mack_turtle

Trail Work n Drank nite this week? I'll bring my rubber boots.

A lot of people my age are parents with kids who are not allowed to leave their driveway at an age when I had a range of about five miles. That's sad that parents are so paranoid.

I met some guys in Circle C park the other day who had gathered to fly drones. They had VR headsets and the drones had cameras. Way cooler than any video game, plus you have to run out into the weeds to fetch your drone when you crash it. They said you could get everything to start out for under $1k. That's a lot of money for most families but it is a better investment than video games IMO.

I think there's more value to video games than many of us think. Some of them require a lot of communication, cooperation and strategic thinking, problem solving, etc. A lot of those games involve design and world-builidng. They need to be used in moderation of course, but it's not all mindless. I am not certain that spending hours alone with one's nose in a book is objectively better.

When I was a kid, I spent endless hours alone indoors building with Lego and Construx. I watched science fiction movies and built badass robots and cars with missle launchers on them. Mad Max stuff. It instilled in me a powerful sense of space and geometry, as well as manual dexterity that I needed to learn to use tools on bikes and around the house. I have met grown men my age who literally don't understand how a screwdriver works.

I had a train set too. Being an '80s kid, parents and grandparents bought trains set stuff for kids of my generation but no one played with them. Sorry, trains just are not fun!

good times. rode the 50k at a pace that challenged me but wasn't very fast. 32/35mm tires and a 39/16 was just fine. my seatpost slipped down so slowly that I didn't notice. I knew the ride was getting harder, but i thought that was because I was getting hungry. I had to look at a photo of my bike to confirm that my seat was over an inch lower than when I started. d'oh!

I was born in 1982, so that puts me at the far-old end of the "millenials." video games were a constant threat to me. i am very addicted to video games when i get my hands on a good one, which is why I don't own a gaming console at my house. If I had an Xbox or whatever the kids are playing these days, I would never leave the house.

I had a ton of Atari 2600 games growing up.  all the other kids had Sega or Nintendo or whatever was new at the time, but my parents wouldn't buy me any of those systems because of some combination of stinginess (we could have afforded new games, but all of my games were from garage sales) and wise forethought. Atari games were never something you could do for hours on end. it was a fun distraction for an hour at best. the games were just so lackluster, slow, and short.

That was good for me because I spent countless hours building trails, treeforts, pedaling everywhere, catching frogs, and exploring the woods. this was in the Midwest, where it's quite cold and foul for a good chunk of the year with snow/ice and mud for weeks when the snow melts. my mom took my brother and me to parks for hiking, sometimes in tall rubber boots, across frozen creeks, searching for interesting icicles and animal tracks. for a few years, I lived in a house that backed up to a farm field, so I spent hours shooting a pellet gun and arrows at targets. when i got bored with that, I rode my scavenged BMX bike on a 5-6 mile look around my rural neighborhood, looking for ledges to jump off of and pretending that my route didn't take me past the house of a girl I liked. middle school!

in high school I moved to Indianapolis to a neighborhood that was home to, by sheer coincidence, the only three kids in my enormous high school who also rode BMX. we rode all the places we were not wanted in the nearby office complex, terrorized downtown, built a dirt jump course that rivals Ninth Street in a vacant lot, and initiated the building of Indy's first public skatepark (which is still next to Major Taylor Velodrome and the BMX race track). I did the same in college and for years prior to getting a mountain bike. all old BMX guys become mountain bikers eventually.

that was a good trip down Memory Lane. suffice it to say that, if it had not been for pulling a BMX bike out of the trash when I was about 13, I would have spent most of my youth playing video games. yeah, the new games are better and more immersive, but I managed to spend hours and hours playing Super Mario Brothers, which came out over 30 years ago.

I cringe when I see the kids with the portable games that are as immersive as they are though. I spend too much time looking down at my phone as it is, but kids with bent necks from a young age who never look up and engage the world around them is pretty grim. I don't have kids, but I have a hard time holding my tongue around parents who spend thousands of dollars on video games for their kids that remove them from reality, not just at home, but everywhere they go. that's going to come back to bite us all one day- socially, medically, emotionally. I don't have kids

A few years ago, I was working at REI and some corporate bigwig came through to give us a pep talk. she asked who REI's competition is, and people named Academy Sports, Whole Earth Provisions, bike shops, Bass Pro Shop, etc. she replied that the real competition to the outdoor recreation retailers are stores like Best Buy, which sell people things that allow them to pass the time without going outside at all.

I will go ahead and say just that- I migrated from a VP Vice pedal to a Chromag Contact. the Chromag is a much bigger pedal and has a concave shape that feels much better under my foot.

just take the idea to some extreme in your head. imagine standing on a 2 inch square pedal for hours. then imagine standing on a 6"x12" plank. which will cause more fatigue on your foot?

I have a full-length 27.2 Thomson Elite straight seatpost in my cyclocross bike right now. it's MUCH longer than necessary for this bike and pretty stiff for how I ride it. anyone have a shorter, more compliant 27.2mm seatpost they would trade for the Thomson?

22 minutes ago, Albert said:

Thanks @mack_turtle for the explanation!  I'd never heard of the technique before. 

 ..Al

Once I became aware of how frequently I rode with my toes pointed down, and how much better and safer everything feels with the heel down, I had to ask myself, How the hell did I not die a million times riding like that?

If nothing else, riding flats part-time is a good way to build skills by exposing your weaknesses. I suggest trying them until you get confident on them, then switch back to clipping in if you get an bit extra control and confidence from them. In and under the impression that several skills instructors insist that you use flats for their classes, probably for the same reason.

