Parts

My road bike, the Thundercougarfalconbird, is now five years old and has covered tens of thousands of miles. Up until yesterday it still had the original drivetrain, and probably even the original chain (which is pretty ridiculous). My cranks were falling apart. My chainrings were bent from an incident a few years ago when half of the chainring bolts fell out while I was riding (hard) up a steep hill. I tried to pound the rings flat with a hammer. It didn't work well enough to fix the problem, but it did work well enough to prevent me from replacing them immediately. Then time passed.

On top of that, between Melissa and me, we have seven bikes with 9-speed Shimano components, which are getting harder and harder to find. The world moved to 10-speed years ago and left me behind.

Anyway, to make a long story short (too late), I replaced my old drivetrain last night with a 10-speed SRAM group. It took about five hours (way longer than I planned) to disassemble the bike, clean it, reassemble everything, then make the necessary adjustments. Tonight I finally got a chance to hop on the TCFB and test it out. It feels like a new bike. I think it will take a few rides to get used to the different ergonomics of the shifters. It's a little strange to have the shifter cables routed along the handlebars rather than sticking out (like all the other older Shimano bikes). This kind of makes the bike feel like it's missing something. I assume that feeling will go away with time.

Well, without further ado, here's the obligatory bike porn.