These last few days I’ve spent a lot of time working on our bikes. They got thrashed during the drive from Phoenix to St George due to all the rain. Even though our bikes were on our hitch bike rack behind our car, providing some protection, they still got covered with a nasty film of salt and road grit. So I decided to do a deep-clean of all our bikes. I borrowed my buddy’s air compressor to dry parts and went to town. After all the cleaning I built up Heather’s new race bike: an America’s Dairyland edition of a Cannondale SystemSix! This year they got frames only so I had to move all the parts over from her Dairyland Cannondale Six13.

Everything went together smoothly except for a couple things. First was the crankset instructions. As a guy, I usually don’t read instructions, but being that I’m dealing with a very expensive frame…one that will be Heather’s, I was extra careful and read through all of them (well, not the thick, generic one that tells you how to wear a helmet). The first thing was that the manual was written as if the Cannondale Carbon SI crankset was three-piece, not two-piece which came in the box. No big deal, I just had to remove the spindle that was already installed in the frame and insert the left crank-arm in its place.

The second issue was that due to the over-sized headset and head tube (that thing is the size of a soda can!), the fork needs an extra-long front brake bolt. The one that was included just barely reached the threaded section of the Dura-Ace brake. So I double-checked the manual and it said that it should be 35mm; the one they gave us was only 30mm! So if you look closely in the pictures you’ll see that the front brake isn’t bolted on. But since Heather’s racing next week, we needed the correct bolt. She made a few phone calls so that she’d have one at her race.

I did manage to rig it so I could take a spin around the block and it feels very similar to her old bike: stiff and very quick handling. When she gets back, I’ll have to take it for a real ride and put it through its paces.