The Tip

I think he should ask the guy if he can take it for an extended ride first. I think that the seller would do that for someone that is sort of connected to the group of mtbers. Your brother needs to know if the bike fits, but more importantly, can his knee take it or not. It would be bad to buy a bike then decide, "nope, can't do it."

And the "new" trail, that is on the north bank of the small stream there, has survived multiple rain events with no blockage. It dries and is good to go very quickly after a big rain. I rode through there today with no problems. The newly developed short route around the wood blockage (on the bridge side of those trees) is easy to see too. I'll be curious how that new 50' of trail will do after a rain. By the way, the "new" trail is 3 1/2 years old. I have not ridden the original trail since the solution to EverWet trail was built.

I'm getting a little aggregate-ed by this thread so I need to calm down. Maybe I will compose a (rip)RAP song as a diversion.

This is flood damage. It's happened before in that exact same space. There is even more this time though because of all the tree clearing the city did recently just up stream. I'm thinking that a reroute should be worked just a few feet upstream from those trees that catch everything so we don't have to be confronted with this blockage after every flood event. That is what I did to bypass it when I rode past it on Saturday. It really only needs to a have a path weedeated out of the vegetation there. No big whoop. Much easier than clearing all that wood again.

Took a ride this morning. Pretty much everything I rode was good to go. The only real problem was on 45 on Median Well next to the red, white, and blue table jump. There was about 100 feet of sloppy wet stuff. But that was it on my entire ride. I even rode the east side of Phoenix. There's a bypass to avoid the west side of it. The west side of both Phoenix trails stay wet along time. I didn't even try there. Bambi and under Mopac, (north of The Hump) was also good. Those two right there is enough to know the rest of the SATN is probably good too. Escarpment Spillway didn't even get my feet wet. But Double Dip and Gravel Crossing were still under water. Bowie Sidewalk was 2-4" deep, so it could be crossed. I didn't look at the three downstream crossings from there. I would have ridden more dirt, because it was all so good, but I rode the 45 sidewalk to 1626, because I have been wanting to do that. It is really very pleasant. Of course it won't be so much so when the highway opens. But right now you can hear the birds and just enjoy the views. Very nicely done. And none of the many workers that saw me said a thing.

I've seen probably 20 different "Hitler in the bunker" videos. I laughed at every single one of them. This is the first one of these I've seen, but I'm guessing I'll be seeing a lot more. Good! And it's funny because it's true!

1) To ride a bike 2)To have a trail experience 3)To be outdoors 4)For exercise So with all the rain we've had, and that which is coming, we won't be able to exercise riding trail outdoors for awhile. But we can still get three out of four of those things by DOING TRAIL WORK! Go experience the trails in a different way. Get outdoors. Get a work out. Three out of four. Remember, not one bit of the single track you ride here in Austin is maintained by a government entity. It's almost exclusively done by volunteer mountain bikers. YOU! If every mountain biker would only maintain 50 feet of trail we would never have a problem. The point being that every little bit helps. Grab some loppers or a machete. Fire up the weed eater. Everything helps. And when you are walking out to trim those face slappers, walk on the side of the trail to knock back the encroaching vegetation. Coming and going. And drag your feet! Don't make me go all bartman on you metro sexual sensitive safe-place-seeking pansies to motivate you. Oops, sorry. But this is the perfect time to give back a little to our community.

My only worry about sharing the trails with the Onewheel folks is trail sanitizing. It's just another user group that REALLY wants to dumb down the trails. I'm sure that Dirt Surfer will be like some of us in preaching to his community to NOT do this. But knowing people, and how we MTBers have to fight this, I know it will only add to the problem. But besides that I don't have a problem with them. And I always say the more trail advocates the better. Even a person that only rides the gravel paths, if they call themselves a mountain biker, and will show up at a city council meeting with a protest sign about keeping trail access open when needed, I'm their brother.

Cool, but what KIND of bike? 😉

Word Your post made me miss bartman.

And it's not that we want the trails all to ourselves either. Well, most of the MTB community that is. Shoot, some of the MTB community doesn't want to even share with other mountain bikers! lol

😁 We parents are not being sadistic when we do this. At least that's what I tell myself! We are just trying to desensitize our kids to their unwarranted embarrassments. (Anyone buying that explanation?)

Lakeway!

I think that this is the crux of it right there. For Texans it's just natural to say, "howdy." In other "cultures" it shows weakness or something. I don't know. You walk down the streets of New York City and nobody is going to look or speak to you. But even big city Austin people will occasionally say something. At least the Texans will!

