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The Italian pit stop. Never want to be the slowest guy on the ride
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Jun 1, 2023 00:17
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This is why group riding is complicated. At least I assume it is; I only do "group" rides except with my wife, with whom I don't mind going slow because I'm just happy to be doing something with her. But, I know she sometimes worries about slowing me down (when she's not murdering me on her e-bike), and it doesn't matter how much I tell her not to worry about it. Then again, if I were in a no-drop group and I was they one they were no-dropping, I'd feel like her, so I get it. The drop rides are just way too intimidating for me, and the only way to know if they'll leave you in the dust watching them do just that, and getting dropped seems like it'd suck and be a little embarrassing. But to be fair to the droppers, well, what else are they supposed to do? They're there for... I don't know, I don't really "get" those kinds of group rides. But they're not there to go slow for me, and they're up-front about it. It is what it is. Solo rides and events are great, though. Solo gives me some actual me time, as Gosh awful as that sounds, and nobody looks at me weird when I mutter to myself. Event rides are basically solo rides for me, except there are groups of people I can pretend to socialize with. Also, there's beer at the end. Decent beer. Lots of it. And iced cream, too.
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Jun 1, 2023 00:56
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wolfs posted:is wearing a full face helmet all the time gauche? outside of downhill mountain biking? yeah full faces are heavy and hot, and wearing one during long efforts would be miserable a regular mtb helmet with a visor is nice though, i think. i appreciate the extra coverage and it’s not too much heavier mips is good, though lots of brands have their own version of it
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Jun 1, 2023 02:37
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I saw someone who had a face shield on what looked like a fairly regular bike helmet. It was like one of the shields I used in high school when I was using the oxy-acetylene torch, except maybe made of mesh. (I just looked, and yeah, they exist.) I thought it looked silly until the third big, buzzy bug smacked me in the face that day.
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Jun 1, 2023 02:49
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Easy pace? No! Drop ride!
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Jun 1, 2023 04:33
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tylertfb posted:Easy pace? No! Drop ride! 
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Jun 1, 2023 12:52
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Going up Loveland today and you guys have inspired me to drop my friend’s wife.
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Jun 1, 2023 12:59
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Residency Evil posted:Going up Loveland today and you guys have inspired me to drop my friend’s wife. Don’t you mean your boyfriend’s wife?
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Jun 1, 2023 13:11
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wolfs posted:I’d have to go kick some roads in Bastrop to give a size estimate of what category aggregates they got but a gravel bike with large tires makes sense given they feel terrible in a car. It's been spoken to already, but a couple thoughts: Single speed has always been a +1 bike for me, and I think that's true for a lot of riders. Single speed as your only bike will either be a) eventually frustrating or b) a lifestyle. The latter is cool, the former makes bicycles less fun which defeats the purpose of them. Protecting the derailleur(s) shouldn't be a major concern, though you're right to have the instinct that they're one of the more delicate parts and should be minded. Like using the parking brake in your car, just make a habit of always leaning the bike up or laying it down on its left side, and be mindful of where it is when you're storing the bike and piling stuff around it in your garage. Having 8+ gears is so useful that protecting the derailleur shouldn't be a big enough concern to drive you toward single speed. Gravel/all-road/hybrid/hardtail is probably ideal for you. Something with 700c wheels and tires up to 50 mm handles lovely gravel quite well. I grew up in south Arkansas riding on pine plantation roads and county roads frequented by log trucks, and from what I recall, the north Louisiana roads are about the same (assuming you mean Bastrop, LA). My hardtails were perfect for those roads, and good enough on pavement. A suspension seatpost, maybe a stem with an elastomer or spring, or a short travel suspension fork would really smooth washboards out. Another thing about riding in that region: having several gears makes it a lot easier to outrun loose dogs. HenryJLittlefinger fucked around with this message at 18:17 on Jun 1, 2023 |
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Jun 1, 2023 17:28
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tarlibone posted:There are also ATB bikes, but I don't know what the difference between that and a gravel bike is, or where the line is between the two styles. Someone else here might be able to shed some light on that. ATB seems to be the kind of stuff that the hipsters at Radavist and Path Less Pedaled are into lately, with weird bars, friction shifters, klunker frames, etc. e.g., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDxCvaUOPWI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55CdX91z47M wolfs, ^this channel^ is actually a really good resource for breaking down some of the concepts of multi-surface bikes, but it's very much geared toward builders with a little deeper pockets and/or uber hip alt cyclists. HenryJLittlefinger fucked around with this message at 17:41 on Jun 1, 2023 |
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Jun 1, 2023 17:36
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The theoretical last parts for my metrea minivelo are coming tomorrow so I took the day off work and I'm just going to hold my breath all morning until the mail gets delivered at like 2pm.
