mack_turtle

Yeah, I hate the cold more than I used to. My childhood memories are dominated by the feeling of flaky, cracked, dry skin and toes that never thaw out. I like it "crisp". I get that people around here are not used to cold but a few things still confuse me about Texans' response to weather: People who wear an effing parka when it dips below 80 (I have seen people wearing winter coats while riding a bike in 78° weather) and people who never bother to buy any sort of warm clothing and shiver through the few cold days we get in a thin sweater and sandals.

100 degrees is just too hot. I wanted to do CnD this week but it's just not fun for me. I ride on the weekends when it gets like this so I can end a ride before noon. I wimp out and melt in this kind of heat. I was born in Chicago, in January, at a time when the temperature was well below 0° F, so maybe that set my internal thermostat lower than you Texas folks.

AB, your site is amazing. Keep up the good work!

I am barely used to Mac OS. I am bilingual in that regard, but Windows is more natural to me at this point. In my last job as a newspaper proofer, we all used Mac desktops with a AWS Windows virtual desktop inside, with 4 to 6 different Windows virtual desktops within that one all running at the same time. Logging out at the end of the day was like being kicked out of a scene in Inception. Confusing, apparently inefficient, but that decision was ten levels above my pay grade.

https://surlybikes.com/surlyday Saturday 4:20-11 pm. Sounds like fun. I don't know much about it other than what's on the link above.

Found a cheap solution for now- borrow my wife's MacBook when I need it. We'll see if sharing a computer is sufficient over the next few months. If not, I'll be able to make a determination around Black Friday if I "need" my own. At that time, I'll refer back to this. Looks like iMovie should be sufficient for my needs.

Thanks, that is what I was afraid of, CX. I don’t want to make things hard for us, so I’ll find another way to use this idea. Maybe. FWIW, when I guide people around SATN, I avoid a lot of routes that I know other people use for this reason. Very little of SATN is “official” and would not be a good idea to expose it any more than Strava already does. However, I just looked on Trailforks and there’s a ton of stuff on there that probably should not be. (Go look at the map on Trailforks and the stuff that people have marked on there will make your blood boil!) I’ve railed against this kind of stuff but the optimists keep assuming they can get away with it. This is why I usually ride alone, no one wants to ride with a party pooper. I have this drive to create and share stuff like this and I need an outlet for it. I used to work in newspapers, which is a great way to make almost no money, then get laid off and make literally no money. When I was younger, I rode BMX and carried a 30-pound backpack full of photo gear. After many hard-headed years of trying to wrangle riders for photo shoots, get them to try something enough times to get the right photo, then try in vain to find an audience for all that work, I sold my camera crap and just enjoyed riding my bike. No one appreciated my efforts and it was not very good anyways. Camera gear is not cheap and you can’t complete with insufficient gear. About two years ago, I spent a whole day filming myself riding SATN. it was a ton of work and the results were boring, even to me. I would have enjoyed it more if I had just ridden my bike and savored the memories in my head until they fade away like tears, in rain. Still, my drive to document and share stuff is strong. I need to focus on my blog and maybe just take more candid cell phone photos to share instead. Shared memories of those places, people and rides will last longer and be more appreciated.

I had to look that up. Now it makes sense. You will get the lie and I will get the bullet. Fantastic and poignant show. We all buy the lies to survive, eh?

Getting lost can be ideal, except when it's not. The first time I rode BCGB around 2013, I ran out of water in my 3L pack, my phone died because I spent so much time trying to figure out how to escape, and I ended up hiking through someone's back yard to get to a familiar road and limp home. Some trails are easier to navigate than that but something that makes it easier for first-timers to not waste their time would be great. Maybe I just have a horrible sense of direction, combined with a fantastic sense of ADVENTURE! A voice whispering directions in your ear is a lot less distracting than blasting Nickelback or whatever the freds are listening to while chasing KOMs these days. Maybe getting lost in SATN is not as bad as I make it out to be. I've just had a lot of lousy experiences getting lost and riding in circles on new trails, so I'd like to make that easier. Videos are too hard to use on the trail and maps don't work in the woods.

Noted on upgradeability. I have several nerd friends who can help me with that stuff no problem.

I'll take you up on that. I need to get a computer that can handle it first. I tried to upload a 10 minutes cell phone video on ye olde lap top a while back and I thought it was going to catch fire while it tried to "process" the video for over eight hours.

I am over Mac stuff at this point. 16GB of memory. Excuse my ignorance, but what memory is that? 99% of the computers I have seen only have 4 and getting 8 makes the price skyrocket. Nothing with 16GB RAM yet. I'll look into dedicated graphics memory. That's Greek to me. Like I said, I am technically an idiot. Or something. I've seen a lot of Acers in my price range. Amazon Prime Day deals have some at over 40% off.

