your daily bicycle log

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.

I want to give this a try:

http://www.wilier.com/en/products/int/gravel/jaroon-plus

Of course Marin just released the paint job of my childhood dreams.

http://d1gxum163dfxw6.cloudfront.net/images/made/images/remote/https_marineeimages.s3.amazonaws.com/images/15773/four_corner_elite_1136_658_80_s.jpg

hey Ed!

can you get Niners in...wherever you are these days? i really want to get a steel RLT for commuting/gravel

Ed! Glad to hear from u. You said your colors I thought black/yellow, misremembered ur style!

That wilier is cool, I'm a big booster of 3.0 tires for terrain that has big and/or loose gnar, I'm kinda special needs tho. They are surprisingly fast and agile in 650B, never tried 29+. That would be a lot of tire?

I am mainly red, pink and black but I'd go raver rainbow for that bike.

Niners look good and the Salsa Cutthroat and Orbea Terra look interesting as well. I saw an interesting diamond back in REI last week.

First need to start riding and probably get my bonus before I can justify a new bike. Won't hurt to start trying a few out.

For packing bikes I have a buddy on a Rocky Mtn Sherpa who's likes that a lot, it sorta fell into his hands cos of a moving friend. But it's 650B.

The other pluses I've seen are more or entirely trail oriented, not packing. Got another buddy on an awesome Salsa Pony Rustler who rides the rough stuff 650B/3.0 but for fast smoother stuff goes std niner. My bike is not really for packing, no mounts and bigger travel (150mm/135mm). Also my spouse is on Scott 650B+ hardtail.

what i really want in life is an Open UP

Don't we all (3T Exploro too)

I think I'm getting a Synapse (Wilier got stolen.) The Ultegra disc version looks great except for the fact that I hate Shimano brifters.

Riding my plus up a pretty steep fire road locked out and standing the other day I wanted nothing more than fucking bar ends. A trend not yet reborn.

If I was on a niner long haul bike I'd get em, too.

People are....posting...here?

well I mean we're through the painful part of the year when avg temperature in SF is below 55f/13c, so yeah, it's time to get out there

sub 55F, my god

*scrolls for disgusting savages thread* :^)

i'm about to move to the desert, so it's entirely possible that in 7-8 months time i'll be bitching about the frigid 40F weather like everyone else

Always go straight to dessert, it is the best.

Have handled but not ridden a Willier Jaroon this afternoon. Pretty awesome bike all in all.

Ordered the Synapse! First thing I do I'm gonna ride those dirt trails in the Marin headlands.

nice, congrats!

Congrats.

Theirs a frame builder in my nea gu or hood I hadn't even heard about and they are making some really beautiful bikes.

https://www.curvecycling.com.au/collections/frames/products/curve-gmx-grovel-monster-cross

Too much for me though. They've got a steel one too.

nice bike, nice site.

Anyone have any experience with On-one? The space chicken has a ridiculous name but looks like a chi-carb open up and the spec is good for the price.

I hadn't a go on the Niner RLT9 steel today, it is a very sweet ride.

Went for a ~40 mile ride Saturday, short ride this morning. Starting to feel the stoke again.

Also, put a second brake on my city bike. Combined with not sprinting all over the city like a crazy person all the time = I'm getting soft with age.

A recent sunny club run: https://youtu.be/1N7rXmj5CfA

great. except for the narrowness of the roads (are those pretty standard for where you are?) the terrain is sorta similar to coastal new england to my eye. more inland, ne gets kinda hilly and rocky tho.

Standard for country lanes. Great when there's nothing around, kind of terrifying when you're riding two abreast round a blind bend and see a car coming towards you.

have really fallen off with cycling almost completely in the last couple of years so basically starting from scratch in terms of fitness. went for quick 5 and 7 mile rides - cycling as fast as i could and doing a straight line route that goes up to the summit of a hill and then down the other side and then back - and i already know I've found my recreation for the rest of the summer. just frustrated at how long i imagine it's going to take me to be able to do any significant distance/climbing

My bike's getting fixed!

And I may have ordered an Equilibrium too.

