AustinBike

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.

Looks like this is a federal recall from CPSC. So Fox is basically pushed into this vs. doing it for the good of the customer. Either way I'm going to check my stuff when I get back into town.

I need to look into this, my 2019 bike came with Fox on both ends.

That and a few jerseys that I still wear.

If you have trail forks through the Apple Store you can cancel now and still have access to your subscription until it ends (vs. me having to remember to cancel before July 23rd...) I typically use it for navigation in August when I am out of town for the month. The rest of the year, the only time I access it on my Garmin is with the ForkSight functionality that pops up the map when I stop. Very intuitive because when I need to figure out where to go, I stop anyway. I do not know if Forksight will work on only the free subscription and not the pro, I guess I will find out in July.

I will probably drop down to the base subscription now. Loved the Garmin integration, but not enough to merit paying when I only use it while traveling.

Looks like the law of small numbers to me.

I have a Kona 31.8mm 730mm that was cut down to ~27" (roughly 685). If you want to try that you are welcome, I will not need it until I sell the Kona and that will be at least a year.

Nice bike. Yeah, Wes runs a great shop. I've got several friends running those bikes on Austin trails and love them. Don't worry, you'll be able to ride it soon enough.

If it was black, that was the one that growled at me and stood in the middle of the trail until I was close enough. Did not seem happy that I was there. Any time I see a dog with no collar I expect the worst. And I am a big dog guy and often stop to pet dogs on my rides.

I ride WC weekly, BMX loop has become so much of a shitshow with homeless people, encampments and loose dogs (from the encampments) that I have decided to stop riding it. There is a new piece along the concrete path, east of Lamar, that I substitute instead.

Attaches to rear axle skewer. Collapses for easy transport. $50.

What they need is standards so that you get longevity. I used to sell $99 CPUs all day long to OEMs. But the same embedded part that needed a long lifecycle and long-term support was waaaaay more than $99. The real challenge with any bikes is that the average rider is not going to burn through the wear and tear in a short period of time. My Orbea has ~4200 miles in a little over 4 years. So that is 1000 miles per year, and still kicking. I have stockpiled hangers, bolts and other proprietary components because they stopped making many of them over a year ago. And that is a bike with a pretty decent shipment range. Specialized and Trek could merit stockpiling motors for downstream service needs based on their volumes. Not sure Fezzari can support the volume to make that viable, it's a pretty large capital outlay for things that are going to die once they accumulate enough wear. It is a capital game far more than a technical game. If you can standardize you can minimize the capital outlays and have better chance. Also, amortizing a part over multiple years of models helps greatly, but so many of these are platform specific and change each year because there is no standard to build around.