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I second this remark. Also, have someone take your credit card away while on the meds!

Home resting comfortably with loving wife, which is a reminder of what's truly important in life. Surgeon told her that the procedure went according to plan. Really got to think about the details with these things. The one question I had was how the hell am I going to be able to sit on a toilet? Surgeon said good call out and had the nurse arrange for my wife to pick up an apparatus that attaches to the toilet, raising the seat 4.5 inches with upright handles on the side. Haha can't wait to try it. Thanks all for the well wishes and good humor. A real must for getting through these things.

Hope your surgery was a total success today, old man! Make sure you get on here with some good drug induced post-surgery deep philosophical manifesto about mountain bike riding and tire choice...those area always the best 🙂 Take care, dude!

Never seen a cougar, although there are occasional sightings out here. Have seen a few bobcats over the years. The State Park has a wildlife viewing blind and I lucked out one night and got some pics and video of this one.

I have held off telling people about this new trail - until now. It is starting to come together and we will need volunteers soon. So here it is. In 2017, Travis County hired a landscape architect to survey and design some new trails at Reimer's Ranch. Our very own MTB trail builder, rider and instructor Jake Carston helped with the design work. The attached PDF file shows the overview of that trail design. The design sat on the shelf for a while. ARR got a grant from REI to start building those trails. That process has now started. We will be building two of the 5 trails shown - marked I1 (Intermediate 1) and Return. These are intended to be Flow Trails. There is not enough elevation to call them Downhill Trails but there is enough to get a good flow without a lot of peddling. We have surveyed the planned trails and picked the I1 trail as the one we want to build first. It has great topology for fun and interesting trail. We have met with Travis County (land manager), REI (funding source) and KOM Trails. We want this trail open for Cranksgiving so we want to get KOM to do the biggest part of the flow trail. ARR will be building the return trail (how you get back up hill). This looks like it will come together and be ready in November. To have it ready in time, ARR will need volunteers to build the return trail. Work days will start in September to avoid the summer heat. Racers can plan on getting their PayDirt hours early this year. Keep an eye out for work day calls and come help build our new MTB trail! And make sure you thank Travis County, REI, KOM, and ARR for making it happen. 2017-03-31_Reimers Flow Trails.pdf

Choosing every piece of a custom build can be fun, but you're fooling yourself if you think it's cheaper unless you already have some of the parts you need from other bikes. New complete bikes are really, really good these days and manufacturers can spec out a bike way cheaper then an individual building a custom bike. Just choose the frame you want and buy the best level complete build that you can afford. Give it chance with the factory spec (don't assume that you'll need to change stuff based on preconceived opinions of brands). Chances are that you don't have to make any compromises at all.

You got a bike part question...I've got an answer. It may not be the one you want, but I'll tell you something! Seriously though, sizing is everything. If the frame doesn't fit well, you're gonna hate it. Second, is the frame geometry. Is the steerer slack/steep enough? BB high/low enough? Chainstays short enough? These are all things that effect the way the bike handles and there is no way (besides a flip chip, angleset, or fork travel) that you can change it. So, pick the right frame. Then, fork. I would compromise on the shock way before the fork purely due to the cost. Make sure you get one you're going to be content with for the life of the bike. Me personally, I am a big fan of Hope brakes. So, any bike build of mine is going to have those. But, other than avoiding SRAM brakes, there's lots of good choices out there and they're easy enough to upgrade later as long as you are comfortable with cutting brake lines and bleeding. With drivetrain, the great thing about building custom is the freedom to create your own drivetrain group. Often, you can spec a lower end derailer and invest in a higher end shifter to drive it. This is often the opposite of what manufacturers will spec. You can also save money on the cassette while putting on a nicer chain that will extend the life of your cassette/chainring(s). Places to compromise on the build IMHO: - Stem - Handlebar - Crankset - Headset - Saddle

RLAG sticker!

Thought this was pretty cool! https://www.pinkbike.com/news/7-bikes-of-the-tour-divide.html

We should hit it together one of these days. Before Brushy, that was one of my fun rides to go from my house, right past your house on the trail in the woods, hit that l loop trail that pops you out at the intersection of Scotland Wells, cross over and do that out and back along the creekbed/drainage, go out spicewood springs and hit those trails along the road, climb the hill, bomb back down and then back to Scotland wells, loop trail, then back home. That and sometimes do DK Ranch (RIP). Ok, just checked and the loop trail is called "Upper Bull Creek Greenbelt trail" and the out/back is the "Spicewood Valley Trail/Upper Spicewood Valley trail". Some really fun sections out there. Especially the stairclimb up to the end at Topridge road.

