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Passed this ditch that has heavily modified by skaters and I could no resist.

Pic from yesterday mornings ride. Long climb but nice cool temps.

I'm pretty stoked that the wife is enjoying her retirement present.

It keeps falling out of his jersey pocket.

OTBS the riding lately has been great, time with the family a blessing , time with my wife has been very nice, working from home is the best. Lost weight, little stress, saving a shit ton of money, sleeping better and feeling good

Maybe just a little 15 mile urban ride on the new(ly rebuilt) steel geared urban bike, but less than 2 weeks ago I was laying on an operating table, so this is a pretty massive accomplishment. Felt great riding and gear may be my friend for a couple of months or so.

View of Sierra Blanca taken from Cedar Creek Trails a little over a week ago.

Given the type of traffic that's been building up out there, perhaps it got degraded by the multitude of kickstands rolling over it. 🤣

This seems to perfectly capture the current zeitgeist: (cartoon credit: F Minus by Tony Carrillo)

Chamois Hagar at Reimers.

Good photo spot for sure. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Tough handful of days packing, driving, and unpacking with little to no help, but we are 95% complete. Large pour of Buffalo Trace on our new balcony in the 80127. First ride tomorrow. Not sure which bike to ride or how I will fare. My legs and lungs are shot right now. LETS GOOOO.

And if you find that you need a tool you don't have, just borrow it from AustinBike! He has a great "loaner" program...

You aren't even trying any more. That says how long it takes to be greeted, not the ICU and ER are empty. You are turning into the new RA.

my Saris rack was missing a bolt. I got on to the site and see Cindy 🙂

Shelter dog acquired. My cats are disgusted, hopefully they get over it.

When a tree falls across the trail and you didn't bring the Husqvarna.

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It's definitely interesting how it affects people so differently. We have to remember that this thing is only months old, and we really don't understand it yet. That's why we shouldn't scoff at the scientists and disease experts when they can't clearly explain something or some of the details aren't 100% accurate. The anti-mask conspiracy theorists want to throw the baby out with the bathwater if one data point doesn't make sense to them, but these scientists are the best we have, doing the best they can.

OK I promise this will be my last weight loss / prediabetic update. Got my A1c rechecked today and I'm thrilled to say that I dropped my Jan measure of 6.1 (prediabetic) down to a 5.3 (within normal range). While that was my primary goal, I've also went from ~201 lbs in Jan to now having logged 6 weeks of weigh-ins at under 175 lbs. I know there have been debates on this forum over the best way to lose weight, but I am now a firm believer that the most important aspect of diet is what you eat much more so than the volume or frequency of what you eat. While you can argue that it's a simple matter of burning more calories than you consume, I'm convinced that magic happens inside your body when you eat the right foods and especially when you eat them in the right combinations. I honestly don't believe that I'm eating any less than I had been - just eating the right stuff now - and still drinking 10-12 heavy beers per week. On the down side, most of my size 34 MTB shorts don't have belt loops and the flimsy velcro adjusters don't work worth crap. So I'm finding myself constantly tugging on my shorts out on the trail to get them back up over my ass. Makes those tech sections out of the saddle a bit challenging.

Haha! True. Especially when some of the mountain biking advice on the mountain biking forum is also questionable...

😆😆😆 Best advice in this thread.

Rode the new Flow Trail a few times at Reimers on Saturday and it was a blast! I was able to hit everything except the last big gap which looks to be 12+ feet by my estimation. After the ride I was kicking myself for not hitting everything, but I just wasn't feeling it so I chickened out on the last feature. As stated in an earlier post, the trail needs some wheels on it. Even though it opened recently, you can tell it's been sitting there a while. The return trail is a mellow climb of just over a mile, which makes sessioning the Flow Trail bearable. The MTB parking lot was absolutely packed by 9am, so there's tons of people going to ride out there. However, we only saw 1 other person riding the Flow Trail while we were in the area. Happy to have more and more options like this in the area. Hopefully the county will follow through with the master plan for this area.

Margets log is going to be replaced with a wood ramp donated from Snail Trail.

Not exactly a freeze warning, but you want to get our your wool socks and mittens. There's a cooling trend in the 10-day forecast! I'm looking at you -- Tuesday, 7/21 -- with a high of 92!

Great thread! Here's my oldest at 5 last fall. Shortly after this ride she decided her helmet didn't feel right so she's barely ridden her bike since.

Make no mistake: Nature doesn't have a will. No anthropomorphic Gaia is trying to "restore a balance." There is no force that views humanity as an infestation. That is old superstition and poppycock. It's not something paying us back for bad behavior like a bloody and barbarous God, it's just cause and effect. Our actions have consequences to which our culture (which is not the only human culture to have existed in this planet) has assigned a negative value. The arc of the universe is long and it bends toward chaos. I think we should fight it, but we need to think long term about whatever predictable results we can calculate. We've known for a long time what this type of civilization costs and we've borrowed from tomorrow's dreams to pay for today. (I've consumed too much Cormac McCarthy lately.)

Thats only if you are doing it wrong. Up until about 5-6 yrs ago, nearly all my bikes have been worth more than the cars I bought. 😉

My first every mountain bike on the day I brought it home - 10/1/06. Purchased from Ozone RIP

Earbuds aren't the problem. it's volume. I've used earbuds for several 10hr NUE races and Enchilida Buffets maybe even a TMBRA or two. At low volume you can still hear everything, even riders calling to pass or getting on your wheels. Road training rides too. Never had a problem. Not saying all others have a brain or care tho.

