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The Bicycling thread

So, did you haul that sasquatch home on the trailer? I understand Texas Hill Country is supposed to be a bigfoot hotspot...

The highway trash pickup folks were headed that way as we were riding home, so decided to go get it and realized it wouldn’t fit in truck bed!


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Many stories like this-


I'm going to dig my old Shogun- circa 1983 out and take a picture. I guess it was a "mountain" bike before the phrase was coined. IIRC, it was around $400.00 back then.
OM

My first “ mt bike” was also a Shogun about same time frame. Hurricane Ike took it out at my coastal house years later
Had good components but was heavy!
 
Just building up an old Giant OCR1. Frames aplenty on eBay, plenty of old parts too. Waiting for the wheels, seat and misc. little parts. Almost bought an old TCR, however, being cheap it was beat up. Also, on certain TCRs and OCRs the forks had been recalled. Can have a lot of fun for a few bucks, like old motorcycles.
 
My early 90’s C’dale V900 is still down due to unobtanium replacement parts for Headshok suspension. Another proprietary design that encourages obsolescence as the caged needle bearings haven’t been made for years
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The underground supply of used units are holding on to their spares. Changing out/ adapting a different fork isn’t a cheap or without handling issues. So...having that bike work as designed isn’t looking good.
I may end up with another used bike. Need something heavier than a gravel set up but will give the 29’’ wheels a shot.


My puncture streak continues today. We both have commented on how many blowout/ tire carcasses are currently on our routes... really over the norm for whatever reason and even when you dodge the obvious, the strands seem to wait for me!
I felt the wobble after entering the city side streets and yep, another flat :banghead
And surprise, another shiny strand of SS wire protruding from tire

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Went with fast new tube change and will put one more patch on my now least favorite Conti tube. I had put a spare tube in my kit without looking. Right size for the 28, but the stem was almost too short to air up... are you kidding me? Had four of same style, but this one was must not have been. Aired up luckily and finished the ride. H said I had tubes at PO if I needed a spare to finish and decided I had my flat of the day and left town.
 
Nice to see some chatter here. Giant frames and flats!

I haven't been posting rides because, well, they haven't been all that exciting. It is getting warm, the trees are full of leaves, the smells are more of sweet spruce than liquid manure. But I didn't see anything noteworthy to post.

It is, however, the 21st of May - so that is 3 weeks into my May challenge. I am currently at 675 of 777 miles (1085 of 1250km). I am also way over the the climbing challenge of 7500m - I just checked: today I'm at 8361m.

OK, here are a couple of pics from today's ride. Michelle ordered up some new wheels for her gravel bike. We just got them on Tuesday. So I set them up and got both of the gravel bikes into 'gravel mode'. Today we rode to Oswego county to check out a rail trail which is now a multi-use trail. The appear to allow ATVs. In the winter, this is a snowmobile route. They get A LOT of snow in Oswego. It is only 20 miles from where I live but that may be the difference of 3 FEET of snow over 24 hours!

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I took a closer shot of the gravel tires. Michelle runs 35c tires, I run 40c. Hers are Clement (now Donnelley) Xplor UST. Mine are Kenda Flintridge.

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Here is our spokesmodel on the trail. At least the trees have leaves now!

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Our destination village was Pennellville. Apparently Pennell had a sawmill in the early 1800's. This picture is from a bridge over the mill pond.

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Asked Michelle to pose for a shot with her bike with the new wheels. Fulcrum Racing 5 disk. This is a road wheel but she weighs less than 100lbs so theywill be plenty tough enough for gravel use under her.

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I guess I should add that on my bike, the gravel tires and FSA wheels added 2.1 lbs to the total weight of the bike over the road setup. 20.72 lbs road, 22.88 lbs gravel. And I can feel that - the bike definitely feels more sluggish on the pavement.

Finally, here is a shot that I took as we rode through wetlands north of the Oneida river. I thought it was pretty - and there were a ton of birds in the area. We saw geese, ducks, and herons. Unfortunately for you, I'm not that quick of a photographer.

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I just checked out how many miles I put in over the last 7 days: 246. All outside. That may not be the most miles I've ridden in a week but I'm pretty sure this May will be my largest mileage month. Another COVID silver lining.

