Another friend and I were planning to ride in the same area that day, but cancelled. Didn't know Paul was riding there too. We would have been on the road, but he was on his MTB. Totally shocked.
Maybe too sensitive a time, but my thought when reading this answer sustainability.stackexchange.com/a/3049/659 was: yes, children should go in a different bin, not the paper one.
@andy256 yeah. Maybe I have a different definition of all out, but my "all out" is where my vision starts to go because I've been anaerobic too long. These days I try to keep it to "blood punding, feel wobbly".
Smart boy just took the multitrack speed record off Beno, and is feeling very full of himself. In prep he finally managed to beat my power output for a 30s sprint, and for some reason felt the need to send me video of it.
He is in his early 30s now, and I was ~35 when I set that particular little goal for him (about 8-9 years ago). I was somewhat surprised he remembered... but competitive people have long memories for stuff like that
I told him to go find some wind trainers to blow up. I suspect they have finally extracted all the pieces from the factory by now, after I went through a few. Although the modern magnetic ones tend to seize up rather than exploding. I think that's a win, but it's bloody hard on you and the bike when it happens.
When the blow you get sharps of plastic exit the machine at high speed, they end up in the funniest places.
I have a natural power output, and if I take my mind off the ride I end up back at that level. So the last couple of kms of the ride to work I have to actually focus on slowing down. And my partner would tell you about that problem, too. She really suffers when I get distracted.
I'm not so much of a chaser, which does help with tactics in solo-ish races, but kills me in group rides. When it works it's really nice, nothing like leading a risky breakaway based on knowing that I have the power to pull away and keep it there, so the bunch can die in the chase or finish out of the money :)
@andy256 or power, I've trained so long to sit at 80% power for hours and hours that my body+mind just considers that the default.
@andy256 some people hate it, they'd rather chase. I'd rather have 2-3 people in a break so I don't have to think about too many others (I suck at keeping in mind how more than 2-3 people are going, I make a really bad group leader for that reason).
It's like we go for a recreational ride about 100 kilometres in relaxed pace and he gets upset because he drops me. It's not like I chase him, I just don't race if we are on recreational ride.
@Rilakkuma that could be annoying. I'd be somewhat annoyed that on a recreational ride anyone gets dropped. Isn't that what differentiates recreational rides from training?
I've ridden with a few people who have to be in front, even if it kills them. Which can be funny if I'm riding along chatting away and their answers get shorter and shorter and after a while they can't talk, but they won't slow down. And I'm just on automatic going "they're riding next to me, it's all good".
Luckily the stronger riders I socialise with are mostly pretty good. There will be the occasional sprint to something they see in the distance, or a couple will peel off and riding around a block we're passing then catch up again.
I have learned that when it's the "kids" who are out there trying to get into training squads or teams I have to just let them run off and play, I can't do that any more.
@andy256 yeah. We run tailenders for that reason, but I have seen someone towards the front stop, vanish into a shop or side street, and by the time the tailender comes past there's no sign they ever existed. Newbies who do that do tend to cop it when they show up next, though.
@andy256 yes, most shops do. However there is some cultural aspect - when they do beginner relaxed rides they are usually very boring, such as going to a Starbucks 50 kilometres away. When they do more interesting rides their pace is beyond my abilities - in fact they have elite racers. :) So far did not find anything suitable, but to be honest did not look very seriously too.
@andy256 sorry to hear that news buddy. All I can say is that there are so many unpleasant ways to die, my own father was in a nursing home (with dementia) for almost 20 years before he finally gave up. If I died when out on my bike in the fresh air, that would be about as good a way as I can think of.
@PeteH Yes, it's fine if you're the one who died. It's just a shock for everyone else. He was only 47. I'm assuming it was his heart. But maybe it was a snake. Have to wait for the coroner.
@andy256 yeah I guess then you can say it was random. But late 40s is a dodgy age I think - I'm 46 now and starting to notice things not quite working as they once did....
My theory is consistency. Gradually build up, and continue at a level. But I hadn't seen Paul on a bike for a couple of months. He did that. Nothing, then some big ride.
@PeteH oh, and I mean lie the drum on it's side, don't try cutting a door or anything. KISS!
