Originally Posted by
abshipp
On the last longer ride I did there was a ~25mph descent on a road so rough I was legitimately concerned to be on 43 year old steel. The bike and I made it, but there are some really terrible roads here. I can deal with a rough road surface okay, it's the damn expansion cracks that produce a large jarring shock through the handlebars every 15 feet or so. There's one road in particular that has them for a good mile straight.
But, but, but! Some of the
in the Greater 41 lead me to believe that wide tires were being foisted upon us because they're necessary for unnecessarily stiff wundercrabon bikes and that no such measures were needed for good ol' steel! Are you saying steel isn't real?!
Seriously, though - my new wheels/tires are wonderful with cracks and seams.
Originally Posted by
abshipp
Same. Most everything I ride around here is pretty quiet country roads, but there are a couple of east/west roads that are the main routes between towns that I will absolutely not ride on for an extended period of time. Minimal shoulders and 55mph+ traffic, but what's the real PITA is that you've got to go really out of your way to avoid them.
In the last few weeks, I have become proficient at scouting with a combination of the Strava Heatmap (which is behind a paywall, unfortunately, but I think that there's a way around it...) and Google Maps/Streetview.
The Heatmap tells you where people are riding, but that's not always the whole story - sometimes they're on bike paths that run parallel to the road and those are often... well, let's just say that I don't like 'em. Anyway, once I have a road in mind from the Heatmap, I'll check it with Streetview. If it's a long road, and too tedious to click all the way through on SV, I'll back out to the satellite view and then zoom in as much as possible - the resolution is often good enough to gauge the width of the shoulder using the lane as a reference. I'll zip along with that top-down view, jumping in to SV every so often just to confirm. It takes a little time, but it's better than feeling it out in person.
Of course, none of this applies if you've been in your area for a while and already know the roads like the back of your hand.
