your daily bicycle log

Picked up Nora's trailer on Saturday - a Chariot Cheetah 1 - and we did 13 miles with her in it in the afternoon. Gorgeous sunshine, and the whole family (well, apart from the cats) out together. Lovely.

Really impressed with the Chariot too - and I'd hope so, for £500 (although I got to cyclescheme it) - light, sturdy, really well designed, packs down small, flexible, and Nora seemed to love it.

Those are great afaict, congrats and have lots of safe fun.

10 miles on Saturday with the trailer round town, and 23 on Sunday morning down the estuary. Great fun!

Nice!

Id put this link a to "pro" post, but since we're on whatever level we're on at ILTRMB afaict, i'll put it here and state this made me laugh my ass off https://twitter.com/Cyclocosm/status/651060514634661888.

Another video - my club's end of season (members only) circuit race earlier this month. The first lap is neutralised (and very slow), some of us thought the second lap was neutralised too, but suddenly discovered it wasn't - I utterly failed to make any impression on the front of the race, being out of contention within a minute: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuhXUaXM2LU

That looks stern, but if I don't see your chin tucking in front of that cam, how can I know it was really 100. ;^)

Hardly ridden this month what with a heavy workload / family commitments / ill-timed Xmas illness, but finally got out on Monday for a 30-miler out in the Essex countryside (sick of riding the same roads in and out of London, so I stuck the bike on the back of the car and drove up the M11 for 20 minutes). The weather has been weird recently, so it felt more like the start of October than nearly January - I was even able to ride in shorts. It's great to be on holiday and have the luxury of enough spare time to get out to the really quiet country lanes:
https://youtu.be/VgXRvqCg6h4

Friends of mine are dipping their toes into the 'cool kit' world: http://www.vcvfsuperbe.com/main. It's on Squadra, which is pretty decent. Looks pretty cool, right?

21 miles along the river. Low intensity. No hills. This is the next few weeks.

First solo rec ride since August. I got plenty of lecture at home about danger of trails and risk, as it was not popular. I stayed off all roads though, it was lots of double track and some singles up top. I wanted to do this in part just to know I could, before I'm back in recovery from surgery in a week. Might be a while, like 4-5 + months. Or it could be half that, they don't know til they get in there.:^\

:-/

ha, man, my post failed to note: IT WAS FUCKING AWESOME! i swear, yesterday after the ride was the absolutely most fatigue-normal i've felt since tbi. i was physically a little tired, but mentally, like _usual_. on the one hand it seems like the explanation would be "that's psychological," but it did not feel psychological at all, it felt physical and biological. do people get endorphin or adrenaline fixations or baseline elevations from years of physical activity?

Did the best 50 mile loop in San Diego county I've ever done with my Fiancee and her friend yesterday. Inspired by Strade Bianche, the ride started off with a 13 mile gravel/dirt road climb, stopped halfway in Julian for apple pie and cider, and finished descending through backroads through farms and ranches. Amazing stuff!

https://www.strava.com/activities/509614962

Nice

i did my second solo ride, this time on the road up my home canyon. i tried to find a friend before going, but couldn't. fam went skiing, so i knew i could depart without a houseblowing row, so i went. i resolved to ask one of the tens of people at the top of the climb to accompany me down the 1500 ft of descent, so i wouldn't be abandoned if i crashed or seized (i've not had a seizure before). felt wonderful going up very hard, found a nice crew to help me ride down the hill.

afterwards, it still caused a fight ("it doesn't matter if you were accompanied, because you'll be dead if you fall"- i dare you to bother arguing back to that), but at some level i needed to try to at least to accomplish that climb. but now every activity is a moral question, and a safety and relationship risk. there is a way to eliminate those risks, which is no riding outside. i am too old now, and was never good enough, to bother to take such risks. right?

tricky

Yeah man. I think someone else might tell me that if it's tricky (as I find it to be) maybe I'm bicycle dependent.

i biked to work today, first time this year. weather is good. my taint hurts.

Saw the dude who started this thread race a crit yesterday. Was out in Murrieta, CA spectating. Next year I'll race that race again, I promise.

That's great! Doc pulled hardware off my rt clavicle Friday, looking forward to more recovery for a while. Betteroutcome than expected.

Drove out to the countryside today and then did an 83-mile ride. It's nearly time for me to go back to work and the good weather's about to end, so I was determined to make the most of it. Thought I'd shot video with some great views, but because the camera's down at handlebar level you can't see much beyond the road. Anyway, here's a video and the bits in villages are nice: https://youtu.be/4s7SXlKatfI

That is great to see, I have little imagined sense of what the terrain is like in that part of England. It seems relatively, um, tranquil? Even where there's traffic, I mean. You got a festive little watch there (assuming that's a watch, at least).

I bought a Fly6 rear cam out of spite for my injury, now I sort of just wish I could turn it around and mount it forward. I wonder if people do that?

It's perfect cycling country really - the lanes are really quiet so you can go five minutes between cars and although it's not flat, there's not really anything that you would call a hill.

