AustinBike

Rode yesterday and it was miserable. Rode today and it was fine. Sunshine makes all of the difference. Also, old Chicago trick is plastic bags on the feet (over the socks). All parks have convenient dispensers for these, the right size for your feet. Dog poop bags. Just please use fresh bags only, off the roll. Work great in a pinch.

You should check out Team Shazam, a bunch of local racing ladies, not heavy duty racers, lots of social. Their group is a private facebook group but I can get you in touch with the right people. PM me.

I saw a bonewipe on Burnet, north of 45th, taking the right hand lane. He was blocking rush hour traffic, even thought there is a 6' wide sidewalk that he could have been riding on. Full-on hipster with the beard and sunglasses. I ride that stretch all the time to get to pinthouse and I use the sidewalk because a.) it's legal, b.) it's safer and c.) it maximizes the traffic flow for the drivers.

Yeah, it has gotten to this. I refuse to stop riding just because it is cold. I can ride with shorts down to about 45, but beyond that point, I need something better. Leg warmers don't work for me, they keep falling down. I normally have some long pants with chamois in them, but they are all old and were cheap to begin with. I ride Pearl Izumi short exclusively because I really like the chamois. Ordered a pair of cold weather PI long pants with chamois, but when they arrived I realized that they did not have a chamois and returned them. When I scoped out the Amazon page I saw that even though they showed a chamois in all of their pictures the description said something about "wear over your favorite shorts". That seemed uncomfortable to me. So what is the wisdom here? Long pants with a chamois? Regular shorts with a chamois under long pants? If I am buying long pants to go over my shorts I don't need to spend the extra money for PI as I would already have that level of comfort underneath. Thoughts?

They will probably be able to avoid liability in most lawsuits. If you get a ride share with Uber and the driver has an accident, Uber is *somewhat* on the hook (but, mostly the driver is going to be at fault). It is *generally* clear on where liability lies because there has been enough (recent) case law; they are on the hook if it was known that the driver had issues, but that is a much longer discussion. However, when you rent a scooter it is like renting a car. If I rent a car from Hertz and then plow into you, I am more on the hook than Hertz is. They are only on the hook if for some reason they should not have rented to me. The scooter companies are probably protected for the most part. BUT, with that being said, where scooter companies are screwed is not with financial liability but with safety regulation. As soon as helmets are mandated on all scooter riders, they all implode. THAT kills the business model. So, these CDC investigations could really kill the business, mostly with regulation, not lawsuits. Where they may be exposed is if a very drunk person rents a scooter and dies as the family would go after the scooter company. When a scooter hits a vehicle or a pedestrian the liability most likely lands on the scooter driver and not the scooter company. All in, it is a very complicated situation.

Fair point. But many of those bikes were cheap "throwaway" bikes or department store bikes. Pretty sure that the shops didn't benefit from that customer base as much.

And I also have battery-powered tools (weed, hedge, blowers, etc.) good for light path clearing before you bring in the heavy guns.

Nope. Let me put on my economics hat for a second (since I use my degree about twice a year these days). Scooters operate in a different economic sphere. The real danger to bike shops are wives and children. Scooters compete with walking, taxicabs, buses, and ride share. All of these are essentially zero investment activities on the front end with varying degrees of flexibility - mass transit is cheap, per-ride consumption, but are fixed in route/time. Scooters, taxis, and ride share are more expensive but more flexible from a timing and route perspective. Bikes compete with cars: some investment on the front end and ownership costs. Cars have less flexibility and also incur parking costs. Bikes will compete with self-purchased scooters (not Bird or Lime but the ones you can buy, own and maintain yourself.) The reason that bike shops are in danger of children is that people spend a lot of money on bikes when they are single. But if they marry a non-biker, that revenue stream either stops or is greatly diminished quickly. Then children come along and there is not enough time. So mid-20's through early 40's you probably see a huge drop in bike shop spending that then kicks in as the kids are self-sufficient or divorces kick in (yeah, dark thought but let's face it, economists don't care about such things, just the facts.) If I were a bike shop owner and I had money to throw around on lobbying and trying to juice the market, I would invest in the following: Propose legislation to make Tinder, Match and the rest of the online dating sites more difficult to use Invest in Trojan and other condom manufacturers Lobby to make divorce easier to execute Lobby to increase the cost of marriage licenses Notice that scooters aren't on that list. Shops only compete with purchased scooters and in that domain as a shop, I'd probably start carrying a scooter line as it can be complimentary to the bikes I am already selling.

