Well, in an attempt to help a local shop by putting my new Trek Emonda in for some relatively minor work, I have been without it for a month now. I have been unable to get the shop so I assume that the owner either himself got sick or he has to attend to a family member such as his mother who is at risk.

Had I decided to do this work myself, I would have had to order the BB removal tool that comes with a set of BB press in tools as well. I would have had to pay through the nose for the wiring but I probably will anyway and there's no way I can get my new bike at the moment or make sure that the owner hasn't keeled over and I have to go to the courts to get my possessions.

The Madone 6.9 is going to need some small parts that are only available from Trek and their local shops of course are closed. So I'm hung up there as well.

This panic over a disease that has killed less that a quarter of what the seasonal flu has so far this year is really irritating. It will be interesting to see how history records this after some 4 or 5 years of reflection.

At least I have my Redline set up with Di2 and can practice the use of that.. With so many years of Campy, changing gears was second nature and it is necessary to get that way with Di2.

My wife wants me to have at least one steel bike so that will be the Lemond and after I get the Emonda or Madone going I will change the Di2 over to it and convert the Redline to manual Ultegra with hydraulic disks. That means I will have to put the GRX levers up for sale since that is the only bike I have with disks. While I have come to admire the possible stopping power of the disks, I have never needed it before or after I got them and since I'm returning to aluminum rims that is all the stopping power necessary.

So the entire 6870 group will go onto the Lemond and I will have to purchase new levers for it.

They have a partial group of 7970 Di2 on the local craigslist for "make an offer". You could probably get that for dirt cheap. But they are not compatible with anything else and it doesn't include a rear derailleur. These are as rare as hen's teeth and you'd have to pay some bike shop in Japan over $500 for one so this local group wouldn't be worth more than $100. The front derailleur is pretty beat up on this one suggesting that it didn't have the "micro-adjust" nor the automatic correction for shifting across the cassette. But eBay has a lot of front derailleurs. Why do you suppose that they don't have any rear derailleurs unless they were as unreliable as possible?

I am really pleased with the operation of the 6870 group and I'm putting 9070 on the Madone since I picked up the parts cheap. The levers look new and weigh between nothing and lighter than air. I understand that the derailleurs have carbon fibers frames and are supposed to be "significantly lighter" than the Ultegra but if they are it isn't noticeable. You would probably have to actually weight them to tell the difference. That cages have to weight the same as the electronics and the motor drives.

The Dura Ace cassette us all hell and gone lighter than Ultegra but so is SROAD cassettes for half the price of Dura Ace.

My Dura Ace rear derailleur is a short arm so all I can shift is a 28 but that was all I could shift on the Campy so there's no difference. And with the much lighter Trek, it should be an improvement anyway.

The Dura Ace crankset is called "hollow cast" or something similar. The Ultegra crankset is the same without the arms hollowed out but it is so light already that the difference couldn't be a couple of ounces. Certainly it all adds up but there is also a cost to weight ratio that you have to consider. It isn't as if I'm racing.

One extremely interesting thing I got from a GCN video was that there was a rather marked difference in speed on a flat course between a superbike like the Treks and a steel classic but otherwise pretty high end bike. I really didn't expect that at all. Since it was a course without stop signs or lights there was no stop and go for the lighter weight to make a difference as it does on my course.

So after close to 6 or 7 years using carbon fiber components I have come to the conclusion that the only place that CF makes any significant difference is in the Frameset and components that are mass produced and hence can have expensive tooling like the Dura Ace levers and frame. Wheels are almost identical weight and you don't have to go through the stupid ordeal of using carbon brake pads and the less braking power (As far as I can tell the lifespan of either wheel used with rim brakes is pretty close). While the Campy carbon crankset looks like it should weight a lot it doesn't. FSA is heavier though it looks like it should be lighter. The entire Ultegra manual group probably weighs a lb more than the Dura Ace but would that really matter to you?