After destroying my CAAD8 last summer, I was without a road bike for an entire academic year while studying abroad in London. I'm back at BC for my senior year and this is what I finished building a couple weeks ago... got a killer deal on everything as an employee of a bike shop.

2007 Ridley Excalibur frameset, small
2009 SRAM Rival groupset
SRAM Force crankset, 172.5mm
2008 Bontrager Race X Lite
FSA Wing Pro Compact Alloy, 40cm
3T ARX Pro 100mm
Thomson Elite, 367mm
Selle Italia SLR

Steerer needs to be cut again. More photos coming once I get the time to clean it up and do a proper shoot. I've been too busy riding the hell out of it every day...

Bummer that you can't afford a camera that takes color photos.

It looks hawt in B&W!!

I hope you're joking.



(not me, a friend at the bike shop with a similar build)

I heart your bike... I've got an Aedon which is the best riding bike I've ever had... I'm sure the Excalibur is incredible. If only my shop carried Ridley

You must be a photographer too - excellent shots of your bike!

I will have a similar build once my frameset arrives. I have Ksyrium SL's for training and ZIP 303s for special days. Whats the aprox weight of your bike? and do you like the shallow drop FSA bars?

Without bottle cages, saddle bag, or Garmin it's 16.3 lbs. I still have to cut the steerer and get rid of some extra length of cable housing, so I'm looking at probably 16.5 with cages when all is done.

His is lopsided?

It was taken with a wide-angle lens, resulting in field-of-view distortion.

your cassette is filthy.




disgusting.

okay... how about some real shots now? I won't have mine built for another 4 days so I need some Excal porn.

umm...that's an apeture thing isn't it?

This is the very definition of...what are the kids calling it now...bike prawns?

I hope your building has an elevator.

I was surprised by how much of an improvement the FSA compact bars are over the stock anatomic ones on my Langster and CAAD8... although maybe I shouldn't be. Partly due to the shallow drop and partly due to the better fit of the Excalibur (LBS sold me the wrong size CAAD8; it was my first road bike), I find myself in the drops more frequently and for longer periods of time. There's just enough of a curve to get a good, light grip on the bars while also providing flexibility in terms of where you place the palm of your hands. I can easily reach my Rival brake and shift levers without extra effort, even when my hands are not as far forward as they could physically be. For whatever reason, they sent me white bars instead of black... and I guess it goes well with the "3T" cutout on the stem.

As for more photos, they will be coming very soon, once I get a chance to cut the steerer this weekend.

I like my dirty cassette.

The field-of view distortion (as seen in the photo of my friend riding his Ridley) is also called barrel distortion, and is symptomatic of wide-angle lenses. The out-of-focus blur that you see in the photos is not this distortion; it's usually referred to as "bokeh" by photographers and results from using a very large aperture (the physical opening that allows light to enter through the lens and onto the film/digital sensor). When the aperture is very large, as in these photos, the plane of what is in focus is very thin. Landscape photographers shoot with very small apertures, on the other hand, to ensure that everything in the photo remains in focus. In the photo of my friend's Ridley, his front wheel looks like it's not perfectly round--this is the result of my wide-angle zoom lens (he was passing really close to me in a training crit when I took this photo).

really...that's pretty clean in my book.

Nice looking build!!!

I've always liked that apartment building on Comm Ave...so, I take it that you are at IBC (I've known the brothers, assuming they are still the owners and around, for years; their dad used to cut my hair when I was a kid); I'll look for you on the roads; at present, I just have with me my MB-3 (with a rack no less), but I am out there staying up just fine with the road bike folk...

Haha yeah, I'm at 2000 Comm Ave and work only Sundays at IBC in Newton now that school has started up again. Yep, Joe and Harold still own and work in the shops.

Hey, it doesn't matter what you ride... I got passed last Friday (and I was really hurting from my workout) by this guy commuting home from work, on a very old Trek roadie with a heavy looking backpack.

great build and photos.

Its depth of field and yes the aperture was WIDE OPEN which caused the blurry background, the wide angle lens helped too.

Actually, longer focal lengths accentuate and exaggerate out-of-focus blur. Wide-angles have "harsher" bokeh when compared to telephoto lenses.

Man, if that cassette is "dirty" mine classifies as a "Hazardous Waste Site" :-)

I just finished my Ridley a couple weeks ago too! I'm LOVING this bike. You're build is pretty similar to what I did as well, a nice mix of SRAM...

How are you liking the ride?

As everyone else has said... love the shots!