Think of the poor horses now that those fat cops won't have bikes.

Businesses should be able to reserve the right to refuse service for whatever reason they see fit. It's their business. If they don't want to sell bikes to APD, they shouldn't. Just like if someone didn't wanna bake a cake for someone, they shouldn't. If profit drops off, they'll have to live with it. If I get refused service somewhere, I'll gladly take my money elsewhere. Just my 2 cents.

i threw something together last night at https://austintrailconditions.com If any trail stewards are interested in maintaining it, let me know and I can give you access.

Thanks for the input - that is his data, it draws from the same source. The reason I put it on my site is because he asked me to put it on the site. A lot of people from out of town hit my site when deciding to come here (in addition to all of the people in Austin). With 2-300 visitors per day, it's good exposure. Not everyone has Facebook. I'm not trying to over-ride other people's efforts, jut trying to tie them together.

my daughter has this one and really likes it.

9 months after buying a new frame my super-slow bike build is actually looking like a bicycle. Still need to shorten hoses and cables, which I’ll probably manage to procrastinate over for another couple of weeks.

Everyday we put ourselves at risk of injury or death. We've learned to live this way throughout our evolution that's why we are still here on this planet. Most of us have learned to make calculated decisions to ensure our survival. This goes for many things we do day to day. For some just going to work is an injury or death risk but we learn how to deal with these risks and eventually share this information with others around us. I've been in more than a dozen car accidents almost half of them totaled cars. I still ride in cars and drive cars but I have a certain amount of control when driving a car and I try to be as careful as possible not just for me but for the other drivers as well. As mountain bikers we understand the risk of injury or death and take steps to reduce the possibility of those things happening. As far as COVID is concerned we should be doing the same. Herd immunity IS THE ONLY WAY we can get through this and at some point we will have that. The issue is in the way it happens. Ideally any vaccine that helps is probably the safest way to get there. I'd prefer getting immunity from a vaccine as opposed to getting it from some selfish fuck that doesn't care about themselves or anyone around them. I personally don't think wearing a mask and keeping your distance as well as avoiding crowded poorly ventilated buildings is asking too much to try and ensure our survival. Just because our leaders are making poor decisions doesn't mean we should too.

I love her Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk

Well yes, but it's sad when others are just not as pumped up as they should be.

I think people who ignore the recommended sag settings should be called "sagnostics".

I'm closing this thread, as TheX is just going to keep posting bullshit articles from obviously biased sources. Go spread your BS about COVID-19 somewhere else. ..Al

I totally agree with you on this. Makes me laugh though. If you cant get people to wear a mask because of whatever they dream up then imagine their uproar when they are told not to breed Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk

I had one miss half of her kindergarten and the other missed half of 3rd grade. I felt like it wasn't such a big loss that they wouldn't be able to recover. Maybe their skills with scissors and glue sticks wont be as good. I know school, even Kindergarten is a lot more than that but I felt like they have time to overcome whatever they missed. Kind of glad it happened at the age it did for us. I don't know how the older kids are dealing with it all. What happened to seniors headed to college? I can't imagine missing out on something like algebra or a whole history class. It's probably easier to keep my kids indoors too. They don't really question it. Trying to trap social media connected teenagers in a house? F that. My kids don't have cell phones and their world simply shrunk. They have each other and us. They play together better now than ever. Any bullshit about limiting screen time is out the window at this point. I bought them a Nintendo Switch and I built them a RetroPi. They can play every old Atari and Nintendo game ever made and the older one saw some of that process. So she knows how to pirate ROMs now. Every now and then I try to push a David Attenborough show on them.

I appreciate your sentiment and maybe 10 years ago I would have agreed. But having adopted 2 black kids, I can tell you it's pretty much impossible that they are not going to be forced to be engaged in some manner even at an early age. When some kid in their middle school feels OK to throw out the N-word at my youngest, they start to ask a lot of questions, and I'm not going to lie to them about how I feel about things and what they can do to help change things. Generations of kids around the world of all races (including mine) didn't or don't have the luxury of that innocence like you and I had as kids.

Working on my bread.

soldiers dying on the beach contributed to victory. people on the homefront willing to forgo coffee, nylon stockings, new tires, less meat, etc. made sacrifices of ordinary conveniences so that the resources could be diverted to the war effort. those simple sacrifices made a difference. people spreading the virus are contributing to defeat. it's a virus, not an army. it can't be bombed, reasoned with, or tired out. the more we throw human lives at it, it gets stronger and we get weaker. the metaphor ends at this: people in the past were willing to make significant sacrifices that made a difference. today, we're being asked to stay home and wear a mask when we go out. the ease and simplicity of these basic sacrifices is so incredibly easy that I have nothing positive to say about the big babies who refuse to make them. these are minor requests that make a difference, but overgrown infants who swear they would "die for their country" would literally rather die than wear a cloth over their face. that's a "snowflake". "oh no, not poor little me! my delicate skin can't handle it. my glasses might fog up. people might look at me and think my penis is not huge if I have a mask on. I need to show everyone that I'm a big tough guy with a huge dick, so I don't need no mask!" the hypocrisy, asshatery, and ignorance of it all is staggering.