Some people are better at following directions than I am, but there are so many possible turns in most trail systems that most people will not remember enough of the video to keep up. Imagine navigating from DNP to Drip Drop by memorizing a video. There are dozens of possible wrong turns here so you have to have a genius-level memory, or refer to the video 20 times in the course of three miles. If video is the only way to do that, I'm out anyhow. Someone with the dough and the time to make a worthwhile video would have to get it done. People listen to music in headphones while riding. I think this is mostly a bad idea, but it can be done.

My laptop is on borrowed time and I need something new for personal use. I went to Best Buy last night and told a salesman that I wanted something that has just enough juice for me to fool around with video editing, like splicing together vacation cell phone video clips and videos of people screwing around on bikes. He showed me a $2600 Macbook Pro and told me I needed to buy a full version of Final Cut Pro or it would be impossible. I felt like the guy who walks into a bike shop and explains he wants a bike to doodle around Town Lake on Sunday mornings and pedal around the block with his kids and is shown a $8000 carbon enduro race bike and a moto helmet. Awkward. What should I look for in a more pedestrian computer? I have researched Windows/ Mac/ Chrome options and I feel like Chrome OS is going to underwhelm me, Macs are just more expensive than what I can justify spending on something purely for personal convenience. Any case to be made for anything other than Windows for me? Looking at computers, I am lost in a sea of technical jargon that makes me think I am going to make the wrong choice no matter what. I don’t want to play games (no time for that nonsense) or watch movies on it (I have a big ass TV on my wall at home for that). Portability, simplicity, and value would be most important to me. Web browsing, Google docs, MS Word and Excel, a little photo/ video / audio hobby-level experimenting, etc. I am not the kind of person who needs the best of everything. What’s the SLX level computers? What features should be most important? Is $500 unrealistic for a no-frills laptop that won't be totally obsolete in a year?

I am also trying to create a hands-free tech experience. Stopping to dig your phone out of your pack every 8 minutes sucks. Navigating SATN by reference videos would mean stopping every 50 feet to watch a video or dicypher a photo. A guide whispering in your ear is more integrated into the experience. What is the state of turn-by-turn GPS navigation for trails these days? I have not tried it. I carry my phone with me when I ride, but it's useless for navigating trails under a canopy of trees. Plus, most people have a smartphone that can play podcasts already. New riders, and tightwads like me, are not going to blow $200-300 or more on something but would benefit from better navigation help.

@AustinBike I see what you are saying, but the whole point of this is to create an audio only guide that people can use while riding on the trail. How would one watch a trail video while riding? How long would you phone battery last? I would not recommend anyone strap a phone to their stem and wear out their battery trying to watch a video while pedaling. It's possible that it would not work at all, but I can make the narration work if it's done right. "Ride through this rocky section until you get to this profoundly indistinguishable landmark. Hit pause and resume when you get there. I am Xx.xx miles from the start at this point." Most headphones have a control button on the cord that the rider can flick without stopping until they reach the next reference point. Also, I don't have the funds to buy a decent action camera right now, nor a computer/ software to handle editing it, let alone the time to do all that. Acquiring all the gear would rival what I've spent on my bike for a lot less fun. 99% of the ride videos I have tried to watch are boring AF so I am trying to do something more useful and interesting. No one wants to watch a video of ME bumbling through the woods, as riding it themselves would be way more interesting.

Other option- film my ride with my old decommissioned iPhone 4s or buy a used GoPro, film the ride, record narration at home later. I don't care enough to spend a lot of money and time on producing videos, but a video that I can watch for reference and timing would be useful to just me.

I live in the middle of SATN. I know my way around it pretty well at this point, although I don't know the names of every segment.The network is very difficult to navigate due to its patchwork format, so riders new to the area will need a guide present or spend a lot of time staring at maps to get the most out of it. A physical guide is not always available and, from personal experience, guiding someone whose skills don’t match mine (either they are too fast or too slow) through the trails can be frustrating. Turn-by-turn navigation on a GPS unit has been pretty useless in the wood, but it might be improving. I have a relatively low-tech solution I’d like to try to help riders navigate the area for the first time: record audio of myself narrating the trail as I ride it, edit it down into sections, and share it like a podcast. A rider could download it and listen to me jabber at them about upcoming intersections, tricky sections, where to bail out if necessary, etc. It would be like one of those audio tour guides that you pick up at a museum. Most headphones have controls built into the unit, so a rider could pause the recording easily if I they fall behind my narrative and need to catch up. Before I try such a thing, what legal and pragmatic concerns should I consider? I’ll have to get the following sorted out: Sound quality- I have my phone, a headset with a built-in speaker, and a standalone digital voice recorder as well. I’ll have to experiment with sound quality, but my main concern would be mitigating wind noise. Maybe rig the recorder to my chest and put a fuzzy wind-cancelling ball on the mic? Legal- I don’t want to be held responsible if someone gets lost, injured, or stumbles into a private property while using my guide. I would err on the side of caution when it comes to guiding people through grey area trails, which is a lot of this system- trails that connect greenbelts that the neighbors use openly to walk their dogs and ride bikes, but most is not recognized by the city. User experience- I want to ride at a slow enough pace that even slow riders can keep up and set it up so they can pause it if they don’t make it to the next landmark when I do in the recording. This will mostly be a matter of my skill as a narrator. I would also break the tour into segments, maybe 5 or 10 mile loops that riders can download individually and string together any way they choose. My hope is just that a few people will find this useful, and I’ll have fun doing it. No expectations that I’ll make money or change the world with this. If it is successful, maybe other people will make their own audio trail tours and make them better than mine.