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Jun 1, 2023 18:01
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wolfs posted:I’d have to go kick some roads in Bastrop to give a size estimate of what category aggregates they got but a gravel bike with large tires makes sense given they feel terrible in a car. Assuming you mean Bastrop TX, you want a gravel bike, with gears. I did a few rides out that way starting in San Marcos. It’s pretty chunky gravel, you would want a bike that allows for the modern wide gravel tires, and even though Texas is “flat” as mentioned that is very different on a bike, there are climbs that most sane riders would want lower gears for.
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Jun 1, 2023 18:12
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I read some mindfulness stuff recently and solo rides seem an awful lot like meditation. Thoughts just come and go. I stopped riding for a long time to switch to running because of the time needed for the same burn, but coming back into it now feels pretty nice.
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Jun 1, 2023 18:19
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HenryJLittlefinger posted:ATB seems to be the kind of stuff that the hipsters at Radavist and Path Less Pedaled are into lately, with weird bars, friction shifters, klunker frames, etc. These are just 90's rigid mtb's lol
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Jun 1, 2023 18:20
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PosSibley posted:How are your injuries? Ride the MKT please! I assumed this meant the Missouri Katy Trail... because, you know, every state not starting with an "M" has its own Katy Trail, so the M is totally necessary. I just looked it up, and that's a little bit of a drive for ol' Tarli. But, I just round out that June 3rd, this Saturday, is World Bicycle Day. My wife is out of commission for riding (she'll have just had a tooth pulled), and I've already ridden the stretch of MCT trail that reopened on my side of the river, so... this weekend's forecast is hot, dry, and cycling. And there's no reason not to finally get on Katy, although over in St. Charles.
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Jun 1, 2023 18:48
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Slavvy posted:These are just 90's rigid mtb's lol But with purple anodized $200 rim brakes and small batch hand built bars! Swoopy seat stays!
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Jun 1, 2023 19:06
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HenryJLittlefinger posted:with weird bars I should give a review of the Surly Corner Bar clones I used. https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256803892892709.html Clone pros: - a bit cheaper. I got mine on sale for $77 - much lighter. Like 500g - more width options, not that I know which one would fit me best. I ordered the 44cm hoods / 66cm ends size Cons: - unknown reliability/durability - maybe shape isn't quite the same In the past, I've found an empirical preference for more sweep on my flat bar setups. I'd ridden the 71cm Jones Loop bar (45deg sweep) on a rigid MTB for a while and loved it. I still use a Ritchey Kyote (27deg) on my MTB. The Corner Bar was a new wide gravel bar take on the old drop bar MTB setup. So not really about offering more sweep, but instead about offering you a shallow road-style drop to sink your hands into. My Tern ebike came with 66cm bars, so I thought it would be the perfect platform to try these out. Actual hand position might be set further apart, but I wouldn't be any wider for squeezing past a car edging into the bike lane. One significant departure in setup to note is where I put my brakes. All the brochure pics show the brake clamps going above the crossbar:  Depending on the lever and your palm size, I think this biases you to having some of your hand up above the elbow in the drop. I would consider having hands far up the drop as the stable/descending position for MTB or dirt drops. For the Tern, I didn't really feel like I needed to be wedged into the bars like that for normal riding, so I put the clamp on the lower half, under the crossbar:  Note the awkward placement of the motor controller. This angle let me reach the assist buttons easily enough, but angled the display to be pretty much impossible to see while riding. I felt the most comfortable with hands toward the ends of the drops, which ends up being close to any number of very swept bars for upright riding: https://velo-orange.blogspot.com/2015/03/building-bike-from-frame-up-flat-and.html The sweep behind the elbow is somewhere like 70deg, I think. That's more a MTB bar kind of thinking, but ultimately I didn't like how swept back it was. The Tern has pretty conservative reach coupled with a relatively steep seatpost (Tern doesn't publish geo numbers, cuz I guess they're paranoid about getting ripped off?), so on tight turns, the bar ends can get into my knees. This random shot is a reasonable first-person look at the effective sweep:  (Note that this person also put the brake clamps under the cross bar, though not as far back as me) I spent a ton of time tweaking bar angle and height, and I'm fairly confident that I explored all plausible options and settled on what I thought was best. The drops are -9cm drop, compared to the +4cm rise on the stock bars. Fortunately, I had plenty of cable length (and stem adjust) to raise up the bars. Like the Jones Loop, the Corner Bar (I'm gonna say these look very similar in shape to the real deal, enough for me to address both as the same thing) feels great in moderate steady state turns, where the axis of your grip (like the line through you closed grasp) is paralel to the bike. That position feels much more neutral with high sweep than with normal MTB bars. A couple more pics of the setup:  Using the hoods to hang grocery bags:  Yes, they're pretty hideous. I got another wire loom to try to clean it up, but that didn't help. I did switch to longer and thicker foam grips, as the Ergons didn't really match where my hands had pressure. The versatility was ok. I could ride on the tops without brakes, or on the "hoods" with some braking, but not very usable shifting, and I could pull my hands all the way back on the ends and ride more relaxed (again without brakes). For commuting, I didn't really have the seat time needed to really want to cycle through positions for variety. After taking an MTB clinic, where I have some goals to improve fundamentals, I don't want to experiment with putting these on the MTB yet. My sense is that I'd want a longer stem to make up for where the hands are relative to the stem clamp position, and also maybe these are a touch narrow for the riding I'm used to.
