Today I:



+12 Wife Happiness

today i rode for 50 someodd miles in the city and checked out my favorite professors new coffee shop in Inwood and did a couple laps around central park, iphone was dying so had to stop strava at 30 miles

/need garmin

Today I had a brilliant day at the pumptrack.

Today I rode 110 miles.

guys. everything hurts. my knees. they hurt. my hands. they are buzzing. my stomach. lol wut.

I'm looking for a good bottle holder that clamps onto the rails of a saddle instead of the seatpost. my velcro one for the downtube is too effing scary, big pothole = slides over = in my every pedal rotation. that's happened at least 10 times over the course of owning it, no matter how tight I strap it, and it's scary every time

had the seatpost one too but I like carrying a little bag back there for tools so I don't have to carry a bag on me.

Tonight I am in Maine. It was a long ride (98 miles). I need sleep.

Bar mount cages rule the universe.

https://www.cambriabike.com/shopexd.a...ed=0CHMQgwgwBQ

I need a comfortable saddle.

today i rode 10 miles to work, saw a coyote on the way, got off early rode 10 miles home enjoyed a large forearm length burrito, got called in for some one sick and rode the 10 miles back to work to get off again and ride 10 miles back home not with out picking up a 24pk of beer and eat a greedily sized turkey and pepper jack sandwhich...now im drunk and forum lurking and your welcome for the day in the life of Dino

Today I worked the second day at this bike shop and established two things; I'm a M-F 9-5 guy, and I don't take much of any joy working on old POS bikes. Thinking about quitting.

I'm seriously looking forward to this bike ride home in the rain. Seriously.

I'm also pondering a lot of questions for someone. I'm not sure if I really want the answers, but I have a feeling that even if I ask, she won't answer them and will just get upset. Oh well.

I cannot wait until Monday. Day off, bike ride, sunshine, will be amazing.

(Yesterday) I got the last color applied to my half-sleeve. Pretty much done at this point... I will let it totally heal up and go back for touch-ups and final pictures for my artist's portfolio but this is it.

For now, haha. We were already talking about what we'd add to it, but I want to live with it for a while and see what ideas come to me. Skin is still pink and swollen and angry, but here's a pic anyway:


Untitled by kazbo, on Flickr

(Pictures of the rest here.)

today my whole back is lobsterized and i cant sit back in my chair, lol

htfu

Nice thing about truly old bikes is that they're never as ****ty as a two year old Magna.

I love working on crappy old bikes. I always get all the Gripshift bikes passed to me cuz no one else can deal with changing cables on them.

I don't mind old bicycles as these are my specialty... but old POS bicycles can be challenging as people often expect a silk purse to be made from a sow's ear or that we can do magic.

Thankfully... the cost of repairing someone's old POS is not related to it's value so many find that when they get the estimate that this is a good time to look at upgrading their bicycle.

Changing those cables is at the top of my "Things I hate most" list.

Word.

I use the Profile Designs RM1. The mount can be tightened up very well so it makes the system stable. It holds my bottles well i havent experienced them shooting out. https://www.profile-design.com/profil...ation/rm1.html

I also looked into the Xlab Mini Wing Kit. attached to your saddle rails + comes with a saddle bag that works with the whole system. I would have gone with the Xlab because of the bag but i got the profile designs one brand new locally for super cheap.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Xlab-mini-wi...6#ht_500wt_986

I know, I know. I'm just doing it part time, so it's hard to want to when I'm getting paid almost $3/hr less to work there than my normal job.

Except when it's a 10-15 year old Magna or Murray. This shop just ran a Groupon for a $25 tuneup, to it seems everyone in Metro-Detroit is pulling the bikes they haven't ridden in a decade out of the shed and bringing them in so we can make our $12.50 off of them.

I was working on one yesterday and nobody in the shop could get the grip shift back together. The worst thing.

It's experience, though. I did my time in a less-then-perfect situation too.

I don't see very many of them at RG but at the old shop where I worked, I would often just replace them at cost. To me, it was better to take a hit on the profit of the parts than to dick around with them for two hours - especially when the board was full of other repairs/tune ups.

Nothing beats used car shopping.... but wagon is wagon.

In 1999, the first cable change on my SRT-600 gripshifts took me 3 hours. Now I can do that style (with the internal cable stop) in ten minutes per side max. MRX under-the-rubber cable stop style takes me 5 minutes per side. The side entry ones are almost as easy as MRX but the cable end tends to get wedged in so add two minutes to grab a scratch awl and dig that cable end out - 7 minutes per side max.

This is how easy an MRX change can go, sometimes the cable doesn't feed 'round the bend but it only takes an extra minute to pop the hatch off, feed cable, then pop the hatch back on.

[yesterday]

20mi group "green ride" to local parks (and a solar/geo-therm low income housing complex) around town.

50 people.

it turns out it's hard for me to purposely go slow. a lot of back pressure to stay with the pack. "this a ride, not a race people".

lots and lots of bikes that seemed they'd never been maintained. no falls/crashes, but there were four flats. when's the last time you checked your tires? a couple months ago? ok. here, use my patch/CO2, just be sure to check them tomorrow....

another 10mi on my own and my legs are toast today. i was the only fixed gear.

best part was getting into a discussion on clipless (i was running Shimano 540's and mountain shoes with the 722ts) and being told: "yeah, clipless is all right, but it hurts at first because you are slowly breaking and reforming all the bones in your feet. then it's cool."

Mazda3s are a good price/quality ratio, picked up an 05 with 72000 on it for just over 6 grand two years ago and she's over 112 thousand now and has never given me much trouble