(and yup, it's going on 4am and I got up at 2am coz I couldn't sleep. Stressing about house buying and too much to do at work. Annoying, can't actually do anything about house buying, it's all about waiting until someone wants to sell a house we want to buy. Then borrowing a ridiculous amount of money,
rather you than me. I was lucky when I got on the ladder, I'm not sure what I'd be avle to afford if I were looking now - certainly not the house we're actually in.
@Batman that's common in Oz. And, I think, in canukstan, from my memory of one friend who was riding through the winter. Although if you're willing to be brutal, a short flat-head screw every 50mm also works :) My vast experience here comes from rotovelo on ice, which lasted one hour at an ice rink :)
We can get those (in the UK) when bought as part of a bike, but I off the top of my head I can't think of anyplace you could just get the tyres. Maybe a Specialized dealer I guess.
Cycling in the US tends to be reasonably expensive, actually. College students have bicycles, but otherwise its mostly people buying bicycles to stick in their garage or show off as fashion items except in a few areas (minneapolis, for example). But almost all cycling equipment is non-US.
Actually when I think about it, it's probably the same here. Where I live, cycling is very popular, but ther again I'm in a nice part of the country. Sky (the broadcaster) sponsor a lot of cycling here and they put on "Sky Rides" in cities across the country. Basically aimed at getting people off their asses, on a traffic-free route. Tou see lots of shiny, full-suspension mtbs on those rides!
So its hard to say theres a premium when everything is foreign. But it does seem that buying from Germany might be somethign I should do more often. theres about a 15 dollar shipping fee, but you don't get charged VAT. You can buy Marathon Plus there for around 25 Euros including vat, which is about 24 dollars excluding VAT. You're looking at 40 dollar at least for the same tire in the US.
it depends where you are as well. for me, if its a tire which isn't commonly spec'd on a Trek/Specialized/Giant bike, chances are its going to be a special order.
When I buy clothing, my preferred brand is Etxeondo. But you can't get it in the UK. In the past I've bought from a guy in Portland, Or. Latterly I've bought from some shop in Andorra. But everything is mail order here.
My local shop will be guaranteed to sell everything at RRP
I think the only thing I ever bought from them was my first pair of shoes, when I wanted to get the fit right
eh. not all shops here are great, plus when you look at the time it takes for them to get a tire in for example, you can buy it from an online retailer and get it at a lower price a few days earlier than they would have it in.
shoes have always been a bit hard for me since i wear US size 13
and thats never stocked at bike shops which are in the middle of nowhere =)
yeah some of these online retailers really do well. The better ones wil now use couriers who will give you a 1-hour delivery slot. Not so long ago it was anytime between 8 and 6
we just have carriers like UPS / Fedex / DHL / post office leave things at our door. Courier service can only be done at a city level in the US I think, just cause things are reasonably far apart.
Fortunately I don't have that problem. For cycling, I'm basicall a medium everything, so don;t have much trouble. Buying regular clothing is different....I'm generally a small and a lot of shops don't bother stocking that any more
We have a gozillion couriers, some better than others.
So far, Ive thumbed through rose bike a bit. Seems like most of the savings would be in buying tires and other things of the sort which are made by German companies.
Shimano equpiment seems to be about the same fi not cheaper stateside.
I find myself buying a lot of stuff on amazon, since the pricing is about as good as the rest. And I don't buy expensive stuff very often (last expensive thing was a set of Alivio shifters, which was done through an LBS)
I think most of my purchases this last year have been tools. I have most of the common tools just by virtue of having owned bikes for 10 years, so these were not particularly easy to get.
What tools did you pick up? I'd think you wouldn't need to replace tools very often or get new ones unless you got some fancier new stuff (like BB30 tools or something)
Actually I got a power meter (Garmin Vector) at the start of the year, for which I used ValueBasket. The meter had an RRP of I think 1450, and I got it from Valuebasket for 850. Excellent price, but delivery was awful. Took 5 weeks to arrive, from showing as "in stock" when I placed the order.
Tools.....headset installer & remover for starters. Also got a wheel jig. I also got the Park Tools allen key set - just because I'd been promising myself
I have a rule "one major item per year". That was it. Despite being quite slow I find data fascinating
Year before it was a wheelset
But I'm lucky now as there's nothing I want. Of course, this could change :)
But if you avoid suspension and go for long-lasting over lightweight, I would have thought there would be reasonable choices. In Oz you can get something decent for ~$US800, nice for twice that.
