Inspired by Sprinter della Casa's post about his Riggio track bike, I thought I might give an overview of the gear I'm using. I gave an overview/review of my Felt TK2 earlier in the season, but, as a disorganized and halfhearted blogster, don't title or tag my entries and so they're hard to look through to link again and find.

This weekend, I put back together my pretty track bike, above. It's a Pogliaghi, dating from 1973 by my guess. I got it for a steal almost two years ago from a rider in Albequerque, who trusted me enough to send the frameset to me on his dime, prior to payment, so that I could give it a chance before committing. I took my time building it up, relying on modern cranks and the wheels from my commuter at first.

But then I took some other opportunities - buying a Zeus rear hub laced to a Mavic Open Pro, picking up a set of Campagnolo pista cranks, and before I really knew it I was slowly building the bike to a general sense of period-appropriateness. The last bit, I picked up this winter - a Zeus front hub laced to a Mavic Open Pro, for a matching wheelset. (Zeus! Avoiding the all-Campy build with these replicas from Spain - and how smooth they are, too...)

With Cinelli criterium bars and 165 cranks (my first foray into <170mm cranks), I was really pleased at how the bike fits. I had only ever ridden my commuter extensively before, and so was pleased at some of the other ways that a bike can fit a smaller rider.

I started the track season racing it, but I'm pretty attached to the bike; the more seriously I took the season, the less I wanted to race a bike I was attached to. So I started looking around for a modern aluminum track bike that would tolerate being underneath a working racer.

The Pogliaghi sat sadly in my bike pile for several months - no rear wheel, no pedals, bars hanging in the closet - until earlier this week. I put it back together, and was reminded about how lovely it is to ride - the swiftness of the handling, the smoothness of the drivetrain and wheels, and the charmingly odd combination of supple steel and jarring, steep angles. So I've been riding it to work, with a big smile on my face.

It's probably the least useful bike in my stable, but we all deserve a little bit of vanity now and then.

Edit: that picture uploaded like that? Crap. well, here's a link.