A couple of days ago we rode to the city of Auburn. When I was checking out the stats for our May distance challenge, I just happened to glance at the leader board and the number 2 guy was from Auburn and he has about 5000km for the month. WTH, right? So I clicked on his name and saw his latest rides. He has been riding a century or more for over 60 consecutive days! Many of those rides were on Zwift (inside on the trainer). It looked like he would regularly be on the bike for 7 or more hours a day.

I can't remember the year but there was a MOA mileage contest where the winner put in over 100000 miles in 6 months. I was chatting with my father-in-law about that and he wouldn't believe me. Seriously, it was like I personally insulted him by telling him this info. My FIL was riding about 20K miles a year at this time and knew what it would take to ride 5X more than he was (our riding year is short - so probably the same amount of time). When you are doing something and learn about someone who is putting in 5X more (whatever) than you are, it is humbling - but also thought provoking. Eating a piece of cake is nice, but trying to force down a few cakes? The question has to be answered by each individual.

I've come to the conclusion that 2 or 3 hours a day on the bike is fine for me. I don't need any more. Maybe the occasional century or epic ride. Its just that there is other stuff to do!
 
I've come to the conclusion that 2 or 3 hours a day on the bike is fine for me. I don't need any more. Maybe the occasional century or epic ride. Its just that there is other stuff to do!

Yup.

Epic long rides are okay as an exception, but not the rule. Unless I’m on an actual bike trip, I don’t much see the point in sitting in the saddle for hours and hours and hours. Or logging massive amounts of weekly miles, even cumulatively. I’m trying to maintain personal fitness, and I view that as contrary to my long-term goals.

Especially as we age, too much repetitive strain leads to injuries and set backs. As one of my friends (an ultra-marathoner) is fond of saying: For aging athletes, we are doing well when we are “between injuries.” Cross-training is critical. Recovery days are critical too.

I try to keep rides <2 hours in length, ideally closer to 90 minutes. Because terrain varies, I’m not at all concerned about how many miles that ends up being.

All things in moderation. And yes, lots of other interesting and necessary things to do!
 
We typically are out for just under 3 hours, with one loop a two hour average I can do the long days but it’s not in my routine, and with Summer coming on, just not that much fun. I have done a few 4-5 hour rides recently solo, but unless I leave at dawn headed into June, not on my list now.
We had a 95 degree, high humidity finish Wednesday and both us felt the too early heat arrival. The feel like temp on our weather station was 102 when we got home. We agreed to not leave that late in the morning again this time of year.

Have a few videos from yesterday’s livestock encounters... H rounded corner to huge herd of goats on the road, then a solo young steer coming down the middle of road she was talking to the whole way.
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I still have to wait for afternoon so it's warm enough.

We're with Lee. I'm looking forward to being able to ride in the morning!

Today was a first for the year: at 9am the temperature outside was WARMER than the temp inside. Maybe that just means we keep the house temp too warm?

We usually don't turn on our AC on until Memorial Day. I may have to jump the gun this year - the sun is really beating down on the house.

Great animal pictures. We don't get much livestock in the road around here. I've even noticed a trend over the last few years that the rural folks are doing a better job at keeping their dogs from chasing bikes. We get the occasional family of geese crossing the road.

Here is a picture from our trip to Ireland last year:

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Notice how touristy we are: both stopped taking photos!

In 2013 or so we were on a motorcycle tour in Utah and were way up in elevation headed toward Brian Head from the east. There was no traffic there - very remote - and it was cold and rainy. Maybe even light snow. In July. All of a sudden a WALL of sheep was coming toward us. I pulled right into the middle of the road and shut the bike down. The sheep went around us like we were an island in a river. After quite a while, a few herders on horseback brought up the tail end. We proceeded on our way. When we got to the hotel that night, we noticed that our bikes were caked in sheep crap. It had baked onto the mufflers and was packed everywhere: belly pan of the K75s, nooks and crannies of the R11. And you really noticed it when you came to a stop.
 
I still have to wait for afternoon so it's warm enough.

It was over 60° by 7:00 this morning up in Michigan. Time to get on my gear and head out. I love riding in the morning. It's really great to get out of the basement and off the trainer. Soon it will be too hot to ride in the afternoon here. We just never seem to get a decent Spring up here on the shores of Lake Huron. We go from 40's to 80's too quickly.
 
