AustinBike

Last night, for the Super Bowl, we went all in for Chicago Italian beef sandwiches. Unfortunately you can't get the right bread here, but the beef was smuggled down here from our last road trip. <chef's kiss>

I am jealous. I had essentially a half cord to 3/4 cord of firewood this year from the storms in my yard. Then I started to get really trashy. Huge oak limb in the street down by the corner during the storm last year. Johnny Chainsaw to the rescue. Neighbors were happy that I helped clear the street for them. Most of it went into my SUV. Large oak limb dropped in the park. After 2 months of it sitting there, Johnny Chainsaw back in action, car filled up, more firewood. Neighbors had branches come down. I was very helpful in chopping things up so that they only had to deal with the little stuff. I have finally started running out. But there are a few more cold days coming up. You know that deadfall that used to be near the Shoal Creek Hike and Bike trail? Don't go looking for it. I highly recommend the Black and Decker electric chainsaws. They use the same battery as my leaf blower and trimmers. Also, an electric pole saw is a right of mid life passage for men. What a great tool.

The folks at AustinBike World Headquarters let me know that this is now on the main page to help drive some more eyeballs to the cause.

Sounds good, let me know.

He did a couple mobile bike repair trucks for the last few years

Might be interested in the top 2 pairs on the right and maybe the platforms at the bottom right if you happen to have some new cleats.

James builds the best wheels in Austin so I know where to go for wheels if I ever need them.

Yeah, I was shaking down a new singlespeed and didn't want to drive all the way up to ninja. Just needed somewhere flat-ish to get all of the tweaking done. With rain on the horizon, it was the only real choice.

Yesterday reminded me of why I should never ride Walnut on a Sunday. Lots of people experiencing being outdoors on a sunny day but feeling the need to document every step on their phones.

This is a completely inappropriate response. Some of those trucks are Amazon.

Is it direct only? If so I would not throw that much down without riding one. Even around the parking lot would be better than mail order. If you are looking for mail order, canyon has a good reputation.

Yes, that will work. The only thing to consider is that some of those lubricants can act as solvents on plastic over time. Works great on metal zippers but if you have plastic teeth, keep an eye on the zipper as it can degrade the teeth over time.

Any tunnel is a pee tunnel if you put your mind to it

Rode it today. You can see the old sidewalk and the new one. Here is the new crossing on Pleasant Valley Road:

I have 3 suggestions for you: 1. Wash the pack, this takes care of the salt 2. Put some vinegar on the salt corrosion point, that will eat the salt. I used to work at a shoe repair and we sold "salt remover", which was basically alcohol and vinegar. Just plain vinegar can be used, but not on leather because it does not dry up properly and leaves residue in leather. Vinegar is fine for non-leather things. 3. Rub some soap on a zipper (on the teeth) and it will help to "lube" the zipper

Does it matter? As long as the replacements happen in a "reasonable" timeframe, I'd gladly give up a 4 year old pack for a few weeks and end up with a brand new one.

yep, putting them on my porch, will pm you the address

OK, done giving away electronics, now back to bike stuff. One pair of large Swiftwick socks. Worn three times. The first time I realized that they don't fit my size 11 feet that well. The second and third times I was trying to convince myself that I was wrong. I realized I was right, just not for me. One pair of L/XL Pearl Izumi toe covers, they have the cutout for cleats. Porch pickup in central Austin.

The dam is great, really wide sidewalks on either side, you can pass someone without having to stop and grab the chain link fence. Plus some crossing lights for Pleasant Valley Road.

Looks like you just bought yourself an architect. An interior designer will probably not be able to do what you want although they will have an opinion. You want someone to structurally tell you what makes sense. The one that I use would probably not want to take this on and I think he is requiring. But if this is just "consulting" and you want to but a couple hours of his time he might be interested in taking a look. This would mean no drawings, but just a "yea or nay" on what you are trying to do. Don't even know if that is his thing but I can ask him if you'd like.

You can start with an architect if you are moving walls, moving plumbing, moving electrical, etc. Some contractors *can* do this but some will also tell you that they can and then do a poor job of it. It is hard to know for sure how good they are. At least with an architect you know what you are getting. If you do go down this path, an architect can be a black hole and they love to charge a percentage of the cost of the job so set the right parameters with them first.

Or it just isn't economically feasible. Don't automatically ascribe the worst on a company without knowing the real motivation.

A big part might be reusability. It is far easier for a company to have parts available if they reuse parts in their design, generation after generation. Same thing with cars. Product costs are tied to design, tooling, volume, carrying costs, incidence of service failure, and reusability across generations. Everyone seems to think that materials cost is the big driver, but in reality it is a smaller part of the process. When TI parts cost more it generally has less to do with the difference between TI and the others, or even fabrication (with the possible exception of frames...) It generally has more to do with the carrying cost and the smaller volume. Imagine you are Shimano and you make Deore, SX, XT and XTR. You use the same parts across all of them, but for XTR you use a titanium part instead of steel to cut down on weight. The fact that XTR is lower volume has a huge cost on the fully burdened part cost, the material is probably only pennies in difference.

What's the part # on them? I can cross reference to see if they work in my fridge.

The real issue is volume and supply chain. It's not that they don't want you to fix things. Actually, being able to add "user repairable" would be a nice marketing bullet for them. The issue is that the "right to repair" works well when you have something like a phone that is shipped in the millions and is really expensive. When you ship products in the millions you will actually build a service stock of spare parts, even those little springs, and you have enough that it makes selling them profitable. You'd rather have your customer fix their broken thing then get pissed about it and swear off your brand forever. But stockpiling all of those parts is expensive, and handling orders for a single $.03 spring is crazy expensive. You can generally assume that typical handling cost on an order is ~$20 (fully burdened) if you are an efficient company like Dell and probably north of $35 for a less efficient company. When you are shipping $65 phone screens that you buy for $27 on the market, you can figure out how to absorb the costs in your business for this. But when you are talking about a $150 item with 50-60 parts in it, you're facing a daunting task of maintaining a stock (which costs money), handling parts (which costs money) and dealing with support for repairs (which costs money). For some products it makes sense. I've fixed a bunch of things on my $1200 Samsung fridge. Every part was wildly expensive but not because they wanted to screw me, it was expensive because they need to maintain a stock, handle all the parts, and deal with the customers.