Chief

14 hours ago, 4fun said:

The upcoming forecast sucks!

Yes it does!

Oh and I feel sorry for all you guys that have to got to redundant early meetings that resolve nothing:)

On 9/28/2018 at 8:26 AM, Morris said:

Miss these rides, Have to figure something out to be able to go again 

 

 

We miss you too!

On 9/27/2018 at 6:12 PM, throet said:

I had posted in the Ride Call that I was but now I remember that I committed to a 9AM meeting. So I'm out unfortunately. Might try to get out around lunch time though. 

Ride was not as good as Thursday. Trails were fine but humidity/dew point had my tires wet the whole time making it fairly slippery.

1 hour ago, throet said:

Heading out now brother! 

Go get some!!!!

1/4 Notch and DD were perfect this morning. We riding tomorrow?

7 hours ago, throet said:

Even though I rode yesterday morning, the "cold front" was so enticing that I went out for a quick couple of laps around Snail right before dark last night. Big thanks to whoever put the additions in there!

Will be interesting to see what we find on Double Down after this most recent downtime. If 1/4 Notch is any indication, I suspect there will be some rogue rock placements. Seems the same people who like to ride wet trails are the ones who like to place rocks in front of the trickier ledges. 

Yeah I noticed new lines being worn in some places. There seems to be one that reconnects with Preplunge cutting out the trickier parts of the trail right after the Altar also one at the ledge after the bridge as you start to descend. I blocked that one this morning with some large rocks that I'm sure will be moved next time through. Also plenty of rutted sections caused by the many assclowns that can't stay off wet trails. On another note the trail was perfect this morning and I had it all to myself. Was surprised no one was out this morning didn't see a single person on the trail. Conditions were Tata's no puddles or standing water except at the Picnic drop in point, dirt was moist and tacky air was cool. Amazing how much easier it is to ride when the humidity drops off and the air gets cool. Feels like cheating:)

On 9/23/2018 at 9:53 AM, mack_turtle said:

Sorry, trains just are not fun!

They are if you're Uncle Fester! I should say Gomez Addams. Either works.

You can't fix stupid!

My wife bought our puppy one of those kiddy pools and it's got 3-1/2 inches of water in it. It's on an open patio with no trees. It rained like a mofo at my house and I'm about a mile and a half due north of the trail. Gonna be a few days before GTG. Hopefully this cooler air sticks around for a while between it and some sun the trails should dry pretty quick provided we don't get any more rain.

That's a sweet bass!

I think our parents looked at TV the same way we view video games and the internet. As pointed out it's our responsibility as parents to help our kids maintain a balance between school, chores and free time. I was always looking for something to stimulate my mind without even realizing it. I started taking mechanical things apart at a very young age. I knew at about ten or eleven years old that I was destined to work with my hands and have done so all my life, but that's the way things were back then. You either did well in school and went on to college to be some sort of "professional" or you worked with your hands. Technology is such a huge part of society today that letting your kids use it and figure it out is not such a bad thing as long as there are set boundaries. Like ATXZJ said the streets are actually a lot safer now then they were back in our day. With everyone now carrying a video camera 24/7 it's a lot harder to get away with nefarious activities. As far as the internet goes that's a lot more dangerous than the streets in my eyes. It's up to the parents to decide what their kids should or shouldn't be doing and to be willing to impose discipline when needed unfortunately I see a lot of parents who could use a little discipline themselves.

Clipless VS flat is kind of a moot point for me. Coming from years and thousands of road miles with clipless pedals there is not much of an advantage to clipless on an MTB in my opinion. We are not physically designed to pull up on the the pedals on the upstroke while sitting and it doesn't really generate that much power. Standing is a different story you can generate a fair amount of pull when standing. For me on the road bike the clipless pedals were more to get a really good round pedal stroke which is important for efficiency. A round pedal stroke on an MTB is almost impossible due to the terrain being rough and the features you encounter. I tried clipless when I started riding MTB, my bike tried to kill me a few times so that ended the clipless thing for me. When I went a good set of flats with grippy shoes I realized that I get about the same pedal stroke when I'm sitting as I did with the clipless. The flats helped me progress my skills faster then clipless because I wasn't thinking about not being able to get away from my bike in crash situations. As far as the original comment I looked at those pedals and read his agenda just didn't think it was that revolutionary. JMO.

