AustinBike

Cranks still available? How much?

Now considering Santa Fe for an August trip, thanks to everyone for the data here, this is really helpful.

I've talked about this on the garage thread before; I think these are the best racks that are available on the market. If you have limited room in your garage and are using wall hanging for your bikes, the Steadyrack allows you to mount your bikes and then swing them to the left or to the right for access. This gives you a much denser packing, I have 3 bikes with 700mm bars in a 5' wide area that also includes the ability to open up a door and get in and out of the garage in that tight space. The original rack holds tires up to 2.4" and the new "MTB specific" version holds them up to 2.8". If anyone wants to check out how their bikes fit they are welcome to swing by.

Here's the full review for those that are interested: http://www.austinbike.com/index.php/product-reviews/351-review-new-steadyrack-mtb-wall-rack

Most importantly, getting the new rack allowed me to move the bikes around so that I could get a wider space for the door:

Central Austin, by central market. If you ever ride at the R&I we can meet there or maybe find somewhere in between to meet. If you live near Shinerider you can pass them off to him and I can PayPal of Venmo you the cash.

Interested in both but cedar park is way out of the way for me. Do you get down to Austin ever?

Here is the definitive answer:

https://hydromet.lcra.org

you can zero in on rainfall for the last 24 hours. There is a station at 360 and mopac, pretty much ground zero for the greenbelt.

We got ~1/4” on the GB, should be fine tomorrow. Might even ride it myself tomorrow. Should be great. 

I plan to be there ~4 for some early riding. I'll post up conditions, but if there is sun by noon you best be on your way there because it looks like the rain missed most of the city (.07" in Rosedale), it is all up to the north.

Betting the GB is even better, only .09" in the past 24 hours.

Everyone south of Willco should be on their bikes today 😉

Rain is done for the day. According to the local weather station they received .15" of rain. 

Sun should be out this afternoon. It will be humid. But it should be hero dirt. I plan to be there riding.

Planning to ride tomorrow, pending any developments in the morning weather. The last 3 days called for rain and we had none here in central Austin

I have seen more copperheads than rattlers. In 20+ years of riding Austin I've seen 3 CH's and 2 rattlers (doubled that number yesterday) and more coral snakes than I have fingers. Might have seen 2 water moccasins but was not close enough to either to make a 100% ID; one was over 4 feet long and looked really nasty.

That almost sounds like work 😉

Ran into a rattler on the greenbelt today. ~3’ long. Freaked me out. Slammed the brakes so hard I did a nose wheelie and almost face planted onto it. 

Did my typical lunchtime lap around the lake and for the first time in many months I did not see a single scooter out there. Perhaps these signs are helping. Nicely done TTF.

Never tried it after a ride but have tried some for general relaxation and better sleep. Seems to do ok, but more experimentation is needed before I can call it success. 

2 hours ago, AntonioGG said:

IEEE still uses 802.xxxx  So what body has adopted the wifi naming convention you mentioned?  I'm in the enterprise industry and everyone including our customers still use that notation, but I'm not involved in consumer level products so I'm curious what other standards there are that manufacturers can rely on and consumers can trust to mean the same in one brand vs the other.

Back on topic:

Specialized does have the guidelines, but they don't tell you about them on their marketing info or at the bike store.  I just recently bought a Roubaix (rains 4 weeks ago my bad), and subsequently learned that if I happen to ever go to northern France or southern Belgium and ride on the famed cobbles, my warranty would be void, because the Roubaix is intended for smooth paved surfaces only.  Apparently someone forgot to tell Peter Sagan that!

https://media.specialized.com/support/collateral/0000093943.pdf

 

It is primarily a consumer thing. We tech people can decode letters easily, but consumers, not so much. https://www.wi-fi.org/discover-wi-fi/wi-fi-certified-6

Back on topic. I really like that Specialized categorization. 

3 hours ago, Teamsloan said:

But...it allows you to flip through your bike collection like the pages of your favorite book.

Ironically, I don't have room in my garage to use these racks. I looked in to them a long time ago as Feedback Sports used to (maybe still do) make a similar rack.

Exactly. I have little space for my bikes, essentially 3 wall studs. And there is an exterior door that opens right into the bikes (clearly I was limited in my storage space.) In that world being able to swing the bikes 6-12" to get in and out of the door is perfect. Without the swing, the door would only open halfway.

6 hours ago, Teamsloan said:

Woah, companies are contacting you for product reviews? You're officially an "influencer"!

I am one level below that. Technically I am an under the influencer.

I am a networking analyst. One of the things the industry did is change all of the nomenclature. Instead of 802.11n or 802.11ac or 802.11b they changed to WiFi1 through WiFi6. Because 6 is higher than 5 (logical) and there is a lack of logic on the letters (AC is higher than N...)

People can figure out what "level" of WiFi is supported, it was far easier than having to figure out if one was better than another. I'd love to see companies find a way of trying to do this as well. But it would have to be standardized, so that, for instance, a Specialized "level 5" should be able to take the same level of abuse as a Yeti "Level 5", and so on.

17 hours ago, RedRider3141 said:

When your bike has higher aspirations than you do...

I actually like that. I wish the biking world could come up with some guidelines for riding like this. From a marketing perspective it would help the guys trying to sell $5K bikes and help differentiate against the low end bikes. Everything is relative, but something like this could be good for the industry.

Not to get everyone off the puns, but while I was out of town Steadyrack pinged me and wanted me to review their new rack. It has a wider holder to accommodate larger tires. They even have a fat bike now. 

https://www.steadyrack.com

Got home last night and the box was waiting for me. Will give it a shot this weekend and see how it goes. The standard racks were a bit tight on you 2.4" chunky monkey tires so this should be interesting.

We rented city bikes from them, then I saw this when we returned them. Since my group was all non-bikers I should have gotten this one and seen if I could keep up with them:

Walking to dinner last night I passed by this sweet ride. Wish I had known about it earlier in the week:

I was expecting that you would go over the log pile at the end. I would have crashed long before I got to that point. 

Head to Toulouse tomorrow and fly out on Thursday morning. Better question is whether WC will be dry I guess.