Also, I am going to put SPD peddles on my e-mtb next time I ride Walnut. I'll give it a shot tomorrow because my dogs love running free in the mud!

4 hours ago, Albert said:

I'm not sure what you mean by this?

It's exactly what it sounds like. You ride with your heels no higher than your toes so that when you hit a number, your foot is driven into the platform, thus increasing your connection to the bike. It's a natural and powerful connection to the bike. Do a quick internet search for "mountain bike heel drop" and you'll find a bazillion articles on the technique.

When I complained about not feeling secure on flats for the first few rides, it's because I was riding with poor technique to begin with but was hiding it with cleats. Once I got used to riding with a technique that does not suck, I can ride with much more confidence knowing that I can make my feet stick when I want them to an come off when I want. No more wondering when I will have that lucky moment when my cleats don't release and I go tumbling down a hill full of rattlesnakes and poison ivy with the bike attached to me. Not I get all the sneks and poison as I run gracefully down the hill on my two feet.

3 minutes ago, AntonioGG said:

During the transition, did you have any close calls due to being used to being attached to the bike?  I’ve tried it and almost hurt myself a few times.

 

yes, but the learning curve is fast. the transition from flats to clipping in is a lot harder than the other way. I started on flat BMX pedals and "graduated" to SPDs. I ate shit so many times while learning to use SPDs but eventually got comfortable with it. give flats (good pedals and good shoes!) three or four rides and you get used to dropping your heels, which is better technique anyways. I used to ride with cleated pedals with my toes DOWN until I forced myself to lose that habit, which was difficult.

25 minutes ago, Albert said:

What kind of shoes do people typically ride with flats? 

 ..Al

I am riding in Adidas Terrex Solo somethings. they were about half the price of Five Tens and I can't bring my cheap bastard self to spend $150 on some sneakers. they have Stealth rubber similar to what Five Ten uses because Adidas owns Five Ten. the general consensus is that Five Tens make the best flat-pedal shoe out there. some people prefer a super stiff sole but none of the mtb-specific sneakers on the market have a sole nearly as stiff as most mtb clipless shoes. most of them are just built like a beefy skate shoe from the 90s. (Damn I miss my Emerica Templtons!)

The guy who designed these pedals has a whole Flat Pedal Manifesto page that is quite compelling. he does not believe that you need a super-stiff shoe for cycling and goes into that theory in some detail. as someone who prefers to wear minimalist type shoes all the time, I agree with his premise. I'll let you all go read it yourself before you judge the whole idea. the pedal is based on that idea- that the pedal should support your shoe so you don't need a shoe that's so stiff that your foot can't move in it.

I dropped the SPDs from my mountain bike earlier this year. after ten years on SPDs, it was absolutely liberating.

these are old news, but it makes sense to me. I am using some very large platform pedals and I can see why larger pedals would provide a more stable platform to stand on and spread the load better. you don't stand on the arch of your foot, but you use your heel, so why should a pedal not support your whole foot?

I am not going to bother with rain gear. being soaked but warm will be just fine. soaked and cold, notsomuch. rain gear just gets swampy. flappy fenders would be a good idea to keep the flying much off your face, though.

however- wet, sandy gravel roads and 35/32 mm tires- good idea or bad idea? not sure if those will get stuck in the dirt, or dig through it. CXers use skinny tires in mud for a reason, right? should be an adventure either way.

weird coincidence- I was rummaging around Yellow Bike and they had a box of various chain guides in there. the box was on the top shelf above the chainrings. I can't guarantee you'll find one that will work in there, but it's worth a shot.

are you at least using a single-specific chainring? if not, a chainring that was designed to shift is going to be an endless source of frustration. a single ring is a pretty cheap item, so she might need to break down and purchase one.

2 minutes ago, RidingAgain said:

And that my good friends... Is how it's done.

I thought you said you were done being an obnoxious asshat.

13 hours ago, JRIDER said:

I've never done a gravel grinder or ridden in this area.  What is the recommended tire pressure for a 29" ht mtb with 2.2 tires?

pump your tires up a little harder than you would for trail riding. I am not going to give you any numbers, but they don't need to be rock-hard for pavement riding, but running them at trail pressure is going to bog you down.

I can't let this thread go without doing my due diligence in saying that KOPS is bullshit. If KOPS works for you, that's fine. the relationship between some vague place near your knee and the pedal spindle is mostly coincidental. any bike fitter who swears by KOPS as the end-all for saddle position is blowing smoke. it's utter nonsense other than a reference point. I know this because a fitter at a certain bike shop in Austin fit me on a mountain bike (and I paid for this service) by slamming my cleats all the way forward on my shoes so the cleat was under my piggies so that he could drop a plumb bob from some arbitrarily point on my knee and have it line up with my pedal. there is and was no scientific reason for this in the first place, but it was an absurd hack on my bike that served no purpose but to give me and the fitter the illusion of scientific precision.

I love the comedy on Mojo. I can do without the blatant asshattery.

might be wet, which will add to the "fun." I am on the bright green SSCX Traitor. My gear is probably too hard for the course so I might be the guy who is walking a lot of it.

forgiveness > permission. if anything goes awry, it's the property owner/ manager's responsibility.

I never thought I would say this, but the world needs more Bartmans.

I'll see what I have. I have a Hadley hub on my bike that I switched from 135x10mm to 142x12mm when I switched frames last year. I might still have the axle assembly and the 10mm bolt. I was holding onto it in case I wanted to put that wheel on a frame with 135mm spacing some day, but those chances are looking more and more slim.

I might...