It was a facebook post by my friend Sharath M.S. in 2013, about his wheelbuilding experience, that triggered my own interest in wheelbuilding, but like many of my acquired interests,  there was no immediate action. The interest to build my own wheel was only in the far recesses of my mind. What occupied a position of higher priority in my mind though, was exploring ways to improve my fitness and get faster on a bike. I did some reading about gear ratios and decided that I might be able to train better, if I switched from my 12-27 groupset to an 11-23 one.  Whether it would actually help me or not was something I'd have to actually test and find out for myself, so off I went to the local bike store and ordered myself a new Shimano Ultegra 10 speed 11-23 groupset, in October of 2014.  Even as I was ordering the groupset, I was toying with the idea of building a new wheel for the extra groupset, as that would allow me the option of doing a simple wheel swap, instead of a messier groupset swap. I ordered a new rim too, but decided that it would be cheaper to buy a wheel truing stand in the US, during my visit in December.  The 11-23  arrived within a week, but it was about a month before I actually got around to changing it.  I changed the groupset in November of 2014, when there was already a lot of snow and ice on the roads.  I tried to test out the new groupset, but within minutes of hitting the road, I'd picked up a flat, thanks to the sharp gravel that had been scattered on the roads, to assist traction. This was the last time I rode my road bike in 2014. 2015 started with a semi-official visit to India, where I got my first experience of riding a brevet. Though I completed it, I didn't qualify, but what it did was get me keenly interested in brevets. Returning to Sweden, I rode and completed successfully, the Linköping 200, organized by CK Hymer, and the Mölndal 300, organized by BeGe Olsson, using my new 11-23 groupset. My successful run however stopped with an abortive bid on the Jonköping 600, a ride which left me wishing I'd used the 12-27 set instead. After this debacle, I switched back to the 12-27 and also decided to finally start my wheelbuilding project.

It was May, 2015. I had a rim, a truing stand, and an excellent book on wheelbuilding by Roger Musson,  but no spokes and nipples. Calculating the correct length of the required spokes is not only the most critical part of the wheelbuild process, but also the hardest, for a newbie. It's very easy to measure incorrectly and order spokes of incorrect lengths, and from that point on, the wheelbuilding can only result in a total failure. This happened to me not once, but twice. Each time I ordered the spokes thinking I'd got my math right, but I'd realize the problem as soon as I started lacing the wheel. I was doing a 32 spoke 3X (3-cross) build, and both times, my spokes ended up being too short for a 3X lacing; the first time severely so, and the second time, very, very close, but still no cookies. However, the two aborted attemps gave me some much needed practice with wheel lacing. With help from Roger Musson himself, who was kind enough to respond to my emails, I was able to get the measurements correct on my third attempt, and ordered DT Competition spokes, from Rose Bikes in Germany.  The spokes arrived, but I was to get buried under work again, and yet again, the wheelbuild project got shelved.

In January of 2016, I got back to Sweden after a month in the US, with the mother of all jet-lags. I'd find myself wide awake in the middle of the night, with little to do, so I decided to take another stab at building that wheel! This time, I found that the spoke lengths were perfect and the lacing was not only done really fast, but also without any issues.  I found some dishing error, but nothing alarming; I didn't have an egg shaped wheel or something, so I seemed to be making good headway. I tried to stick as closely to the instructions in the book as I could, but found myself with a few questions about the final tensioning; I sent a mail to Roger and the project which was so near to completion had to be put on hold again, till Roger responded. A few days later, I got the response, and I dove right in, and completed the wheelbuild, but even then, I couldn't test the wheel as the weather was totally ill-suited for road biking. On the 9th of February, I decided to take advantage of the ice-free conditions and do the ride, even if it was going to be cold or wet, the next day. The new wheel was finally mated with the 11-23 groupset which had been lying idle since May 2015, and it went onto the bike. On February 10, 2016, 26 months after I got my first thought of building a wheel, and 15 months after I ordered the first of the components for a new wheel, I set off on my first ride ever, on a wheel I'd built myself.  I was as apprehensive as I was excited, and kept listening for any telltale tinkling sounds that would indicate impromper tensioning and/or spoke twist, but heard nothing; the wheel rolled beautifully. I rode it to work and back, and put it on the stand again and gave it a quick check and found to my great relief that it had stayed true. I hope to ride some more and do some more checking in the days to come, and hopefully go on to build some more decent wheels in the future.  To any bike nut who might be interested to get started with wheelbuilding, I wholeheartedly recommend Roger Musson's book, which can be purchased from http://www.wheelpro.co.uk/wheelbuilding/book.php.