JoeyBike

Sorry 'bout that. Not the first time I have done that. Now I have big letters NO written all over the edge of the front of the camera with silver sharpie ink. If I look down and see NO staring back at me, I need to turn the CCD.

We don't need to slide into the Gulf. It's coming for us!

JoeyBike

If you listen closely at that place in the vid you will hear a horn blow. That was a white pickup heading the other direction that did not show up in the vid. It was a bit of "thread the needle" for sure.

I only passed him at the start of the video because he had poor light-running skills. All part of running an open course. It ain't just about raw speed, although speed sure helped him on the long, straight run with few crossings and no traffic to speak of. I was definitely in his element after the first light.

SPlKE 

NICE RIDE.

You might want to give the camera guy a few lessons in how to walk through walls so he can keep up next time.

JoeyBike

I should have mentioned that the camera man was riding a fixed gear bike. I think he just spun out in the faster parts. He kept up better than I thought he would when he asked me to go on that ride to test his camera setup.

And thanks. That was a nice ride. The guy behind me in the vid is the fastest rider I know. I was riding the same route with him one evening hanging on his wheel for dear life on my road bike. I croaked out "Cut it back a notch" and he heard "Kick it up a notch!" By the time we got to his turn-off a mile later my mouth tasted like I had a handfull of rusty iron in it. I had broken a capillary or two in my lungs and the blood got atomized up my windpipe like gasoline through a carburetor. I made it home the last mile after his turn-off, told my wife not to speak to me (cause I couldn't say more than a word or two anyway) and went to bed for 12 hours.

qmsdc15

Running an open course? Were you competing? You look like a gaper trying desperately to hold onto your delusions of grandeur. Enter some races and post results. If you want respect, earn it. You are a joke.

urban_assault

Hopefully you are being sarcastic, if not, it looks like someone missed the point here. It is a joke.

All righty then. Sorry to bother you.

Bekologist

...speaking of going fast on a bike, here's a couple of links to handheld video i shot doing 40mph on a loaded touring bike. one from the cascades, one from the olympic mountains.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6cRr...e=channel_page

and

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiQ89...e=channel_page

fun stuff going fast. there's a couple of hills in the city limits here you can hit 50 mph with good runouts when the pavement is dry. i really need to get a helmet cam.

JoeyBike

I prefer wearing regular clothes, riding my bikes instead of training on them, having a life outside of biking circles, and not putting my bike in a car and driving it someplace to ride it. Or race it. And then hang around with a group of geeks talking about my prowess (or lack thereof) and drinking beers with names I can not pronounce.

Once in a great while I get a chance aggravate some clown sausage down in the grid as I give him/her a clinic on city riding with my flowered fenders and panniers flapping in the wind in front of them.

I went two blocks out of my way to catch up with the roadie. Two blocks is about my limit. I posted the results in video form. You are free to interpret that any way you like as this is an open forum. Some folks even enjoyed it.

JoeyBike

He didn't stick around for that first credit to roll apparently.

bragi

I grew up in CO, and am pretty familiar with Trail Ridge Road. The scenery is awesome, the terrain severe, and I commend anyone with the balls to ride down that road at very high speeds, especially during RV season. I do have an issue with your numbers, though. If the road is really 20 miles long (I can't remember if 20 miles is the actual distance or not), and you descend in 20 minutes, wouldn't that mean that your average speed is 60 mph? I'm sorry to be a wet blanket, but I think anyone attempting to ride down that road at that average speed would die, without question.

(Disclaimer: I'm a bit of a speed wimp myself. I like to think I have a relatively high average speed, just riding around, but I get uncomfortable at speeds >30 mph, and have never dared to ride a bike faster than 40 mph.)

JoeyBike

Dude! That one-handed riding was freaking me out a little bit. I kept trying to grab your bars through my monitor!

Nice job. I have seen several of your vids before now. You must have a ton of them online. I think I am up to 55 vids posted myself, 10 or so I really like. How many do you think you have up?

urban_assault

No one appreciates to work that goes into post-production and editing.


Maybe it has been asked, but I missed it. How many of the people here watched the video with their head tilted?


*raises hand*

JoeyBike

Yeah, that's a bit off. Average speed is more like 30-35. 45-50 much of the time on the Estes Park side, but there are at least 2 short stretches where you might want to turn the pedals. The Grand lake side is 13 miles of descent (I think) with more hairpin turns.

