AustinBike

I just saw this on MTBR: This is an interesting take. I had not considered the "finesse" that you can get from a bike that is just not present with an e-bike. So much of my riding over the years has become much more about feeling the bike through tight obstacles, rock gardens, etc. My Orbea Occam is exceptionally adept at helping me finesse my way through features, to the point where I often tell people to give me a little space because I have the ability to slow a climb to insanely low speed to slips through the appropriate line instead of just getting a head of steam and trying to power up something. The singlespeed really taught me this skill but the Occam lets me literally track stand in the middle of a climb or a rock garden and sneak through with the least effort.

We used Klock Electric in Austin when we had a lightning strike to fix some issues in the house, they were fast, did good work, and as I recall, pretty reasonably priced. Also, Mark Bedell who posted on the old Mojo site as "silverback" is an electrician: https://www.facebook.com/mark.bedell1/ I think he works for a solar company these days so I don't know if he is in the service market but if you are friends with him you may want to reach out to him.

They pulled the mask off and it was poison ivy. And he would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for those meddling kids.

Well, not to be the downer, but we live in a state where 95% of the land is privately owned. Sadly, this is going to happen. Property owners can do whatever they want with their property and allowing a high risk activity like biking is rarely in the cards.

I have a buddy that has a Kuat Transfer V2 Rack with a 2" receiver. Hardly ever used, probably less than 10 times. If you are interested ping me and I can put you in touch with him. Here's more info on the rack: https://www.rei.com/product/187294/kuat-transfer-v2-2-bike-hitch-rack There is nothing wrong with it, but they have 2 e-bikes and need a heavier duty rack to handle the extra heft of a battery bike.

You say US. You don't say Texas. My guess is that with the way Texas fights to stay off the US grid that any declaration about US plans will have little to no impact on Texas.

I view standards from a higher level. If a bike company is pushing a proprietary standard then there is a lock in - buy brand X I am tied to brand X for some small universe of parts. But my wheel spacing, wheel size, brake mounting, handlebar clamp, bottom bracket, etc. are all standard. I can change components far easier today than in the past. Now, bike component makers might have proprietary parts, but you have the choice. I can choose between SRAM and Shimano because they will both fit on any of my standardized bikes. But when I broke a Shimano brake lever blade like I did earlier this year, I could only buy Shimano. So what. I think the bike industry has gotten much more standardized, the bike component industry is still proprietary but I'd rather have proprietary at the $35 brake lever blade than the $800 suspension fork.

Tires. Hubs and wheels. Drivetrains. Brakes. Handlebars. Grips. Seatposts and seats. The industry has a ton of standardization. Go shop for a dropper and you'll find that you have 3-4 diameters to choose from and no mention of what kind of bike it is going on. Bike companies are very proprietary on their shock mounting, derailleur hangers and small spare parts. I would say that the industry is incredibly standardized. The biggest outlier always seemed to be Cannondale with their Lefty and their Headshock. The industry brought them in line pretty quick. Those are still products per se, but mostly from an ego perspective.

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I would suggest that there is a bigger determinant out there: modularity and standardization. If I were investigating an e-bike, one of my top criteria would be the modularity of the batteries. My wife has an Electra Townie Go e-bike and she loves it. But the battery is integrated into the downtube and not really user accessible. I also have some friends with REI city e-bikes that have modular, removable batteries - a much better design. But what the industry needs is some standardization. That will drive adoption faster than anything. Additionally, while it is not optimal, if you had a removable battery you could actually carry a spare with you on an overnight trip if you needed to. Sure, its not optimal because of the weight, but it would be a consideration.

I have an Occam - carbon. This is the best bike I have ever owned. And I have owned a bunch. Maybe it is overkill, but there are times when overkill beats almost enough. Highly recommend it. Also, I have hammered on this one a lot, bought in September of 2019 and it is still going strong. I have broken frames on just about everything else I have owned, except for my Santa Cruz Blur. And I am not a big jump guy, I just ride a ton.

I have dropped a bunch of tires off there and have more on the shelf. I am slowly cleaning out the garage and when I hit the bike area I will have another big shipment to drop off.

No, you are not being too cheap. Check out swapping the front and back. I have a a regimen for my tires, the good bike gets the new ones, passing down its tires to the singlespeed, and then the singlespeed tires go to the urban bike for the final grinding down. I get years out of a set of tires across multiple bikes.

Yes, you are correct. HG is basically a whole bunch of spacers. XD is a more complicated solution. But, cheaper than a new wheel.

Yeah, but if Costco only offers the 1X SRAM then I think I know what my answer would probably be. At $1500 it would be worth swapping derailleur and shifters later if the SRAM proved to be too cumbersome for me. If I had just done a couple months straight of heavy contracting I would have bought it already. But so far the work this year is light, only equivalent to a bit more than the cost of the bike. There are times to do crazy stupid purchases, but the grave bike can wait for now.

Also, their Gravel bike is pretty sweet. Considering this for myself in the future: https://www.costco.com/intense-951-gravel-bike-1x-sram.product.4000230137.html

Looks like Fox and SRAM components. https://www.costco.com/intense-951-trail-bike.product.4000136517.html

Yeah, this is a really good deal and Intense is a great company. The big thing though, for anyone that buys one, is to make sure that it is properly assembled. ESPECIALLY when it comes to the torque tolerances around carbon components. I'd opt to get one unassembled and use that $1000 savings on a good Park Tools torque wrench. The geometry is more of an XC bike, but that is fine for around here. If you spend all your time at Spider Mountain you might want to pass, but if you are riding most of our stuff it is a really good deal. And I believe that Costco gives you an additional warranty (that is why I buy my computers there.) Also, the Costco credit cards give you a % back. I'd assume that anyone who buys one is going to upgrade some components pretty quick. If anyone happens to be there and sees one on the floor, snap a few pics for us.

I have struggled with cholesterol for years. It's a hereditary thing because I have tried everything and can't seem to bring it down. For a while I had a doctor pushing me to get on statins because my overall number was well over 200, which is why I tried everything to avoid statins. My new doctor was much more pragmatic. Her position was that as long as my LDL was less than 160 I was fine to stay off statins. Because I ride every day, my HDL was high and my eating/drinking habits kept my Triglycerides in check. 7 years ago I had a calcium scan and the score was ~25. Just had one in January and my new number was 140. Statins it is. Step aside lifestyle this is a job for science.

Based on the number of bikes that they have in the Netherlands, I can see them doing this. I absolutely loved riding there, it was like Denmark, a pretty bike-centric commuting experience, regardless of the weather.

I would be interested in the wheel boxes

Yeah, that's the good news with good patents: they fetch good money on the open market when a business goes under. I worked for a startup and Dell was licensing our technology for one of their platforms. We were taking on water and tried to get them to buy the company. Why bother? They could buy the patent in the liquidation at a fraction of the cost. I'd bet if these are solid patents, they'll be around in the future on other products. If nobody wants to buy the patent or the assets of the company, they *could* still end up in the market if someone is ballsy enough to figure that whoever is holding the bag on the patent is unlikely to sue. At that point, you're throwing good money at bad. It's a weird world full of lots of calculations.

I would think that any insurance company is going to set rates based on the probability of something happening. Fire in a traditional shop is probably pretty low. Fire in a shop with top line bikes is higher. Fire in a shop with any kind of bike is going to be the highest. I'd bet that shops will also limit what they will work on based on their insurance, so if someone does buy the cheap knock off, it may be more expensive to get it repaired. I could see a shop agreeing to only work on approved platforms in order to get some break in liability insurance.