big john

In 1990 4 of us went across the U.S. Motels and people invited us to stay at their houses sometimes. We bought the maps from Adventure Cycling, or whatever it was called then.
In 1992 my ex wife and I did 9 days around Oregon. We got the general route from a book by Roy Wallack and got motel info from a AAA travel guide.
In 2007 8 of us did a 5 day ride from SLO to home. A friend had a program to design route slips and made them for us, it was excellent.
When I rode motorcycles stayed in tents around 30 times a year. I'm sick of tents and could be happy never seeing another one.

topflightpro

Found out yesterday that I am no longer able to get parts at wholesale. My buddy closed his shop about six months ago, but his accounts were still open and he gave me the passwords, so I was ordering whatever parts I needed at cost. But the distributor decided on Friday it was time to close the account. I only wish I had stocked up on tires and tubes before the account was closed. Oh well.

gsteinb

time to start collecting friends instead of tires

revchuck 

I've got the reverse problem - I stocked up on tires and chains and bar tape, then I got a job at the LBS where I can get things at cost, but I've already got a stash of what I need. Mostly, anyway.

carpediemracing 

Consider this an introduction. Heh.

carpediemracing 

I used to have a lot of industry contacts. I ordered a lot of stuff wholesale. I tried to pay full price from the LBSs because I know where they're coming from and for me to save 10% or whatever isn't significant but for them it is. Even doing that the LBSs I tried to support have mostly failed. The current LBS is long established and I think the owner is past any kind of credit line issues so I let him give me discounts (team discounts basically so no real favors per se, although he undercharges me for labor).

For tubulars I go UK. For tubes I buy them bulk through the team shop or at an LBS if I'm, say, in SoCal. I'm still using up the 20 or 30 tubes I bought in SoCal in 2011 (36, 60, and 80mm valve inner tubes). I'm just starting to burn through the clinchers I bought in 2011? at the now closed LBS that was 10 minutes away from the house.

furiousferret

I bought c02 and tubes in bulk earlier this year but I'm starting to run out. Totally worth it to have those things stocked.

revchuck 

Ygduf

I finally was annoyed enough by this dude on my commute to say something. Three times (!) I am stopped at a light and he blows through the red.

Morning commute times, so plenty of cars to see. All these people hate me because of him. I've seen him a bunch of other days, but never 3x in one ride in.

carpediemracing 

Good on you.

The UK sprinter guy (memory failing me, he's the sprinter guy of the last 10 years or so) rode up to someone and said something to that effect.

The Missus got cut off by 8 or so riders turning left in front of her, no regard for her. I watch riders blow stop signs and lights and it's annoying to me, the sheer recklessness of it.

I figure if they do the same in their car then okay, I understand. But I imagine most of them don't sail through red lights and such.

Well this guy did (my dash cam clip). I have more clips of people racing through stop lights, stop signs, to beat me through the intersection (when I have the green or I am already at my stop sign). The Missus is in our Golf in front of me. She never saw the cop so she was like, "first the guy blows the light and now he slams on the brakes in front of me???" The red light runner had a young child (10? 12?) in the passenger front seat.

edbikebabe

Congrats! What kind of things do they ask in the interview? "Have you ever harvested organs for money?" "Would you ever harvest organs for money?"

topflightpro

A couple weeks ago, I'm out for a ride and stopped at a stop light at a pretty big road. Guy across the intersection from me starts going, so I start going too. (It's a small rural road crossing a decent sized state highway, and it is not uncommon for one direction to get a green light while the other stays red if no cars are present.)

At that moment, out of the corner of my eye, I see the light for cross traffic turn green.

I slammed on my brakes and was able to get unclipped before traffic started moving. (I stopped so suddenly, I'm surprised I didn't just fall over.) The cars mostly sat and waited for the other guy to cross the intersection. I looked at him and hollered, "What the hell are you doing? The light is green."