If you approach the hairpin turns with no traffic (look over the edge of the road downward to see if anything is coming up the road), hug the right edge of the asphalt in the approach, then cut your turn all the way to the inside edge of the asphalt (contraflow) then back to the outer edge. This way you use every inch of the road surface fogline to fogline for faster turns. A "cautious" person should be able to cut those turns at 20mph.

On the Estes Park side, I can't think of one single turn (if you go into Estes the back way) that can't be done at 40-45mph. So whatever the distance is really, you can let 'er RIP the entire run. If you take the Endo Valley turnoff (hard left at the only "T" intersection) then you will have to slow down for the turn and pretty soon hit some flats until you pass Alpenglen Campground.

qmsdc15

You're special.

qmsdc15

You are giving clinics on how to ride like a jerk. You are competing with motorcycles, cars, cyclists that are not competing with you. How can you be so competitive and have such disdain for riders who actually compete with other riders who are aware of being in a competition?

JoeyBike

You want a really good laugh? This is what the raw vid looked like before any editing



I spent two freakin' hours on the Web hunting accessories to my editing program to fix that screwup.

JoeyBike

The only competition in my mind comes from other cyclists. Like two kayaks racing in a white water river. I am swept up in the flow (traffic going my way) and avoiding the rocks (crossing traffic). The geek was my only target.

As I stated in an earlier post, I was mashing out 25 mph when MR. Legs-like-god strolled past me with little apparent effort.

The rest of the story: He was pissed that I killed him at the first light. He drafted a white SUV to catch me and dropped off as he got 20 feet behind me and used that momentum to crush me. Then he forgot about me, relaxed, and let me hang on until he failed at the second light. From there, I don't know what his problem was because I was eating up ground between us like crazy. Perhaps he was toying with me, I really don't know. Maybe he wanted to chat about where I bought those flowered fenders (that I installed JUST to pi$$ off the roadies). What I do know is he cared BIG TIME. As expected he is obviously a competitive person. So am I to a point. We were both quite happy to blow red lights. You really can't single me out here. The roadie was giving the same clinic...almost.

bragi

That was pretty amusing; did the other guy know you were trying to keep up? Speaking for myself, roadies, I mean real roadies, simply can't be caught when you're riding a LHT, especially one that's loaded with books and beer. Given the differences in equipment, especially the very under-inflated front tire, you did pretty well.

BTW, how do you manage to ride so fast? That part of your videos impresses me to no end. I can't manage to ride faster than 20 mph on my LHT on flat ground for any extended period of time, and my moving average is more like 16-17 mph; yet you seem able to do 20-25 mph pretty much all the time. What are you eating?

Sixty Fiver

You almost had him...

JoeyBike

I doubt it. He had earbuds and was pretty oblivious of me behind him for five blocks before the first red light. I edited out those five blocks BTW. He probably forgot about me soon after passing me.

20 years car free, 35 years car light? I was the fastest kid on my block too, but I had a 24 inch bike, the rest of the kids had 20 inch wheels and slower bikes in general. I ran track in middle school and high school. Won so many ribbons I would throw them in the trash at the track right after the award ceremony. So genetics must play a big part.

Let me clear the air about speed on the Trucker. 20 is pretty comfortable. 18 is REALLY comfortable. 25 hurts like hell. I just have the capacity to hurt like hell a very long time.

nashcommguy

+1 I was laughing all the way thru the vid. I spit my water when he turned around and saw you were still within striking distance. I think he thought he'd buried you. All your vids are fun and interesting. Thanks alot for sharing them.

dobber

I love the way you present the roadie as a loser.

Quel

By "thread the needle" you mean "ridiculously stupid"? There is a big difference between that maneuver and the ones in the rest of your videos I've seen.

JoeyBike

Well, that's a bit harsh. He would have some challenges following me through the grid at rush hour, and even more challenges if he led the way. I would probably pick the better line through traffic and across intersections, because the better line is NOT what is preached and practiced by conventional suburban cyclists.

On the other hand, if we were in his natural habitat on a closed or semi-closed race course for 50 to 100 miles - me on the LHT and him on the Seven (or whatever) - I might as well be sponsored by Loser Inc., and get that printed on my shirt for the race.

JoeyBike

You (and buzzman) are welcome. Ain't the Internet GREAT!