Greetings from Northern Virginia
Hey everyone! Glad to be part of the forum.
I'm Dave, a student at GMU in Fairfax, VA. I have been riding on and off for most of my life. Cheap wal-mart bikes, secondhand BMX, I built an old Stingray with Peapickers and rode that for a while until it was stolen, I then built a 24" BMX cruiser which I eventually sold.
I just transferred schools, and looking at commute time and cost decided to buy my first ever road bike. They had always seemed precarious and not agile enough for me so I avoided them. I started doing research online and it seemed like every Google search I did led me back to this site. I've already been slinking around these pages for nearly a month and decided to finally join in.
I just bought my first road bike, a slightly used IRO Mark V frame with IRO wheelset, and a bunch of other custom parts. I started building the bike with the intention of a single speed, but I bought the wheelset used and he had a fixed cog installed on the hub. So as soon as I had it together I took it for a spin on my first fixed ride. I am in love, both with this bike and fixed gear. The speed, oh lord, the speed. My favorite bike Ive ever owned by far and I think it is sexy as hell. Still need to work a few things out on it, hopefully this weekend.
Coolest/Saddest bike story: I built an old vintage stingray, metallic blue, a couple years back when I was living in Richmond. It was really sweet and I was the only one riding around on one of those. I parked it at the bottom of the stairs in my apartment building and one morning it was just gone. It was a huge bummer since that was probably my favorite bike I had ever owned at the time. Then about a month later I was riding my new bike down the road and in the distance I saw a Stingray sitting in from of the local EB games. At first I thought it could never be mine as it was gold, but when I got close I could see the blue from the missed spots in the thief's crappy spray job. Also I had custom valve caps on that thing. As much as I would have loved to have confronted the thief in the store I settled on simply stealing my bicycle back and walking both my new and old one home. So yeah I stole my bike back.
Anyway thats it!