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We have a trip to Bentonville coming up and my wife has been looking around for a new bike and fell in love with the 27.5" Trek Fuel EX 9.8 she test rode. Got a decent clearance deal since it's a 2021 Gen 5 so I pulled the trigger. Going to surprise her with it when she gets home today.

We just finished an amazing seven-day family ride from Teluride to Moab. When I get home I hope to post a ride report.

Down under in Coogee Australia. Nothing better than the first ride with your 2 1/2 yr old grandson.

The mesa you're viewing is the north facing escarpment of the Mesa Verde cuesta. This section is the Ute Mountain Tribal Park, further east is Mesa Verde National Park. Foreground is a trail at Hawkins Preserve, right outside my door. Bike is set up for zipping about town, to go to the library, grocery store, farmer's market and other errancs. Also ready for bikepacking and riding around at Hawkins Preserve.

Spent a couple of days camping on the North Rim. We mostly hiked and gawked at the geologic awesomeness, but I did a little bit of riding on a portion of the Arizona Trail.

Old thread but I thought I would add one more to the “don’t ignore it if things feel off” crowd. I started feeling like my heart was racing while riding around Christmas, and thought it was probably because I was getting over being sick around Thanksgiving. It didn’t really improve so I got a 24hr monitor from the cardiologist my Dr. referred me to. I went out for a ride with the monitor which showed my heart rate peaked at 262 with several arrhythmias. Cardiologist freaked out a little, additional tests (stress test and echo) were normal so I was sent to an electrophysiologist who thought I either had an an extra electrical pathway (Wolff Parkinson White syndrome) or more general atrial fibrillation. I had an ablation on Thursday which hopefully treated atrial fibrillation (no evidence of WPW was found). If it worked I should be back to normal shortly. It has been a strange few months though- I’m not super fit but I’ve always been fairly active and reasonably healthy, so this wasn’t an area I was expecting to have problems with.

Patzcuaro, Mexico

Hit the foothills trail in Franklin state park with the Mrs on Sunday. Man that place has gotta be the best TX State park when it comes to MTB trails. Climbing back out is so steep, but the vistas are totally worth it! https://www.trailforks.com/trails/lower-foothills-4626/

Brown mountain outside of saguaro national park, west of Tucson.

Enjoying the weather in Tucson

Today’s ride was quite a bit chillier. Friday was Lindsey Park and today was Tyler State Park.

Finally got out for a ride yesterday and felt like i was back in Virginia. Almost 500ft of climbing in 1 mile to get to the main connector. Views of El Paso, Juarez and New Mexico were worth it though.

On our way to the Telluride-to-Moab adventure we did a fun ride at Phil’s World. It was my first time there and it was great fun!

North of Pagosa Springs

Hooky Day ride for me. Monarch Crest, a tad under 12K feet.

Getting ready for a big shuttle run descent from the franklins to the houses in the valley below. Hooked up with some locals and found the gnarly stuff. Definitely some Chihuahuan desert freeride going on out here.

Early Spring color on trails we don’t mention

Another hard lesson learned about listening to your body, and another lucky outcome. Earlier this month I started experiencing a dull pain in my chest that got slightly worse when I exercised. I sort of wrote it off to aging and angina, since I wasn't feeling any other symptoms, such as shortness of breath, lightheadedness, weakness, etc. The one real oddity was a ride on Jan 7, where I was having to stop after every climb to catch my breath and where my max HR far exceeded the norm for me (and for any 65yr old dude for that matter) at 190. I wrote that off too, to lack of sleep and alcohol consumption the day prior, aka "low body battery". Still, I did make an appointment with my Cardiologist but the earliest available was in mid-Feb. Fast forward to Jan 28 (this past Sun) - woke up excited to pick up my buddy and head out to RPR for some much needed riding before settling in for an afternoon / evening of NFL action. I started feeling some sharper pains in my chest though, that would come and go as I was just going through my morning routine. Finally my better judgement kicked in and I let my friend know what was going on and that I didn't want to chance it, especially knowing the medical response at RPR would be less than ideal for anything life threatening. I woke up my wife and let her know that I was going to just run over to the BS&W Emergency Hospital in Cedar Park so that I could get checked out and back home for the NFL games. The EKG was perfectly normal, but given my past history of pulmonary embolism, they did a CT Scan, even though my D-Dimer (blood indicator of clotting) was only slightly elevated. Good thing they did as multiple clots were discovered across both lungs. Needless to say, instead of enjoying some ice-cold beer that afternoon, I was treated to a steady drip of Heparin while watching football on a hospital-grade (small) flatscreen TV. They found no DVT this time, and surmised that the clots may be the residual effect of stuff that's been going on for the past few weeks. In any case, I'll be on Eliquis indefinitely now given this second episode of pulmonary emboli. Moral of story, listen to your body and don't fear the dreaded "false alarm at the ER", as I've had a few of those myself as well. In retrospect, I should have gone much earlier and just got lucky this time, again. SIMILAR MTB RIDES DEC 30-JAN 13

Sneaking out before the rain arrives.

Better half enjoying some of those sunny Chihuahuan desert trails.

It is always fun to ride in East Texas.

Father son project. 1990 Smurf Miata restoration: clutch, clutch hydraulics, shocks, shock mounts, rear main seal (as you should if you do the clutch), cam angle sensor I-ring (super common top end source for oil leaks), shifter bushings, paint touch up, seat upholstery change. Yes in this heat with no AC in the garage. We took this past weekend off.

