Fender? Heck, I Hardly Know Her...

Nothing says "geeky commuter bike" better than a set of nice, black plastic fenders. Needless to say, I am quite pleased with these.

The sticker says:

NEV

No Emissions Vehicle

I have sold the rear ENO-hubbed wheel on the bike to a fellow with an older Cannondale (like I originally used this one on, with good results), so I ordered new wheels for the Diablo. They should be here sometime next week. I sorta wanted silver, but it is quite a bit cheaper to buy prebuilt wheels than to buy the parts to build them, myself, and the prebuilt ones I wanted only come in black.

They will look good with the other black components, but silver seems more appropriate to the age of the frame. Of course, I run black rims on the Orange Peugeot, which is 15 years older than this bike, so I don't know why it even concerns me. This bike is meant to be utilitarian transportation, anyhow.

Though, that doesn't stop me from wanting to make it esthetically pleasing; in other words, "Fly." (To steal a line from Soul Coughing.)

In other commuter news, I hit 83 consecutive work days of riding in on the bike, and 1500 miles of commute last Thursday.

The weather is in that mode where I wear a lot of clothes in the morning, then have to pack most of them in the panniers on the afternoon ride home. This is my favorite time of year to ride, because of that.

It's supposed to rain on Tuesday, so the fenders may come in handy. One drawback is that they don't leave enough clearance for the snow chains, but I don't think the U-Brake has enough clearance for them, anyway, so it probably doesn't matter.

I'm hoping the 29-inch wheels on the GT will work better in the snow, anyway. We'll cross that snow bridge when we come to it (hopefully more successfully than Robert Wagner in The Mountain).

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