jimincalif

Apparently they are, since it’s not something I ever practiced, just happened. A bit of snark’s ok as long as it’s all in good fun here in the Carbo Loading threads! 🙂

Yeah I haven’t looked into a Dynaplug kit for the car, maybe I should. Probably takes a bit more force to push one thru a car tire.

dagray

a little further today against a headwind on my way west. https://www.strava.com/activities/2708744569/overview Think I need to drop my saddle 1/4 inch as there is knee pain in my right knee.

DrIsotope

Pain... where? I kept raising and raising my saddle, waiting for discomfort at the back of the knee. Never came. My saddle sits about an inch and a half higher than the "straddle a spirit level" recommended height.

Semi-related, my first ride on my "do it all" bike without a Selle Anatomica saddle... ever. I built it with a SA Titanico X1, and transitioned to an H2 about 18 months ago. Well, nothing good can last forever, and over the past couple of months the H2 had started to be "less invisible." No pain, mind you, just a kind of residual soreness after some rides. I had been thinking about trying a different saddle for several months, but my overwhelming cheapness kept getting in the way. The stars aligned, and one of my saved sellers had a saddle in my price range, in a shape I had been shopping for (drop nose) and I had some eBay Bucks set aside, so I went for it. It is the absolutely ridiculously named Selle Italia Novus Boost Gravel Heritage Titanium S3, and the first ride (30 brisk-ish miles) shows promise.

It's gonna take a few weeks to get a real idea of whether or not it's gonna work out, but it managed a hundred minutes with my most blown-out, high mileage bibs, so fingers crossed.

jimincalif

Holy crap, that one heckuva name. Do they have that entire paragraph printed on the saddle? That alone would add a few grams!

DrIsotope

I don't think the saddle is even physically big enough to fit the full name. It just says SELLE ITALIA GRAVEL on the hind end.

It's a sort of natural leather light brownish color, which I'm 100% fine with-- as both the "Heritage" brown and black both MSRP at $249, but the brown one is on eBay (new in packaging) for $66.

dagray

Front of the knee. I was paying attention today on the extension of the leg and figured maybe I was hyperextending a bit.. But I am loving the SMP Evolution saddle as it doesn't seem to be causing a saddle sore or irritating the current saddle sore. This is an Ass Hatchet at 129mm wide.

jsigone

Last time I had front of knee pain the cleat had moved quiet a bit and worn. Replaced with new cleats in known good position and rode a double century the next day. No problem since than

RubeRad

I have a SA Titanico X on my CrossCheck that I commute on, and a Brooks on my Krampus. I find the Brooks MUCH more comfortable. The SA has kind of sharp edges that I keep never getting around to skiving smoother

DrIsotope

Which is not to say I find the SA saddles uncomfortable, even now. Between the X1 and the H2, something like 22,000 miles? I also put a few thousand on a C-Series. I've never sat atop a Brooks that I liked at all, unfortunately.

I think the key for me this year has been having two radically different saddles on the bikes-- one was on the H2, and the other an ISM PN 1.1 noseless. So me heinie rests on completely different spots between the two bikes.

tunavic

Put this one on your list of places to ride even if you don't do the organized event. It's a great place to ride. There are many trails and between the winter and summer seasons (basically the entire month of September) the town slows down and finding accommodations is easier and traffic on many roads is extremely light. Oh and if you like to hike, there are many, many opportunities.

Beachgrad05

That is great advice about doing in September. I may have to toss the idea about doing a remote ride with the ladies from The Unlikely Cyclist. Those roads look so enticing!

TrojanHorse

I have 1.7 years before fall centuries become available. Daughter is off at college, so there goes any disposable income and son is on a ridiculously competitive water polo team so there goes all my disposable time. Been traveling every other week since March, so there goes any sort of fitness.
Le Sigh.
#FirstWorldProblems

DrIsotope

We've got an east-west semi-arterial out here named 9th St, one of a whole series-- I think we have almost continuous numeration from 2nd St. up through 55th St. I mention this because this week 9th St, as well as a smattering of other most residential streets, are all getting slurry seal on them this week.

This is ironic to the point of hilarity because I routinely ride 9th St. because it's one of the only streets with a proper bike lane, and it's in significantly better shape that the streets running parallel to it-- 5th St. has "potholes" that will nearly fit a car inside them. So they (them!) in their infinite wisdom decide to put a new top on 9th-- which absolutely did not need it-- while other streets just continue to get worse. They also just sealed Weaver St, a steep ass hill, which had pavement so good the downhill KOM is +40mph.

Meanwhile, my street looks worse every day, and has gotten to where it's starting to develop those little sinkhole-like depressions, just little circular dents about a foot across, a few inches deep. Combine those with the worst patch fills you've ever seen, from where some telecom company cut up the entire street to bury a bunch of orange tubing, and my street is just wrecked.

And of course anywhere in a half mile radius of new top seal is loose gravel, just everywhere. Add that to the already non-stop thorns and bottle glass, and it's as if the whole region has declared war on pneumatic tires. I had two sealant-bubbling punctures in the first 8 minutes of my ride this morning. Every day, Zwift genuinely starts to make more sense.

