Nordest Albarda

Although the Nordest Albarda sort of was my 50th birthday present to myself, it was built on a tight budget using the wheels I had on my red Volagi Viaje and robbing my Ritte Snob Disc of most of its parts. Building the Albarda was a slow process. An hour one evening, two hours another evening, and sometimes more when I lost track of time. Everything was built in stages. One night, the BB and crankset. The next night, the drivetrain. One night headset and fork. Another for the brakes and one last evening to bleed them. No hiccups or problems, except that the Chris King headset Nordest sold with the frameset isn't suitable for the fork. At least not in my opinion. So, a Cane Creek 110 was installed instead. The fork and DT Swiss Centerlock lock ring didn't have enough clearance for me. Then I remembered that my wife's Alfine hub had an older DT Swiss lock ring with an inner spline. This one would leave a wider gap to the fork leg, so I swapped lock rings since it really doesn't matter what type of lock ring is on my wife's bike.

I also needed a new stem. Doing the rough math in my head, I figured the stem needed to be slightly shorter with more drop. One weekend morning, I fired up QCAD on my MacBook Pro and drew my Volagi Viaje and my custom-geo Nordest Albarda. A very simplified drawing, because all I needed was a stem length and drop. Whereas my Volagi runs a 110mm stem with -6º, a shorter 100mm stem with -17º put me into a very similar riding position as the Volagi. So, one was ordered. Zipp, of course, to keep components across my bikes the same. The purpose of the bike is to put me back on 700C wheels so that I can compare them to 650B RoadPlus. With a total weight of 8.6 kg, the Albarda is noticeably lighter than the Volagi. Time will tell if I'll prefer one over the other, and maybe I'll discover that both wheel sizes have their place.