4 moons ago I had no knowledge of bikes, but I managed! And long live the ‘80s (and my memories of their seasons)

This is (about) my just-finished at home <80s pop – cosmos> themed bike that I built from scratch, from a stripped and thoroughly cleaned 10 years-old Merida frame (that already felt as a part of my body; I had to replace the fork though). For 90% city and whatever gravel squeezes in. And then throughout it will also be me, I guess.

Since geometries have not changed much over the last 10 years, a round-bars not modern frame was great for clean and bold retro.

I made it in 4 months, alone, starting from not knowing anything technical about a bike.

It took so long because there were eventually so many pieces to order, from all around, and then a normal budget tends to disagree. It has been a very steep learning curve. (I am still being rather formal, it is only the intro!)

The frame was white (an enemy) and I fully wrapped it in 3M vinyl, Deep space high gloss flip, and then PPF 3M Scothgard almost everywhere.

It is quite hard to start telling you what and how and even why, to remember everything. It’s been 4 months with noise on the brain, but I am willing and glad to share. 🙂

I will write here the why, and there are 2.

By logics, it all started with me wanting for the past year to buy the top Canyon Grizl, the one at around 6000 EUR, to replace my old urban-trekking Merida from 2016 (It was the Crossway Urban 300). And one from my trinity of best friends told me – kept telling me during that time – that I am stupid. How to pay that much?!… Not that the Grizl isn't worth it.

(well, yes.. no..)

I love quite a lot of people and I am receptive to their thoughts and info about their lives and pains, yet don’t trust no one when it is about my life (of course I share it a lot, only to laugh though). But one evening 4 months ago before the salary, while I was working (or plain Solitaire maybe), I accidentally looked at the bike (dead dusty resting on the wall ≈80 cm from my PC/ me) and I leaned towards making my friend’s thought mine! Well from that second of course anima kicked in, got up, went downstairs and grabbed a random screwdriver, let’s see… See what!? I knew nothing, I loosened something cause lucky it was torx and got the front light out of its mount. Not saying it for show, I swear I took one step back as the following step and stared for a time correctly proportionally pertaining to my obscure age – that middle one when you stuck often + make noises when bending. So, so far, familiar and legit, and getting back on the chair running crying to ChatGpt or Gemini seemed and still seems righteous.

…! Pfff, it so DID explode from there (because obviously I want to live forever, which equals I want it all), and not only once at the beginning but almost like the Jupiter storm with never-ending question after info after doubt. Finding out about —–strange (in)compatibilities and standards, tiny o-rings, traction-speed-heights-angles-ratios-stack&reach, the infinite variation in the number and size of key notches, materials (and the mighty titanium), industrial cleaners, friction/anti-seize/grease/threadlockers, anodization and PVD coating, post-heating, torques, dampers, tapered things, ZS44/28.6 and 56 vs 55/40, 1 1/8 1.5 27.2 40-622, IS to PM, strange RD hangers, adjustment bolts, clutch mechanics, narrow-wide profiles, oversized pulleys, bleeding Hope (+ its seemingly innocent olive and insert when you turn and want to cut 2cm more for utter perfection), the intersections of my own and the bike’s geometry, KOPS method, big-big+2 for the chain—–, I burnt through more than 30 full-stuck conversations with those two AIs pfff, how annoying when it happens. …To be fair and accurate, my order of feeds was: common sense now and then > Google and YouTube (only because I got so often so mad at the next two) > Gemini > ChatGpt > my handiness > manuals > my sunny disconnected memories from high school physics and chemistry > my intuition (I have close to none, just a big boy).

The colors are not random.

I’m born in the ‘80s (on 8 2 in ’82) (dmyy).

Even if I was a child, even if it was different food, toys, TV, and the iodine pills from ‘86 in Romania before ’89, I’ve been there. I’ve seen the colors of that decade (“that made us”), felt its energy and confidence, lived its summers and its evenings. I’ve seen its enduring echo in the ‘90s. At least for me, it’s been a timeless echo of a time.

