Bike From Scratch

I emailed back and forth with Jay at Rivendell last Friday about my new bike. Unfortunately I’m looking at at least another two weeks until I get it, probably more as my experience so far has been that Rivendell has trouble with estimating how long things are going to take (Note I doubt this is universally true, but with the Hillbornes it has been the case). I had sent an email asking for a status update (read as, why haven’t I gotten my bike yet) and was informed that the raw steel frames got jacked up due to a miscommunication with the dealer. So instead of being raw steel they were acid dipped (to prevent corrosion) and came out pale gray and ugly. They look bad enough that they have to be painted. Why I had to email two weeks after they got the frames to figure this out (instead of them calling me on day one) is a little beyond me, but whatever. So now instead of raw steel I’m getting a blue powder coat that hopefully matches the blue band in the sticker. Renaissance Bicycles put up a really nice gallery of the stock green frame. Riv did offer me a green frame and they could ship it right away (I’m assuming I was fairly close to the front of the deposit line) but I just can’t get excited about the green. A local shop Hiawatha Cyclery is doing a ride to Lake Pepin on the 24th of May. Hopefully I will have  the bike in action by then (doubtful, but nothing wrong with hope right?).