Despite giving myself over to 'cross on all levels and then some, I am a roadie at heart. I started on pavement. I learned everything I know on pavement. The road culture infects all I do on and away from it. Without a road background, with its influences and biases, I couldn't make a bicycle. I certainly couldn't make one well. How others can go to the bench or hang out a sign, and have no experience, no deep and decades long relationship with the road - well it's beyond me. The road is my informer. My opinions, all four of them, weigh nothing without pavement.

This is my first new road bicycle in about a decade. It's time. And overdue. And maybe a day's labor from completion. I've been called back. And once the paint dries I'll be ready.

All This By Hand