I really couldn't justify buying another frame right now, but when this one fell into my hands for free as a result of damage by United Parcel Servcice, I couldn't resist. For quite a few years I've been riding a 25 inch Cannonodale ST500 touring frame as a fixed gear, but it never really fit me right, and the vertical dropouts made it only marginally suitable for fixed-gear use.

This 58 cm Gunnar Street Dog frame has an ugly dent in the side of the top tube, but is functionally OK, and fits me a lot better than the Cannondale did. In addition, it was compatible with the nice crmo touring fork that came with the 'Dale, and the color matched too!

I picked up a used Sugino AT tandem crank on the Internet, and have used half of it to outfit this bike with left side drive, using the captain's cranks from the tandem set. This gives a nice narrow tread ("Q factor") and good chainline with a Shimano 113 mm symmetrical bottom bracket.

This bike actually has a 630 mm (27 inch) rear wheel and a 622 mm (700C) front wheel at present. The Cannondale had originally been built for 630 wheels, but I had wound up replacing the front with a lighter 622 wheel. Sometime I'll replace the rear wheel as well, maybe with a flip-flop hub...the larger wheel is a bit of a tight squeeze for the rear fender.

The front wheel has only 24 spokes, using a 36 hole Sansin Gyromaster hub and a 24 hole Sun ME14 rim.

It features a Lepper Voyager saddle, Scott AT3 LF handlebars, and a BMX freestyle brake lever with a "stopper" button that acts as a parking brake.

The headlight mount is a bit unusual. I used the "custom lowrider" mount on the touring frame to mount an old Soubitez headlamp, using a cut-down hub quick release skewer. It uses an old broken axle as a sspacer. This makes a very secure headlight mount but permits vertical aiming of the lamp. The headlight has a yellow French bulb just for the hell of it.

The generator is a Swiss "Lightspin" unit, amazingly easy running. I can hardly tell when it is engaged, though it doesn't put out as much light at low speeds as the Shimano Nexus generator hubs I've got on a couple of my other bikes.

When the light setup was on the Cannondale, I had the generator mounted on the seat stay, but when I transferred the parts, I didn't feel like re-wiring the lights, so I just moved it to the fork. That's why there's so much excess wire wrapped around the mount. Someday I'll shorten it...