Today I'm in the bay, had a blast in San Diego but that place is too nice for me.

How long are you here for?

Today I registered for red kite on sunday. First road race without 5s in the field, and I'm also doing the 3/4 race. I've gotten a little stronger lately, so I'm hoping I can pull something off. Racing tonight at the track too.

Also cleared my balance on my credit card today and have enough saved for the new Fuel EX 8 27.5+, so I'm gonna get that once my billing cycle ends.

The EX 8 is a couple hundred cheaper than the bike I originally planning to get, so I'll have a little bit left over for some accessories too. Probably going to get some XT trail pedals and a helmet or camelback or something. What are some basic mtb accessories?

Maybe Friday or Saturday, not entirely sure. Just playing it by ear for now.

Interesting! I ended up turning around and not waiting for it to pass. It had just started moving shortly before I got there and was crawling along. Still pretty cool to be right there in front of it, just wish I had gotten there 30 seconds earlier.

best pedals. :thumb:

stans.
tubeless tape.
full finger gloves (try them on, trust me)

everything else is just how endurobro you wanna look / comfort (saddle, shoes, grips, bars etc). but all that comes after you get used to the bike and learn what you hate/like/need/want

oh cool I have all that already. Or at least the shop has it in bulk so I don't have to pay much at all for it.

Get a decent multi tool that fits all of your bits. My pedal came loose once out on the trail and my multi tool didn't have a big enough hex, luckily, my buddy's did.

Oh, and get a shock pump if one doesn't come with the bike.

That's interesting! Makes total sense now.

cool. I have crank bros m19, but I'll def get a shock pump

Crank bros multitools are the best. :thumb:

I carry their pixl and pixie. They have all I need and not what I don't unlike my old topeak alien which was overkill and had me size up a saddle bag just to fit it.

today my legs are sore from riding fixed yesterday.

not in the exhausted overworked way they did last week, but in the "i worked out" way that i havent felt in a long time. miss that ****.

feelsgoodman.jpg

Yesterday I removed the anodizing from my new aluminum Crane Bell so I could polished it up proper.

It went from dull satin with manufacturing stretch marks to a flawless mirror.

I did it all in just 30 minutes.

"How?" you ask. Sure, I'll tell ya.

I cheated. That's right. I eliminated all those hours of hand sanding by cheating.

I took a 3 inch bolt with the same diameter as the bell hole, and a nut to lock it in place from the underside. The bolt extended downward, think umbrella. Then I put the bolt into the chuck a cordless drill. Voila! A mini-lathe-thingymabobber.

A few hundred RPM of time saving goodness. Like a pottery wheel, but hauling ass.

Attack with sand paper, 600, 800, 1000, 1500, 2000, 2500. Like ten minutes instead of three hours. Schmooooooth.

But still dull.

Then the fun part. Old T-shirt and Blue Magic metal polish. Did 4 rounds of that. Looks like an $800.00 chrome plating job.

Pics? Nope. I tried. My low end Fuji camera refuses to focus on it. "Subject too reflective" according to the manual. Seriously.

My **** is too shiny for photographs. :lol:

What'd you do in SD?

Today I met with a vein specialist to go over my ultrasound that I had last week. My legs need some work. Getting old is the suckage. At least he told me that my level of fitness and activity has kept this at bay for a significant amount of time. That made me feel pretty good.

Raced bikes and get kicked out of everywhere by cops.

where did you race your bike?

Alleycats, I met Scrod too though I didn't race his race.

Oh, kewl. Scrod is a nice guy in person. It's a bit out of the way, but I try to find a reason to get something at Retrogression every now and then.

I was at that one. *two ships pass in the night*

Mine are finally not sore today, after my brilliant experiment of a ~110 mile round trip fully loaded bike camping tour Sunday - Monday on my rigid SS MTB. Was super fun, and not nearly as painful as I feared.

It has limes which prevent scurvy and scurvy is bad for any engine ; )

[last night, I...]


pulled out the FG to ride to work and discovered that the BB cartridge had backed out ~1.5mm on the drive side. Yikes.


Pulled the cranks and cartridge bearing, cleaned everything up and re-installed. That gave me a chance to clean up the drive train, remove the useless freewheel on the other flip/flop side, and re-assemble.


Rode the FG in this morning. It was a bit cooler and not as damp, so a pretty nice ride. Glad to have that bike back in working condition, too.

Today (technically this morning before I went to bed) I pulled the Aerospoke off the Felt and swapped the tube and tire back to the matching red American Classic 420. Bike feels really light now, like in the 16lb range again. Gonna try to throw it on the scale down at the shop today and see.

I live less than a mile from where all the **** went down last night.
I don't understand what's wrong with the world....this sucks.