The vinyl was the guiding first choice and it was hard to choose from all the nice deep flashy foils from 3M and Avery. But I had to go with purple, I had to. Not only that it is ‘80s DNA, but I have always been familiar in my thoughts with the cosmos, its wild dark vastness (if only to counterbalance our stupid locality, centrality issue of representation) – which violet and ultraviolet can capture.

Purple, deep blue and dark copper are the colors of the flip, and none strange to the cosmos; therefore, many of the pieces and accessories are also those colors. But then I needed another 3 accent luminous colors for pop stamina, and I went for soft pink, bleu ciel, and orange. They were all in the ‘80s (of course, but everything was there anyway); and they are all in the cosmic nebulae of our Pisces-Cetus and beyond.

From there, there was the conflicting concern that I had to stay away from –…what is big and different from pink, light blue and orange? – yellow, red, and green! (It’s been so long that even now I see those as enemies and I will need some more time to cool down). Otherwise, it could’ve been a circus (or maybe some think it already is??). So, the technical precision that was already hunting my days delved from the millimeters into the microns whole new level of struggle with choices.

I was finally lucky enough to find in great numbers what I needed, including purple limited editions of the things I wanted anyway!! Still, the colors alone would not convince anyone about the ‘80s idea, so I naturally identified the wheel rims as a permissive playground for more. On the one hand, I used them as an ‘index’ of my bike, the brands that included stickers, and on the other hand, I tried a more direct expression which took 4 full days: I searched for and downloaded hundreds of photos, painfully selected and used 81 of those (unintentional number); for each I edited 3 parameters in Photoshop (hue, luminosity, saturation) across 7 colors (meaning 1701 edits in total) :)) ; there were other edits as well, then mastering in Lightroom, then composing in Illustrator. That was needed so as to have no red, yellow, or green; in fact, I actually left those below an eyeballed 5%, not to flatten the puzzles too much. I also composed them reversely symmetrical in pairs, in both background and foreground colors, for more consistency when the wheels will spin. 🙂

And they are, for each wheel side: 1 set of sweaters, 1 set of track/ shell suits, 1 set of “lights”, and 1 of graffiti. Aside from the graffiti, they are exclusively photos taken in the ‘80s, haha. …You might know, even if they are not, they were intended to be perfect.

My accent colors also have a little intentional geometry: I’ve made a top floating line of brown/ bronze (matching the copper in the flip foil) with the Cambium saddle, the Title bronze spacers and the Ergon cork grips, which boxes the bike together with the tan walls of the tires (the flipped rie:sel mud guards chip in). Then, the Woodman QRs are light satin pink, and the one in the front makes a straight upwards line with the large (same) pink Title spacer at the top, having the Trigo (same) pink bracket in the middle of that line (and again the rie:sel). The oranges – the King seat clamp, the Bookman curve light facing front-right just above the pedals on the seat tube, and the BikeYoke glossy cap (that sparks like fire over the satin spacers) – are an up-shifted main triangle. The handlebar and front have as many purple pieces I could find, with all burnt blue bolts, and finally the light blue has its own smaller triangle in the back-to-middle – the Garbaruk cage, the back Trigo (with its rie:sel again), and the back-half of the Supacaz right bottle cage (which is a gradient to purple towards the purple front).

The spacers – I’ll tell you about that.

On a general note, I think I grasp this thick wave of pop nostalgia hitting our Western culture, but tangled with an anxiety and curiosity for a techno-galactic future. Accelerated tech feels like expanding boundaries, and the closest to us are physical ones, cosmic. That is why I believe I see a lot of blue-purple around (I have enough current examples, but see the Xiaomi 17t right on haha, and the recent Metallica concert in Bucharest – a smart girl friend of mine pointed it out to me). Copper, pink, orange, and light blue are also cosmic, and in my multi-tiny-fractured brain I tend to believe these colors serve our excitement for the future better than yellow, green or red.