RubeRad

What's an ass-hill?

jimincalif

I've never understood how cities allocate road maintenance dollars. Some streets are maintained regularly, some are never touched, others are torn up immediately after being completely repaved. They started doing the orange tubing thing on Trabuco Road here in Lake Forest this week. If you believe the signs, it is a MCI Verizon project. Not sure why, Cox has the cable monopoly. AT&T has the dying POTS monopoly.

Hopefully they do some work on your street before it ends up like Jackrabbit Trail.

HBCruiser1

I think if you live in an area of a city council member(s) or maybe an affluent friend of a city council member, your streets are done more often. That's the only thing that makes sense for repaving some and leaving others to go to sh*te.

HBCruiser1

The Dr. said "steep ass hill" which means, damn steep!

HBCruiser1

Jim, you never bunny-hopped as a kid on a bmx bike? I thought we all did especially those of us that grew up before they cut the sidewalks. Bunny-hoppping the curbs at intersections made a huge difference on whether you could keep up with your buds!

jimincalif

Maybe I did, I’m old enough to be pre-cut sidewalks AND pre-BMX. We had Stingrays, but I got my first “10-speed” (Schwinn Varsity) in 1970. I think BMX became a thing a few years later.

I do remember we would get our Stingrays going fast, then jump off them and see how far they could go on their own before falling. Mine ran into a neighbors mailbox, sorta bent the fork back a bit. But it still worked and I still rode it.

HBCruiser1

Ooooooo, 10-speed by 1970. Yea, probably not. The BMX bikes had smaller more straight up handlebars, definitely a little better equipped for "tricks".
Stingray?! Nice. You must have been one of the richies. Us poor folk couldn't launch our bikes. Too much risk of breakage and then we'd have to walk everywhere!
Back then our parents wouldn't take us ANYWHERE.

Have a great weekend. What's on deck for tomorrow? Anything special?

jimincalif

BCI ride, circles around Irvine and Tustin areas I think, how ‘bout you? Still pushing that same cruiser around?

Richie? Not hardly. I said “stingray” since pretty much everyone knows the genre. The neighbors had actual Schwinns, I had an AMF Roadmaster Renegade stingray clone that Santa Claus apparently acquired from Fedco in San Bernardino. Launching wasn’t the smartest thing to do of course, but the bikes were durable. If we broke ‘em we had to fix ‘em. Mostly just flats or realigning the handlebars, or putting cards in the spokes. We did actually wear out tires too.

Yeah our parents were not on-call private Uber drivers either. We had our bikes and our territory was defined by how far we could ride them while still being home when the street lights came on. Funny I was just thinking about this last week, riding home thru my neighborhood mid-Saturday. There are a fair number of kids living here but I did not see a single one outside, riding bikes, playing, getting in trouble, nothing. Came around the corner and saw my neighbor loading up a kid and all his stuff in the SUV to go to a game. I get the team sports thing - to a point. But it’s not the same as a group of kids with their bikes and a whole day to fill on their own.

HBCruiser1

Nice. Working again today. I am still cruising the cruiser, but a lot less in the last year. Did my double last year (June 2018) and just about retired. Working crazy hours and also blew an achilles tendon late last year/early this year. Usually do 3500-45000 miles per year but ended midyear with about 2400 and this year only ~600 so far. Hopeful for 2020 to get back to normal but gotta get this work situation under control. 18 months of this is too much.

Haha, I had an AMF Roadmaster BMX bike. I remember Fedco. I put mine on layaway from some local department store and made payments. But in those days that payment plan meant you didn't get it until it was paid off. LOL Interesting to note, I remember it was something like $80 for the bike (mid 70's) and you could buy that same 20 inch bike today for less. Kinda illustrates where manufacturing has gone.

Indeed, we beat our bikes up pretty good and learned how to fix them. When I was in the mid-west, we'd go puddle running after a good rain and then spend the rest of the day cleaning them up. Good times. Moved to Lake Havasu in the mid 70's and became an expert on patching tubes!

Yes, it's a shame. Wherever we lived there were kids all over the streets from dawn to dusk. We spent very little time indoors. Too many organized sports these days and 95+% don't ever do them beyond that so what's the point. We dabbled in AYSO and did some high school sports but never really got into the club sports. Just couldn't justify the expense, driving all over the state every weekend or flying around the country. Just wasn't for us. We were still too busy. Hopefully our kids will do it better then we did.

RubeRad

I know, but if you follow the link you'll get the joke

jsigone

I grew up on BMX bikes, some of them are work some good coin now if you have those from the 80's. Those 80's Gt freestyle goes for couple grand these days.

Beachgrad05

No Schwinn here either. But man I wanted one. Think mine was a Huffy....it had the banana seat and sissy bar. Had it from first grade until 6th grade. Got a Sears Free Spirit 24" 10 speed for Christmas because my bike didn't survive the move back to Washington state from Mississippi. Guessing my crash may have played a role. I was riding double with a friend and both of us were pedaling to get going really fast. Her foot slipped off pedal and into front wheel/fork...and we suddenly stopped and flew over handlebars. I had road rash on my stomach from my Super Man landing. She landed on me. She was balling her eyes out. I walked by bike home and went to my room...and waited...with dread that the call from her parents would come because I feared she was really hurt based on how much she was crying. Crickets. At school, she had a bandaid on one hand....while I had serious road rash on my stomach. I didn't get a Schwinn until I got a hard tail MTB in 1998