Cycling Pigs

Andy my riding buddy just picked up a used Eddy Merckx Corsa Extra frame this past week. After fine tuning at Temple City Bike shop the bike looks awesome. Actually its exactly like mine except for the paint. Both frames are the Corsa Extra in 56 cm. His is the Blue and Red while mine is the Team colors of the 7-11 fame circa mid 1980’s. Bob Roll who is now announcing on Versus Direct TV was a member of the 7-11 “Team Slurpy”.

Today we took off from Stan’s Monrovia Bike shop for the usual ride down to South Pasadena and the Heirloom Bakery shop. Yummmmy those Heirloom cakes are really something special. We had to ride extra just to work off the calories from the cakes we ate this morning but that is our usual routine anyway.

I picked up the Eddy Merckx Corsa Extra last year when the frame came out as a reissue of the team frame. In the bottom of the cellar at the Eddy Merckx shop in Brussels there were a few stacks of old tubes left from the days of the Corsa Extra. These frames were origanalluy made from Columbus Tubing and this tube set is no longer being manufactured by Columbus. Some one had the great idea of using up the remained of the tube sets and to put out a limited edition of the Team Frame that sported this tube set - Team 7-11. There were only one hundred of these frames made last year and I picked one up as soon as they became available. The only difference between the reissued frame sets and the ones made in the 80’s is the threadless folk. The reissue still sports the all steel fork but mine is a threadless variety that was not thought of in the mid 1980’s.

Andy will be one of the riders in this years annual Cycling Pigs great Iowa adventure at RAGBRAI. I am looking forward to this ride in July very much. I don’t think Andy will be taking his Corsa Extra to Iowa but its an idea anyway. I will be getting a new travel bike to take made by Dean Cycles in Boulder Colorado. I just talked to John there at the shop and he told me the frame is brazed up and is just going through quality assurance now. Maybe in a couple of weeks I will put up some pictures of the new titanium travel bike with S&S couplers. More on this later for sure but for now it back into the woodwork. This March starts a training cycle that will take me through the summer. My plans for Iowa is to kick some major butt!