Note that you’ll have to speak the title using a Jeff Spicoli voice (as performed by Sean Penn in Fast Times…). Or perhaps from Bill and Ted…

I’m spending the week becoming a more excellent developer, in a five-day course for developers. “Excellence” has been a big hit since Tom Peter’s 1982 smash hit In Search of Excellence (which was followed by “A Passion for Excellence” in 1985, and then, finally, with “A messy divorce from Excellence” in late 1989).

Classes like this can be hit or miss – they’ll cover a lot of ground that you’ve seen before, but this one has a lot of audience participation, and it always brings up a few topics of interest.

Interestingly, I sat next to a guy that used to work in the same building as I did back at Boeing Computer Services in the late 80’s, though we never met.

Last fall, I wrote a post about being an aspiring Fred, where a “Fred” is someone with more bike than rider. Apologies to anybody named “Fred” – I’m not the one who coined the term .

I had gotten tired of my LeMond Tourmalet, whose decidedly midrange components have seen better days, and whose main claim to fame is “heavy”.

I rode bikes made of steel and titanium, but it was the carbon fiber Trek that I fell in love with. It’s certainly not as live of a feel as the metallic bikes that I rode, but it doesn’t feel mushy either. Just sort of muted, a marked opposite to the Litespeed TI bike I rode (their entry-level bike, to be fair), which was a bit springy. I was either going to buy the 5000 or the 5200, the chief difference being that the 5200 comes with full Ultegra (Shimano’s second-best line of bicycle components), and that 5000 comes with some Ultegra, some 105.

My first Fred post got a comment from SeanB, where he pointed me to Trek’s ProjectOne website. On this site, you can choose a model, a paint job, and then customize parts of the bike. You can choose color, saddle, wheels, component group (to varying degrees based on the bike), seatpost, bars, etc. When you order, you can specify a stem and crank length as well.

I first test rode the 5200 in 58cm (the frame size), doing some hills outside of Greggs. I found two things – that I loved the feel, and the 58 was too small for me. They ordered in a 60, and I rode that, and it was pretty much perfect. I decided to go the project one route, did my customizing, and had them order the bike. As part of their model year switch, Trek is changing their line, and the 5200 is being replaced by the 5.2 Madone, which is just like the 5200, except it has the fin behind the seat post (for improved aero above 23 MPH, I have heard). Oh, and it’s about $150 more expensive, though that also corresponds to the change from a 9-speed cassette in the rear to the new Ultegra 10 speed cassette, so it’s not just the frame change. Coupled with the triple up front, that gives me 30 different gear combinations (brief aside – you can’t really use all 30. First of all, there’s lots of overlap, and second, if you ran the large ring on the front and the large on the back, the angle could lead to noise, wear, or even chain breakage. But more speeds gives you more chance to find the exact one you want).

The paint job is the project one “Deep South” motif – bright red with some yellow accents on. I’d considered getting “Pave Flambe”, but it was a little too muted for my taste. Notice the flowing curves of the carbon fiber frame.

The bike arrived in good condition, except that it came with a carbon seatpost (I wanted aluminum because I sometimes run a seatpost rack, and carbon seatposts don’t hold up to that), and Gregg’s had put a 2″ x 3″ silver sticker right on the bottom of the downtube. The seatpost will get re-ordered, and the sticker came off fairly easily.

Unfortunately, it’s been cold and wet here, so I haven’t been able to go on a real ride yet, but I did go out on Saturday for 5 or 6 miles. I’m not sure how fast it is, since I don’t have a computer yet, but it’s definitely faster on the flats, and felt really nice on the one hill that I threw at it.

On, and here’s a picture of “Fred” next to his bike. The shorts are normally black/silver, but the retro-reflective fabric really shows up in the flash. Oh, and what were they thinking with the blue bar tape? I can handle the saddle being blue, but blue bars on a red bike?