Sadness

A few months prior, I acquired a legendary track bike of Soviet fame.  I've mentioned Takhions on here before, and I've also gone off on tangents about how I love weird things, so naturally I discovered these crazy bikes existed and sought to find one.  And after months of searching, I did.

Behold.

You're probably looking at this thinking "Wow, that looks uncomfortable/dangerous/awkward/painful," but when I got to do a test ride on it back in November, I have to say it was equally as much fun to ride as my Trek District, which I rate somewhere around sushi from Sugarfish on my scale of awesomeness. 

As these particular bikes were ridden in the Olympics, they were made to be good for a season.  This bike in particular is a Takhion Temp, and the only one I've ever seen - most are Aeros or Super Sports.  When it came to me, it was clear it had been loved, and ridden quite a bit during its 21 years in existence.  After getting a crankset and bottom bracket and throwing an old Campy seatpost I had lying around on it, a friend of mine threw an amazingly hipster wheelset on it and we took it for a test ride...after which we discovered that the areas where the handlebar attachments are brazed on had cracked.  

These things.

I wasn't too worried, as any welder can do some magic when it comes to Columbus tubing, so I took it back to the shop to have a welder friend of theirs take a look at it.  And guess what?

It's cast iron.  

So it can be fixed, but it will break again.  At this point, I'm pretty bummed because I was hoping to ride this beast around a velodrome, but it seems like that will probably never happen.  Looks like my next step will either be commissioning a very talented frame builder to replicate the incredibly complex fork or seeing if I can find someone to recreate the bike entirely, which has been done.  Sadly, I am anything but made of money, so in the meantime I will have to repair the sad little cast iron fork and bide my time until I can get a legitimately rideable Takhion. 

Bummer.