We had no choice but to get outside. There was very little to keep me in the house. When I was a kid cartoons were only Saturday until like 10:00 AM, no video games although my buddy had an original pong console but rarely played it. We had more fun building forts, riding bikes, playing jail break or just exploring places in the woods we had never been to. Parenting has changed so much from those times. My parents would tell me to get the hell out of the house and play outside don't bother me! In the summer I would leave my house at 7:30 in the morning and be gone until it got dark. Now parents are afraid to let their kids do anything without supervision. Hell we didn't know what supervision was we learned our lessons the hard way. Surprised I survived sometimes. Did a lot of stupid things when I was a kid. I learned to ride a two wheeler with no training wheels at 4 years old. That was my first taste of freedom and I loved it, been riding ever since.

13 hours ago, throet said:

I bit the bullet and just ordered a new Renthal Carbon Lite bar to replace my 2-yr old banged up Renthal Carbon bar. I hated spending that kind of money to replace something that's technically not broken, but there seem to be plenty of solid opinions that carbon bars, especially ridden hard and crashed multiple times, should be periodically replaced. The post above regarding a ticking noise really got me concerned too, as I generally haven't paid attention to the many noises that my bike makes. It's hard for me to distinguish internally routed cable rattle from other sounds, but I was definitely hearing a distinctive ticking sound coming from the cockpit on rough terrain. I put an old aluminum bar on the bike for a couple of rides, and didn't seem to hear that same noise. Could just be that this thread has gotten in my head. Might be interesting though to slice my old carbon bars in half length-wise to see if there is any apparent damage.

Side note - on just those two rides with my old aluminum bars the harshness was quite evident. I wish there was a better selection of titanium bars on the market, which apparently are stronger than both aluminum and carbon, yet better at reducing vibrations than either of the alternatives.  

A lot of times the ticking is just a dirty contact point between the bars and stem. Cleaning and repasting the contact points usually works.

Damn this rain!

Little too late for me. Next week.

Rode this morning , but could probably ride tomorrow if anyone's game.

Just got back from a ride. All is good. Conditions moist and sticky.

Stop looking at the weather! You know it's usually wrong!

Looking towards the top on tough climbs is a demotivator.

If the trails are good so am I.....maybe. Two weeks off the bike is gonna hurt:)

18 hours ago, MrTheCatLady said:

 

Another one of the "the usual suspects" climbs I've heard of is Jester Blvd.  I've thought about checking it out...it's easy enough to get to from my 360 route.

Y'know it's funny.  I have watched a lot of videos on climbing and whatnot and one thing that always cracks me up is they talk about strategies for this and that - breathing, cadence, gear choice, hand position, etc.  Pffffft on the hills around here, I often have only one choice at all: Shift down to the granny gear and just try not to stop.  Or die.  When I get to the point where I don't need the granny gear (or at least don't feel like I'm going to die) then some of the advice may be useful.  But getting to that point is IMO the much bigger challenge.  After that it's just marginal gains.

-cls

Jester is steep but Beauford  is so steep they've textured the road surface for bad weather. The texture also make the climb a bit more difficult. As far as getting up the really big ones breathing, cadence and regulating effort are key to not blowing up before the top. Another good technique is just looking down at your wheel and not at the top of the hill.

360 climbing up to 2244 is a leg burner also. One more just for fun, Ladera Norte.

23 hours ago, Chongo Loco said:

So at first I was thinking Steiner Ranch Rd from Quinlan Park up to 620, but wasn’t sure how that compared to Yaupon. Definitely easier to get to from work than Steiner.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Much easier climb than Yaupon. That climb gets tough at the end because you've been climbing for a bit and it pitches just before the light at Comanche. When you do the damn loop starting from 360 that climb can be hard.