Happy Birthday To Me. Time For A Little Upgrade.

Seriously, it really is my birthday today.  And, unlike that famous quote by Harrison Ford in Raiders of the Lost Ark, "It's not the age, it's the mileage," in cycling, it really is about the mileage.  The age part is just a by-product of life tacked on to remind us to not waste any of the precious time we have here on Ol' Blue.  And, waste not, I.

I bought Frankenbike, my reliable Trek 2.3, in 2010, and it has seen me through thick and thin, as well as serving as an excellent testbed for product evaluations.  However, as honest of a ride as it has been, one thing had always kinda' bugged me: The mish-mash of cables out in front of the bars, courtesy of the stock Shimano 105 5600 Series shifters.  While my old friend Mr. 105 has never let me down, I have always admired the clean look of under-the-bar cables, and being it was time to change out all of the cables anyway (three-years was plenty of time), why not clean up the cable routing, too?

Enter Tweaked Sports of Glendora, California, and the fine gentlemen there helped solve my ire with cable spaghetti with a beautiful set of Ultegra 6700 shifters.  Good-bye cable spaghetti!  In addition, they also provided a Shimano PRO Vibe 7S Alloy bar to go along with my birthday upgrade, and to compliment the Pro Vibe 7S alloy stem I have fallen in love with.  The Vibe bar is basically the same as my trusty Ritchey WCS Logic II alloy, but the Vibe carries on where the Ritchey left off: A constant 31.8mm diameter across the tops of the bar.  I have discovered over time that I like the constant diameter, as the Logic II's narrow quite a bit from the center.

Well, there you have it.  Some new stuff to try, another year older, and more roads to explore, yonder there horizon.

So, with the sincerest apologies to Mr. Indiana Jones, give me miles, miles, and miles.  The age factor I cannot do anything about.  

The box.

The prize: New Ultegra 6700 shifters.

Shimano PRO Vibe 7S Alloy, Anatomical bars.