AustinBike

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.

I am a big fan of these on my singlespeed: https://www.on-one.co.uk/i/q/TYOOCM29X24/on-one-chunky-monkey-29x24-tyre Even with the shipping a pair of these is cheaper than anything I can get in the US and more importantly they perform great and last about a year (20-30 miles per week on the bike). For my squishy I use Ardent 2.4's, they work fine but are definitely more expensive. May try the monkeys on the squishy one of these days.

One of my claims to fame was that I beat LA in a race - on his own property 🙂 A few years back the Mellow Johnny's classic was run on his ranch and he ended up with a DNF. Technically anyone that finished the race beat him.

Wow, that is an awesome price. I paid $91 for mine.

I prefer KMC. Their 10-speed chains have a multiuse quick link, Shimano positions theirs as single use only (according to a very well respected wrench I talked to back in the day). Maybe they can be used more than once, but because of this I stick with KMC.

Yeah, no kidding. I am always going on the assumption that everyone was juicing in one way or another. His juicing probably made him 5-10% better, just enough to win, but what if he could have won without it? We'll never know.

The Anderson store will be shutting down, the Lamar store will supposedly be open. Are the items at Lamar also 30% off?

Yep, it is stories like those that made me consider the change.

I'm the king of ass-related advice apparently.

I'd be interested in seeing this, exclusive of any VC/angel funding. Right now the models seem primed for implosion. The charging piece is especially troubling: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/05/charging-electric-scooters-is-a-cutthroat-business/560747/ Just wait until people start doing the math on this. It is similar to being an Uber driver. In the early days people were very hung ho, great way to make money. Then they started cracking down on the drivers, it was harder to make money. Then the real costs started to show through in wear and tear on cars, insurance riders, etc. Eventually people started to realize that the primo side hustle was closer to minimum wage than they had imagined. Give it time on the "wranglers". It is coming. As the economics tighten on the companies, the rewards will start to fall off. And that is when things turn inwards. There is room for one scooter company, maybe 2 (more like 1.5). Definitely not 3.

Bought one of these and it is head and shoulders above the Camelbak. The TL;DR if you don't want to wade through the review is that it is no longer uncomfortable since they have changed the bladder design. Camelbak has a few advantages, but the Osprey lifetime warranty is pretty sweet and I am happy to be in their camp now. Performance had them at ~$95 in their closeout. http://www.austinbike.com/index.php/product-reviews/338-review-osprey-raptor-10-hydration-pack

All we can hope is that the scooter companies all go belly up. Once they run out of their VC cushion they'll come up with the unfortunate truth that their business models are unsustainable. Literally. They need to be rounded up each night, charged, and then redeployed every morning. There is no way this is viable when you consider the high capital cost of entry and the high operational costs. Hopefully the demise will happen quickly.

I have passed Lance on one of those unnamed trails. We were about to go down it and he passed by going up it. Just sayin'.

I have KS's on my bikes. The LEV on my singlespeed has been great and worry-free. The i950r on my full suspension has been sketchy. It drops easy but I usually have to grab it with my legs to pull it back up. Will replace that with something better when I replace the frame in the next year or so.

This is my daily workout, down around the lake and back, about 18 miles round trip, always been a great way to kill some time and keep in shape. Earlier this year they put up the "no motorized vehicles" sign to keep the scooters off the trail. This afternoon I saw 2 guys from park police and asked them when are they going to start enforcing that because the scooter situation is getting out of control. They aren't. And it gets worse. Starting on 12/1 they are going into a 1 year "pilot program" of allowing scooters on town lake trails. Fuuuuuuuu.......dge. Get ready to start dodging frat bros and douchebags on scooters racing through the trail. They did impress upon me the need to call 311 any time we see idiots going too far (i.e. racing, weaving in and out of people, knocking into people, being general idiots, etc.) Those complaints will get registered, it's our only way to show the impact. Brace yourselves, scooters are coming.