mack_turtle

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.

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

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...

Woodchippers are a bit extreme for a bike that was designed for conventional drop bars. they work well on a mountain bike that was designed with a super-tall stack and short reach like the Fargo. if you want to really ride trails on a CX/gravel bike the Cowbells or Cowchippers would be better. I replaced the horrible round, deep, flare-less bars that came with my CX bikes with Cowbells and I could not be happier.

I just noticed that forum. I should have this moved.

Don't know yet! Just got home from a week-long vacation and had to dive into work. I can't take another whole week off this year, so I am looking for what I can do on a short-term trip. I'll tally up all these options. Hopefully this thread is useful for people who want other options as well. It sounds like a trip to the west end of the state might not be worthwhile if I have to spend two out of my three days just driving. I might look for something a little closer in Hill Country until I can find a way to do a whole week getaway. My priority is to find something with a great camping setting, and something that will challenge me to ride. My wife is going to be bored if we go somewhere and I spend the whole time out riding.

I rarely leave Austin to ride. I'd like to go someplace remote and beautiful sometime this fall/winter for a camp/ride trip. Must be less than a full day drive away so I can squeeze it into a three/four- day weekend. Edit- my wife doesn't ride, so I need something that she can enjoy while I get some riding in. she likes camping, just not riding a bike. she's a gym rat, but being in a gym riding a bicycle that literally goes nowhere bores me to death. I might make this a riding-only trip and leave her to do her own thing, but we usually do these things together. Big Bend is the first thing that comes to mind but I don't know much about it. What have you already done and what's on your bucket list?

Put you hands in the hooks and get your lever blades closer. Set it up more like a "dirt drop" if you must. It's almost impossible to loose grip down there. When you get old, just get a taller stem. No need for a flat/riser bar unless your frame is already too big for you.

If you need interrupter levers because you can't stand riding on the hoods and drops, your frame and stem are too low or too long or both. Those levers can be useful in some situations but if you need them, that's a bike fit issue. There's no point in riding a bike with drop bars if you can't ride in the drops at least half of the time. If you know how to install and adjust regular brake cables, installing them is a breeze. You don't even have to unwrap the bar tape.

Some people never learn to appreciate drop bars, but most who don't have never ridden a drop bar bike that is set up to fit them properly.

True, but, factually speaking, riding a mountain bike on the road sucks ballz. I would choose the CX bike if I am going to spend more than 50% of the time on roads and bike paths. I have to routes that cicumnavigate the whole city that are super fun on curvy bars and skinny tires and include quite a bit of dirt.

I have not ridden a CX at Walnut, but I have explored a lot of SATN on a CX bike. Some of the trails are fun and just challenging enough, but those little tires just don't do well in the chunk. I'll bet there's a fun, challenging loop in there that can be done on skinny tires but you need to know the trails well enough, which I don't. The other thing I like about riding a CX bike is that you can link together road and trails. If the trail gets too chunky, it's a CX bike, so you can shoulder and hike it.

The picture above of the squatting man has me thinking... I have been working on relearning how to move like that. It's an essential, normal, natural ability that most Westerner s have lost. It's very likely that I enjoyed my brief experiment with a dropper post because it caters to my specific kind of laziness and inability to move. I have to wonder how much a dropper post and other affectations of modern mountain bikes are made "necessary" by the poor health and movement of modern living. Sitting all day at a desk, in a couch, and in a car, lousy diets, overly- supportive footware, movement that is restricted to compartmentalized "exercise." I live this way too for the most part, but I am aware of it and work to limit my helplessness. Riding my bike is one of the few aspects of my lifestyle where I can choose to use or restrict my reliance of the crutches. Maybe a dropper is not a crutch, but I don't find it to add anything to my riding experience just yet. Edit- not saying that a dropper is a bad thing or that it does not make some trails and terrain a lot less treacherous and more fun, but I worry about relying on it as a crutch.

I thought I remembered seeing that. She had parked her trailer behind Burger Fi. I called 311 and they transfered me to 911. Weshould all make an effort to start bombarding 311 with calls about horses and off-leash dogs and maybe things will change. SW Austin really needs an off-leash dog park too!

Tires- something light with tiny knobs. Spec Renegades or Schwalbe Thunder Burt's would be nice.

I have not seen a map yet. how far do you have to go before you repeat a "lap?" I signed up for Come and Grind It 100k earlier this year. the 100k was just two laps of the 50k course. it was hot an humid, so after the first lap, I saw cold beer and shade and didn't want to see all those pastures again. I called it a day after 50.