Kyle

I heard they were going to start clearing space to put a gas station and a mattress store on either side of the new sidewalk.

I found a cheap blowgun with a $0.10 piece of plastic tube slid over the presta stem (with valve removed) was way higher flow and worked much better than a real presta chuck for seating tires. It's not like it needs to hold a ton of pressure or for very long.

I have a compressor, but ended up with one of those floor pumps with the air tank instead. I can use it when my kid is asleep, and I can take it with me to various tire destroying ride locations. If it had been available in the first place I'd have just skipped the compressor. Unless you're going to become a carpenter also or something.

I walked the rim trail today at lunch, and it was nearly completely dry. Totally rideable. Plus it was sunny and windy, so stuff is going to be drying out pretty quickly. If I was one of the inhabitants of this thread that seem to ride either Brushy or nothing, I'd ride this evening for sure.

Basically this. If I were looking for a general purpose bike today I'd ride everything with geometry similar to the Primer and pick the one I actually liked best. Nothing beats actual demos. That's what I did a year ago and ended up with an SB4.5 because I liked it a little more for mostly unquantifiable reasons.

They should just get a 14 year old to show them how to drive it back out.

Other than Peddler's Swamp is the trail really still wet? The hydromet says we only got ~0.05" rain over the last 5 days.

Deception is in great shape. I did not check peddler's.

I was near the top of the ditch.

A while ago I stopped to fix a flat and found an arrowhead...

I read once upon a time that active people are typically deficient in magnesium. I get 50% RDA from a supplement I take, I figure that's enough. Maybe switch to a regular non-liquid? I used to take a ZMA supplement, but the zinc gave me nightmares so reliably that I cut it out.

Huh. That could explain it. I wonder what's going to become of the trail now.

My perception was at the trail actually has been profoundly damaged, and now it's full of deep ruts that hold water all over the place. It has never been the way it is after this wet winter in the five years I've been riding there anyway.

City park is totally destroyed right now. There are dozens and dozens of big deep puddles everywhere. Every single corner that you'd hit at >3mph has a deep puddle the whole way around. I guess you could technically ride it, but it'll be slow and crappy.

One nice thing about city park is that it presents a nearly insurmountable sanitization challenge. If you ride out there a single time and decide to come back for more, then you're almost certainly not the kind of rider that would do dumb sanitization. There are still contentious changes made to the trail, but it keeps the true idiots away.

Majestic.

Every time I pass this tree I smile...

If you haven't changed the damper oil in 11 years then you were well into the delayed maintenance bonus period anyway.

One thing I think I did right was riding a test lap this August on my XL SB4.5 and determined the length and more aggressive posture wasn't right for this kind of trail. I rode my old clapped out 2015 Niner Jet with a large frame and it was a lot more comfortable for all those hours. I feel sore but nothing too acute. My left pinkie fingertip is a little tingly and my left tricep is more sore than my right. Not sure what's going on there. I've done a couple other rides of almost this length, but none that required you to be this active the whole time. I felt positively great the whole ride and until the moment I got home, where I developed a stomach ache that lasted until after noon today. Just ate breakfast. I never really cramped the whole ride. I felt a couple of twinges warning me to back off, but nothing too bad. I had tums in my pocket that went untouched. I put a pinch of light salt in each sandwich and bottle of gatorade, maybe that helped.

In the car on the way to the event I was lamenting my lack of training and kept telling myself it was all going to come down to nutrition and pacing. So to get myself in the "slow down and finish" mood I followed a car on Parmer with a bike on the back that was going exactly the speed limit, but the dude kept driving slower and slower as we got closer to the park, and then I was trapped on a country road behind him with no way to pass. So I got my pacing out of the way early. I grabbed my number plate at the last second and joined the start about a third of the way back. I enjoyed the banter of those around me. "I'm from Dallas, are there rocks on this trail?" I passed a dozen or so people early but then ended up in a really good spot, where I hardly had to pass anyone and hardly anyone passed me. I ran into Dewayne who I vaguely knew from around town, and we rode a lot of the first lap together. The problem was, Dewayne was here to mountain bike while I was just trying to cling to survival by my fingernails. So he was tearing down the descents and powering up climbs, while I was worried that I was burning matches. It was a fun ride though, and we finished in about 3:20 with me feeling like I spent a little too much effort. In previous endurance events I've blown up and been scolded that I'm not eating enough, so I used this ride as an experiment in how to get a tummy ache. During the first lap I ate 2 packs of shot blocks, a honey stinger, and 24oz of gatorade. At the first pit stop I had a cream cheese, jelly, and walnut sandwich on a croissant that I figure was about 320 calories, 1/3 a tube of pringles, and some pickles. I tried to keep the stop less than 10 minutes. On the second lap I quickly ran into a guy named Don who was setting a good pace, so I tagged along. He told me stories about riding bikes thousands of miles around the country, and once again I felt like the pace was a liiiitle too quick. Food was like a video game power up though. The more I ate the better I felt. I had 1 1/2 more packs of shot blocks (getting old at this point) a honey stinger, bottle of gatorade, and another pit stop sandwich. We finished the second lap in 3:20 again. Once again I was worried I pushed the pace a little too much, but at this point I knew I could battle through a 3rd lap. Second pit stop I ate the same stuff as the first. I tried eating some macaroni and cheese but it tasted like stomach danger. This stop was probably a couple minutes longer, but less than 15. I set out alone on the third lap. Maybe five miles in a guy on a blue Chumba single speed passed me like I was standing still. It was surreal. A few minutes after that I encountered Ulisses for the Nth time. Dude was riding a single speed and had been battling cramps all day. We'd pass each other occasionally, and he didn't really stop between laps so he'd always have an early lead on me. We rode together for a half hour or so then he stopped to take a break. I couldn't imagine riding a single speed out here for a single lap. I passed mile marker 18 and realized for the first time that the signs all have text by the mile number. This one said "What sort of person would do this to them self?" I laughed out loud with no one around as I struggled to eat my 5th package of shot blocks. 3rd lap food was identical to second. I stopped at Camp Tejas to get my lights out of my pack. I met a guy named Cody there and we rode together for a few miles of the singletrack. He stopped for a second and at that point I was in hammer-to-the-finish-line mode so I rode on. I stopped and got a rock, I wanted one that was as manged as I felt. I needed lights as I entered the last rocky bit between the single track and the park. I finished the 3rd lap in about 3:45. Cody finished right behind me, and then Ulisses a few minutes after that. What an animal At the end I honestly didn't feel too bad. That probably means I should've tried to ride faster. This ride was a huge lesson for me in the role nutrition plays. I think I ate around 3500 calories, mostly on the bike. Also, I was seriously completely untrained for this. This one ride was almost 10% of my mileage for 2018. For someone who had no business being there it was alright.

Yeah, or bad dental plan choices.

That's a great idea. Swag rock at brushy used to be hilarious before all the stuff disappeared.

Oh man I'm doomed. Anyone else gonna be at Reveille the day before?

You should be able to easily perceive a difference between locked and unlocked. I would ask the shop to rebuild it since you just bought it.

There was some serious jaw clenching action on my part when I voted yes for the RRISD bond. Either you submit to a wildly mismanaged system that squanders all kinds of money, or they educate your kids in squalor. The bond makeup is here: https://communityimpact.com/austin/round-rock-pflugerville-hutto/education/2018/08/21/breaking-down-round-rock-isds-508m-bond-proposition/ I'm sure they're getting competitive quotes: Redo field to get rid of roots, rocks, etc. $296,382