Ah sucks.

I did a group ride not long ago and the leader guy was upper 40s, riding a single speed hardtail and he basically DROPPED the entire group immediately lol.

Best pair of rode bike glasses? Mine recently broke while in San Diego.

Brahs, I think I may have fooked up my training for racing this year.

Really been focusing on lifting heavy (squats, deads) with the hopes of generating lots of watts. Significantly less mileage than previous years. I mix in long rides with short tempo rides, but I haven’t done max output at all. Season is starting soon so I wanted to test myself. Essentially did a tempo ride with a focus on max output on a 3 mile stretch at the end of my ride. My angus was not peppered - Got up to 29.9 mph and it felt really good for the first mile and then all at once I blew up. Got side stitches, my body temperature spiked and I just started pouring sweat. I was totally cooked and had to back off and limp all the way home. Now I’m nervous that I’m going to cook myself again during a race…

i took my old raleigh (1989) to the car wash today so i could blast it with the power washer to sell it.

Now that its clean, i realize i will probably never sell this bike LMAO. Been riding it steadily for 8 years now, my longest time owning a bike.... Shimano 600 components are absolutely bullet proof. Its insane.

Theres an old guy out here in his mid 80's who has been riding the same bike since the late 70's that he is the original owner. Pretty cool imo. He rattled off some stats about it to me regarding the mileage, all original parts, etc. Pretty cool concept to just keep an old bike going until you die.

One of my favorite bikes ever was a mid 90's Raleigh. Bent the forks and just scrapped the bike. She was the best.

swapped out my 36T front sprocket for a 33T for last night 30 mile ride

big fukn difference...I was spinning like a mofo, way more than usual....had good burst speed / acieration tho

Giving yourself a different set of gears to work with is a VERY good way to change things up.

I swapped my mountain bike back to single speed and rode it this morning. Completely different experience, and I am a full MPH faster average speed over my home trails.... go figure.

this is interesting:

https://www.active.com/cycling/artic...ake-you-faster

picked up a new bike over the weekend, a Trek Fuel EX 8
Drove 4.5 hours to pick it up
I have some bits coming in the mail this week for it to get it trail ready

sick!

that'll be fun to shred.

are there good trails in florida? seems like the flatness would be brutal for mtb.

yeah tons of trails with drops, jump lines etc

Its not like there are 1.5 hour climbs but ....FL is flat but there is a pretty big misconception of the trails / hills around the state.

Gram Swamp, Alfia, Santos and Tom Brown for a few of the advanced trails with hills & descents ...black / double black diamonds

RIP local singletrack when I am set up single speed


Hnmmnnngggggggg

nice I want to get a new hard tail .. miss my 4500 and Marlin

really liking Nukeproof ones right now ... closest dealer to me tho is in NC

i just sold my santa cruz bronson recently because the hardtail is WAY more fun to ride, and doubly more fun when i man up and take it single speed. Im obsessed with hardtailing, the bike is so predictable and ALIVE... With the aggressive head angle, and longer reach, there isnt much i cant do on the hardtail that i could on my full suspension bike.... The only exception is sustained rock gardens.... i avoid them now, or just go very slow over them.

Go check pinkbike buy/sell section for a nukeproof.... Theres several on there.

Not sure if anyone ITT even knows about the genre of flatland biking, but they have put it back into the X-games after a 19 year hiatus. It's wildly popular in Japan, and Japan hosted the XGAMES this year. They have "flatland bmx school" in Japan (coaching I suppose) for kids, and the level of riding is obscene.

I found this video, the kid is 15.... I used to ride flatland in highschool and to see a 15 year old riding at this level is absolutely mind blowing.

SKIP TO 1:40

pop it up

Lol! I know I've already posted my old flatland footage ITT like 5 times, but here it is.

Can't believe 2004 was 38 years ago

props to Japan for this....

absolutely insane.

Why is bike culture so horrific in the USA?

https://youtu.be/zHtpkv0hkmQ

Been messing with my 1997 gravel resto-mod recently and discovered the extraordinary old tech of friction shifters! What a concept; because they aren't indexed you can use them on different cassettes.... 6 speed, 7 speed, 8, 9.... Maybe even 10.

I stuck the shift lever to my stem so now I have the option to run drop handlebars on the bike, and swap to just about any cassette I want without having to swap all my drivetrain. Sick!

There's a solid +2,000 ft climb on dirt that I've done probably a dozen times on my mountain bike, I'm curious to see how easily I PR it with the gravel bike.... Just cruising around on dirt paths near home I feel like I'm flying on this compared to the drudgery of the mountain bike. Tires really change a bike.

^^^I had a bike growing up with them. It’s fun to run through the gears in an analog manner. Also nice because you can trim the adjustment to get all of the noise out of the drivetrain by perfectly aligning the gears.

Just been racing, no rides since the season started. Kinda boring.

Took it out yesterday for 20 miles/ 1700ft gain, and had an absolute RIOT.