16.7km with 160m climbing on my slightly janky old single-speed every day for the last 8 days. I'm slowly getting less out of shape but impatient to actually be able to go any sort of distance

really appreciating living in vancouver which in the summer is surely one of the best cities you could be in for cycling

saw some trailforks thing that was showing how much great shit is like RIGHT THERE, so jealous.

Just spent a few days in Copenhagen cycling around. It really is as good as it gets for urban cycling. Great infrastructure and driver awareness of cyclists is incredibly good.

My sit bones are suffering.

Someone from my cycling club has got a cycliq fly6 rear light - video camera combination thing. I'd never heard of them before. He used it on our ride on Sunday. I had no idea it had a camera (and wondered why he had his light on in the middle of the day), but he's uploaded some of the footage and I was so impressed that I've gone out and bought one for myself. The big plus is that you get video of people's faces instead of backs all the time.
https://vimeo.com/225914722
I feature in it quite a bit (green socks, red & white shoes, the only fool with a rucksack on my back*).

*it was a long ride with a lengthy break at a reunion event in the middle so I thought I might need a change of clothes and a pair of trainers

Oops. Fucked up that link. Here it is: https://vimeo.com/225914722

I have one for a while- battery life has been an issue but a fun safe thing! Good call.

I did a sportive in the North York Moors on Sunday - the best part of six hours driving away so a bit of a one-off. I'd never been there before, but the area has a reputation for being full of ridiculously steep climbs. The most infamous one is Rosedale Chimney, which hits 33%. They had four different route lengths - the longest one was 120 miles and went up the Chimney. That gave me THE FEAR so I opted for the 100-mile version instead, which took the 'easy' climb out of the village ('only' 25%!).

It was grim grey day with temperatures nothing like you'd expect for July, but at least it didn't rain. I've never known such a low average speed - it could barely keep it above 14mph. The route repeatedly went down roads that were so steep I felt worried I was going to somersault over my handlebars and then straight back up the other side. I was feeling wasted after about 40 miles, so it was a nightmare keeping it together to finish the whole thing, definitely the most difficult ride I've ever done. I ended up with over 3,000 metres of climbing, which is a record for me in itself, but doesn't even begin to tell the story of how much of that was >10% (in fact over 20% on plenty of occasions).

I've got some fairly rubbish video footage of bits of the worst climb (rubbish because of the lighting and because the handblebar-mounted camera keeps swinging from left to right as I wrestled my bike up the hill) which shows the nightmare scenario: just at the steepest 25% left hand bend about halfway up, a car stalled, rolled backwards a little bit then jammed its brakes on. The rider in front of me had to stop and then I did too. Once the car managed to drive off I had to work out how on earth to get going again. I didn't fancy walking another half a mile or so to the top and certainly didn't want to descend to the beginning again so I had to pull off a go-sideways-clip-in-turn-180-degrees-go-sideways-again-turn-90-degrees-pray-you-can-keep-moving manoeuvre.

https://youtu.be/5n-QVLHkdJo

Work trip to London, been hiring Santander bikes to get from Fulham to King's Cross. Fun! Had an exciting moment as a double-decker and I approached a roundabout at the same time - we both go, right? I think we both go.

Approached it from different directions? I've never really worked out what the law / expectation is there. If someone's already on the roundabout you have to give way to them, but what about when there's a car approaching the roundabout at a higher speed than you're cycling - you get onto the roundabout first, but they have to slam the brakes on to avoid hitting you. Not really sure about that one.

Approaching from different directions at roughly the same speed, and part of the excitement was that it was just a disc of paint, so I wasn't sure how close the bus was going to cut it. (In the event, the kind bus driver - along with dozens of passengers, I guess - yielded to the reckless cyclist.)

https://vimeo.com/228614869

I forgot how little air there is at over 13k feet- some of that hike-a-bike was steepish but very rideable with o2. whole lotto hikin' going on.

Wow. Stunning scenery.

http://jalopnik.com/watch-all-these-people-eat-shit-while-trying-to-cross-a-1797602342

Pretty amazing vid