WhyFi

How so? I don't see how it's any more ******** than putting a tube in a regular tire. I mean, yeah, on average the tire will cost you a handful of dollars more, but that doesn't mean that you need to jump in to the tubeless waters if you don't want to.

Velo Vol 

You people must ride on some terrible roads.

MoAlpha

Yes.

WhyFi

The road in LAJ's video wouldn't be unusual in my area, either. There are definitely better roads out there, but that kind of surface condition wouldn't be bad enough to make me avoid it. I'm more likely to avoid a road because of traffic considerations (hell, about a mile away, the road outside my door has a 30mph, slightly uphill, 1/4 mile section with no shoulder - if I'm riding alone, I'll go two miles out of my way to avoid that stretch).

seedsbelize 

Good to know. I've been considering one of those. Though with the bum finger its usefulness might finally be upon me. I'll avoid Pedro's

seedsbelize 

I just finished organizing my rims and wheels yet again. I can happily say that I have enough for my future needs. 700c, 27", a single 26", prolly junk, and I even have a pair of tubular rims. I am reasonably supplied with hubs as well. Prolly 20 pounds of spokes but very few of the lengths I've been needing lately.

seedsbelize 

The traffic on that road gave me the willies. I didn't even notice the cracks.

datlas 

It will add extra weight, and I don't know how the performance will be. A tubeless tire essentially has rubber (not sure if butyl but prolly or equivalent) bonded to the inside of the tire. Adding another layer of butyl I suspect will affect rolling resistance and performance, and probably not in a good way. It may be a tiny difference, I won't lose any sleep over this. Yet.

MoAlpha

It anchors the cable with a cam and flattens it. I have destroyed two recently. I don't remember the Park tool doing that.

Velo Vol 

MoAlpha what do you think about the practice of hypnosis?

abshipp 

Correct.

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.

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.

WhyFi

Kind of, but not really. There are tubeless tires and tubeless ready tires. Tubeless tires are the ones with the impermeable lining that doesn't require sealant - I don't know that I've actually come across one of those IRL yet. Tubeless ready tires seem to be much more common (at least among the performance tires that I've been using), require sealant for normal use and aren't that much heavier than their tubed counterparts.

MoAlpha

It's clearly "a thing," and there are some interesting new data on how it and some related phenomena might work, but I don't know much about the practice, per se. Why are you asking?

abshipp 

As of last night I am the owner of a bicycle motorcross bicycle.

I'd say proud owner, but I picked it from the curb and haven't dug into it enough to find out how big of a POS it is

The good news is that it has 3 piece cranks, which seems to be the bare minimum to elevate it above total POS classification, but it certainly gets knocked down a peg or two since the freewheel has no notches for removal

Should be interesting, I don't know much about these things.

WhyFi

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.

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. ​​​​​​​

MoAlpha

The Strava heat map is here: https://www.strava.com/heatmap#7.00/....36000/hot/all. No pay wall.

abshipp 

Sometimes a road is just so rough that nothing's going to help

And yes, generally an old steel frame does great for taking the edge off and a lot of them take at least 28s, which is what I run on my SLT.

I've got no desire to run less than 28s on anything anymore, although I do have a used set of Veloflex Masters in 25mm that feel nice and I wouldn't mind mounting up again, but those are just really really nice tires anyways

I do the exact same thing . One of my favorite activities before a longer ride on unfamiliar roads is annotating my cue sheet by reviewing the course on Google Maps.

I did just realize the usefulness of the Heatmap a couple of months ago, and ended up changing my route pretty significantly from what I saw on there. Both by not taking a road I thought would be good, and by taking a road that I would have never considered - Route 2 southbound into Oregon IL.

I think I know the roads around here after living at my current place for almost 4 years now, but I still manage to get myself turned around every once in a while

And yeah, like Mo said, the global heatmap is free. I think that the personal heatmap is a paid feature.

WhyFi

I knew that I had it bookmarked some place, but I wasn't sure if it was an actual Strava map or if it was a third party that had leeched the info. Since I have the subscription, I've just been using the Heatmap in their route builder, but between this and Intervals, I may not have a ton of reasons to re-up in 10 months.

WhyFi

I've got a way around that one, too... or at least I used to.

phrantic09

I don’t think I’m going to either.

Ive found lately that I haven’t been planning routes, just trying some random turns here and there to see where they go. Of course, these are all short time constrained rides.

Velo Vol 

Hard pass.

There's a road I go on that was probably paved in the last five years, has barely visible cracks, just enough to cause a thump thump thump, like you might feel in a car on a concrete interstate, and even that annoys me.
I saw it in an overall dumb movie yesterday and got to thinking about it. Like, is there ongoing research on how it supposedly works?

Another question I have is the myth of the brain having a vast store of memories which you generally can't recall, but can be revived if the brain is properly stimulated. Is there anything to that?

abshipp 

The road conditions annoy me to, but there's no escaping it. Road maintenance out in the country seems to be limited to dumping a layer of fine gravel on top of them every year or two.

The local MUP is actually in worse shape than the roads around here

big john

Expansion cracks on a descent are awful. Worse are the little peaks across the road, the ones that launch you off the surface. The worst expansion cracks I know are in the Eastern Sierra, descending a steep road and slamming into them every few seconds is just bone jarring. Mostly I just wanted to post a picture from there.

bampilot06

The guy I went to go riding with today never showed up. I got a text message later on in my ride that his crank arm fell off. I went and found him, sure enough his crank arm fell off while. The bolt that holds his arm on looked ok, I’m not really sure what happened. He had praxis oval cranks.

WhyFi

Little bolt or biggin'? Little bolts usually just pinch the crankarm on to the spindle, essentially the same as stem to a steerer. Big bolts usually thread in to the spindle. Either way, being under-tightened was likely the problem.