I'm also in the middle of planning for major changes in my life come spring. I am planning on taking temporary contract work in Seattle, Washington with a target of May 1st start date while my wife will stay here in Colorado to attend school. I will be living cheap, probably living out of a 100 square foot rented room with only a car load of possessions with me. 3 bikes and all the extra gear seems a little excessive. Especially considering I only logged 200 miles on my Mt. Bike last year. I have begun parting out my Mt. Bike to raise funds for a new all around bike. It will have 29" wheels, carbon frame, drop bars with cross levers, 10 speed road bike drive train, cable action disc brakes, and no suspension to start. I may add a fork with lockout later. I will have 2 wheel sets. One with 25-28cm road slicks, and the other with 2.4" tubeless knobbies. This bike will be built for aggressive road riding, cross racing, and XC MTB racing. All my old MTB parts are getting sold on eBay to prepare.
It's hard to part with this 15 year old aluminum bike. I got it on sponsorship when I was 17 and have ridden it about 10,000 hard off-road miles since. It has served me well but is painfully stiff and I welcome riding a full carbon bike with bigger wheels on and off road.
I am working with www.dengfubikes.com to build a custom painted full Carbon bike frame, fork, seatpost, and stem directly from China. This is the frame and fork, base price $480 shipped at only about 4 lbs:
And is is my team color scheme I came up with:
Very excited to see the rendering of what they come up with! Bike companies have done exactly this for the last 25 years. It's time to cut out the middle man. This technology is so common and standard now and China is much more reliable to work with than they used to be.
Once I have the frame in possession which will take at least a month, I will canabalize/part out my cross bike to finish the build. I will be down to my singlespeed commuter bike during the final transition. That $400 steel tank has served me very well so far after upgrading to white industry ENO freewheel. I've had it for 6 months and logged about 1,700 miles on it. What a great low maintenance work horse! Just what I was hopping for. I will be taking this bike to Seattle for commute and rain riding. It keeps me from getting lazy on the climbs.
