So my plans changed, apparently the Sam Hillborne was not the right bike for me.  It sounds silly to say it as I would have been happy to have had it and happy to have ridden it.  I believe it would have been with me a very long time.  But the frames weren’t going to arrive on time and so I have upgraded to a Rivendell Atlantis, which of course is my dream bike.

I leave from Charlottesville on the 20th of June, a change in direction.  One woman writes, it isn’t the wind, as we all know that isn’t so, but I won’t have the sun in my eyes in the morning and I will be out of the hotter areas by late summer and into the mountains in a warmer and drier set of months.  And that made perfect sense to me.  I also heard from my son (@petebikes) and he mentioned motivation and the desire to be home helping guide him.  All of this got me thinking that it was the right thing.  And then it occurred to me that having travel plans when I could actually schedule them would keep my cost down and so it goes.   I know the mountains would have built my legs into a powerful Kansas beating engine but they will still be there later in the trip and I will have good legs when I reach them this time.

So why is the bike shop so important, because it helps to have a shop mirror the values you have and frankly this place simply lived up to what I have always heard, always expected.  I love my local shops and the my favorite mechanics are great.  What these folks did is calmly assist me in Plan B, and with a tremendous amount of elegance they get it.  It is another bike for them to build and at the same time it is a very special bike for me, a bike that I have waited for and wished for over a long period of time.  I know that many adjustments will go into it, and many things will be great, and some will be different, but at the end of this day I find myself extremely happy and aware of my good fortune.