Plan on building a garage? Got to have somewhere to store the bikes :)

They are all in the garage right now

I need to heat it...

@Christian, @SuspendedUser, sure I've noticed that whole DH craze. However, regular MTB also look more and more like those. The people on a forum were also talking that good trails are only a few hours away. I mean, a few hours on those bikes to get there, then the grind up, zipping down, and then a few hours home. That really sounds tough.

What is more, with all the DH craze, still one cannot change that one has to spend an hour going up for every ten minutes going down. That is unless one is a wattage monster and sucks at the descend.

It's like anything else. There's downhill, freeride and all mountain. All of which are on the spectrum before trail. They also generally require more carefully crafted trails and are frowned on in some areas.

My newish crarbon hardtail shares little in common with those, but it's a trail bike, not any of those.

I've read that there are some small mountain trails here now where cycling is permitted, ie, closed for hikers (and going up).

And downhill is in decline from what I can tell. I feel like it had it's height during the NWD years. It's not popular in the US because of lawsuits

What are those all mountain? Read it, but couldn't see much diff to a DH in setup or usage.

NWD?

Quite different, an All mountain rig should be like 5 or 6 inches of travel, enough to handle light DH duty, but still light enough to climb (albiet less efficiently than a trail or CX rig)

Last time I looked at the MTB here, about 2009 they looked a lot like those in 2000, just more carbony. Came back from Canada, and all the bikes here look like DH, even expensive bikes are now fullies.

New World Disorder....it was a series of MTB videos they made during the 2000s

@gschenk Those people are the ones who buy roof racks for their cars.

they make about 1/3 i think of the MTB population I see on the roads.

I don't even own a bike with suspension.

Wait, light enough to climb.

that doesn't mean DH canot climb? Are they pushing their bikes up or what?

A real downhill rig is noteworthy, like 8 inches front and back of travel and probably in excess of 40 pounds

A downhill course shouldn't have any uphill sections

similar to how a ski slalom course won't have any uphill sections

That's quite a bit difficult, with potential energy and such...

No, they have lifts (in other countries, ski resorts are regularly used as DH places in the summer) or people do "shuttle runs" where a rider takes turns driving a truck back to the top of the trail

I used to shuttle regularly on Sundays

Bikes on lifts?! Fuck me. That's really crazy.

it's no more crazy than ski's on lifts

or people in golf carts

Yeah - we had a bike lift built here in the Port Hills. It opened for business in December last year, and is now closed because of fire damage. They got ~3 months out of it for $9 million

Well, with skis its nearly impossible to do it as a mass tourist thing, walking up i mean. Too much risk of avalanches or dropping of cliffs. That's not an issue with cycling.

DH rig

Its ~$4 for a ferry ride up for you and your bike.

wait, those guys were talking about hours of driving cars to get to those lifts, not their ride?

probably

not at all, people could walk up ski hills all day long, except it's no fun and people coiming down would crash into them

you wouldn't ride that bike for hours on the flat

Never ocured to me that one would drive a car to go mountain biking.

unloading a shuttle

If you design suspension entirely to hand nasty rock gardens and drop offs, it doesn't respond well to pedaling input

I mean we go mountain biking because, there are those effin mountains on all sides, alternative is boring going up the valley or going down. You have mountains where one is permitted to drive to the top?

sure, people recreationally bulldoze roads around Fairbanks all the time

People build roads to the tops of mountains so "everyone can enjoy the view"

gotta go, catch you all later

Mountains or hills?

lemme get you a height on Ester Dome

which is where those shuttles were happening

2364 feet, and 1700 feet above the Tanana river valley below

That certainly isn't a hill anymore. Oh dear Alaska, not quite flatland either. Ok, the mountain biking i knew from here was a bit different. It was usually about which mountain one achieved, counting vertical meters, not flat km.

Not that i've done any of that.

I usually made only small passes, such that i could go down on tarmac rather than gravel. Its more fun to go 60 kph with a MTB than just 40 on a trail. Going any faster scared the shite out of me when there were ruts or potholes in corners on the trail.

There are actually bike parks with ski lifts now in my state. I wonder how they got the permit for that. I mean, it is usually strictly forbidden to go on trails where the surface isn't packed, due to errosion and root damage risks (plus danger for hikers). I know that there are some bike trails now, but when they lift people up, they get thousands of rides a day, which ought to cause noise, erosion and damage with no end.

where areyou?

Oh, watched a video of one, its about 15km from here. A trail of 1100 m, did mean length of the DH section, not vertical metres! Its also more like a long BMX track.

The park is so close, that's even with a DH bike less than an hour ride, that explains why there are so many full suspension bikes around here now.

I'm not far from the alps, in the southernmost part of bavaria.

fun

@SuspendedUser - Now you get the fun of road salt =)

actually where you are, probably not

roads are clear for almost a month now. It's warmer here than in the rest of Germany, we get often get a warm and dry wind across the mountains.

@SuspendedUser you must be the famous arctic cyclist, that is often mentioned here :-)

Well, I think he was the only one crazy enough to live that far north

Whenever someone mentions cold weather cycling, and doesn't provide a temperature below the freezing point of nitrogen, there's a SE user mentioned, who is not held back by the cold.

