Almost ready

I went in to work early and finished gluing up the rear wheel. It went much better than the first one. Apparently I am a fast learner. The tread is almost perfectly straight and it took less time. Also my front tire appears to be solidly attached. I was worried about that last night.

The next step was to install some new brakes. This is not quite finished yet. I have the rear set still to install. There wasn't a thing wrong with my neo retros except that I had a hard time finding carbon pads that would work with the style brake post that they use--threaded. In the end it was cheaper and quicker for me to just get a new set up than to order (if any one actually had them in stock) a good carbon pad with a threaded post. I have used the TRP Euro X before and liked them.

I found out that these carbon rims are going to eat pads quickly. I would not be surprised if I can only get a couple of races out of each set. Some races it may be even worse. I have a couple of different carbon pads. The first set I tried came with the TRP brakes. These sucked. When I first tried them after hooking up the front brake I was great with a very strong burning rubber sort of smell. I thought that maybe there was just a glaze or something on the rim that was affecting the brake pad. But the smell came back every time. Plus, the pad was very quickly eaten away. I next tried that pads that John from Neuvation sent with the wheels. These seemed to work much better. They stopped better and the pad didn't radiate the burning smell quite a much. I didn't know that John was going to send the wheels with pads (and valve extenders too!!) and so I have on the way--probably to arrive tomorrow--some Swiss Stop Rat Yellow carbon pads. We will see how these pad work from Neuvation this weekend and then maybe I will switch to the Swiss Stops once they wear out.

I have owned a set of American Classic carbon wheels and they never ate brake pads like these wheels do. I hope that after a bit this is ameliorated a bit and pads last and stop better than they did tonight. Admittedly, I was only using the front brake, there wasn't a rear brake connected at all when I was trying it out. This is a small concern though--after all it is cyclocross, brakes are for pansies. Yeah, well maybe.

Now I hope that Bridget doesn't read this--although I am sure she suspects--I think my Curtlo is hot. Just looking at it with these wheels really excites me, at least in a non-sexual but still very exciteable way. I wonder if guys with a wife that gets breast implants feel the same way when they see their wife afterwards for the first time. My bike was always great, but it really looks sexy with the carbon wheels, just like their wife was always great but now with the bigger...oh, nevermind. I am just going to end this post right now before I really get in serious trouble.