AntonioGG

I don't think of it just as a shorter commute, I think of it as less millions spent on more lanes and more bridges and more road maintenance because more people are commuting from 29 & 183 or Elgin or Bastrop or Kyle or whatever. All those people will start voting and writing and complaining about their traffic, more roads get built and those are immediately filled up (proven time again.) How much does 1 mile of 4-lane highway with 2 lanes of access cost? IIRC it was $10M something like 30 years ago. It's not just teachers and firefighters that need the break either.

This is no different than corporations do (in fact lots of towns are cities are corporations.) Everything you buy--whether you're a captive customer (like being a citizen in a city) or a customer by choice (buying a car)--has a debt service cost to it. No corporation or town operates in a mode where they save money for 10 years before they can do something. The State of Texas or the Federal government don't either. Most people also finance their shit--some more irresponsibly than others. So borrowing the money is not the issue right? Is it the debt/income level? What's the alternative? Put off capital improvement projects? We have shit falling apart already. I just went to my kids' middle school for a meeting (blue Ribbon school in RRISD, I pay a ton of taxes to them, gladly) and their little ID badge printer started spitting out a bunch of them instead of just the one. The lady said their system has been acting up and needs to be upgraded. She then asked me "did the bond package pass?". One thing I check for in all these bond packages is for frivolous things like football stadiums which I haven't seen. In the last couple of years, I see a lot of "upgrade HVAC system, repair/upgrade electrical equipment" in the bond packages. For the affordability bonds...well, no CodeNext, no $15/hour minimum wage means people living in affordable "suburbs" (really it's other towns) and using the roads and infrastructure to go into town. I think looking at the big picture can show that this is not a perfect or easy system to deal with. A growing city means this kind of stuff.

Who is doing this? Either just the first loop or the whole thing? I've done it partial several years but not the whole thing for one reason or another. The last time in 2015 I rode it in my Tallboy for about 60 miles.

Doing just the lowers, either rinsing the seals and putting new oil is pretty easy. You get pretty fast at it.

Tried to ride 1/4 this morning. It's too wet. There was more than the usual mud holes and the rocks were very slick. The fog was condensing on any surface as late as 9:30am. I turned back and rode the BCRT, and even that is slick. I low-sided on the dam hairpins. Mud wasn't sticking in the trail, but it was rutting in more than the usual spots. The connector trail at the East start of 1/4 did stick to my tires on the way out (had the thin stuff that wasn't sticking and it just attracted that reddish/whitish stuff.) I was told Picnic was also bad. We didn't even try Peddlers.

Yes, compression setting will keep you from using full travel in fast bumps. But it should not keep you from from full travel in slow bumps. [I'm assuming this shock has a single bump and a single rebound adjustment, I think the ones with slow/fast bump/rebound all have external reservoirs, but I could be wrong]. If you can't compress it completely in a slow bump condition (i.e. putting all your weight on the back of it) when set at proper sag, I'd suspect the shock is too progressive. Either it has some packers/spacers/extra grease in it, or the can is too small for the suspension design.

Saturday night sounded/felt like a lot of rain, but the gauge at my house said only 0.3in. I checked all the trail weather stations and 0.3 is about the highest I saw. Of course, the ground is pretty saturated already.

The phone app doesn't seem to have the option to display history.

How was Thumper?

Matt, the speed at which oil moves through the orifices in a dampener is what determines how it works. There are other variables like cavitation, whether it's pressurized, etc. It's possible to speed up your bump and rebound by going to lighter oil. That's the caveat though: both your bump and rebound will be affected. By adjusting the orifices you can affect bump and rebound separately. It would be an easy experiment to try lighter oil.

Hydromet also has a soil moisture option.

You can change the view. You can select yesterday or weekly mode to see the precipitation in the last week. That gives a better idea of the saturation I think. It's rare, but some weather stations actually include ground saturation readings.

My experience with the metal fans is that either at the factory, in shipping or through use, the metal blades can get out of whack, then they vibrate like crazy and make more noise than plastic fans. I can balance fans, but the harder thing is to get the pitch even on all the blades.

Matt, have you tried just a lighter oil in that Monarch? I'm assuming it already has no packers in there.

Sold

Someone on Yaupon puts out a water tank on weekends. I’m not sure how consistently but I often see it.

Leonard Zinn: https://www.velonews.com/2018/06/bikes-and-tech/zinn-e-bike-can-life-changing-lifelong-cyclist_470738

I have had a standing 4:30-5:30 call on Tuesdays for the last several years. So as rarely as I make it to the R&I, it's more likely than not that I finished the call from the parking lot. I have done a call from the St. Ed's trail. I rode, stopped at the bottom of the climb by the creek crossing and took the whole call from there, with the noise of the babbling creek as the background. It was nice.

In. I’ll start as soon as my conf call is done.

I finally installed my shop stand.

I wondered about the Tokamak. Is it still even operational? [looked] Looks like Pickle still has the Tokamak but the one under RLM was removed. I got to see the one under RLM while I was in school. Pretty cool stuff.

We're washing clothes (also 2 boys, there's no option not to do one load for each one every week), but not changing sheets and towels this week. At least we have a front loader which uses very little water. My poor P29er sits unwashed after the RHR24 though...

Several people at my work drink the faucet water and they're OK.

If it's yellow, we already let it mellow.