It didn't complete me, but I completed it

I had trouble sleeping Thursday night.

I was excited.  The bike would be coming together on Friday.  Assuming the new Industry Nine Trail 24 wheels with Torch hubs show up at my house.

They did.

I had to kinda beg to get them before the weekend.  They were hoping to wait until after the product launch to ship them to me, being that I'm an internet whore and might spill their beans.  Thus the threat of death scribbled onto the box.  The FedEx lady loves when I get packages.

So I came home in a big hurry, unboxed the wheels, and got to building... sorta.

I did throw both wheels on the scale first.

800 grams for a rear wheel that's stiffer than a donkey boner.  710 for the front... just trust me.

More about the wheels later.

The build was smooth for the most part, but not entirely.  Not wanting to clamp the upper part of my drooper hard enough to work on the bike (told not to), and too lazy to raise the post high enough to clamp the lower portion, I left the bike on the floor.  Working on the rear derailleur like an auto mechanic on a creeper was not ideal.  I missed the routing and gave myself a few hurdles to overcome chasing down a problem I created.  I blame SRAM and their manuals that are more cartoonish pictograms than directions. 

Then while adjusting the rear derailleur, and might I add, ONLY derailleur, I was spinning the cranks with the right XTR pedal in my hand as I focused my attention to the chain moving across the cassette.  Then the world came undone on the end of the bike I wasn't looking at.  I felt the bike let go of me.

My pedal fell off the spindle.  I'd seen slightly smaller female riders break the axles on the newer XTR's, but given the fact that my original set is going strong two+ years later, I was hardly worried about my less than one year old set.  Pissed at my nice pedals that I brag up on (VS those with "great customer service"), content in the knowledge that the ones I've known about had been warrantied, I just mounted up my XT Trail pedals and moved on relieved that it happened in my bike room as opposed to on the trail.

Some time around 8:30PM, the bike was done.  By done, I mean I was too lazy to bother shortening the lines.  I had been able to shorten my other four XTR brakes without bleeding, but I didn't want to risk it being that I wasn't in the mood to learn how to bleed XTR's at 10:00PM.  Ride plans in the mountains were finalized for the next day.

I was excited as a kid on Christmas eve, up every couple hours looking at the clock.  At 4:22AM, I woke up and thought about my brake lines...

I flashed back and remembered that Eric "PMBAR Honcho" Wever once rode with extremely long brake lines, got it caught up in his front wheel/fork on a hard compression, and took a nasty digger.

I was up.

Brake lines shortened with an hour to go, I drank a second pot of coffee and headed out the door towards Wilson's Creek.

More about the ride tomorrow.