Every morning I look at my bike and my longing for this trip gets stronger. I can't wait to give up life as I know it in favor of the road in a strange country with no worries except where I am going to sleep.

I picked up a torque wrench tonight and installed the bottom bracket and crankset on my bike. (neither the drops or the areo bars are secured, that isn't the final angle!).

Tara was here last week and we got her sized up for a frame and ordered it. We're the same size! That is really exciting for me because I am ridiculously obsessive about silly things like consistency. When it came I took her to the powdercoaters to mull about what shade of purple she wanted it to be :) I'll post photos when it is done!

My wheels showed up from Peter White Cycles the day before Tara arrived. They are Deore XT hubs laced to 36 hole Velocity Cliffhangers with DT Swiss spokes. Bombproof!

We spent some time mounting the tires and tubes while Tara was here. It was easy as pie and now Tara knows how to change her own tires/tubes if need be.

After we were done we pumped the tires up and cheered at how awesome we were. The next morning both tires were flat! I was confused as to what went wrong until I realized I'd forgotten an important detail: rim tape. Ever the optimist I was exited because now we had two legit flats with which to practice patching tubes with. We picked up some rim tape and self vulcanizing patches and went to town. Both of our patches held :)