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Jun 1, 2023 19:16
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Salt Fish posted:The theoretical last parts for my metrea minivelo are coming tomorrow so I took the day off work and I'm just going to hold my breath all morning until the mail gets delivered at like 2pm. Did you cover how you fixed the barb that broke? former glory posted:I read some mindfulness stuff recently and solo rides seem an awful lot like meditation. Thoughts just come and go. I stopped riding for a long time to switch to running because of the time needed for the same burn, but coming back into it now feels pretty nice. For sufficiently safe rides, I can agree with that. On roads shared with cars, I'm constantly mentally alert for cars running into me. Had two cars cut me off in the bike lane last night and I didn't even yell at the drivers at the next light. So maybe that is getting Zen... 
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Jun 1, 2023 19:19
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kimbo305 posted:Did you cover how you fixed the barb that broke? The broken piece was a plastic insert that bridged the barb and lever body. I brought it to a shop and their assessment was that the fitting is identical to every shimano hydraulic fitting they've ever seen once that plastic bit is removed. The best theory I've heard is that its for centering the barb during installation. I'm just running it as is and so far the brake works perfectly. No clue about it, but I will have another brake with the insert and I'm not riding this bike up and down mountains or anything, so this is within my personal risk tolerance. So yah hopefully its like the shimano crank plate pin, or shimano brake caliper bolt covers.
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Jun 1, 2023 19:29
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Anyone have a Canyon Grand Canyon 5? Feeling the mtb itch and it seems like a hell of a deal compared to other entry level models like the Salsa Rangefinder. I'd probably add a dropper seat post to it but otherwise the poo poo I'd be riding around IL/WI isn't exactly demanding.
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Jun 1, 2023 22:36
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HenryJLittlefinger posted:Like using the parking brake in your car, just make a habit of always leaning the bike up or laying it down on its left side This is backwards, always lean your bike drive side towards the object / wall, so that if it falls the derailleur is saved.
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Jun 1, 2023 22:40
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wooger posted:This is backwards, always lean your bike drive side towards the object / wall, so that if it falls the derailleur is saved. Nah I've scraped a wall or banged a tree or post with the rd more when doing it that way than I've had the bike fall over.
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Jun 1, 2023 23:02
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I just throw my bike into a bush when I need to stop
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Jun 1, 2023 23:04
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Always lean your bike with the drive side away from the wall so that when people look at your bike they will see the correct side
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Jun 1, 2023 23:09
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Sphyre posted:Always lean your bike with the drive side away from the wall so that when people look at your bike they will see the correct side new thread title IMO
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Jun 1, 2023 23:26
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Sphyre posted:Always lean your bike with the drive side away from the wall so that when people look at your bike they will see the correct side
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Jun 2, 2023 00:01
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tarlibone posted:I assumed this meant the Missouri Katy Trail... because, you know, every state not starting with an "M" has its own Katy Trail, so the M is totally necessary. I just looked it up, and that's a little bit of a drive for ol' Tarli.  I was there mid-June and my first day was between 90 and 95 degrees (before a rainstorm blew through like a tornado and cooled everything to 80), but I started in Sedalia and ended in St. Charles. So I have fond memories of that area of the trail and the culmination of my ride. You will journey along the big Missouri River and be both Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, but less problematic! The trail went right past the Lewis and Clark Boat House, which I couldn't help but notice because I ate lunch in sight of it at Schlafly Bankside. Defiance also had a good brewery called Good News Brewing  and some vineyards out just past Augusta, at least one of which does live music every weekend. Oh that's probably like 40 miles from St. Charles already, so I'll stop before I talk about the KT Caboose.More civilization and tons more people on the trail near St. Charles, which was nice compared to the quiet and often undeveloped or abandoned western parts of the trail. There's a lot of just riding alongside route 94 at the east end, though. Hopefully you get to see some of the bluffs alongside the river!
