And so I got a road racer...

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Yes, I did, although initially I wanted to have a so called "speed bike", which is a road racer with a "flat" handle bar. Such a bike combines speed and light weight with the agility of a mountain or cross bike. The flat handle bar is usually narrower than the cross bike ones. Sounded like a good compromise until I rode a few race bikes for a quick test and found that they are actually quite interesting.

And then Berlin has quite large streets and only a few twisty roads, so suddenly I had no real preference between a road racer and a speed bike...



I hunted around for a good deal of either a speed bike or a road racer. I wanted good components, minimum Shimano 105 components, preferably Ultegra and a target weight of the bike of around 9 kg. I checked some magazines and with my test experiences I waited for the right deal and it came unexpectatly from an Austrian Ebay auction offering a Dynamics RSLpro (here the 2007 model) with Campagnolo Chorus equipment, Shimano WH-R550 wheels and Ritchey WCS components. Top equipment, albight so rare (Chorus) that most ebayers didn't really know how good the deal was. I guess most of them try to fetch a bike with Shimano equipment, like I was initially and don't even look at it. And if you don't know the value of the components and the quality of the bike, the starting price of initially 750EUR doesn't sound like a bargain. Dynamics being the house brand of a German bike shop chain isn't exactly a household name.

When I came across the bike a second time, the offer was already lowered, I was still unsure. Then after some time the bike reappeared on Ebay with again a lower minimum bid price. I had done some enquiries, it proved to be a type of bike I had for a test ride, it was built in 2005 but pratically never used. My initial resistence faded away and there I was waiting till the last minute and bidding the minimum price and ... I got it.

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