If I went too far with words on colors here, I can try to cancel by going the other way far out: For anything you have to choose something; in any way, to go on then. haha

Some details now, for your reference, kindly please see figures II, IV, VII, and MMDCX haha. No, but really, some things I would like to show and share:

● I put vinyl and PPF even on the handlebar and mirror. I am actually proud I managed to lay the deep space foil everywhere, even on every side, face and part of the mounts, eyelets, tabs, ridges, slopes and valleys of the frame! The girls unitedly exclaimed that I am meticulous-patient but I had not once thought of that, so I was glad to believe that I could, maybe, I really am(!).

● Some things you just long for, so I bought a JBL Click remote from Australia – but from the only place on this earth where you can still find it, it seems. They don’t make it anymore. The longer I searched, it was obvious that it was the only option.

● At some point I had 43 packages to receive. My Aftership became air traffic control for inter-continental logistics. :)) I obviously tended to panic and didn’t know where my life was at, but my luck was to be able trust them all, ah!, good people of this middle earth who delivered on their promises to an easy-to-take-advantage-of-those-few-days overwhelmed me. 🙂

● There are more numbers of crazy – crazy now, cause then was just business: …I have 499 photos taken throughout with my backup crappy cold-blooded phone (that was supposed to be replaced back but wasn’t, and I know their number, they’re in a folder); excluding screenshots. For seeing (sometimes even for zooming on tiny where eyes don’t help pfff), showing, bragging, consulting (people, on things and details they don’t give a fck), knowing what to buy when hunting pieces, fearfully checking with AI, raising disputes on wrong items. WTF :))

● I bought an Insize digital caliper early. Aaannd… No, no one can count how many times I used it. But the complete motion, you sit on the bed to cool off a bit (apply yourself to normality for good’s sake, one day(!)), measurement; just to get back up, go where the PC is to act accordingly to the former. Yes, that is in fact my prevailing memory now, clowny repetition in silence.

● I replaced all the steel screws I possibly could. Counted 120 screws, washers and nuts – titanium, PVD coated in burnt blue, oil slick, and candy/ trout (not random).

● About the bottle cages and mount stack on the down tube, I am proud of that rocket engineering (always calipers here): The cage bosses on the down tube had small raised bumps which lifted the long Wolf Tooth B-RAD 4-slot mount by about 1 mm. And they are not enough anyway to carry the weight in the cages, so I used, build a sort of “custom washer” from 2 layers of 3M Safety Walk 220 (transparent, not mineral, soft on the PFF, while also creating friction) cut to the exact size of the width of the long B-rad and precise interruptions for 4 ring wraps of TESA self-amalgamating tape, again needed for protection + friction between the PPF and the ABB Ty-Rap (high performance) zip ties. I used a Toolcraft tie pliers for flush cuts. Then, for the lower part of the stack, I mounted a small B-rad and half-bottle adaptors for flexibility, but that B-RAD could not be tightened on top of the Alterlock gen 3, because that is plastic and they recommend max 2 Nm; so I routed the Ty-Raps under the Alterlock, and then to distribute the pressure on it from above (for the lower cage), I used  2 countersunk RTAMO burnt blue bolts of 45 mm (45  to engage almost all of frame threads) on 14 mm countersunk assorted washers, which then sit on larger Taimeili burnt blue washers which have an upper face of exactly 14 mm and a bottom of 20 mm, which is exactly the width of the small B-RAD slot they are pressing; but these are M8 washers, and the screws are M5, so to centre them I used 3 bushing gaskets on each screw, 5.2 internal and 8 mm external diameter, 2 mm high each – 3 because they don’t just occupy the height of the washers, they also fall into the slots of the B-RAD. And you can grab and lift the bike by this mount!! –You can see the thing in one pf the photos.

The 2 Supacaz upper bottle cages are for 2 JBL Flip 7.

