AntonioGG

On 9/11/2018 at 2:00 PM, cxagent said:

There are lots of routes from Zilker to 360 near Scottish Woods. I go under MOPAC due west of Zilker on Rollingwood. At Bee Caves the same road becomes Old Walsh Tarlton Follow that road until it "T"s at Wilderness. Turn right on Wildernest. Turn left at Walsh Tarlton and next right (less than a normal block) on Pinnacle. At the Westlake schools (jr high and high school) turn left on Westbank. At the top of that Westbank climb is 360 directly across from Scottish Woods.

This sounds complicated but I recall this is actually a marked bike route so it is easy to follow. But in terms of easy to follow, Austin Bike's route is hard to beat.

I knew that sequence of roads seemed very familiar!  http://www.dashugel.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/TDH_2017_trifold_03.pdf

On 9/7/2018 at 12:17 PM, DBehrens said:

CJB, very familiar with route from Thumper to Cedar Park.  I used this route for years and cross any major roadway at stop lights.  Most of my route is west of 183 through Neighborhoods.

It is very easy to get to the YMCA and enter the far west end of DD.

I've been wanting to try that entrance to DD.  Normally I do what Cody described.

7 hours ago, Albert said:

Well, I have managed to destroy my current shoes, so I need to buy another pair right away. I've had the best fit so far with Specialized, so I have to take a look at their current lineup. 

Mine are looking similar to yours.  I've wondered about taking them to a cobbler to see if they could add back some lugs.  I wondered if anyone else had before.  I also thought about taking tire pieces and shoe gooing some lugs back on.

Damn  Chinese carbon hitches!

3 hours ago, Ridenfool said:

For anyone suffering numbness the Ergons are great. That didn't quite do it for me.

The next step was purchasing On One Mary bars. These are the most comfortable bars, as they allow hands and wrists to interface with the bar in the most natural position. If you extend your arms and let the hands show you where they want to be that will be the way they land on these bars.

I've run them on three or four frames now, with the Ergons. The occurrences of numbness has been reduced significantly and control is improved as well. Hard to find in the colonies, but well worth looking for, or place an order for them from the UK.

... and no, they are not carpet fiber, they are Aluminium (UK speak).

 

Sorry, couldn't resist:

I'd only attempt a night ride at LGT if everything is 100% dry.  I don't like riding slick rocks and roots at night.  It does sound enticing... 

3 hours ago, Chief said:

I have the GA3's on my bike and like them a lot. As far as hand and finger numbness I attribute that to not having having enough back sweep on my handlebars. The less sweep on your bars the more of an angle your wrist has when holding the bars.

Which fingers get numb on your hands?  Since I got my new-to-me bike with wider Enve bars, I suffer terribly with all the fingers and thumb except the pinky.  Looking at anatomy books, I figured the only place this can happen is at the shoulder or neck.

My old bike had a narrower bar, and I think more back sweep.

I've never used the spare derraileur hanger or the first aid kit.  I've used the zip ties, tape, FedEx envelope (Tyvek) squares as tire boots and of course the tubes and CO2 cartridges.  I've in the past wish I had pliers but I don't carry them.

Bamwa:  PHRASING!

I'm in for 100k.  I'm on a black and white TrueFab bike with BSS Club jersey and faded (WTF?) Giro yellow helmet.

To me, holding the paceline means a few things:

1. Confident enough in your riding and your group's riding to ride very close to each other.
2. Not doing abrupt moves, braking, accelerating hard, or not keeping momentum and bike position when going from seated to standing or vice-versa or drinking.
3. When its your turn to pull, don't go harder than the group's speed even if you feel very strong, if you can't pull for very long, that's OK, do a quick turn and move back so as to not explode.
4. Not panic over every single thing on the road.  I've been in so many group rides where people point out everything and do some harsh maneuvers or just the fact that one hand comes off the bars turns it into a scary situation.  Ride over gravel, point things offline.   When in a tight group, the best thing to do is to follow the wheel in front of you.  There's little chance you'll be able to react to something pointed by the person right in front of you.

#2,3,4 are one reason why I don't do many group rides to be honest.  I need to get faster so I can go on the faster and more experienced group rides.

I couldn't hold onto my drop levers at Walnut during impacts.  It makes it a bit sketchy. 

16 minutes ago, throet said:

Is there a "rule of thumb" torque setting for anything attaching to carbon bars? I don't recall if any of my components have values stamped on them, and even if they did those values would likely vary for carbon. I tend to google search when I'm tightening anything on my bars, and seem to recall using something between 3-4 nm. My grips, which only have inside locks, can still spin after tightening to recommended torque, but I've resisted tightening them any further. Hopefully the occasional spinning of the lock ring is not in itself compromising the integrity of the bar.  

