Sticker Shock

I have had the great fortune of receiving bikes for free since 2006. Ah, the joys of sponsorship. Prior to that, my last road bike purchase was 2003, when I bought my Moser scandium frame with 9 speed Ultegra for $2000. I am quite certain that I got a pretty good deal on that bike. Perhaps the frame was discounted because it was a one year old model and 46cm frames aren’t exactly flying off the shelves.

I have owned a total of 11 bicycles since I started racing in 1999.

Note: the number of bikes you own should be equal to the number of years spent racing/riding plus one. The exception to this rule is if it is your second year or less of racing, you are allowed 3 bikes, provided one is a road bike, one is a cross or mountain bike, and one is a beater/commuter/singlespeed.

With the exception of the Moser, everything else was either purchased used at an extremely low price, given to be for free because it lacked value and no one else could fit it, or it was provided by a sponsor. Wait, I did buy one new Novara Pulse kids size 26″ cross bike from REI in 2006, but it was only $500 and I have since sold it to a smaller friend in need of an appropriate bike for off road riding.

Which leads me to where I am now. I raced for Terry Precision from 2006-2009. During that time I was provided with a brand new Dura Ace equipped road bike with racing and training wheels every season, with the exception of 2009 when I was provided with a SRAM Rival equipped cyclocross bike. I love, love, love my Terry bikes. I love them so much that unlike my teammates who would often sell off their previous year model at the end of the season, I kept mine. When finding decent bikes that fit is difficult, you find it hard to let go of these things. Most people would wonder why I owned two identical road bikes. My response was, well, if something happens in a Saturday race and I crash, I can’t exactly go to the shop and just buy another for the Sunday race. So my spare bikes were my insurance policy. I did not keep every bike, but it takes a while for me to part with them. I have this rule where I won’t allow myself to sell off a bike until it has been replaced. For example, the Moser was not let go until I had accumulated two Terry’s (one of which was then converted to a time trial bike). The IF cross bike was not sold until the Valkyrie was in my possession.

So here we are and it’s 2010 and I decided that I’d really like to try a carbon frame. I have been riding steel since 2006 and before that scandium since 2003, and then 7000 series aluminum since I started in 1999. I have ridden a carbon bike once, for about 20 miles, at Interbike in 2006 – I test rode a Fuji Supreme SL. The bike was about 15lbs and I was amazed at the responsiveness of the carbon. The bike was also full Dura Ace and other carbon goodies and cost about $5000. I did not dispute the value of the bike – it really was worth $5k, but I did not like the geometry or the fact that the smallest size was built with 700c wheels. I did not like the fact that the smallest size had a 100mm stem and Mr. Fuji (not his real name, but it was the owner or president of the American portion of Fuji Bikes) insisted that the design was correct for the longer stem. This was the bike that would be ridden by Team Lipton and he insisted that Laura Van Gilder had no trouble with that geometry. Well, sure, but LVG is still about 2″ taller than me. But whatever…it was an expensive carbon bike, but I did not like it.

Back to 2010 and my quest for a carbon bike that fit me – after endless searching of the internet, I found my new bike – an Orbea Diva. The frame is carbon, the bike fully built weighs around 15lbs, and the geometry is exactly what I need – 74º seat tube angle, 50cm top tube, 46cm head tube. The chain stays are slightly shorter and the head tube is slightly more relaxed with a bit more fork rake than my Terry, but this all promises to be a smooth handling bike, and I have received emails from other women who race confirming that the Orbea is a phenomenal machine.

Finding a dealer willing to bring said bike into stock was another matter, but Providence Bike was very accommodating. You see, I did not want to buy a fully built bike. I decided that it wasn’t worth paying for it fully built when I practically have an entire bike shop inventory of miscellaneous parts lying around here. I decided I would strip a Terry and put those parts on the Orbea and save some buck.

Why not just buy the whole thing new? I’ll tell you why.

A brand new 2010 Orbea Diva with full Dura Ace group and fancy schmancy carbon peripherals (seat post, stem, etc..) costs…are you ready?

Seven.Thousand.Dollars.

$7000

Oh my word. That’s a car. That’s a used low mileage Ducati. That’s practically a year of graduate school.
WTF? When did bikes get so expensive?

The Ultegra build costs $5000….you can imagine my shock when I saw that my frame and fork – just frame and fork, no seatpost, no bottom bracket, no headset – cost $3000.

People…my Terry Fast Woman with Dura Ace retails for $3000 new.

Wow.

I’ll write more about this later (the frame is here, but it’s just a naked frame and fork at the moment, nothing exciting yet). I am not exactly in a hurry to build this, because despite our lack of snow this winter (suck it, Mid Atlantic people) it’s still too cold for me to ride outside. What I can tell you is that I opted for the “pink” frame instead of the “blue” because I already own several sets of pink Velocity wheels and many pink Terry Damselfly saddles. And wouldn’t you know that what Orbea calls “pink” the 64 box of Crayola crayons would call “orchid”, or perhaps “violet”. So now I am starting to wonder if I should have ordered the blue one, but then I thought in the off chance that I don’t feel like putting the black race wheels on my bike for training, I would probably look like a Smurf riding around in pink and blue, because what Orbea calls “blue” Crayola would call “aqua marine”.