I've held off on making an announcement on this because we are essentially still in a beta format. However, this thread and topic seems on point, therefore I figured it might prove useful to some of you who are contemplating custom builds and want to play around a bit. I've been working for this company for the past few years and we recently brought on @Teamsloan to help us move things fwd. You can create a profile and then save build lists, set pricing searches for specific parts, and share your builds with others. Later on I may give it its own thread, but for now feel free to jump in and you can give feedback in our forums. https://cyclingbuilder.com/ Thanks, CJB

Starting this as a generic thread for reporting on MTB injuries along with related treatments and prognosis. My current injury resulted from a freakish type accident where after washing out on a slick turn at Spider Mtn, I gracefully managed to stay on my feet but then immediately slid into a split that 60yr old male should never attempt. Left knee went down but right leg stayed straight. Felt extreme pressure in the groin area, but the telltale "pop" seemed to come from behind, hamstring / buttocks area. Instantly I thought "I'm not going to be able to ride down from here". Then I got extremely light headed and felt like I was going to pass out. Of course there were plenty of other riders coming along and offering aid. I managed to limp back up to the jeep trail and get carted down but quickly realized I would not be able to operate my vehicle. Wife scooped me up a couple of hours later and took me to the ED, which was a complete waste of time. The only reason I even went was to expedite the MRI that I knew I needed, but the doc just discharged me with a muscle strain. Got evaluated today by a proper ortho, and was diagnosed with a tear of the proximal hamstring tendon(s). Groin muscle is strained as well, but that is apparently just incidental. MRI tomorrow for the complete story. Anybody had something like this? They are warning that if tendon is completely torn and / or separated from bone, surgery might be best option. I have a close friend who had a similar injury water skiing many years ago and has suffered from chronic pain ever since. Edit: Waist band is best option for transporting beer between fridge and couch when on crutches, either while wife is away or when you don't want wife to know you are drinking so early in the day.

OK, we were reading some article that was talking about economic distribution (long story, don't ask, it will kill the mood.) Anyway, in that article they said that since ~2014 or so 33 new breweries opened in the Austin area. My wife refused to believe that there were that many breweries in the area. So I checked, and here is my list (which stands at 50+ right now): 4th Tap 512 Brewing ABGB Acopon Adelberts Austin Beerworks Blue Owl Bluebonnet Brewer's Table Brewtorium Celis Central District Circle Brewing Compadre Draught House Family Business Flying Man Brewing Friends and Allies Frontyard Brewing Ghost Note Guns and Oil Hi Sign Hops and Grain Independence Brewing Infamous Jester King Lazarus Live Oak Middleton Nomadic Beerworks North by Northwest Oasis Brewing Oddwood Orf Brewing Oskar Blues Pinthouse Burnet Pinthouse Lamar Pinthouse Round Rock Red Horn Brewing Rentsch Rusty Barrel Skull Mechanix Southern Heights St. Elmo Strange Land Suds Monkey Thirsty Planet Treaty Oak Twisted X Uncle Billy's Vista Brewing Zilker Our plan is to start making a weekly pilgrimage to somewhere neither of us has been - pretty sure I have been to half of them. And the brewery needs to have a both on-site brewing AND a taproom. I left some off that looked like brewing only. What am I missing from my list?

At least it's not a wiping hand injury. Wiping with the wrong hand, it's so awkward! (Try it).

Darn when the doc said he was giving me Norco I was already planning to hit their website to browse the latest models.

Man, these injury threads really make me second guess my willingness to leave the house! For those of you are recently injured or still recovering: Keep up the PT, listen to you Dr's and PT's. If they aren't pushing you, find a different one. I had a pretty nasty Bucket Handle Tear on my meniscus on top of a partial MCL tear on the same knee back in 2011 and recovery sucked. I skipped leg day for too long and didn't keep my PT up. It took years instead of months before I would say I was 100% again. It's actually one of the big reasons I got into MTB because the pedaling motion helps my joint and was a good way to build strength. If I had stuck with my PT I think I would have recovered and been more active much sooner than I was.

"Good news is that it came off the bone clean and will be easy to anchor it back on surgically." I was just agreeing with your above thought.

