Originally Posted by
Carbonfiberboy
It is pretty damp out even for here. Ridiculous, though this evening it's way warm, I have 44° and pouring. My lower limit is 40° and raining. I don't go out if it's frozen the night before and the daytime temp doesn't go over 40°. Luckily it's been "warm" down low lately. It should be nice this coming Sunday.
Another interesting thing to do is to plot gear-inches on a spreadsheet, several iterations with different rings and cog sets. Easy to do, just copying the formulas into a new block.
Bright lights at both ends in the rain, day an night! Bright enough to be seen a mile away is about right.
In what areas do you mostly ride? I'm in Everett and ride mostly Eastside ridges and valleys and on up past Arlington
I do Port Townsend, Chimacum, Sequim and any road that is safe in between. Was going to extend further up the ODT soon but haven't yet. There are not many here, most roads are deadly. When I ride in town, I have to ride by a memorial on a street corner where a girl was killed by a car turning right as she headed into the intersection. PT has done a lot to try and improve their bike friendliness so I give them credit, but the outlying areas are terrible, 3 and 6 inch shoulders. The Larry Scott Memorial Trail is pretty good, a nice workout, but this time of year, maintenance is suffering because of branches and mud. The ODT is fantastic but does have some roads linking various parts. With in a couple of weeks, I plan to ride on the ferry and experience the Burke-Gillman trail. This summer I was planning to come over and ride with a friend of mine up towards Sedro-Wooley. Another is to head over to Mazama/Winthrop. Did that last year and the riding, both road and MTB, was beautiful, it was heaven.
Weather is nasty. I'm due west of Everett almost directly. I just took a short 8 mile ride and was soaked and hands frozen when I finally gave up, glasses were impossible to see through (plus I have no fenders on any bike, so shoot rooster tails front and rear). Plus all the rain had started some landslides on the LS Memorial Trail, boulders and all. I thought there was a bear laying down in the middle of the trail and as I got closer, I realized it was a boulder, then looked up and realized the bluff had slid down about 10 feet. I didn't tarry long. The weather service has flood warnings for us through Friday I think, and that means slide danger.
I'll post separately about my findings on the ride. I didn't capture the hill for the calculator as I intended but I did find some interesting stuff about using the lower gearing on a more moderate hill (9% max) that I had some comparison figures on.