As an international man of leisure I'd be willing to meet up for a beer and some surveying or shovel work.

Thinking about east side breweries for this weekend, there is a nice path to be bike able.

Kent, thanks for staying on top of this.

We've already had at least one death and several very severe head traumas. If an individual on a scooter hits your car, I do not believe there is clarity about who pays. Lime and Bird are definitely not liable, I've heard that your auto insurance will not cover it. I am about to shop for new insurance (house, car, umbrella, business, etc.) and this is a top question on my list.

In with a 4:30 start. Oscar Blues was good for post ride food and drink last week, wouldn't mind that again. Gonna be in the 50's for riding, just a hair under perfect but still very rideable.

I will give that a few weeks. Got a full Wednesday and it looks like rain coming, so this week might be off for a Grelle trip, so that could shift to next week. If put CB on the back burner and ping you before I head out there.

I'll take some gears out there this week. I guess it is better to bring a gun to a knife fight than a knife to a gunfight.

I have just hung my camelbak in the garage for years and never had an issue with cleaning, but I only use water. Every other year I get a funky mold in the tube, so I use the cleaning tool and cleaning tabs, 5 minutes later I am good for another 2 years or so.

YES!!! Lime is a menace to the downtown area. Scooters are strewn everywhere. Why does out city have to become polluted with their scooters just to satisfy their business model. I see the scooter companies being like Uber/Lyft - they will push things as far as they can until the city has to step in and take charge. If you've ever had an Uber stop dead in the middle of the street to let people out you know what I mean. Zero situational awareness, it is 100% all about them. They need to understand that they are part of an ecosystem and that they need to get along with everyone else. You are part of the ecosystem and can run in harmony, but when you overpower the ecosystem you become a cancer. And you need extreme measures to battle cancer in the ecosystem.

Nice single!

If your wife is posting as "Cody" then I think you have bigger issues than tires.

I agree 100%. I would be willing to do some trail work if they were to build some MTB-only trails. And I also agree that getting the bikes off of the horse trails would make both groups happy.

Thanks, I think I might head out to Grelle this week, depending on how things work out at ABWHQ. I hear there may be some networking installations to deal with. Is it singlespeedable?

Yeah, Grelle is all about making sure that we cover all the trails in the region. AB world HQ has strict requirements and yearly performance reviews are coming up.

Yeah, the place is probably great for families and hiking. Seems like a horse and zip line would be great. Just not together.

Fan of Ardents on my 29er. 2.4 sealant compliant tires work well for me. I've heard complaints about Ardent Race - probably good for racing but not for regular riding on technical trails.

The TL;DR - don't bother. Sometimes the AustinBike World Headquarters sends me on a mission to scout out a new trail. And then sometimes this happens - I'm sent out to review something where I would have been better off riding urban around town. Headed out to McKinney Roughs yesterday and it is a mess. The trails are in terrible condition. They are almost all jeep track and terribly torn up by horses. While I was able to pull off more than 1000' of climbing in the ~12 miles of riding, it was pretty sketchy. Some of the uphills are sharp turns with switchbacks, and so loose/rutted that it was hard to clear them on my singlespeed. I would have been better off with gears unfortunately, primarily because of the terrible trail surface. Here's the full review: http://www.austinbike.com/index.php/east-of-austin/339-mckinneyroughs Now that the travel is done for the years I am looking to hit up some new trails. Grelle and Colorado Bend are on my list. If anyone else has suggestions on relatively close locations that I might be missing, ping me and I will add them to my list.