Here comes a rider heading towards me on the trail. We pass, I give the nod and I say, "how's it going?" The other rider pretends I don't even exist! Seriously? Hey bud, I KNOW you see me. It's just down right creepy. It doesn't matter if they have ear buds in or not. You don't have to say anything. Just nod your friggin head or something. Jeez. And this is on SATN trails where you might pass two riders all day on a ride. And that's on a busy day. So it's not like you're nodding your head continually. It's just weird to pass and not do anything. No wonder we mountain bikers get a bad reputation sometimes. If you can't even acknowledge a fellow biker I shudder to think how you react to a walker.

It was good PR. Any time "mountain bike trails" are mentioned as being good helps the cause. "They started as basically old game trails and then the bikers started connecting them." Love it. Isn't that how ALL trails get made? That's my story and I'm sticking to it at least.

Interesting. They suggest $20 a day is normal. I know a lot of us have multiple bikes in their garages. Mine already looks like a bike rental shop.

Made me think of that old joke, Q: What do you call the medical student that finished last in his class? A: Doctor

That's sort of my problem. But for me its that I drink whisky like I drink beer. "Sipping" is not in my vocabulary.

The Back 40 was not all out in the wilderness like I thought something called the Back 40 would be. Going ccw we just followed along the road at first . I would say you could see houses 60% of the time. Not that it had anything to do with the trail. It was just different from what I was expecting. Speaking of houses, I learned to dread seeing approaching houses and street signs from the trail. That indicated that a killer climb up to that street was coming up. Based on our nine guy's experience, you have a 25% chance of getting a puncture or side wall tear on the Back 40. Be prepared to repair out there. It took us slow guys just under five hours to ride the 21+ mile loop. This included four tire repair stops, two falling off a cliff stops for me, a couple of other crashes, and one waiting for a driver to come take one rider to the ER stop. My Strava time was 567th out of 601 for the Whole Quesadilla CCW Phat Tire Bike Shop prices were surprisingly reasonable on tires. And other stuff too. It is difficult for a newbie to figure the best ways to do all the Bentonville trails. You should have a good idea on how to prior to getting there. You might enjoy it without research of course, but I think it best to not waste time "exploring" because you will run out of time to experience everything. We are in south Austin. It took us 10 hours including gas and one 40 minute meal stop. It was the same both ways. Google Maps will tell us it's 8.75 hours. We drove 75 mph just about the whole time. Go figure.

Yes, it's in the Latta Branch Greenbelt, just west of Beckett, across the street from Dick Nichols. If you can find anyone's Strava ride and look at the map, that car is on a trail marked on the map as "Rocky Trail."

Awhile back I went to every trail head in this area to look at signage and found these signs as pictured, minus the no hunting sign, at everyone of them. Notice that the signage is new-ish looking too. Meaning you must assume it to be "recent" policy. You have to be a very good internet sleuth to go through the COA Parks Department website to find where it says, "hiking only" for this area. As a matter of fact I stopped writing this post to try and find where I had found it before. I spent 10 minutes and couldn't this time. But I know it is still the policy because I had a discussion with a park police person at a meeting about it a couple of months ago. We should devout efforts into getting mtbing officially allowed there. It is almost the same size as Walnut Creek and has as good of topography. And of course we should work on getting more areas of the SATN sanctioned. And there are efforts being made towards that. I know I have said this before but our mtbing community should make golden images of cxagent to idolize for his "patience of Job" devotion to the tedious work of working with the City and other entities in accomplishing just that. In the SATN and the rest of the Austin area as well.

I don't have time to watch lengthy videos like that. Can you summarize what is in those videos? Cool stuff.

This is as pleasing of a story as the African poacher that got stomped by elephants than eaten by lions.

Don't ride muddy trail. Yes we know that. But if we waited until there is absolutely no mud anywhere on the trail, not only would we really limit our time on the trail, but then we would be dealing with moon dust too. How ironic! I contend that it is okay to ride trail that has SOME "bad" spots. The problem is that a bunch of riders have different opinions than I do about what percentage the "allowable" bad spots are. So unfortunately we have to be over militant about sending the "don't ride muddy trails" message. This is such an inexact thing of course, because how do you really measure, but I think that a 95/5% mix is acceptable. That means on 5% of the trail you are going to have to get off your bike and walk around the muddy patch. And none of the patches I am talking about are ever more than 5 feet long. But 95% of the trail is probably hero dirt. I think that a 90/10 mix would make it not worthwhile to ride. Again, inexact, but am I making any sense? I feel it is unfair to shame a guy in the parking lot on a muddy bike without knowing his full story. He might have just discovered for the community that 95% of the trail was good, "but don't ride _____ because I did and it was not ready. That's why my bike is dirty."