Some talk about old mountain bikes but no pictures!

Yesterday I cleaned up my fat bike and figured I would get the MTB out of the shed. Pumped up the tires and took it for a spin around the neighborhood. Lots of good memories on this bike. It has done races, single track, fire roads, beaches, lots of trips to breweries, fourth of July fireworks ... it is my old buddy. Two winters ago I took everything off of it and cleaned and lubed everything from headset to a new bottom bracket. Most components are original on this bike - even the pedals and seat! I put new chains and cassettes on but that is about it.

1997 or 98 Gary Fisher Big Sur.

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I love that color. When I had the parts off, I used rubbing compound, swirl remover and wax to get it as nice as I could - but this bike has seen a lot of incidents.
 
That bike brought back a memory of the first event that we did that prompted me to become interested in training - and eventually into many years of triathlon competition.

In early 1998, Michelle and I had new mountain bikes and we would ride really long distance on dirt roads: like 3 or 4 miles! We had no idea what was possible. A few of my fraternity buddies who were into mountain biking talked us into doing a triathlon at Killington Mountain in Vermont. The three legs were: Mogul skiing, mountain biking and trail running. The only thing I had any business doing was the skiing part. But this took place on Memorial Day - there was only snow at Killington Peak and it was spotty. In sections you had to take off your skis and run downhill in ski boots to the next snow patch. I am not very good at that. When I got onto the mountain bike leg, It went straight uphill almost immediately. I couldn't believe people could ride up that. I walked. Then the run started out very easy: because I was running downhill for the first half (1.5 miles) and then had to run back up for the finish. I jogged down. Walked up. I finished exhausted. I was too young to be that out of shape! I finished in the bottom 25% of participants. I enjoyed my post race beer but a seed had been planted: I will not perform that poorly again! How do you get good at this stuff? My buddies kicked my ass - that wasn't going to happen again.
 
No postings since my last one over a week ago! I hope you are all out riding either bicycles or motos.

It is June 1st so my May challenge of riding 1250km (777mi) with 7500m (24600 ft) of elevation gain is over. Since I was yammering on about it, I figured I would tie it up with a final report.

I ended up doing 1516km (942mi) with 12451m (40850 ft) of elevation. That included 23 rides to various villages in our region, all rides started and ended at our house. Michelle rode 22 of those rides with me and ended up with 1km more distance and 150m more elevation. Strava ranks you relative to the participants in the challenge so I found it interesting that in the distance challenge I ended up about 25000th out of 450000. In the climbing challenge I was 50000th out of 400000. I'm surprised that many people enter these kind of things!

Here is a heat map showing all the rides. Light blue means we were only on the road once. The darker blue to red means we did the ride multiple times. The really red routes are dictated by the locations of two things: bridges that cross the Seneca river and places to cross highways, particularly route 90.

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There is one ride missing from this plot where my phone app crashed and I lost my GPS data. I have distance and time data from my bike computer, though.

Our ride yesterday was a pleasant 41 miles to a local fish hatchery. We took our gravel bikes and found a gravel road, the Erie canal and a little off roading at the hatchery.

Whiskey Hollow Road is the only local gravel road that we have. There aren't any residences along the road, it is nicely wooded and there is a spring halfway up the road. There are always folks filling up bottles there. I wish there were more places like this within easy cycling distance.

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Carpenter's Brook Fish Hatchery is both a hatchery and a county park. It is currently closed except for 'passive use'. We enjoy stopping by and checking out the fish. The tank behind Michelle holds some giant rainbow trout. Tough to see through the bird netting. Most of the tanks are empty now but there are a few running water tanks that have a bunch of brown trout in various stages of development. My first century ride 20 something years ago began and ended at this park.

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Our last village sign of the month.

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And a pleasant jaunt on the canal trail.

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In summary, this wasn't all that difficult of a challenge. Just riding is pretty easy, actually, if you have the time. My top end speed and power definitely took a hit this month but I have noticed that my ability to recover from hard efforts is fantastic. After a steep hill, my heart rate drops almost immediately. So my cardiovascular fitness has improved. This is what I was hoping for: base building. I won't keep up this type of distance, I'll dial it back to maybe 1000km per month and add real workouts back in. I'm still 3+ months away from any events, though.
 
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