Speak from experience? Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk

Not a destination, but online tools to suss out what might be waiting at your destination; especially useful for contemplating bikepacking routes. I'm using a place I'm interested in (Red Canyon in SE Utah) as an example. I stumbled across this awesome web site called TopoZone.com. It has free access to USGS topographic maps and there is a print option as well. You can zoom in for details (for example, what's the elevation of this contour line?) or pull back for the big picture. And yes, view on a full size monitor. Cell phones and tablets wouldn't work well. One can order custom maps from TopoZone for a charge. Combined with Google maps 3d view, it's an excellent way to preview topography and get a better understanding of terrain and perhaps locate roads and trails. . This particular TopoZone link is to the South Fork Red Canyon, San Juan County, Utah, which has caught my attention for bike packing potential out to Lake Powell (water!) and back. If you scroll down, this specific information is provided: elevation, coordinates, the USGS topo map for this particular landform, links to nearby similar land forms (in this case valleys) and the related USGS topo map where that particular land form occurs. For example, the south fork of Red Canyon is found on the USGS Chocolate Drop topo map. It was fun spending an hour or two toggling back and forth between googlemaps 3D view and the topo map. I may be the last person to realize this, but Google maps will respond to queries for landform names if given enough info. I used "Red Canyon, San Juan County, Utah" as the address query. The result showed one red marker ("Red Canyon") in the middle of Lake Powell, because the mouth of Red Canyon is now in the middle of the damn lake. The second red marker, North Fork Red Canyon, marks the confluence of the north and south forks of Red Canyon. Then click on satellite view and zoom in. These areas in SE Utah have zip for vegetation, so what you see is what you get. I don't know how well this would work for forested areas. Anyway, if you're thinking about going somewhere new and route planning, combining Google Maps 3d view and TopoZone are a great combination.

Yeah, really nice. And Sloan is there "component research guru" They are owned by the same company.

Awesome! Reimers has been a go-to for us since we moved here. Glad to hear trails are being expanded and we're totally down for some volunteer time this fall.

I'll look into that. Thanks

Thanks. Surgery is tomorrow morning.

Depending on schedule I might be available to help out as well. I can't work weekends but if you do something on a weekday I might be able to lend a hand.

I don't compromise on anything except maybe time. If there's a bike I want, I might wait until there's a deal. There is a pleasure in owning something and knowing you got a deal on it. There are a lot of other areas in my life that I don't care much about yet spend a lot of money on compared to bicycles - house, cars, health insurance....but none of these brings the pleasure of a nice bike, or keeps me strong or healthy. I built the last five bikes from the frame up with new parts.

I don’t get out there too often, but I really enjoy riding reimers. Count me in for dig days in the fall.

Better solution!

Sold

Ive had numerous bikes over the last 30 years of riding (holy shit that doesnt seem possible 😞 ) The ones Ive regretted is where I bought the bike and thought I'd adapt to a frame geo or size and over time that bike turned out to be one that wasnt so good for me. Might have been a good deal money wise but not riding wise. So wont compromise any more on frame size or geometry. Same with fork,, I dont need to latest greatest or very best but they are so pricey that I try and buy with a nicely specd fork or shock. I know how I like the cockpit setup and those parts are affordable and easy to come by so doesnt matter to much to me as Ill end up swapping bars and drivechain out Brakes must not be SRAM , has to be XTs or SLX , Shifting must not be Shimano, must be SRAM but easy to buy and swap.. Dont care about cranks, pedals. Stems and bars , dont care because I have enough laying around that I like. When I feel the itch to buy I just change things around a bit and that scratches the need

If a complete bike is being sold for 35-40% off, i'd compromise a little on spec and upgrade components down the line. An LBS selling a 2+ y/o bike for 20% off is not even worth the drive. In my experience, building from scratch is always the best option

Oh joy - just in time for next summer 😀

Hey T sorry to hear this. On the bright side though, this is not your favorite time of year to ride.

Ok, back to the streets tomorrow 😞

Finally some useful advice on this site. Hope you heal up fast.

Has anyone ever worked out a scoring system between Shinerider and Seth to determine who has done the most frame carnage? I'm pretty sure Shinerider is in the lead overall, but there could be comparable categories like "Frames Cracked Per Year" and "Other Parts Destroyed" that might provide some interesting data that could be used for historical charting, or creating a betting pool.