Where have I been in this thread? Oh well! Heres a catch up: Having a winter beater is necessary, and you will enjoy riding so much more when you can treat the bike like the incredibly useful tool it is (ie. not your girlfriend). I have in fact become so attached to my winter beater that I (almost) prefer it to speedy bike. Eyefloater: nice sounding build, you'll be rocking the same bars that I am (if they ever make it to you). Gokiburi, get your damn sannino off the road you tyrant! I just want to say again how sweet and buttery and bombproof my tied cxp-33/level wheelset is.

Also, did I see someone here on tuesday afternoon riding a black fixie left off of bloor onto bathurst (probably coming from curbside)? I'm in Paris again (for christmas), and the bike shops here are either big sports stores with a decent enough bike section with some road and mountain bikes ranging from crap to decent, or super boutique stores with all CF colnagos in the windows speced with crazy crazy parts going for 4000 euros. Also they have everything you could ever think of branded with colnago, in case people can't already tell you have a sweet ride. There is no real 'pignon-fixe' scene here though, despite the velodromes, and none of the shops seem to carry fixie stuff.

Now below are pictures of my 3 bikes. The grey one has new wheels and tires now (cxp33s/level/conti-gp3000), the blue one now has the wheels and tires off of the grey bike, and has since been given back its original fork and lost its brakes and had its fenders replaced with full coverage, as well as some high-vis lights and an ever so sexy rack. I also replaced the bars with the flopped and chopped original nitto road bars that came with the bike, and put on campy strada GS cranks off of my bmx. In fact the only parts on it that are the same as in the picture are the frame, seatpost and saddle (new headset and bb even!), I should probably just take another picture of the darn thing. The silver bike is in pieces in the shed waiting to be rebuilt as a not-quite-as-insane fixed gear bmx I intend to mess around on and attempt to hurt myself doing tricks. No pics of me as I am on the parental laptop, but I assure you I bear a stunning resemblance to Ghostface Killah.