0.0 Returns to Active Duty

10:30 am
I've had my shower and I'm walking into the shop.
Last night I left the shop at 2:30 after having laced three wheels and mostly tensioned and trued one of them. I was totally delirious and cross-eyed by the time I decided to get off my stool. My last memory from the bench is of being so tired that I was closing my eyes and relying only on the sound of the rim brushing the caliper. It felt so nice with my eyes closed. At some point I realized that I was in an odd sort of wheel building trance that was quickly leading to sleep.
'Just stop before you start to eff up. Do it in the morning.'

That is, the real morning: after some sleep.

12:40 pm
Wheel truing has me in a daze again.
I'm locking up the shop to go grab a burrito and some rim strips.

2:37 pm
Rim strips, burrito, beer? check, check, and check.
Ready to work again.

9:35 pm
My sister just left with the Sprout 0.0. It's back on active duty after much too long.

I have to eat the Thai food she brought me before I can type anymore...

9:55 pm
My belly's full, but I still want more. I haven't had 'evil jungle noodles', as Thai Orchid calls it (it is really just a panang style curry over rice noodles with broccoli, baby corn, green bean, and bean sprouts) in quite a while, so this is really hitting the spot. Perhaps too hard. It's also making me feel sleepy, so I think I'm making the decision not go back to work tonight.
I am really happy to have gotten the original Sprout frame back on wheels. It's hard to believe, but I built that frame at bike school seven years ago. I will admit that as I was reassembling it I noticed many of the design flaws that, at the time i built it, were just details overlooked, but now seem like much larger errors -- like 17+ in chainstays (that's really long). Oops. It hasn't been ridden since April of last year when I loaned it to a friend to ride with me in Fruita. (Incidentally, that was some of the most amazing trail riding I've ever done. Quite comparable to the McKenzie River Trail.) Last fall I sacked the wheels in order to build my 10-year-old niece a cyclocross worthy rig, which she rides multiple times a week -- sometimes to school.
Without going into detail, suffice it to say that the bike my sister had been riding was not up to par, and she's really starting to take pleasure from the riding that has become a regular part of family time. As with all my bikes, I like to see them getting ridden, so it was perfect to put the 0.0 back on the trail, especially under my sister.


Today my niece got the tires I originally wanted to give her: Schwalbe CX Pros. They're 26x1.35" and have a relatively traditional style cyclocross tread pattern. I'm excited to see how much faster she is this year.

I'm calling an early bed time tonight.