I learned long ago that I would never be satisfied with a stock bike, so every "bicycle" I have owned has been an evolution of the same three bikes: BMX, singlespeed mtb, road/gravel/ CX bike. I started riding BMX in the mid 90s on a bike that I cobbled together out of parts I literally found in the trash. I bought a used mtb in 2009, then put the best parts on a plain old 2010 Monocog. Within a year, I had replaced everything on the 'cog except the frame, hubs, and stem. I can't see myself ever buying a regular new, complete bike for this reason.

Bike that fits and works. Brakes, shifting, suspension, etc. Helmet that fits comfortably. Try a few on. Ventilation is important. A $50 helmet will be just fine. Some method of carrying water. Lots of water, actually, because the heat will zap it out of you fast. Glasses to keep bugs and stuff out of your eyeballs. The $5 ones from Harbor Freight are just fine if you don't need RX lenses. Clear or lightly tinted lenses for riding in the woods. Comfy athletic clothes. Avoid cotton. Cycling shorts are a good idea for longer rides to protect your taint. Gloves. Never expensive but hardware store work gloves (like Mechanic) can work. You will fall and use your hands to stop yourself at some point. Multi-tool, spare tube, portable pump. Walnut is a great place to start. Roy Guerro Park has a little trails. Slaughter Creek Nature Preserve in South Austin a great because it's not terribly difficult and it's impossible to get lost as it's a one-way loop. Tuesday nights at 6:00 behind ATX Bikes on Slaughter is Crank n Drank, weather permitting. It's a great ride for all abilities. SATN is very difficult to navigate on your own. I don't know a lot about Freeride512, but you need to look up what "freeride" is first. That might be a bit advanced for you even at the beginner level. Let me know if you want to explore SATN or need mechanical help with the bike.

Many people regret buying bikes with SRAM brakes. If that's the only holdup, remove and sell the SRAM brakes before you even ride the bike so you can sell them as "brand new" takeoffs and use the funds for some proper Shimano brakes.

It happens every week I am there, multiple times each night. Every time, the drivers look PISSED. For some reason, I pay attention to these things. The first few times I saw it, I yelled to get riders out of the middle of the driveway but I am usually ignored. I've stopped trying.

To be fair, at every CnD I have attended, y'all stand around blocking the driveway like a bunch of dickheads while several cars drive up, stop, then reverse direction so they can leave. If you have a little respect for other people (like the people whose back yards and golf courses you ride through instead of taking the alternative route that is also trail) maybe stuff like this would not happen. Can CnD riders start congregating at the spillway behind Alamo Drafthouse or in the parking lot just west of ATX Bikes?

That could work out if you're trying to build a monster cross frankenbike type thing. There's no specific reason you need a drop bar on a gravel bike, but it's nice to have additional hand positions. It may be tricky to get the handlebar in the right position on a mtb that does fit you, but a smaller frame might be easier. The trick is getting the handlebar high enough. See my comments on the "I want a hardtail" thread.

Are you interested in participating in some gravel races? Are you competing to win or just for fun? A hardtail/ rigid mtb with some lightweight tires and and alternative hand position like some classic Cane Creek bar ends would be just fine. No need for a gravel-specific bike. I've ridden a few gravel races over the years on CX and touring bikes. Salsa Cowbells have been great on that kind of ride. Currently I have a SSCX bike with tubeless 35/38mm tires, 38/16 gearing, Cowbells. Last year I rode Come and Grind it, Castell, and Hill Country Hundy with 32-35mm tires. Everyone frets over giant tires but I've never felt like anything bigger than 35mm tires are needed. If I truly need tires bigger than that, I'll just ride a mountain bike. I also did just fine at Chainring Massacre on a rigid steel singlespeed 29er with a taller gear than what I would have used on trails, Schwalbe Thunder Burt 29x2.1 tires, and some Ergon bar ends. So far, Castell Grind is my favorite event, but the terrain on Hill Country Hundy has been my favorite.