He didn't seem to care.

carpediemracing 

Ebola thoughts. An interesting article in the Slate here. Basically the main bit is that Ebola spreads through close contact (duh, at least for us it's a "duh"). We know what we have to do by the book. Now consider your 2 year old is sick and wants to be held and it's 2 o'clock in the morning and he wasn't sick before. Do you keep them at arm's length, put on a full body suit before you even touch him? What if you don't know anyone with Ebola, or you don't think you've been exposed? If your two year old sneezes on you then, tag, you're it.

Substitute your wife, husband, brother, sister, mom, dad, etc.

Ebola preys on those that have/exhibit humanity.

Even if you know that if you hold your child you may die what would you do? If it's your only child you may decide to hold him. If most/rest of your family died of Ebola recently then the choice may not be that difficult.

Me holding Junior when his core temp was 105.2 deg F (hospital's official reading). Pulse 140 (that's high for a 2 year old), 56-58 respiration (very high).

UmneyDurak

I probably seen him too. Personally I don't give a ****, but it reflects badly on rest of the cycling community and by extension me. Every time cyclist debate comes up first thing people bring up is cyclists blowing red lights and stop signs. Of course no on mentions cars doing it all the time also. ****ing hypocrites.

Ygduf

I roll stopsigns and whatever with the best of them, when no one is around to care. If there's a line of 30 cars stopped at a red (a pointless red, sure, but still red) and this dude brazenly blows through it we all suffer from the perception he creates. It's a dick move and after the third time I made my opinion clear.

UmneyDurak

Yeah, I agree. Good on you for telling him. What was his reaction?

Ygduf

indignant muttering.

hack

Small personal pet peeve...when i'm out riding solo, I purposefully stop at all stop signs, lights, etc. I hate it when cars give up their ROW and wave me through.

echappist

sorry to hear; hope he recovers soon

is this one of those respiratory tract superbugs that's been plaguing toddlers?

carpediemracing 

Thankfully no. Someone I know had (grand)child that had some kind of respiratory things. They could see the child's throat pull in when he tried to breathe in. Junior got a couple chest x-rays and although initially they said pneumonia later they said not.

This was last Sunday night/Monday morning. He basically finally made it back to normal about yesterday - he ate all day, pretty much grazing from 8AM - 8PM. Until then he wasn't eating much at all. I was deathly ill Sat/Sun (meaning 3 days ago, not 10 days ago), but regular flu like symptoms.

aaronmcd

Ha that's probably my biggest issue out riding. I only stop if there is other traffic though. Otherwise I slow down enough to check for cops.

Red lights, I'll run them at T intersections, and at certain other intersections with no traffic if they don't register my bike in the turn lane.

UmneyDurak

Try lane splitting on a motorcycle on freeway. Some people would literally pull all the way in to the median. I don't even want to pass them, but now I kind of obligated to do so. Just creates a dangerous situation all around.

Sorry to hear about your sun @carpediemracing, I hope he gets better.

Homebrew01

NPR touched on that last night. Describing the millions of decisions Doctors Without Borders and others have to make every day about families, kids, who should go where, when, ... etc .....
And there was also mention of how these disasters only get the attention once they become disasters. If full resources were applied 9 months ago when it started, it might be a non-issue now. But slow moving governments won't act until they have to. And the front line doctors are stuck until the funding and equipment comes through.

beatlebee 

Okay, I can speak about this now...

I was hit by a company truck back at the end of July. No signal, just turned into me. My bike was evaluated and claimed a total loss. My left hand took a pretty bad hit and this was the hand that was very slow to heal from the radius breaking way back in the spring. I've been riding, entered a HC TT this past weekend, and finally got the settlement from the company. New bike posted the in Race Rig thread.

I heard bad things happen in threes so I think I am all done.

carpediemracing 

I need to post about this in the blog. I can trigger a light with a non-ferrous frame every time. Well as long as the light is working I guess. I stop, unclip the right foot, and sort of drop the cassette/chain area to the road so it's just above the metal grid, the magnetic field thing. The idea is to get steel as close to the grid as possible (center of the square doesn't help as much).

I actually stop at lights and stop signs even if there's no visible traffic for anywhere. There are people that will see me even if I don't think they're there.