The other extreme in this forum are people who consider it rather warm outside only when their roof is about to burst in flames.

@SuspendedUser Do you suffer material degradation due to cold: eg, polymers below the glass point; lubricants failing.

there are a few midwesterners here. My area has lows of around -15 F to -20 F in winter, to highs of around 105 F in the summer.

this year has been ridiculously mild though

That's close enough to Toronto's weather (when we had westerlies) to imagine how uncomfortable that is.

we had a few days around -10 F in december. but january and february have been very nice

It was absurd. The mildest winter in years in Toronto, just after I left. Only to get a Toronto like winter here, the coldest in years.

and then call midwesterners crazy once i leave

The tough thing in midwest is that you have that heat and humidity for extended periods of time.

In Toronto it was a heat wave, but eventually the winds turn and there is some relief. The worst of the thunderstorms also rain off over the lakes.

Are you cycling during the heat too?

yep

where to are you heading?

dunno. currently applying to jobs, but all the jobs are on the coasts

so either northeast, socal, norcal or seattle.

That is quite some endurance. I was acclimatised by years of toronto summers, but had to be careful after an hour of two walking in the city. Needed to go to a Tim Hortons or Starbucks to cool otherwise i got headaches and nausea.

I'm in a similar position. Stuck here until I find a job, anywhere in EU. Most likely not too far from here, as southern Germany, Austria and Switzerland are the technology engine here.

Oh dear, it occured to me that it is a little late. Cheers. @Batman all the best for your job search.

later'

@Batman what kind of work are you looking for?

@gschenk That has a high likely hood of being me. Last I checked Moz and I had the full spectrum covered. We met somewhere in the middle where I considered it too hot to ride and Moz thought it was too cold.

Hard call... the US is anti-bikes, so the government reflects that in policy.

By breaking the law they set a bad example

It only takes one non-rider to get hurt then its all over - remember the US is particularly litigious

@CristianCiupitu Left the http:// out.

still came up as a link for me

On my screen it came up with [the Sedona Five](etc)

ahhh ok yes.

It seems ppl in the US of A are far more interested in their rights than their responsibilities.

@andy256 BTW I'm only on 1110 km and 9334m vertical so far

which are both lower than last year at this time

@CristianCiupitu "Seton 5" that is pretty tough. Freedoms in the US are extensive, but the limit come often surprising and arbitrary, whereas the consequences are draconic. At least it seems to me that way from the outside.

yep

I think I'm gonna buy my fourth bike.

That video... I shouldn't even trust my step enough to walk there, lest I risk falling of the cliffs. Riding there seems quite a bit risky. Riding right to the edge to stop on the last decimetres semi-suicidal. Cheers though, that changed my impression of what is liked in MTB nowadays.

@Criggie That's the first step you need to take on the way to your sixth.

Corr: Seton to Sedona

-grin- I have 3.5 at the moment (one's a scooterbike)

trademe.co.nz/1268519170 its a wreck atm.

US Freedoms are not extensive

but that's a whole nother mess of conversation

the US is less anti-bike and more pro-lawsuit

when people are liable to sue you for crashes on your property, the first thing you do is ban reasons for them to be there

But the above assessment is correct, Americans have been steadily leveraged to trade away rights they are not using, all the while shirking any responsibilities that should be associated.

@Criggie fourth bike as in you already have 3 bikes or as in you're changing your bike for the third time? Are your bikes more like a wife in the West or more like one in the Middle-East? :-)

I've noticed the spokes on the non drive side of the wheel I built 18 years ago have next to no tension. But are very consistent in that regard. Wheels are still surprisingly true.

Just found out the spokes are from DT. Their logo looks like Chinese and I thought, which I believed them to be all the time.

:35759217, out of curiosity, who made the wheels?

imgur.com/gallery/Phaat

@SuspendedUser - i do mostly signal processing type stuff, so research work in that area

Well that kind of sucks. I don't see a lot of remote work for signal processing engineer

well, i want to move closer to a city anyway

even for dating and stuff, itd be better

I should make some crack about dating "city people"....but I can't think of one ot make work.

well, as it stands now, the only girls in my age group here already have kids, or are single for good reason, for the most part

not to mention the lack of jobs

I thought you were in CHicago?

Although theoretically I should encourage you to recycle and find a girl that already has a kid and an ex who has a substance abuse problem or something similar. You skip through all the exciting single dating mess, jump right into the drudgery of having a family and look like a hero.

Outside of cities I find it very hard to form meaningful friendships.

It's part statistics (small samples) part people being focused on sports, their core family, houses and gardens.

meh. 30 mph winds today

Head or tail?

head

oh dear, it always is.

we are getting two inches of snow here

per hour

sucks

So, no opinion about the ridiculously long MTB ?

I'm gonna buy it and take the motor off, and see what a really long bike rides like.

I know it's comparing apples to oranges, but I've noticed that hybrid city bikes switch from Altus/Acera or better to Claris and Sora as the price goes higher. Are Claris and Sora much better than their MTB equivalent?

Your poor blog! I liked reading it.