What does Mark do on a friday?

..and every other day of the week?

I ride my '05 Ritchey Breakaway travel bike! This bike rules -- particularly when tricked out with a pair of HED Alps wheels. (The Breakaway's stock wheels are quite good actually!) The bike is equipped with Ultegra 9-speed shifters, a SRAM cassette, and Ritchey most-everything-else. (Great stuff I might add).

The Breakaway is a *full-size* bike that comes with its own travel bag. You can check it as luggage and fly with it for no extra charge. This travel bike weighs a scant 20 pounds, not bad at all. (Besides, it is much more responsive than my old 26 pound folding bike, which I sold on ebay. No more 20" tires -- and flats -- for me.)

Got a great deal on the Breakaway from the Beaverton Bike Gallery (fantastic shop). Before the Lance Armstrong Foundation ride, I was shopping for some shoes and left with the bike -- but no shoes. (I was looking for a pair of Nike Poggio shoes that I had bought there a few years ago.)

I put the Alps on this bike because it has *vertical* dropouts. The rear wheel kept slipping on my '95 De Rosa Primato, which has *horizontal* dropouts. I could get it to stick on the De Rosa only by "hogging" the skewer, making it a pain to remove the wheel. Seems the locknuts are made of an alloy material that doesn't bite into steel very well. I think HED intends for these wheels to go on a bike from *this* millenium, most of which have vertical dropouts...

Since I bought these Alps wheels with a 10-speed Campy cassette body, I had to use a Wheels Manufacturing shim kit (Shift-7) to respace a loose 9-speed Campy cassette. I picked up a Miche 9-speed cassette (Campy compatible) from Universal and replaced the shims. I also had to adjust the derailleur stops because the cassette is slightly offset in position from the original wheel.

I took the bike out on the Decker road loop, which has a bit of everything, including a nice climb and descent. The drive train was spot on! (Who says you can't mix components?) Yeah, I could have purchased a Shimano cassette body from Hed, but they say you have to redish the wheel and that seems like a lot of trouble!