SRAM Orange

• My riders sometimes complain that I am an cycling elitist, but I counter that I am but a humble community organizer. For a while, I wondered whether this had something to do with my usual training bike, a custom titanium roadie equipped with Campagnolo components. In the scheme of things, this isn't a particularly flashy ride, but as the DS of a novice development team -- I though this might be inappropriate, so last week I sold it.

  I've decided to replace it with my trusty, fifty-eight year old Frejus. It has an absolutely frozen seatpost (thankfully stuck at exactly the right height) and a greaseless frozen bottom bracket and lovely cottered crank with a permanent melodious squeak. It's the perfect fixed wheel winter training bike, and it's come out a bit early this year. To spiffy things up a bit, I treated it to a fancy-but-old-looking grey Brooks B-17 with titanium rails and a shiny cockpit: a Nitto stem and matching 36cm B125 track drops. While bare track drops sure are pretty -- they're pretty slippery, so I added a pair of limited edition SRAM Orange brifters, made just for Team TATI.

  The brifters neither shift (as there are no mechs) nor do they brake (as there are not brakes). Upon viewing my new setup this morning, Jesse decided that it was a fine bike and all, but the SRAM Orange stuff was a little uppity.