Neuhaus Metal Works Hummingbird in size M+. Ride report coming soon. Nick Neuhaus is a good dude, and you should buy a bike from him.

Cedar Park had a "kaleido-spoke" festival on Friday night. It was an impressive event for being free. Great for kids.

I've been off the bike since January 1 this year with a shoulder injury. Riding any bike in any configuration is agony... until now. As I'm working my way through rehab, this is my new ride. Built around a Univega beach cruiser I found at Yellow Bike, I ditched most of the parts and started over. I had to buy the bottom bracket adapter cups and a shim for the handlebar, so I've spent less than $25 on it.

Patzcuaro, Mexico. Yesterday was my fourth ride in five days here. All of them have involved some amount of urban riding which has been a great way to see the town and a dizzying amount of visual, audio and olfactory experiences. All the roads are cobblestone and our hosts bikes that we are using are hardtails. And we are at 7000 feet and the rides have taken us up to around 8000 feet so plenty of huffing and puffing!

The new trail at Brushy is open. It's called Billy Goat in memory of Rob Paulk. He helped build a lot of the original trails at Brushyand and did countless hours of volunteering in the mtb community. https://www.trailforks.com/trails/billy-goat-729615/?fbclid=IwAR2yEYQWcl9eWK_brERaFADb_XYKmrbcYCy_uNFe0IelGgyagpi1oKunrkE

After some convincing, got the wife up into the franklin mtn foothills today. She was far from stoked with some of the steep climbs, but the scenery and feeling of accomplishment was worth it. Plus the weather was killer today.

I looked up and January is almost over and I’ve barely been on my bike. Uncool. So today I rode.

Bring on 2024.

Finally replaced my broken mountain bike yesterday. Revel Rascal bought at Velorangutan. A week ago I made a joke to the wife about a brand new car (she shot it down). So then I joked about a brand new bike (and I was very specific). I didn't think she would actually order a bike for me. I went into Velo to check on Rascals. They said they have to check on inventory and get back to me. They connected the dots and realized my wife had just ordered a bike. They tried to help make it a surprise. They were trying to go out of their way on this Christmas surprise. This shop is a good find.

Emerging from summer hibernation today but trails were muddy. Put together a 15-mile "gravel" route to kick off the non-suck weather.

Back in the HH days, some customers (who were friends of mine), would have occasional gear-gatherings. They'd show up to the shop (which sat on a 1/2 acre) with their bike loaded down with their setup. It was a show and tell of sorts to help newbs and each other with ideas and best practices. Addtionally, I know that frequently their shake down rides would consist of heading out 'into the wild' of Austin trails and simply spending the night somewhere...CP, BCGB, etc.. I've not really done legit bikepacking (even though I followed the sport closely), but on a few occasions my teen son and I would throw a hammock into our pack, grab a burrito and muffin and ride off into some of the 'unmentionables' to spend the night on the side of the trail in some obscure spot. We'd setup hammocks, eat burrito, talk about stuff, sleep, wake up, eat muffin, and then take the scenic route home....it was essentially a basic S24O with my son. @sherpaxc @Mattlikesbikes@GFisher

puntos = dots, he's translating puntos to points. I had guessed he meant fisheyes. "what's your point?" = "cual es to punto?" punto/a also means point as in the point of a spear. "mi bici tiene puntos" = "my bike has dots"

I waited around and even yelled out several times, but no one ever came to the hole.

We have arrived. Time to plan. Have a golf cart to deal with now, too, because who would live in Salado without a golf cart.

RPR littered with wildflowers!

Finally made it to Barkley Meadows Park at the intersection of 71 and 130 along Onion Creek. It's an obscure spot that turned out to be quite interesting. There's a small network of concrete paths, some fully shaded and some not, that ultimately lead...nowhere. One path crosses under 130 and parallels a pond and what I think is an immense borrow pit for construction of 130. It just dead ends, although the park map shows a loop. The other path dead ends at Hwy 71, very close to where the highway crosses Onion Creek. Had conditions been drier, we would have gone under the bridge and connected up to SE Metropolitan Park. There is a bulldozed road that goes from the side of 71 down to Onion Creek. But, there are some amazing pecan trees, shaded picnic tables with a shaded playscape, Berdoll pond to fish for catch and release, a bridge along the Old Bastrop highway on a "closed" trail, an interpretive sign for an archaeological site, and a bazillion signs in large lettering that note to watch for SNAKES ON TRAIL. We did see a snowy egret, a caracara and a hawk. The interpretive sign for the Old Bastrop Highway bridge notes that Fort Comanche (1849) was located nearby, but I can find no references to an historic fort or camp by that name, even on this quite extensive list on the Texas Forts website. It would be a great spot to spend an hour or two with small children able to ride a bike on the paths, picnic and play.

Way too humid out there but there are rewards!

Not entirely garage related. But the new digs didn't have a really great bike wash option. No conveniently placed trees or whatnot. So this dedicated wash stand had to happen. Because why not slap a Park bench stand on an 8×8 cedar post? I just had to remove and replace a single sod tile. My original idea was to put a swivel plate between the post and the stand so I can spin it around and wash both sides while standing on the laneway. But damnit all if I can't find a freakin' swivel plate with a 4.25" bolt pattern.