I want to be able to mount my Virb backwards (under the saddle) so I can take it on a club run and get decent footage of my club mates (instead of lots of footage of people's bums). There's a mount made for Go-Pro which you can buy and adapt, but ideally I'd need another cradle for the Virb and they've stopped making them (because the new Virb is a completely different design) so I'd have to work out how to dismantle what I've already got.

Some of those lanes are unimaginably narrow to me, they are almost cart tracks! Really beautiful tho.

On mounting kits- yeah, I keep thinking somebody must have done what I'd like to do. On the Cycliq site I see that people have made 3D mounts for rear bike racks, but nothing for bars. I realized that somewhere my in 28 yrs of riding, I may have accumulated the perfect adapter - a computer mount originally for adapting to aero bars.

Adaptation made, here's the test run home from train station on the commuter:

https://vimeo.com/179413873

Boy, does standing make it wobble though.

Yep, can see that

does Virb have some kind of anti wobble software or ? Part of it on mine I think was accelerating the playback to 1.25x or even 4x in places.

I don't think so. When I upload it to youtube, it always says something like "We have detected a wobble" or "Your footage is unstable, would you like us to correct it?" or something like that, and I always ignore it.

Captured a bunch of my very rough mtb ride yesterday- bar mount really doesn't work well there, will post a sample later.

Biggest daily bike log event out of that ride was I lost my phone a long way from much traffic/civilization, but it was found and returned very quickly. Apple Find iPhone is pretty cool, I could see my phone migrating in a place that usually doesn't even get service!

Have you seen this 'relive' thing you can link to your strava account? https://www.relive.cc/view/693209122

Whoa cool!

That is amazing.

Hunter how (is? was?) the recovery

Pretty good man, thanks for asking. The sporting/bike side is very strong. The mental/work side is really really hard. Turns out...you don't need all your brain function to ride as fast as you used to do, however the fatigue really affects your when you're trying to grind out work. And bad executive function for me.

I'll share more when books are closed, but given the survival/recovery profiles for my age, GCS 5 tbi, and 8-12 days of post trauma amnesia- I'm the luckiest guy there could be.

glad you're still at it and still with us, hunter!

thx! if anyone gets out here, come ride/ski. gbx i gave my newish rossis a core shot on saturday- sucked, but it still felt like victory (there was no skiing last year). :^)

yay bikes

i am sidelined from skiing until next season due to a recent ACL repair, but i'm hoping to get back on the (stationary) bike pretty soon

GCS 5 tbi, and 8-12 days of post trauma amnesia

Fucking hell, I had no idea - I thought you'd had a bad knee injury

Well best wishes on recovery gbx I recall you referring to yr knee and considering status/recovery.

And yeah nbs it's been a complicated 1.5 years, I now have had like "gravity sports" levels of fractures, because I suck at riding bikes. When I go straight braggin' I'm like "yeah over 25 yrs: skull, femur, clavicle 2x, metacarpals, scapula, wrist, ribs several times." I currently have screws in femur and hand, clavicle hardware was removed last march. Sad. but you know what still works great when I run? My mint condition knees!

KIDS STAY IN SCHOOL DONT DO BIKES. (Ok do them, but be careful.)

Yes, be v careful.

Got hit, in a very, very minor way, by a motorcycle on the way home tonight; he was overtaking stationary traffic (that had just let a fire engine through, dude!) and hit me, at low speed, while I was edging out to see if it was safe to cross the road (so I could get on the cycle path). Cuts and bruises to my leg and my right elbow is stiff and sore (he hit my front wheel so arm was jarred cos I was holding handlebars), but otherwise OK. Saddle is knackered and front wheel out of alignment but I hope bike otherwise OK.

Third time I've been hit by a combustion engine.

And my knees are ruined from years of football and genetics; I've retired from football after another injury last month. Cycling is my physio to keep my knees OK!

Hope u get a speedy recovery, man.

X ray shows what's almost certainly a very minor crack in the bone just below the elbow. Nowt to be done apart from not stressing it for a few weeks.

:^(

ouch

guys I quit commuting on bikes for two years and had my CX bike and a nice pair of wheels I had made for the old CX bike stolen (from my apartment building!) and gotten fat but I have just got an insurance payout for the theft and I am back baby, I am back!!

sensible commuter (but blue)
racier option

My Nexus 8 has like 20k miles, has been overhauled just once, and if you get your chainring/cog ratio right, they're fantastic imo. I Like never never had to mess with it or think about it. (It is "retired," since I am disallowed from commuting, and that whole bike is still in post-collision twisted heap til books are closed).

couple other notes- one thing i didn't really love on nexus was that twist shifter, though it's more defensible with an igh commuter than any other use. and i never heard or seen intentionally raw fillets before but that's an artisan sharpened pencil level lol.

After coming back from a bunch off shitty problems in my ankles, I'm also ready to start bike commuting again. I'm thinking about a gravel/adventure bike. Sporty but I need a rack - not being able to buy groceries prevented me from riding home a lot of nights.