I'm a finalist!

I got some pretty exciting news this morning. I'm a finalist in a competition to win a bike. Not just any bike mind you... the bike I designed around a Cotic Roadrat frame. Thanks to the generosity of Vorb, Essence Bicycle, and Cotic, I have a 12.5% chance (1 in 8) of winning my dream Cotic.

The competition required choosing a bike frame from the 4 steel hardtail models available from Cotic, then choosing all the parts (right down to the spokes!) and justifying your reason for choosing each bit. You had to price each part and ensure you were under the NZ$5,500 limit. I was well under at about $4k. It was a heck of a lot of fun to do, and I learnt a lot about bikes and bike parts in researching my build.

I've chosen a Roadrat which is kind of a road bike with enough beef to handle some offroad duties (like cyclocross). And I've built it with knobbly tyres, a flip-flop hub being dingle on the freewheel side and single on the fixed side. Flat-ish On One Fleegle bars, a beautiful Pink Hope Mono Mini front brake, and some other stylie stuff finishes it off. The full build details are here.

Mine would be kinda like this one.

My fingers are crossed and I'm trying not to get too excited so I'm not too disappointed if I don't win!

Stay tuned.

*Update*

They say that good news travels fast... well, unfortunately bad news can travel even faster. I didn't win the competition for the bike. Some lucky bloke called 'skint' was named the winner. Oh well, nevermind. Thanks to Essence Bicycle skint will be a very happy man indeed.