Grumpy McTrumpy

Please. Cyclist running stop signs causes road-rage? Try driving in Central America. People need to get some perspective or at least sell a few shares of their "This is my road, I own it" stock.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNu8q30WNFk

TheKillerPenguin

This isn't 'nam Grumpy there are rules.

furiousferret

Okay, I'm triggered. I was saving my notifications until I hit 1,000 to see if it would reset. Since Bike Forums created this new site they are gone. I was only 180 away....

Ygduf

wat

spectastic

great to see america caring about soccer every 2 years now, instead of every 4 years. that's a 100% improvement! myy goodness

Flatballer

It's just so beautiful around here in the Lehigh Valley. I can't get over it. This is from my ride tonight, just 20 minutes or so from T-Town. The crappy phone photo in the shadow doesn't even do it justice.



I also cut my leg on my ride. I was sprinting some and cut my thigh on the sharp end of a zip tie holding my powertap mount on the stem.

Managed to average 1050W for 5 seconds (originally said 5 minutes, that would be cool), at the end of an hour ride, which isn't terrible considering how long I've been off the bike.

Flatballer

Watching the Copa America. There's been a 2 hour rain delay, they're about to get started again. But the video feed (it's a single world feed that Fox Sports just rebroadcasts) is just showing hot women dancing and stuff in the stands. The camera just switches from hot woman to hot woman. It's pretty funny. The commentators keep apologizing.

spdntrxi

beautiful indeed.. except for that piece of tarmac

hack

Jr teammate is going to guest ride with one of the big Jr teams at Jr race in Ireland. Pretty stoked on his behalf ... he's grown quite a bit as a cyclist in the past year.

furiousferret

and Wales is in the final 16 of the Euros!

Honestly, the US isn't there but if we had a Messi, Bale, or Ronaldo we'd be one of the best teams in the world.

topflightpro

I was thinking the same thing. People actually drive on those rides, let along bike on them?

TheKillerPenguin

That's how it is in much of the north east. It's probably why cyclocross is so big around here, we're always training for it

grolby

I know we've talked about it already but this "new" BB look is very Windows XP. Are @-mentions and notifications totally gone? No great loss if so, but it's a really peculiar seeming-rollback. I don't get it.

Flatballer

That's not even close to the worst section of that road. I'm getting used to it. There's so little traffic out there that you can move around the lane and avoid the worst of it.

mike868y

wait, what? that's like pretty standard issue rural northeast pavement.

TheKillerPenguin

At least we don't have bott's dots!

himespau 

If it's like where I grew up, you just drive down the middle of the road unless another vehicle from the other direction is coming. Give it another 5-10 years and they'll chip seal it.

grolby

People just don't know.

I consider these to be "real" roads - narrow, iffy pavement quality. Riding them well is part of the skill set of a good bike racer IMO. Obviously smooth pavement is nice but to some extent you need to learn to take the bad roads in stride.

rankin116

Riding in the northeast after a year in Chapel Hill made me think 'were these roads always this rough?' NC roads are pretty smooth.

globecanvas

My standard TT setup is to use my Ti road bike with a 130mm -17 stem, clip-ons, and push the seat forward. It's no TT bike and I am no TT specialist. In the few TTs I have done results have been top 20% which I would describe as "not competitive but not embarrassing."

As a test today I did consecutive runs on a 5.5 mile rolling course with a couple of turns and a couple hundred feet of net overall climbing (not a loop), once with the TT setup and once on the Venge in straight up road racing configuration. I tried to keep power steady at ~90% throughout both runs. The Merckx run was about 60% drops, 20% tops with elbows tucked in (Obree egg), 20% IAB.

TT setup - 275w - 13:50 - 23.6 mph
Merckx - 277w - 13:28 - 24.2 mph

So that settles that. I'm sure I could work with the clip-on setup to get faster but if I'm already starting in an 0.6 mph hole I don't see any reason to invest the time. Kind of a relief really.

Harlan

Yeah I'm kind of not surprised. Venge with a position you're used to vs a non aero bike you're not used to riding.

topflightpro

I must be spoiled then. Even when I lived out in West Texas, the roads were in better shape.

TheKillerPenguin

We get every kind of weather imaginable and it does funny things to the roads. I could go Forrest Gump on all the different types of weather we have without need for hyperbole. We even have the kind of rain that seems to come straight up from underneath.

Grumpy McTrumpy

I think it's due to a fairly high precipitation level and a whole lot of freeze-thaw cycles each year. We also use a lot of broken shale in the aggregate (I think)

Grumpy McTrumpy

The salt doesn't help either