I took the family to Texarkana over the Memorial Day weekend to see our good friends Chris and Megan Schumake and their family. We had not been up there since last August and we were excited to have them see Lincoln at six months old and shared their excitement in expectation of a little girl of their own. Friday afternoon, several parts for the build arrived in the mail and I did not have a chance to install them before I left. The Radius front brake from State Bicycle, the Pake 1/8 in chain I bought off eBay and the Kryptonite NYC Fuhgeddaboutit U-Lock and Avenir Tightrope cable from Amazon all appeared on Friday to sit alone till I could get to them Monday morning. The chain and lock combo were pretty useless until the wheelset arrived so I installed the front brake. I was pleased to find that the hardware for the brake still fit my 25 year old frame and installation was a snap. Based on advice from the late, great Sheldon Brown I installed the brake lever on the right hand side so my dominant hand would be in charge of stopping the bike as quick as possibly needed.
On Tuesday I picked up the Tec9 wheelset I bought from eBay at the front office and went and met Daniel at my parent’s house to put the bike together. Sidebar – That is right, I ordered a wheelset from a company that gets its namesake from a handgun favored by gangs and the Columbine shooters. Yikes.
While the rear wheel went into the dropouts immediately; the front wheel would not budge so we brought out the Dremel tool to file a small amount from the front dropouts.
After this, the wheels dropped right in and we got a glimpse of what the finished bike may end up looking like: 
The next step was to work the chain to fit the bike and this is where things got frustrating. Daniel and I quickly used the chain breaker I bought at Wal Mart over the weekend to completely disassemble the end link on the Pake chain I bought. We then read the instructions and saw that in the very first line we are told to NOT completely separate the link if we want the chain to go back together. This led to about an hour of sweat and stress as we worked to get the chain back together. It finally did, we put it on the drivetrain, bolted down the wheels and began to pump up the tires. The rear tube immediately popped because we absolutely could not get the bead of the tire to hook into the well of the wheel all the way around. After about an hour, we gave up trying to make it lock into the wheel and I put the whole setup back in my car to go home. I am taking it over to the bike shop today to either have them get the tire to lock in or to buy a new set of tires that will work.
Bike About Town 
Looking good in the neighborhood!