How to get 2 new bikes without buying (or selling!) anything

I had a problem over the summer. Alastair had outgrown his first cyclocross bike, and I was itchin' to get drop-bar gnarly with him. He'd never found the joy in off/soft road adventuring, and I chalked it up to a combination of 3 factors:

1. 1. his CX bike was WAY too rigid and built almost entirely of spare parts
2. 2. he flatted every single time he rode the thing
3. 3. it was just too small

So when a good local deal popped up on a new one, we jumped on it. Let me find "good local deal": it was the exact same bike as mine, just one year newer. Same size, same spec level, same everything. So with both a 2016 and a 2017 Giant TCX SLR 2 on the car, we set out to find joy on the road less traveled.

And he flatted. And flatted. And flatted.

It struck me one day that his riding style can best be described as "heavy", whereas mine tends to veer more to "light". I pick up the back wheel for minor obstacles. I use my body to reduce impact because I know the value of the components under me. Alastair does not do those things. His butt stays on the saddle unless (and ONLY unless) he is actively sprinting. And it is always the rear tire that goes down for him, so I can only attribute that to style. He's never broken or deformed a rim, and frankly at 121 lbs I'm not sure he can, just pinch-flats all dang day.

So I figured I'd just quicko swap my old CX tubeless wheels to his bike and see if we could get through a couple of rides.

Except 2017 was the first year Giant equipped the TCX with thru-axles. NBD: when I bought the wheels new in 2017 they came with the promise of easy conversion. Only, and this is super cute, half of the pieces necessary to complete the conversion are discontinued. Only half, and not the same pieces from front to rear. Just kinda randomly chosen, but super critical pieces. Gone. Not even a hint of a whisper on ebay.

This was a huge issue for me, and I railed to Easton about having the AUDACITY to make wheels and discontinue repair parts within 5 years, which is illegal in some places (ran across that little gem years ago when Apple got in trouble for discontinuing service parts). They didn't prioritize getting back to me. And then it got worse, as Easton basically stopped making repair parts for everything. The market for 11-speed R4 freehubs dried up almost overnight.

Anyway, I couldn't put my tubeless Easton EA90XD wheels on his bike, and I wasn't going to put my newer wheels on it, either. I like 'em. They're mine. But I did have all the necessary parts to put them on that bike.

The Eastons would have solved another problem for him, too, weighing over 1 pound less than his stock wheelset.

And then it hit me: why not just switch bikes? The Eastons weren't doing any good rotting on a shelf: there's no CX to race, so I didn't need them under my bike when my fancier gravel wheels were doing just fine thank you. But the bikes, being otherwise identical in every meaningful way, should just take a quick cockpit and drivetrain swap. Because he also wasn't getting my carbon handlebar or SRAM Forcee 1 drivetrain.

And since he wasn't getting any of that, the job would be made even easier by just pulling the handlebars off at the stems, cables and all, and just switching them. I didn't even have to undo bar-tape! And then it just kept getting conceptually easier because it turns out his saddle was actually NOT identical to mine, but WAS identical to my MTB saddle, and I can happily do just as many hours on that, so that conversion just became "raise/lower the post".

And so, about 3 weeks ago, with a plan to salvage his interest in gravel and get him rolling on nicer wheels while also not spending a single dollar, I pulled our bikes down to frames, lined everything up on the bench, and swapped it all. Cables were like-for-like, which was easy on my 1x setup and a friggin' nightmare to fish through the frame on his. I swapped cranks so I could save time moving pedals and chain-rings, and was ready to run new shift-cable inners in less than 2 hours on both bikes. And I had spares of those from previous projects, so literally nothing was spent to complete the conversion!

And when it was all said and done, we both had tubeless setups that should last a ride without flatting. I just now had bar tape that didn't match the bike, so I broke my rule and spent $27 on a new roll. But still: $27 for new bikes all around? Not a bad bargain.