● Gopro mounts are always shown with those chunky thumb screws. But I always used calipers to measure the faces of the outer prongs and ordered corresponding (diameters + colors) titanium bolts and nyloc nuts, then tightened the assemblies at the needed angles. Yes, there is another joint on top of the FR160, for the hollow 3D printed mount (for the computer), but with it I can tilt it however I need and it is raised a bit as well.

● Towards the end, a gravitational pull or a sense of darkness creeping back into the forests of the world, or something, I don’t know, made it very difficult to close the circle. For instance, the final symposium of orders contained a screw of 120 RON from AliExpress (the candy/ trout m5x25 one with an exact 14mm head, compressing the Ravemen gopro into the purple West Biking gopro adapter with an exact 14 mm face of the outer prong – yeees, yess, they send 4, but I used the one). Of course, I had my doubts – but doubt is putting it mildly – I spent almost 2 hours trying to bypass the outrage, even reverse image-searched. But what can you do?! when life is millimeters and you need the exact one but there is none? Yes, I ended up spending more on screws than on the bike when I got it in 2016. The same with tools. I mean more on tools than the bike, the second separate more, ok?! :)) But listen, I had my heart on the Wera A5 and C2 click-torque for the full 2.5 – 100 Nm range in 1/4 and 1/2 for 4 years since I was gently destroying screw after screw building the fence (ghhh, yes, I now remember the annoying extra detail with so many keys being actually 3/8, how else?!)

Regarding technical things, I used Hope Tech 4 EVO TR4 brakes with mismatched road – MTB, smoke – orange sets (front and back), purple Control blades, and burnt blue titanium pivots and BPC & reach adjustment screws (from Ti-Parts), half for beauty, half for wanting the best for brakes, an aero Alugear mainly for beauty (and narrow-wide), less for rigidity, the Garbaruk cage with oversized tension pulley for all they say, SRAM BB and eagle crank for rigidity, XT 8000 shadow RD for reliability, XTR 9000 shifter for crispness, Paragon Gold fork for what it is and what my bike is for (had to measure and lower and inverse everything though, to get back to my original geometry, and I did), Schwalbe G R Evo front for bite & control and Maxxis Reaver back for speed — that is, if I got everything right…

I got the new Rearvue 820 (will use only the radar) and 1050, curious about them.

And yeah, the tower of spacers ABOVE the stem, together with the mini handlebar extender, live only to embrace one on each side a(nother) JBL – but a Charge 6 now –> only when I’m rough, cause I’m a punk!

Oh! I forgot to say, I didn’t fck up too much with nothing, not at all!

So there is also my “day” (essentials) music list, which is there!, only not in the photos.

It is of course built around 80s pop, new wave, synth-pop – my main thing. But not only that and not only a genre or an energy or linear. It has hypnosis, elegance, melancholy, aggression and brute force from music for many ways of looking at the scenery, it is a gear shifter in traffic, and it contains everything I believe to be fantastic for cycling in the city, from the little I know.

Yes, I have no filter and I don’t listen to genres, I listen to songs that defeated the other songs in their genres and ways. And it is not a playlist of soapy retreat, but for engagement. Of course.

And then, beware, a part is sort of designed for my routes. :)) Dragula – Megalomaniac – Supernature is to get out of my filthy fkin suburb, and quickly. At Dragula I am generally pissed + electric-charging for the inside-to-outside environment change (not feeling uncomfortable but every time anxious, from the 300,000 years-old hunter ganglia I guess); for the other 2 I can be less so, it’s a wide boulevard by now. And at Go or more realistic at Black Jack Davey I can even look at people. But the way I look is in I Touch Roses still. Further down at Face To Face I am actually able to smile and quickly next at So In Love I am fully back at what I consider to be my standard “good me”. This one is rolling 2 times without any 3 clicks-back for a reason. (I might be way wrong here, I might not be good for anybody.)

But then it is cycles.

No, not cycles – it’s Fire and Fires

People Everywhere, they said Don’t Go.