My plan was to take it on just gravel roads, but after detouring onto some single track early in the ride and seeing that it had absolutely no issues with it, I decided to keep it on more singletrack whenever possible.

obviously I had to jam on the brakes every time I came up on rocks but I was able to navigate through them by weaving and bobbing.

so much damn fun. Cantilever brakes making all kinds of noise lol.... Under-biking is the GOAT.

no fap beware, I always love the Ritchey's, this one is sick:

welp, here's the 'complete' first iteration of this project bike. I ended up not using the new cassette/derailleur/shifter I bought for it, but will probably end up using that stuff on my mountain bike at some point, or just keep it around as a spare. For now, this "gravel hybrid" is a 1x7 with a friction shifter HA! I love the friction shifter for some unexplainable reason.

I did try some drop bars on it and absolutely hate how it feels. I do not like drop bars at all. I like these wide 700mm bars on this bike, it feels so rad.

It's funny how project bikes are just so much more fun than blinging something out with top end stuff. I've done the whole $5000 build, and that bike just sort of felt "dead" to me (ended up selling it). Actually, at that time I also had a parts bin hardtail that I rode the piss out of. I don't race, so maybe that's why.

I still need to pick new tires, these touring tires are 'FINE' for now.... But I am contemplating between tubeless or not tubeless, etc....

Here is what I'm in for so far:
$100 - the original complete bike on craigslist
$7 - grips
$25 - pedals
$30 - stem/quill
$7 - friction shifter
$16 - 38t narrow-wide chainring
$11 - 2 water bottle cages

TOTAL: $196- I'm actually surprised it's this low, but that's the advantage of using old parts I already had, and doing all the work myself.

Here's the stuff I didn't buy, but used from my old parts bin:
- NX crankset
- saddle
- handlebars
- chain
- all fresh cables & housing (I'm actually using shifter cables as brake cables for now, not OSHA approved I'm sure)





Here was the video that inspired me to build this silly bike in the first place:

This bike build talk is so relevant to my interests, I brought an old bike last summer but haven't done anything to fix it up.

Any "horror" stories here?

One time, like an idiot, I was riding without sunglasses and took a mosquito right in the eyeball.

I was able to get half of it's body out but the other half was legit stuck in there.

For three days straight I kept waking up with my eyelid pasted shut from my eyeball trying to push the ****er out

Killed it over the weekend in NC... Dupont and Pisgah forests
climbed over 3400 feet
broke in my new Trek pretty good on some nice eduro descends

loved passing people on the inclines and telling them Im from Florida as I went by... just about everyone we told that to raged

The first thing you do before throwing anything away is to sit with a can of wd40 and a roll of paper towel. You'll be surprised at how fresh the old parts are after removing one layer of gunk. Odds are, mechanically everything will actually work fine. When I bought this for $100, my initial expectation was a complete overhaul, but that wasn't so. Most low-end used adult bikes that you find were never really ridden in the first place lol.

So cool seeing actual water in a river... No water in the desert, just sandy dry wash. Feels bad man.

My main bike is a fuji tread 1.5 i got back in 2017; haven't ridden it a while and just got back into riding; love it for my riding style (mostly with the family on somewhat maintained trails/roads)
Bought a $300 bike with the idea of upgrading it myself, just for the experience cause beyond changing tubes i've never done anything on a bike. came with a 44t crank and a 7 speed 14-28 on the back. actually not terrible for flat ground around the neighborhood. want to throw the Microshift adventx 10 speed on the back; what's the best place to find a decent wheel that supports a 10 speed cassette that's not more than the price of the bike. 700x35 is what's on there now, but i could go 35 or 38. rim brakes.

This is very difficult for me to explain to you because you have no idea what I'm saying, but you can take a 10-speed cassette, remove the smallest cog (the 11t one), and the remaining 9 speeds will fit onto your 7 speed rear wheel. Then you just need a 10 speed chain, a 10 speed shifter, and a 10 speed derailleur for your new drive train. You then will adjust you max and min screws on the derailleur to accomodate the rigged 9 10 speed (with only 9 gears) setup.

It actually does work, and is by far the easiest hack for upgrading your drivetrain.

Skip to 8:26:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YPymQz4j_HM

I kinda have an idea what you're saying, sorry if i'm using the wrong terminology; been researching and watching lots of videos; i'll check out yours over lunch. Though I don't have a 7 speed cassette on the back, it's a free-wheel which is why i was looking at a new wheel with a 10 speed compatible hub. I understand that it's not JUST swapping out the cassette; and that it will involve getting compatible parts for the rest and some tuning/adjustments. I've got 135mm spacing which sounds fairly common, right?

Ahhhh, a freewheel.... Well damn... Not sure what is the easiest path in that situation. Theres a ton of different spacings... 135mm is a common one.

If i was in ur situation, id buy a cheap friction shifter to accommodate more gears, find the largest range thread-on freewheel available, and a new chain to match the number of gears you will now have... Hopefully that way you could still use your existing derailleur and rear wheel.

Friction shifters is my new favorite hack; it works with 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, or 11 speed cassttes, but doesnt use a hard 'click' to shift gears, you have to finesse the gears into the correct alignment manually with ur thumb - I never thought Id enjoy such a reverse of technology so much. Maybe Im just a dweeb.