AustinBike

Most importantly, you were on a bike. And today rocked.

Rode BCGB and hit a few places that I have not ridden for a few years. Wow. What a difference. Too often we get caught up in riding the same lines and the same trails. When you try something you have not been on in a while it's pretty cool. Maybe you want to shred your queso, and then you realize that you haven't been on that trail for a long time. My advice to all of you: remember where you used to ride and try that again.

Yeah James (Balentine) is the guy. He built several wheelsets for me and they all stayed true for their full life. I'm not the craziest rider so I may not be the best judge on this, but I think he does awesome work. https://www.velofix.com If you are on Facebook you can find him directly, otherwise go through the Velofix site and make sure you are dealing with him.

The good news is that the situation, as bad as it is here in TX, will start to subside around the end of this month. We've been spiking from a series of holidays where people were too damn selfish to not share the disease with their families. Right now we are getting to the end of that (hopefully). Combine that with the beginning of the vaccine rollout and you have a glide path to flattening of these spikes. If by the end of Feb things are rolling downhill, April may be in the cards. But if you are still breaking new records daily, that's a bigger issue. Despite all of my pessimism today, by April things *should* be better than today. I continue to monitor.

I think Kent would know the full story. As I recall, someone was cutting a downhill section that was neither sanctioned nor sustainable. That action to close it was the compromise to prevent further scrutiny. I would guess that a.) nobody really knows who to contact that could approve taking it down and b.) even if it were down you can't ride/cut there so it does not matter. I think the sign works as a reminder not to ride anywhere except the approved trail and not to cut anything. But I think the sign is also BS because it implies that we should now be allowed to somehow ride there now that a particular date has passed. In reality that line was not ever sanctioned (at least as I was aware) so removal of the sign should change nothing. I could be wrong, maybe someone involved in the issue can chime in.

I was riding past the BCGB trailhead around xmas and some guy was letting his dog take a HUGE shit while he chatted with his girlfriend. Then he started to just walk away to go start his hike. Lots of people around. I screamed "HEY, your dog just took a huge shit." Everyone turned around. He said "yeah, I am gonna get that on the way out" (even though he would be walking right past the garbage cans. So I said "it might be cooler if you do that NOW." Grudgingly he turned around, cleaned it up and threw it out. Probably ruined his whole hike. It was worth it.

Many Austin parks have plastic foot covers that can be used inside shoes (over socks). They are in green dispensers at the trailhead 😉

Based on how in bed the city is with developers, be careful of what you wish for. The minute the ban is lifted it will be subdivided and plowed. You'll go from complaining about birds to complain about suburban homes or office buildings. The probability that Forest Ridge ever becomes a bike trail is nil at this point in my mind. Developers are a bigger challenge than birds to me because once you plow, its gone for good.

No, I tried those once and had nothing but problems with my pedals. Finally just gave up on it. Basically just wool socks and those work for 1:45 of a 2 hour ride, so it is workable for me.

This is a 6.2-mile "easy" trail according to their website. There is a $5 fee for trail usage, so my gut would say that it is not a price performer. To drive that far and spend a similar amount you could go to Reimers, Pedernales Falls, or Pace Bend. I'll as the folks at AustinBike World Headquarters if I can get approval to do do a ride out there in the next week or two in order to check it out.

I got in 20 miles of urban riding, started at 38F. Best thing to happen to me recently was finally working out all of my layers properly. I rode the whole time today with no issue, only my toes got cold in the last 15 minutes.

Stumbled across this: https://www.sherlock.bike/en/ Based on all of the bikes being heisted, it is an interesting solution. Definitely better than a lot of the other options on the market. Biggest downside that I see is that it has a 7-day battery. This means you'd probably never have it fully charged on the day of the heist, so there is really a 3-5 day window at best. Think about how many times you've gotten the low battery warning on a Garmin... Anyway, it does look like a good solution, but it is pricey vs. just buying an insurance policy rider and expecting that you will need to buy a new bike somewhere down the line.

Actually we (at least me) like trail runners, you guys are never annoying, I think we are all probably cut from the same cloth. The ones on the trails that annoy us are the ones who cut down the technical challenges and try to make things easier. Valburn stuff is called "---- trail" in our world. I've met --- a few times, he's really chill. He's a trail runner, not a biker but he is cool with bikes being on his property. Whenever we ride there, we always give runners the right of way because, um, it's their world and we're just visitors. It is a connection to some other trails in the area, not a primary destination in most cases. Forest Ridge - don't go there. We've been banned from there due to the warblers. Apparently a bike rolling by startles their delicate sensitivity. But the other large habitat, near Ft. Hood, seems do do fine with artillery practice. Must be the particular sound of our tire vs. explosions.... River Place is a private trail and they specifically say no bikes. If you own the property you get to make the rules. Based on the "steps" system that they have in place, I'd never want to ride a bike there. All of the trails at Lakeway are well understood by the community. Parking at Canyonlands allows you to do both Mt. Lakeway and the Hamilton Greenbelt so for those of us that like the longer day of riding, it's a better option. Some other reasons are there that I won't get into on a public site.

I agree with this assessment, even though I have never ridden one. Having a bike be 20% heavier but giving you 20% more leverage seems like a bad tradeoff. My steel HT SS is ~22 pounds or so and it was way more nimble than my older FS geared aluminum bike that clocked in around 30 pounds. There are places that I could get up on the SS that I could not on the FS. Of course, bombing down the hill was completely different.

I have an older pike, 15mm non-boost that I am about to put on eBay when I get motivated....