AustinBike

Today did not suck. Riding for our place.

If you still have that full squish box in about 18 months, ping me 😉

The iPhone 14 satellite capability is pretty rudimentary but give it another year or two and smartphones will have true satellite capabilities for standard texting. We are literally at phase one of this trend. My guess is that by 2025 we'll be looking at a completely different world and the one-off market for things like this Motorola device will be swallowed up. The market will split into rudimentary, very durable devices, and smartphones. Anything in the middle will be dead.

Be very careful with some of these tools. When they say you can text, you need to see whether that is normal texting through normal text apps or only texting between their apps, meaning the person you are connecting to needs to have their app installed at the time you send the message. Some have that limitation. Also, how much info can you send?

I think I still have a 720 somewhere on one of my bikes. My widest is 760mm, never seen a need to go beyond that and the number of tree gates I can just squeeze through is still high enough to merit not going above that.

Saw 2 Sur-rons on the greenbelt yesterday. Not sure how far they got, in my mind these guys were definitely in over their heads. This is part of the problem that we are going to face as mountain bikers. Some bonewipe is gonna knock over a hiker or break their neck. And the city will crank down indiscriminately. This risks trail access for all of us.

Cardmalbec

My Black Box is full of wine.

I use a hip pack in the middle of the summer, bottles for the other 6 months.

I had one of those. It wasn't supposed to fold, but when the frame cracks... 🙂

And despite having industrial-strength AC inside the house, Herr Glücklich prefers to sit outside in the hot screen porch.

I started out slower than previous years, but in the past 7 days have done seven rides. All trail rides were 15 miles, all urban rides were 20+ miles. Typically state between 9 and 11. I am finally acclimated. This morning Texas Blood texted me about my regular donation and I told them I can't do that until the fall. It's hard enough to ride now, but take away some blood and it is 10X the impact.

My wife's bike has grip shift, only on the right. Got a set of these on Amazon for $12. She LOVES them. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07BPT2CQ1/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Definitely the greenbelt. Minimum once a week, typically twice a week, and a good week is three times.

I might as well pile on with everyone else. The other problem is that it will somewhat block your view when backing up. I have an amazon bike cover that I use when parking out bikes outside the hotel where we used to stay. But now that we are no longer traveling with the cheap bikes, we keep them in the room.

It does not look it, but this is what 3000% humidity looks like.

I dropped a bike there on Wednesday, work was done by noon (yay, holidays!) Been very happy with them.

I'm the opposite. I burn through chainrings a lot faster than cassettes. Some of it may be that I have singlespeeds and geared bikes so I would run through more rings as a rule.

Take your chainring and cassette off the bike, get every piece of grime off, put them back on and tighten them to spec. Lube everything and take it for a ride. If it is still making noise then they probably need to be replaced. Sometimes it is just a matter of having a clean component and a dirty component or a tight component and a loose component. If they are all clean, all tight and all lubed, then the problem is a metal mismatch somewhere and that is usually replacement. I typically replace the ring first because it is cheaper and it is used 100% of the time. The cassette will spread that 100% across the different gears.

I am stunned, that in the world of 50T cassettes that anyone would believe that 2X gives you better range. To those guys it is the princess and the pea at this point in my head. I'd almost say that 1X is a bigger improvement than dropper posts. Almost.

It hurts a bit, but you probably have a meat thermometer in the house somewhere. It will tell you to stop working when you are well done.

The official word on these: The first 10 minutes that you are wearing it you think, what the F was I thinking???? Then, about 20 minutes in, you realize the benefit. At the end of the ride it is a soaking mess. Pro tip: Put it on and then roll the bottom edge up ~1". If it is covering your ears it makes you way hotter. With it rolled up it also does a better job of catching the sweat.

I am going to dig into that. My wife is digging the tour, not for the biking but the the scenery. The first day in the Basque Country was great, saw plenty of places we have been.

That is specifically why I do not do 100% of my repairs myself. It is good to periodically take it to a shop to really have things dialed in.

Most shops do it. Most do it well. The typical issue is the parts which can push the service out. This is why I always drop off on a Monday morning. I get mine serviced once a year, typical before my bike trip.