Happy birthday to me...

I've been riding the same bicycle since 2000. It's been a great bike, I've put more miles on it than I can even begin to guess, but it's starting to break down. Since my 40th birthday is this year, I'm taking the opportunity to be completely selfish and ordered a custom steel bike from Independent Fabrication.

In a lot of ways this is the bike that I've wanted for well over a decade. Before I turned 30 I was looking at several Italian steel frame bikes with lots of chrome and beautiful lugs and all that fun stuff. Life got in the way though and I was doing more adventure racing at the time and well on my way to being dirt poor. Lukily, things have turned around and again I've found myself at a milestone birthday and dreaming of a new bicycle. Here's the picture of the paint scheme mock up that I sent to IF.

I started this process shortly after the new year, looked at several really great bikes; Orbea, Pinarello, Trek, Specialized, but while they all would have more than fulfilled my need for a new bike, none of them were as exciting to me as getting to pick a frame, get measured for it, select every component, and then finally get the chance to see it all come together as something I get to ride.

Ridiculously selfish? Absolutely.

Pretty silly? Yeah, that too.

Still, I’m so excited about it and the process has been a great experience.

Marc