I just bought a 2007 Sputnik last weekend in Toronto for CDN$900 with Tektro brakes, a handlebar swap to 44cm Bontrager flattop drops and an ACS freewheel from Cycle Therapy on Queen E...It is a matter of pride that I ALWAYS ride my bikes home from the shop I bought them...Unfortunately, I live about a 150km ride from Cycle Therapy...The good news is, you can pretty much get all the little seat height and handlebar height/angle issues solved over the course of such a long ride...

John at Cycle Therapy did a great job building up my bike for me...The wheels came from Jamis severely undertensioned, but he spent almost an hour and a half essentially rebuilding them for me so I wouldn't have any issues on the ride home...This was definitely the best assembly job I've ever experienced (including the "pro quality" assembly I paid extra for on my Lemond)...The brakes are still perfectly set up, the wheels are still round and true even though I rode home over some seriously washboarded gravel farmroads that had potholes big enough to stick my fat head into while wearing a messenger bag with 20 pounds of crap in it...

The frame is pretty cleanly built (which is more than I can say for the afforementioned Lemond) with especially nice lost wax dropouts with threaded adjusters, brazed on seatpost binder and a really nice looking brake bridge...It's black anodized with "decals" which look to be somehow printed directly onto the frame (decal peelers BEWARE...this is NOT the bike for you)...The plastic headtube badge looks a little cheap, but it'll probably fall off in a month, so it won't matter...The angles aren't as steep as I initially thought they would be, which yields a ride which is similar to the Lemond "classic" geometry...Which means it's equally as good over long hauls with a messenger bag full of crap as it is slicing and dicing with traffic...It does feel a bit harsh on the arse for a steel frame, but that could be due to the incredible bump-muting power of the Easton EC70 fork making the frame look bad...

About that Easton fork: It is stiff as hell...It mutes all of the bumps on the road...And it looks Uber-sexy whilst doing so...Oddly, the Easton logos stand out more than the Jamis logos on the bike...A couple of non-bike people have commented on how much they like my new Easton ride...As a bonus, the fork's steerer comes from Jamis uncut...So, for those of you out there who are suffering from back problems or who just don't like being hunched over too much, this might be a reason to choose the Sputnik over the competition...

The bike comes stock with Ritchey Comp handlebars, stem and seatpost...I swapped out the bars for wider Bontrager ones so I can't comment on them, but the stem and seatpost both look okay, are easy to adjust, and seem to work fine...Having used everything from the cheapest Kalloy up to high end Thomson, I can say that this stuff really doesn't matter too much and you won't notice it while riding...I have NEVER felt that a seatpost has ever hampered the quality of my ride...

I think it was Jobst Brandt who said you should always build wheels with the best hubs you can afford...He said this because the hubs will outlast the rims and you can always upgrade your rims on the second building of the hubs...Jamis must have listened to Jobst because the Sputnik comes with Formula cartridge bearing hubs which should last a long time...Unfortunately, the Alex rims are sort of cheap and they are made of pretty soft aluminum without eyelets in the spoke holes...Also, as I noted earlier, the wheels came from the factory with severe tension issues...If you're not shopping at a store that is willing to put the extra time into making sure the wheels are corrected or you're not a particularly good wheelbuilder, you might want to look elsewhere...The wire beaded Vittoria tires are better than I thought they would be, though they're considerably harder to get on and off the rims than Kevlar beaded tires...If you lack finesse with inner tube changes, see if your shop will let you upgrade to a tire with a Kevlar bead and save yourself some frustration...

The optional Tektro brakes and levers seem to be okay...The levers are Campy copies and the dual pivot brakes are Shimano knockoffs...They even come with cartridge pads which was a nice surprise...Sure, the bushings aren't as nice as what Shimano and Campy offer, but a couple of squirts of 3in1 oil on the pivots and you'll never notice the difference...I don't imagine they'll be as durable over the long haul, but at 1/3 the cost, what can you expect?...NOTE: there are no cable stops on the Jamis for a rear brake so, if you want to run them, you'll need to either run a full length of housing down the top tube and attach it with zip ties or use bolt-on cable stops...

About the San Marco Ponza saddle: There is stitching on the nose that ate through my thighs in less than an hour...By the time I got home, I had the worst case of chaffing I'd experienced in my adult life (and a ruined pair of brand new shorts)...For every bum, there is a perfect saddle, and the San Marco Ponza was MOST definitely not the perfect saddle for me...It has subsequently been replaced on my bike with a San Marco Regal Titanio which is my favourite saddle of all time...

Almost every singlespeed out there for the 2007 season seems to have the same RPM cranks...Cannondale, Kona, Giant, Jamis and others have all put them on their fixxies and singlespeeds...They sort of look a bit cheap and they're apparently quite heavy...That being said, they seem to be doing their job...I haven't noted a lot of flex in them...They are WAY too long for a fixxie at 175mm though...

Despite minor qualms, I'm extremely happy with the Jamis Sputnik as a whole...I wanted something for mixing it up in traffic which could also handle longer rides like it's initial voyage...It looks great, it's fairly light (20.5 lbs with brakes, pedals and freewheel) and it makes me feel like a better rider than I am...

OK...Enough typing...Now I ride...