They say it’s No Good.

They said they can’t Walk the Atlas with Pantera on Diesel Power. Then they said you can’t reach that Blue Savannah, Burning Blue, True Blue!

But Go!

Go West over Oceans And Streams…

Me, I don’t know, I’m Thinking Of A Place and This Is Nowhere. I have this Nostalgic Feel, a New Sensation. And the Joyride is now My Obsession.

See now the Dancing Queen with those Purple Eyes?

Me, I still don’t know. Do I Wanna Dance With Somebody? Cause I’m just Dancing With Myself. Might be Dancing With Tears In My Eyes.

Domino Dancing, no Self Control, just hopelessly Keep Fallin From The Air. Why scream why whisper Catch Me I’m Falling?

I don’t know anymore, It Sounds Like A Melody so Let The Music Play anyway!

And keep them Bloody Palms on the handlebar,

I still Hope for Deliverance

17+ hours here: https://tidal.com/playlist/bb72febf-3669-4278-aea8-cc6cc0edd8eb

I know some hate music in public spaces, fair. But the outside works messy with spiders, dust, and UV and that is where the extended range of diversity is. Better to be happy.

I have always been acutely sensitive to worlds that disappear. To the extent that it gets quite physical; and that, for instance, I better look the other way when I pass by the place where my grandparents lived, I mean the place where there were so many real episodes of a life, mine, but one so far away in time like it was another. I don’t really know where it got suspended. …A foreign place now which holds no memory, no clue even that anything was there anyway.

And all the places I’ve been, with all the spectacles, the people in them. Cities that look different or gone, the internet which was a place, shops, trains, rooms, objects, and versions of yourself – like a dream of sorts.

Maybe I am like that because I had a first moment of strange awareness of time very early in my life. This strangest of feelings that world is either too beautiful or too mysterious to be comprehended, or that the world, the existence is too big, or melancholia, or that life is elsewhere because while time gives you you and reality, at every “turn” it also takes away from you every possibility to be somewhere else – the paradox of the “infinity of possibilities” around you which is also you, but a you who never entered the straight line of passing time (in fact I guess this is melancholia, sehnsucht, longing for what never was). Pfff, I could have described now that first moment, with a road and certain evening light and some things, and I think it would’ve been easier to understand, though it doesn’t seem the place for it.

So anyway, yes, it’s tricky with time, and I long for lost worlds, from both in and out of time if nobody minds me say it like this. …I mean really, doesn’t it bother you at all that none of us will be here in 2610?

However, my key is that I am not just a passive melancholic. I also use my hands to build.

My natural reaction to disappearance is a reflex to create what is possible, to recover densities. Yes, I know, sand castles!, but my own, and real. I build new physical worlds to comfortably survive the disappearance of the old ones.

So I built this. A 1%-time machine, a stubborn attempt to stop it (time!) haha

When I look at the bike today, I find it utterly beautiful. Not because I “made” it – I didn’t, I was just playing, staying here for a while, living around.. The only thing that is in my mind, and I swear again, is how could all those-and how many unknown people-and how much time and effort it took for them to deliver that technical preciseness with such finesse.

I am grateful, but more than that, of course, I feel small.

And happy though. 🙂

Now that it is part of the picture, that felt on the wall behind the bike, great for both thermal insulation and room acoustics in my bedroom, I bought from Feltright – and they are so so nice.

Oh yes!, I built it in my bedroom. 🙂 The messy stages were in the bathroom or in the hallway between them, but most of it was on the free side of my 2×2 meters bed. I mean you might know, vinyl wrap requires cleanliness, and which other room?? And one might better not make a face, because the mattress is the firm type, the height was perfect for both sitting and leaning over, the lights right on, and the parts were always cleaned with IPA, anyway. And it inspired no rush. Yeah, I bought a bike stand, never used it, for real.

Maybe, yes, anybody can do it.

A photo with Pegas is never too late!