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Jun 2, 2023 01:55
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PosSibley posted:
Thanks! I've ridden along the Mississippi a lot because, well, it's right down the hill from me. I went along the Great River Road this past weekend, and that ride is nothing but bluffs on one side and the river on the other. I've driven along 94 quite a bit, so hitting a bike trail near it doesn't sound too bad. I'm definitely not in a big hurry to ride on that particular road, though. I don't have a route planned or anything. Just maybe do 30 or so miles, like my last couple of rides. But I really need to start ramping the distance up soon.
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Jun 2, 2023 03:03
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Literally Lewis Hamilton posted:Don’t you mean your boyfriend’s wife? lol Rode from Idaho Springs to Loveland Pass and back today, a ride of 56 miles/5k or so of elevation gain. It was pretty decent going up, but some weather started moving in and we got caught in rain for the last 20 miles or so on the way back. At least it was downhill.  Last week I did a loop of the first climb of the Triple Bypass. Later this month I'll do the last climb from Frisco up to Vail. I feel like I still need to dial in my nutrition/eating, because I feel like I'm not eating enough: I'm currently doing about 1 SIS gel/hour. Residency Evil fucked around with this message at 03:36 on Jun 2, 2023 |
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Jun 2, 2023 03:20
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Residency Evil posted:lol
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Jun 2, 2023 03:31
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I got a really good deal on a second hand Zipp Aero cockpit for my TT bike. It'll be nice to be able to clean up some of the currently very exposed Di2 wiring but the most important question is do I stick with the black bar tape or go for bright yellow to match the frame?
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Jun 2, 2023 15:15
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Yeep posted:I got a really good deal on a second hand Zipp Aero cockpit for my TT bike. It'll be nice to be able to clean up some of the currently very exposed Di2 wiring but the most important question is do I stick with the black bar tape or go for bright yellow to match the frame? Yellow is too much effort to keep clean, which makes purple the obvious choice.
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Jun 2, 2023 16:44
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Yeep posted:I got a really good deal on a second hand Zipp Aero cockpit for my TT bike. It'll be nice to be able to clean up some of the currently very exposed Di2 wiring but the most important question is do I stick with the black bar tape or go for bright yellow to match the frame? ♫ Boardman ♫ Central handles for your hands
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Jun 2, 2023 16:48
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Does anybody make affordable quality bicycling trousers for commuting?
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Jun 2, 2023 17:28
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Gripweed posted:Does anybody make affordable quality bicycling trousers for commuting? Any stretch jeans work fine for shortish distances, that’s what I wear when commuting in decent weather & not planning to do a proper long ride straight out of work. Best are undercover hiking trousers with stretch, mild water repellent qualities. moleskin or similar. There are also stretch jeans for cycle commuting with seamless crotch and reflective accents, but there aren’t too many options for a good price. You can also get inconspicuous merino underwear with a slim cycling pad, e.g. Vulpine. In the UK at least there’s a discounter called sportpursuit that sells off some of this specialist stuff cheap.
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Jun 2, 2023 17:35
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Gripweed posted:Does anybody make affordable quality bicycling trousers for commuting? When wearing non-cycling trousers, slacks, britches, or even pants or shorts, I wear cycling briefs as underwear for cycling-clothes comfort with street-clothes looks. Also, the bike I get groceries with has a seat that's fine for regular clothes.
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Jun 2, 2023 17:37
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HenryJLittlefinger posted:the hipsters Nice timing, I just finished installing a new stem on my new all terrain gravel bike. 
Siivola fucked around with this message at 19:31 on Jun 2, 2023 |
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Jun 2, 2023 18:31
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Hadlock posted:new thread title IMO Too long I'm afraid.
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Jun 2, 2023 18:41
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Residency Evil posted:
Jeez, that’s not even close to enough calories or carbs. Highly recommend Skratch Superfuel (now super high carb?). It’s expensive, but it beats experiencing the Hell Bonk at 11,000 feet.
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Jun 2, 2023 19:30
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Siivola posted:Nice timing, I just finished installing a new stem on my new all terrain gravel bike. Yes, good, this is a good bike. I can't decide whether I like the chain/chainring guard more or the rad chainring itself, which I wish I could see.
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Jun 2, 2023 19:36
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