AustinBike

That was why I obsessed so much about the bike choice for this trip. Tried to get the best (cheapest) combo. Ended up just building out the best bike and that turned out to be a faster choice to build (fewer hassles) and mostly a more fun bike to ride.Weather is getting drier and I hope to be able to hit trails this week.

I rode this weekend in California with some riders, mostly road, but some gravel. They were on gravel bikes. A couple were on e-MTBs. I got my ass handed to me on the climbs. Yeah, most of it was because they have been riding these routes for years and I was not ready for it. Anyway, it got me thinking, what if I turned my steel hardtail into a gravel bike? It has a nice King/Stans Wheelset. Put a nice carbon fork on it, maybe some drop bars, some gravel tires, would it be an effective gravel bike? Or would I just be fooling myself because the geometries are way off? Long term I may move out here and for the month of Santa Fe that we do every year might be just as good on a gravel bike, today I use a full rigid steel hardtail. One thing I did not understand was their drive trains were basically 42T with 11-42T in the back. I was on a 32T with 11-36T in the back, so technically I was in an easier gear (but had 2.4" Ardents on the back...) Any thoughts or input here?

A little bit of bike, maybe this should be on the dog thread. Really big dogs. Outside a former celebrity's place, Hidden Valley Ranch.

Put it on the website, too bad I can't be there. Hope you get a good turnout.

Just got to CA. Wife's e-bike made the trip. She's excited about riding along the ocean. The other bike in the back is hoping that the trails dry out in time.

Friend here in CA recommended locking the bikes in the hotel room. That is too much for me. My Kona would have been ok if it were stolen, more worried about the Vassago, but at this point it will not be out of my sight. Big concern was visiting brother in law in Santa Monica, but we will most likely not take bikes based on weather.

Santa Fe 7K is highly recommended, along with their Java stout.

What I learned for this trip is a. Don’t worry about bike theft and b. Focus on not cheaping out. I was trying to bring the cheapest bike instead of the right bike because I was worried about theft. As we are going to have the bikes in the room with us, I decided to use a good fork and the right wheel set. After fighting for 2 days on cheap wheel options, new Ardents with a King/Stans wheel got me set up in 15 minutes. Now I just need the weather to cooperate.

Cool, I will drop them by the next time I am out there.

H Mart for lunch today Spicy squid and pork.

PSA: The South Gate of the Pickle center is closed off right now so you can't cut through there from Gnarnia.

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....

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.

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.

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.

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: