I just received the go ahead....

Hurry, before the "window" closes !!

OK, here is the "before" pic of the Libertas, which I have been riding since college, ~ 15 years.

This will be quite the upgrade...

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Congrats and good luck on the bike hunt!  I received the green light from "The Boss" about a month ago after finishing my first HIM on a 30lb $100 GMC Denali.  I ended up finding a good deal on a like-new 2009 Cannondale Slice.

Steve

But...but if you get rid of that how will you make yourself feel good about passing people on carbon tribikes?

You know the only APPROPRIATE comment to make, 2 seconds after receiving the "Go-Ahead" would be ... "Great - Fantastic ... is it alright if I bring it inside now"

Shopping for new bikes is so much fun.

I miss my first road bike....Schwinn LeTour from the 70s. If I find one at a garage sale I'm buying it.

Are you having a fit first?

Those pedals were from a late '80s Kestral, along with the crankset (Campy Chorus) and FD.  Frame was from the late '70s i think (rec.bike newsgroup buy), and then I put it all together with some new (at the time) Campy components and wheels.  Total frankenstein bike, but it was so much fun to build.

So this will be the first bike I've purchased while NOT working in a bike shop.  Definitely a weird feeling...

I will get a fit first, that is step 1.

But you're right, I will no longer have the joy of passing folks on carbon with my steel frankenstein... at least not in a tri race.  I'll still do it during the centuries though! 

You are going to notice one heckuva difference then.  And, I am officially envious of you getting a new bike.

So after much research, I decided to take a trip up to Austin and visit what I consider one of the best shops I've ever been in, Austin Tri-Cyclist.  None of the shops in San Antonio had what I was looking for, and I just had a good feeling about this shop the first time I went there after a race up in Austin a few years ago.

Long story short, they gave me a fitting and I ended up with a P1.  Swapped the stem out for a shorter one, and changed the cassette for me to an 11-25 instead of the stock 12-25.  Overall just a great experience, well worth the trip.

And I even stayed with the red Look pedals, because red is fast of course

Here's a pic!

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x2, love the look of that old bike.

It was a difficult choice to go to Austin because I  like Britton's, Solers and Tri-Sition Area, but none of those shops had Cervelo, or a bike comparable in price to the P1 that I liked.  Only Bikeworld carries Cervelo (a shop to which I am very unimpressed with), and they didn't have a P1.

I just can't say enough good things about Austin Tri-Cyclist either.  They remind me of the kind of shop I used to work in, just a mom and pop store that loves bikes and actually care about helping their customers.   Not too many shops like that around anymore, so you have to support them as much as possible to keep em around.