Will's 61cm Gallop - 83.5cm saddle height

I originally didn't plan on getting a Gallop. I have at least eight other Rivendells to cover all types of riding from skinny-tire road to mountain touring, and my Homer covers the fat tire road bike thing nicely, but, as the resident tall guy test rider, I had lots of opportunities to ride customer builds around the building and every time they just felt so, so good that I ultimately caved. I can pinpoint it to one bike in particular too. It was customer Matt's drop bar-er:

This bike rides fantastically, and it sealed the deal in my head, not that there was that much resistance in the first place.

I used a Wavie bar as a stand-in until we get our new Twin Peaks bar. No complaints about the Wavie though, it's a great bar.

For the past couple of years, I've experimented with wider Wavie-like bars. I've used everything from 72 to 80cm, and I've decided that anything over 70 is just too wide. I think the middle to upper 60s is perfect. Maybe the super wide ones are more necessary on super slacked out boinger mountain bikes, but for our bikes, a little narrower is better. Plus, you can get your bike in and out of your apartment so much more easily, and you're not constantly jamming your hand into tree trunks on tighter trails.

The OM-1 works great with this 10 speed 11-36 cassette. 

This is a 167mm 40/28 Silver3 crank. Grant will say I'm losing it, but I swear I can tell the difference between this length and my usual 170mm. It's not like one length is bad and the other is good, I'm just saying I can feel the difference. It's not significant enough to switch this bike to 170 or switch all my other bikes to 167, that's for sure, although I don't think I'd go any shorter. Grant once used a 172.5 non driveside arm with a 170 crank for more than a year without noticing. Whether that means I'm overly sensitive to crank lengths, or he's particularly insensitive to it, I don't know. 

Ritchey stuff. Their road saddles, especially the lower-end ones in the hierarchy, are surprisingly comfortable, and the upper material is slippery enough for regular pants. I don't like when saddles are too tacky; it makes too hard to shift positions without my pants folding up in weird ways.

I built a light set of wheels for this bike. These are new old stock DT Swiss 240s before everything went to disc. They're 28 hole, front and rear, which isn't something I'd recommend to...  anybody, but I'm a halfway competent wheelbuilder at this point and if anything goes sideways, I can fix it.

My fake wheel brand, until I get a C&D from Peterbilt.

We used to sell the silver version of these Shimano "non-series" short-pull levers. They're my favorite brake levers of all time. The clamp bolt is tucked in enough that you can mount thumbshifters on the inside of the bar easily, the shape is right, and they were dirt cheap. They're now discontinued. 

We sell a bunch of long/short pull Shimano options now and those are all fine, but the clamp bolt is bulkier, so, depending on your shifter set up, sometimes you have to use the right lever on the left and left lever on the right.

I love this bike. It's going to get a lot of use.