I made the pilgrimage to Walnut Creek via Bart yesterday, my Sam was waiting for me. I thought it would be romantic to ride home and get a proper feel for my first Rivendell...and it WAS. Roman is a pleasure to work with and he showed me some details of the bike. I didn't know this but they give you some swag too:patch kit, allen tool, bandana, the new seatpost diam. stickers etc...fun!
Build details: I bought the Sam Hillborne to replace a Crust Romanceur and moved most of the parts over. The low trail handling of the Romanceur did not sit well with me, felt too unstable and quick descents felt borderline dangerous requiring both hands on bars. I did need 700c wheels so I kept with the Velocity Quills in case I go tubeless again. *Hub sound is important to me, I have a White T11 that is very loud (too loud for me) and would make sense (to me) on a proper road bike. But the Sam (and the Crust) is my do most things bike, including low speed neighborhood runs with my kids, errands, etc. A loud hub is a conversation non-starter in these situations. I visited RBW earlier and really liked the stock Velocity hub, louder than Deore but still quiet-ish, a classy sound imo. Rich used one word to describe the Silvr hub.....LOUD. I also have the Velocity dynamo hub which Rich says is the same as the Kasai (which isn't in stock atm. *Son light, paul cantis, White VBC cranks (44x30) albatross bars, a new RBW front rack etc. Bike thoughts: Only 20 miles with some hills into it but I love the stability! That was my main reason for selling the Crust and I love how the Sam handles. With sweep back bars the handling can become too light but I was able to ride hands free down small hills which I would never try on the low trail Crust. YAY!! I will fine tune bar height; the stem is a Tallux 12 which is an error, we had decided on the 90-190 so Roman will have that switched next week. I will try to post pics here but if not I will reply with pics. I may change the eggplant bartape to olive or navy or grey. I'm open to suggestions! I'm looking forward to more time on the bike, thanks for reading! Brian -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbw-owners-bunch/6694d5a5-5688-4b5f-a64a-6866d76c0e39n%40googlegroups.com.