Yeah. Finding second hand bikes that aren't crap is getting harder these days. 80s and earlier bikes are now "vintage" or whatever, so have a price premium.
And there seems to be a lull or not enoguh depreciation in the middle to now
There are some bikes for 800 ish that look interesting. I'm somewhat considering buying a Jamis Nova Sport which has MSRP 800 new and redoing the brakes with BB7's or something.
@Batman I was thinking relatively new. The Vivente Randonneur and Tourer bikes seem to be popular with the kids who ride a lot on a budget. Although they do have a Rohloff version at the top end.
It depends a lot on where you are and what not though. College towns these days pretty mcuh cater to foreign students who will go in and buy a nice expensive bike leaving the rest of us in the lurch
I used to buy second hand MTBs and put new wheels on them, because stock wheels used to be junk. Or just respoke them. These days machine built wheels are ok.
But when the foreign students leave surely some of them sell those bikes for whatever they can get?
@nhinkle actually I was motivated to write an answer when I saw who'd proposed the first answer. That's not very nice of me, but anyone else and I;d have settled for the comment!
Changing phones......my old phone is rooted and I have a backup program which takes advantage of that and backs up all apps' settings. Great.
But when the new phone arrives it will not be rooted, so the apps' settings will be lost
....and the settings are what I really want to copy over. The apps are easy enough to get off Google, and my videos etc. are on an sd card anyway
@PeteH can you root it temporarily? I've never tried, although I have put the default crud back on my phone after CM decided that the rear camera should never work. There's something horribly wrong with the camera in my phone, even the Samsung crud-tastic version usually needs to be rebooted before it can take photos.
I'm sure there's someone in Sydney I could pay a token amount to, to get them to CM my new phone, when I eventually get a new phone.
Experience suggests it will take me most of a day to do it myself.
@PeteH I dunno, that sort of thing is not my forte and I don't think it ever really has been. I fall too easily into skipping steps or missing things unless I understand everything that is going on.
I have a Smart Citizen Kit (air quality monitor) that I have never been able to get to work despite the other 99% of their customers having few to no problems.
But my RFDuino with DIY 1A motor controller worked first time, and my astonishingly crappy app seems to work more reliably than I have any right to expect. Now I just want a phone that will talk to it, instead of the BLE USB dongle I got off eBay for $5...
@PeteH I made the transition to Ubuntu surprisingly easily, given how badly I've failed in the past. Possibly because now I have a use for it other than "I should probably learn how to do this". And SE makes a lot of it much easier, I don't have to find a forum and ask a question because I can 99% of the time find the answer in search.,
The problem with DIY stuff is that it goes down and there's never any great imperative to fix it. I used to do my own hosting, server blew one day and it was 18 months efore I could be bothered to fix it. Same with cctv, weather station etc.
Last few days I have learned a great deal about what uses space on ubuntu, because my development VM was getting towards 20GB. It's back to 12GB after a good purging of stuff like chinese and arabic fonts, plus Tex and a couple of other things I don't use but Ubuntu likes to install just in case.
@PeteH some things it's very worth it. Often it's just tools, having that one expensive tool that takes 90% of the effort out, or just using the skill every week, can make all the difference. Doing ceilings, for example, is a huge chore but the pros come round with the tools and do several rooms in a day. You can hire all the tools... for about the same price as getting someone else to do the work.
It's like wheelbuilding - I paid $140 to have someone else cut 32 spokes for the girly's new wheel, then build the wheel. It's just not worth ordering the right length online ($50-ish), then spending 30 minutes building the wheel, taking it to the bike shop and paying $50 for them to use a tensiometer on it. Yay, saved $40... or not.
Yep. A guy I know figured that he could get rims, spokes and hubs, build them into wheels and sell them at a profit of something like £50 per set. But.....can you be bothered? Maybe he could, maybe he's done something about it. But it's faff
For me, the therapeutic aspect of wheelbuilding can't be overstated
@PeteH absolutely. The Park cheap-ish one works as well as anything, makes building a lot faster and easier. Plus you can actually get to the suggested tension rather than guessing...
I enjoy going fast and my current bicycle tops too early, what kind of upgrades would I need to make to achieve a taller final gear?
