brake: XT v-brake
Shifters: Dura Ace Bar Cons
Front Der: Newer XTR
Rear Der: Black 105 Nine Speed
Crank: Black 105 triple
Saddle: Ti Flite
Seat Post: thomson
Bar Salsa Bell Lap
Wheels: Cane Creek Volos
Tires: Specialized Armadillos I didnt really do anything fancy to it besides add an incredibell and use spacers to make the 1 1/8 inch stem work with the 1" fork and frame.


She really flies so far. I have to muck with the fit of it, but for the two bike commutes since I finished it, I have done well.

On another topic...Last week a collegue of mine told me that her former neighbor is going to be the manager of a new bike shop in Cherry Hill, NJ. The shop is actually a new shop addition to Keswick Cycle of Glenside, Pa. I said that he should get me a job...half kidding, as I sort of already have a summer job, but I decided to look into it, since I would love to get back to working at a shop. I put out some feelers and found out the they were hiring. I called the shop and I talked to a manager for a bit before she asked me to send a resume off. After last weekend, I finally got chance to send one out very late on the evening of Memorial Day. The next morning I had an email from the owner of the shop asking me to give hime a ring. I called him up and chatted for a bit. To make a long story short, I went to meet with him at the new shop on saturday for an "interview". the interview consisted of some bikes dudes shooting the shit with some money talk thrown in. I got hired(as I thought I would), and I start on Wednesday at the Glenside shop. I will be working at the Cherry Hill shop once the lights are in, and we can start building some displays and what not.
The OG Keswick is an old Schwinn shop from the 30's that is now a very cutting edge shop that carries some of the major brands, and also specialises in Tri Bikes. The Cherry Hill shop is a former high end Motor Cycle shop that Keswick bought. The place is huge. It will be one of the biggest bike shops I have ever been in. We will have so much storage and work space, it will be amazing. Everything about this place reminds me of when City Bikes opened the Chevy Chase, MD shop. Looking at the city bikes site, I see that my picture is still up there.
This weekend was my birthday, and it was more subduded than other birthdays, but fun nevertheless. On Friday (my birthday) I had field day at school with my kids, which was very nice, as I dont like ot work on my birthday. After work, I took the train home, as I was a bit too lazy and the rain was really about to fall. It would have been nice to get a good ride in on my B-day. After I got home, Jess and I went to go pick up my wedding ring. We went to a shop in Philly called Halloween. It has to be the coolest place ever. It feels like it is straight out of a science fiction/Hobbit movie. Someone def had to go there to find a special key or get a link to a broken map or something. The ring is going to be really cool, and is custom made by the guy. It is also under $100 which is perfect! I would pay $100+ for a headset, but a wedding ring...you have to be crazy I could forget it somewhere. After wedding ring shopping we went to Cherry St for some great vegetarian chineese food from some of our favorite folks in the city. After dinner we headed off to see
an inconvenient truth .
As an Earth science teacher a sort of a greenie, I loved the movie. It is exactly what I have been teaching my students all year long. I can not wait till it is out on DVD, so the studnets can see how great the actual slide show is. Maybe I can get Al Gore to come speak to my students someday! How fucking cool would that be?
After the movie we walked out into a total downpour. The type where you just walk in the rain, because you are going to get as wet running. We were frozen and wet by the time we got home, but were able to change into dry clothes...for a while.
The dog was afraid of the storm and would not go outside to pee. We tried to send her to the basement to do so, but we were stopped by a fountain and flood in our basement. There is some sort of strange hole near the bottom of out steps that backed up and had water shooting up about 6 inches and flooding our basement. Luckily we were able to stop it, and clean up the water, but that was not how I wanted to end my birhtday.
Saturday was spent doing some housework, scoring the job at Keswick, and then the fun really started. Two of our best friends Pete and Colleen were cleaning out some trash they had from some demo work they did in their house. They tried to do the right thing and drop it off at the bulk drop off in Philly, but it was closed when they got there, which left these two with a 16 foot Uhall full of crap and no where legal to put it. This provided us with an impromptu trip out to Norristown to use the dumpster behind my school. Jess and I left the school to go return some things from her shower, while pete and col went back to the city with the UHall. We met up with them later for a Birthday dinner at Azure.
Sunday was another auction, but I didnt find shit I was interested in. Col and Jess did, while pete and I went to get my oil changed and made stupid faces at eachother while trying to stay awake. We went out to eat at Victory. Pete and I split for home, and I finished up my new IF. That gave me a good reason to finally get a bike ride in for the day.