Bella Blue - The Beautiful Litespeed

My beautiful new Litespeed, a 2005 "Bella" is here. The bike build went beautifully thanks to Steve Loebach, manager of Carmichael Cycles and fellow cycling buddy and all-around wonderful human being.

Here's a shot of her in her finished state:

We robbed all the good stuff from my poor Fuji. Dura Ace components from stem to stern with one wee exception: I still have Ultegra brakes...

At the bike shop, Steve, Jett, and I debated changing the crankset out to either a Dura Ace or Ultegra. We left the shop with the decision to use the Ultegra due to cost, availability and (for me) looks (I liked it being a matte type of metal rather than shiny). Later on, Jett and I had doubts. Why didn't we go for Dura Ace? Opportunity lost. Oh well. But Steve our psychic bike builder, who knows us better than we know ourselves, realized we would be happier with the Dura Ace. And he was right and it is gorgeous. I love the look against the raw titanium and blue paint.

The previous 2 shots we "finished product" shots. Here are a few shots of Jett adding some finishing touches. Here's Bella in our backyard. The Fuji has mis-matched carbon bottle cages. This was unacceptable. Bella deserves matching cages! (And sorry, Dave, no titanium cages for me. I like the carbon touches here and there: handle bars, seat post, bottle cages).

One thing that has been a major problem has been my pedals. I was using Look Keos and Jett was using Shimanos. That means that while we are the same height and do fit the same size bike, our shoes wouldn't let us easily swap rides. And those darn Keos were harder than heck for me to clip in and out of... Here are some cool Shimano Ultegra pedals. The color is uber cool against the titanium. (Look at Jett's hands - she has the tiniest mitts ever. I am somewhat proud of my man-hands!)

And here are the matching bottle cages. Looks fly, doesn't it?

And my very sad Keo cleats. Very grungy. How did Jett put it? There was a lot of landscape in there.

And here's my new Shimano cleat - and Jett's older Shimano cleat: matching! She later changed her cleats out too. Now we are both fresh and new in the cleat department...

That's it for now. Will post photos of some of our gorgeous Sacramento rides in the near future.