the Not-So-Beautiful-Bike

Bike porn it's called. The guy with the blog called prollynowradavist has a feature called Beautiful Bicycle - close-up photos of bike details, exquisite lugwork and such…snooze. There's also Lovely Bicycle. And the pristine bikes in the Bicycle Quarterly calendar.

That's alright. If you like that sort of thing.

I might be a little hard on bikes, so here's some close-up photos of my not so Beautiful Bike.

a little embarrassing, the aftermath of a crash. maybe
next weekend  I'll get around to re-taping the bars

the cables rubbed the paint off. working on a fix for this.

not sure how I got some chips on the fork. maybe from
leaning the bike against a short retaining wall with
the pedal on top to hold it, and the bike slipped. or
another crash.

That stark white paint patch is not so good. I decided to use it to protect the frame until I find a better match.

this was after it got washed

 bad cheap fender line:

yikes this is starting to bug me now that I look at it closer

The specs for the Vaya say it can has fender clearance for tires unto 38mm wide, but a guy on the Salsa forum at mtbr.com was able to fit SKS P50 fenders on his bike with the Clement X'Plor MSO 40mm tires. I think I'll give those a try as I don't think I'll be switching to narrower tires soon. The Clements have some miles left in them.

the so-called sternum crusher:

changed the height of the stem 20 times. finally think I've
decided on this heighth and maybe can cut the tube now
leaving room for a spacer.

the dirty pie plate:

can never remember which way the rules say the QR
lever should go

I can't believe I ride around in public like this. Maybe I can take it to an auto detailing place and they can clean it up.