AustinBike

If you don't get something by the time I am back from CA, you can use my back Vassago Verhauen. It is a Medium, but a "large Medium".

3 days on the road, they’ll be great 😊 

finally convinced myself to take the good wheels after fighting with every combination of cheap options. Bringing extra locks.

I have discovered that I was a worn tire hoarder and it is killing me. 
 

where can I drop these?

Well, what I needed was the component selection. The problem is not which bike to take, but do I need to swap tires, swap wheels, swap forks, etc.

My Frankenstein has an extra 1.5" of steerer tube coming out (the one I thought about cutting 2 weeks ago...) and the brake pads are noisy so I might need to swap with those on another bike because I do not have any spares....

13 hours ago, Mattlikesbikes said:

I've got a steel SS that's 21#. Probably a 4# frame. Rigid carbon fork but nothing else strangely light. Even with a suspension fork and 3# of extra frame, you've still got a few lbs of extra you could lose.

According to the interwebs my Vassago is 4.98 pounds. I have never weighed the full bike but I am guessing, with a Fox fork and a dropper that I am just under 24. While a few more pounds does not seem like a wildly different amount, when you factor it into pulling the bike over ledges, etc, then that extra weight starts to matter.

Getting ready for a west coast road trip. Was trying to decide on bikes. Having more bikes actually makes things more complicated. Between tires, gears, wheel sets, forks, etc. I cannot find the right combination of “best for the rides” and “least likely to care if it is stolen.”

I just spent 2 hours swapping things around and I still don’t know if I made the right choices. Very frustrating. Old man problems.

Yeah, I was running an 18t for years and just swapped to 20t when I thought SSTX would be at RPR. Haven’t gone back to 18t yet, may not. Screw it, I’m old.

9 hours ago, mack_turtle said:

Over 31 pounds for a bike with one gear for a 165-pound rider. I had a good time riding it today, but it wears me out. I'm reconsidering my current attempt to lose weight.

Yeah, I am ~1 pound under you in bike weight for full squish and gears. Good ride yesterday I think fuel was more of a challenge than bike weight.

We cleaned up a bunch of trails. This one called for a reroute.

2 hours ago, mack_turtle said:

This is fair. Truth be told, when I pulled it out of the box and discovered that it weighs nearly seven pounds, I started building a case against this bike subconsciously. When I ride it, I can't get that amount of dead weight out of my head. There's a possibility that it lacks that "steel is real" feel, but I don't have enough of a frame of reference to judge that. It works and it's not stopping me, but life is short. I'll give it a few more rides. The catch is that trying something different yet again is predicated on selling this frame, because the sale of one big item is what frees up the budget for the next.

A friend of mine was going to a race and stopped at a McDonald's to take a crap. When he came out of the bathroom he said to the guy he was with "I just upgraded to XTR."

So, there's that.

Is two rides enough? 

I have found that my body settles in and I get the feel of a bike after 3-4 rides, at least. The more different the bike is the longer it takes.

13 hours ago, circuitbreaker said:

The North Walnut Creek trail extension is now open. It takes you under Lamar and ends at Oakbrook and Cedarbrook - Walnut Bluffs Trailhead. So not ideal for crossing I35. but still its pretty great. and it turns out there are more trails on that side.

 

 

Is there a route under I-35 from there? I ended up back on Barker after I couldn't find my way out of there.

I put this up on my site. If new workdays come up in the future, sending an email to John at austinbike dot com will be a quick way to get it on the site. 

Mine were a mix. We have a massive pecan tree that took a direct lightning strike 2 years ago, there was literally a spot in the bark where it had been blown off (and there were embers burning when we rushed to the window to see what happened. That tree only dropped one large limb, the rest of them were fine. When I took the chainsaw to the branch to get it out of the back yard, it did not appear to be bad in any way, looked healthy. 

Neither did the live oak branches that dropped on my shack.

I was over at my in-laws who live up the hill from you and all of their branches that I cut seemed to be OK. I did see one or two distressed limbs, but 80-90% of the stuff that I have cut (so far) has been healthy wood. Here is my accumulated pile, just getting started on cutting this up for firewood:

14 hours ago, Sluggo said:

Last 100 for 100 was 2011. Not that hard of a work around if you want to get by. 

100 for 100 was 2011. 100 for 90 is pretty common. That means more than a quarter of the year if you are doing the math....

We have family here so we can't leave now, but we are scoping places because of the weather. As it is we are paying to leave for the entire month of August and it is looking like 6 weeks might even be a better strategy. 

Can't live here in the heat of summer.

TX can't deliver reliable power in the winter. 

And things are getting progressively worse.

On 2/1/2023 at 6:38 PM, AntonioGG said:

Worse here also.  We escaped major tree damage last time.  Because of construction on our backyard and wanting to add solar panels at some point, we had the arborist and the company do what they needed for the trees that needed help, and we trimmed a bunch off our cedar elms close to the house.

I wondered if much colder temps make the branches less flexible and hence the leverage is not as much?

this is our largest hackberry.  Far from our house thankfully.  It’s a big trunk.

Yeah, my in-laws are up the hill from you. We went over there to clear some limbs. It looked like a war zone trying to get to their house. With as bad as our neighborhood was, it looks like in your area it was 10X worse. Headed back up there this morning to get more cutting done now that my batteries are recharged for my chainsaw.

Well, our block was, a little, um, interesting this morning.

Hit a neighbor's car but did no damage luckily. 

I've recharged my chainsaw batteries 3 times today helping neighbors clear their driveways and front walks.

3 hours ago, Chongo Loco said:

Nice! Never saw that pedestrian bridge.  Good way to avoid all that glass by the convenience store on Shady/Airport. Have to give that a shot on my next loop.  Looks like it may be another hike & bike weekend if this weather persists. 😞 

Question. I headed over to that path a few months back and it had like 2' of water trapped on the path under Airport because the path was the low point. They resolve that?

I have only had one time where the water was trapped on the path. This week's water will not be an issue, I believe it needs a much larger amount of water.

12 hours ago, Chongo Loco said:

Looks like that’s over on the new Mokan trail that runs from behind the apartment building across from Govalle along the RR tracks (mokan line) over to Springdale. I think most riders take Shady Lane towards the lake still. 

Actually I have switched. You can go under Airport on that spur trail, then hit Mansell south (over the pedestrian bridge) and head east on Gonzales to pick up Shady. A little bit longer but no traffic lights or traffic to deal with.

PM sent.

You need a 1X setup not because it allows a dropper but because it is simplicity at its finest. Less clutter, all the range. Weight? Eh, don't care about that. 1X is just so much smoother for me. Except singlespeed, that is smoother.

15 hours ago, mack_turtle said:

I'm a sucker for survival/dystopian/zombie stories of all types.

Then you're really gonna love the future of this country....

But that is a perfect use case for an e-bike. You should get one if it allows you to do the thing you want to do. Not only are there no prohibitions against riding one there, the city will give you a rebate. We got $300 on my wife's bike and after Jan 1 that would have been $600. It is worth consideration.

But "punchy, short, uphill bikes" is really a terrible name.