Speaking of colors (but no longer gold), I am completely sick of white. In particular:

• Snow. ‘Nuff said.
• ProTour team jerseys. So many teams are riding around in bland, colorless jerseys this year. I’m sure they mean it to represent cleanliness and purity (i.e., the absence of doping), but it makes a beautiful, colorful sport look washed out and boring (which it’s in danger of becoming).
• My pale, pasty limbs.

And they’re unanimous in their support (benevolent or otherwise) of gold chains. Which is good, since I’d ordered one even before creating the poll! Ha HA! So behold, my gold chain:

I think that does it for the gold bike componentry. Hopefully this doesn’t spill over into other areas of my life. If, a year from now, I’m running around in a black turtleneck and a gold necklace, driving a black Lincoln Town Car, and drinking martinis, at least we’ll know where I went wrong.

So, my new bike has gold SUNringle’ wheels. It’s also got gold handlebar tape and gold Nokon cable housing. It’s kinda flashy, but I like it.

Since putting the bike together, I’ve had trouble with the chain skipping when it’s on the 11-tooth cog. Some quick perusal of the forums at www.roadbikereview.com confirmed that it’s not an uncommon problem with Wipperman chains. The brand most people recommended for use with SRAM drivetrains is KMC. And guess what. KMC offers a gold chain.

I’ve created a poll (over there on the right) by which you can indicate whether or not you think I should get the gold KMC chain. It’ll be interesting to see whether anyone actually reads this, and whether anyone actually cares what color my chain is.

Old bike:

New bike:

This is pretty exciting. I haven’t had a new road bike in about five years. The Waterford has a lot of sentimental value, so the fact that the Specialized looks so similar has me pretty “stoked” as the kids like to say.

More pictures. I took these.

Check ‘em. Mostly taken by my wife, Kelley.