Yes, the bars have specs and so do the things with clamps.  I have found that there are often incompatibilities.  Some bars are rated for 3-4Nm while a lot of clampy things are rated at 5-7Nm.    As an example, I run bar ends.  I believe those are 6-7Nm.  My older TruVativ bars specifically say no bar-ends allowed.  I machined aluminum pieces to fit inside the area where the bars clamp to deal with that issue.  As to the other things like brake levers, I go with the bar specs and use carbon paste.  It works well to keep shifters and levers from spinning.

Delete

Humidity definitely affects me a lot.

I think whether you prefer humidity and cooler air vs dryness and hot air all depends on how much body heat you're trying to get rid of (i.e. how hard you're riding.)  We humans cool-off through evaporation mostly.  If you remember HS chemistry class the heat of vaporization of water experiment (amazing how it stuck with me), it is a dramatic amount of heat you can remove through evaporation vs convection (or even contact, like in eating ice).  If you ride below a certain threshold, riding in humidity is not bad because through convection (better when it's humid) or just contact (sweat dripping off you) you get rid of enough heat.  But above a certain threshold, your body cannot get rid of that extra heat through convection.   As long as I have water and I'm sweating, if I'm riding hard, I'd rather ride in 95-100 than 80 and 90% humidity.

I made it to my car before the rain and I was completely soaked.  I did not walk through the wet crossings but my socks were just as wet as if I had.  Usually unzipping my jersey helps, but today it made zero difference.  It was gross, but at my pace it wasn't too bad b/c of the cloud cover and cooler temps.

Does anyone start 2 laps at 5:30? 

51 minutes ago, Seths Pool said:

theres been discussion about that. but that dropper lever tightens with a 3mm allen wrench. its gonna pre pretty hard in my opinion to he-man torque a 3mm allen wrench so hard it crushes carbon underneath it to the point it snaps of under the weight of me riding on it. and for whatever its worth, it took about zero torque to loosen it off of the broken piece of handlebar

This is actually an interesting point.  I think it's easy to create a lot of pressure and damage a tube of any kind, but I wonder how much it would take.  I bet it's less than it takes to strip a 3mm bolt.  The fact it took zero torque to remove tells me it was crushed.

I know I don't even use the cheap clicker torque wrench for my bar,  I use only a beam wrench on my levers and bar ends.  I used to exclusively ride Truvativ (really not that expensive) but my latest bike came with an Enve.  So far so good.  I put about 10k miles on the Truvativ that was on my Tallboy, now it's my wife's bike.  Still looks good.

I was also looking at the Chromag page.  From the info on their website, it's not a company that inspires confidence in me (translate as: I wouldn't buy from them).  They have a lot of sales people, and graphic designers, and apparently one--maybe--technical dude.  I didn't see an engineer listed on there.  I was concerned with the unidirectional fiber they claim is good for their bars.  I'm no ME but I believe I'd want parallel fibers along the length for shear strength, as well as circumferential fibers for crush strength.

Well, about 3.25 miles in I realized I forgot my saddle bag which has all my spares, tubes, and CO2 cartridges.  I realized it b/c I had to stop to tighten my thru-axle lever which was loose and rattling.  Well, I eventually lost it completely.  I went back to my car, then back out to see if I could find it and to get more miles in close to my car in case I had a mechanical.  Got about 15.5 miles in of gnarly trail and had a blast right up until it started raining.  Thanks for the ride call Cody!

The amount of rain predicted is so little though.  How is LGT with small amounts of rain?  Slick rocks?  Will dirt clump to tires?

I've had one break on my Specialized S-works shoes.  I don't really think it's an improvement over velcro plus the ratchet system.  If they'd gone to a single boa I could see the advantage.  But 2 boas plus a velcro strap aren't really an advantage over 3 straps or 2 straps plus a ratchet, and the Boas make it difficult to put my shoe on unless you unhook the line--which is not easy.

I still have my old Specialized pro shoes with the 2 velcro straps plus the ratchet.  They fit pretty well still but I do recall having the ratchet not stay tight sometimes.

My favorite shoe closure system is on my Salomon Quicklace system.   I wish I could get some bike shoes that would fit me and have this system.

https://www.salomon.com/us/blog/article/how-to-use-the-salomon-quicklace-system

I hate horse flies!  Those things have bitten me through my shorts.  Thanks for the warning.

You could pack some extra grease in them to take up volume.

I don't have any kind of alarm set.  On endurance rides I'm highly focused on keeping track of the ride, by hour, and by certain intervals, like 1/6 done, 1/4 done, 1/2 done.  So it's easy for me to remind myself.  But there are people that set reminders on their watches or bike computers.

8 hours ago, notyal said:

One little thing if it's easy to change. When you click on the little speech bubbles icon on a thread, it takes you to the first unread post (awesome). When you click on the exact same looking icon next to a forum, it marks all topics as "read". This action is not reversible and is basically the opposite of taking you to the first unread because after doing so, you have no reference which thread you have read and which posts are new. Is it possible to remove the "mark as read" icon or at least make it look different?

I was coming here to give the exact same feedback.

Is there a 501(c)3 associated with this trail?  If there is, I can put in hours during work hours and put them down as volunteer hours.