My new Brooks B-17 Special in British Racing Green arrived today. I was, um, really quite surprised. I’d ordered just two days ago on the 15th when Nashbar had a 25% off sale. I wasn’t quite willing to buy the new saddle at $150, but with the discount it seemed, well I did it.
The color was almost immediately disappointing…until I took the saddle into sunlight. Then the beauty was completely apparent. I’d put up a picture, but it’s almost impossible to see the lovely green color – a very deep sort of jade according to a lovely woman who was on the roof of our building where I had to go to get some sunlight this time of day. She was doing her laundry btw, that’s where our machines are…she wasn’t just hanging around on the roof.
The other item that arrived with my order was a 130mm Nashbar Comfort Quill Stem for the Fujiyama. Basically I’d sort of messed up the original stem when I changed bars a while back. When I opened the stem up a bit to slide the bars into position I’d overdone it and bent it up a bit with the result that it wouldn’t clamp well and keep the bars from sliding a bit over time.
The new one has a faceplate so you can simply place the bar where you want it and tighten everything up. We’ll have to see if it is, in fact, a better stem. So far so good as at the very least it looks better.
Some other things are on the way…
- Velox bar end plugs
- Another Nitto Touring water bottle cage
- Some leather mud flaps
- And to match the QBs color – some Klean Kanteen water bottles
There might even be a few other things on the way but that’s all I can recall for the moment.
Aloha!