Quickbeam…

It’s been a long week with much to tell. I haven’t told it until now because, among all the good there’s been a wee bit of the bad. I have a cold. It started on Tuesday, caused me to take the day off of work Wednesday, and I left early Thursday and will do so again today. To be honest, I just haven’t had the energy to write. But…
My Quickbeam arrived on Tuesday morning! Because my signature was required I came to work in the morning as usual, but left before the delivery window opened up. I was hopeful that my QB would arrive before I had to leave again for an anniversary banquet; did I mention I’ve had the same job for over ten years now?
The banquet wasn’t solely for me, indeed there was a total of over 3000 years of experience being feted. A good time was had by all, but…
It might have interfered with the delivery of my bike.
I received a phone call from the UPS driver asking if I’d be home and I said yes, except for the hours of the banquet when the manager of my building would sign for me. He said okay but he didn’t think he’d be there till the afternoon.
Then he arrived before before I had to leave. He was definitely my hero that day.

Rivendell’s are packed superbly. I didn’t have time to unpack the bike before lunch, but I did open it up and take a peek inside. Wow! Later I opened the box all the way up to see everything and how it was packed…

Just Wow!
But as nice as the packing was, I wasn’t planning on leaving it that way for long. After getting back from the banquet I made the decision to put the bike together which just enough parts to ride. If I’d put on the fenders and such it might have taken till dark. I thought it would be better to get out there while the sun was up!
It took next to no time to build. I’m not a competent mechanic and I managed it in under half an hour. That’s pretty darn good.
My first stop was my LBS for tubes, just in case. I didn’t have any 700x35c tubes around. Now I do. Then it was off to the park for quick photo shoot. You can see all the images of the day on my Flick page in my Quickbeam Day One set. But here’s a shot of the bike with Diamond Head in the background…

That’s the shot that’s gotten the most comments so far.
After I got home I realized my cold was worse than I thought and…I didn’t go to work in the morning because I could barely sleep all night. I’d love to say it was the excitement over having the best bike I’ve ever owned, but it was the cold.
I did, however, use the opportunity of a day at home, once I’d actually woken up, to put on the fenders. My best suggestion would be, “never do this when you are sick.” It’s not that it’s particularly hard, it’s just that with fuzzy thinking I had a number of false starts. Still it went together very well the second time around. I’m using silver plastic SKS/Esge fenders which don’t look bad at all on the silver framed QB. No, they aren’t Berthoud or Honjo, but they aren’t very expensive or noisy either. And, when all is said and done, they look pretty good.

You can see my Sackville Saddlesack (L) has finally found its proper home as well. 🙂
That was about it till Thursday when I took it to work for the first time as real working commuter bike. Here she is parked amidst her kin, actual commuters.

I’m hoping to get in a nice long ride this weekend, but for that to happen my health will need to improve a bit and it will have to do so by tomorrow. My planned route is going to be a bit busy on Sunday as it’s time once again for the Honolulu Marathon. I’m not going to compete with thousands of runners for the same small bit of road.
Rest assured though, I’ll be riding somewhere!
Aloha!
PS – Rivendell just released a peak at their Spring 2010 catalog. Sweet.