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NEVERENDING ♾️ The NEVERENDING Bicycle Thread

Betwixt the sap lines and on the ski hill for this weekend for me:

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Those handle bars are an interesting adaptation. :)
 
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mendelman said:
Those handle bars are a interesting adaptation. :)
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This is my fat/ "super gravel" bike, a category I admit I basically made up myself. I ride this to commute and on mixed paved/road/mtb trail rides. The drops let me get down out of the wind when I need to but are wide enough to give me pretty good leverage on the trail as well. This bike is currently set up "dinglespeed," so you have the choice of a 36x16 for the road or 22x30 for the trail. You have to stop for a minute and move the chain between these two manually to "shift."

If I ever have the time for more backroad/backcountry touring. I'll probably put a wide 29er wheelset on with an 11-52 chainring instead of the 26x4 I have now.
 
No problem making up a new design/ride category. Someone had to invent the "Mountain Bike" moniker.

By way of analogy, about 2 years ago I created the colloquial name for a well defined portion of our downtown. It's now South Town as it's effectively the south half of our greater C-2 (Cen. Bus.) District and the primary portion of the downtown I called Uptown.

Not very inventive, but easy to remember.
 
I've been riding the bike a lot and it's helping with the weight loss.

My 58th birthday was yesterday (yay me) so I set out to ride my age this morning. For an extra level of difficulty I rode it on a single speed fixed gear bike. I was great through 50+ miles but the last 10 I was dragging. I rode my age and them some, ended up just shy of 65 miles.

People get ready, there's a train a-comin'
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Coffee stop
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Airfield Falls (I've posted pictures of this before)
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This is where I was when I reached my age
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In my neck of the woods you cannot get a new bike until April. Apparently during the pandemic everyone bought or ordered a new bicycle. I have a rusty old mountain bike. I really just want a cruiser.
 
dandy_warhol said:
In my neck of the woods you cannot get a new bike until April. Apparently during the pandemic everyone bought or ordered a new bicycle. I have a rusty old mountain bike. I really just want a cruiser.
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Look for gently used bikes. People who realized they don't really like cycling are selling their pretty new bikes. My friend got a nice Trek on Facebook marketplace.
 
dandy_warhol said:
In my neck of the woods you cannot get a new bike until April. Apparently during the pandemic everyone bought or ordered a new bicycle. I have a rusty old mountain bike. I really just want a cruiser.
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Buy slick tires for it. It will be a lot more fun to ride on the streets.
 
I took vacation this week and the weather has been super fine. That means a nice bike ride every day. I went 50 miles today on my fixed gear bike today. My first stop was breakfast at a coffee shop
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Took a few pics of some random artwork in the city- a mural on a hair salon, a mosaic in a sidewalk, and an even larger mural in the Stockyards area (note my bicycle lower left for scale)
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Finally.... there is a section of trail that's been closed for a while. I snuck in there today to see what they're doing. They've widened the trail and paved over a muddy area between a park access road and the trail. In this picture, on the far left is the Trinity River. On the edge of the bank is the track for the Forest Park Miniature Railroad, a tourist train that runs between the Fort Worth Zoo (recently rated #1 in the nation, brag, brag) and Trinity Park, then the Trinity Trail bike/pedestrian trail; you can see they added about a foot to its width, then a paved "plaza" area, then the road (which is awaiting repaving), then a little more plaza, then a parking area. Those plaza areas were unpaved dirty/muddy areas previously. They are now nicely finished off. It's almost worth having the trail closed to get this done.
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I did a 50 miler yesterday. In July when I started losing weight, I couldn't even do 50, now it's not that big of a deal.

Early stop for fuel
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We're all friends here!
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I will note that when I first started riding I had trouble with this bike: when I leaned over to get to the handlebars, my stomach was in the way so riding was not comfortable. Much better now.

Topping off the tank mid-ride
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In Texas, Multi-Use Path takes on a whole new meaning!
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As I build up my stamina, it seems like the city is getting smaller. Longish rides are short hops.
 
Thanksgiving Eve Thirty: The thirty mile ride I did Wednesday. I'm starting to like this Taco Truck on Every Corner thing:
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Waiting for TEXRail, the train that goes from DFW Airport to downtown Ft Worth
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They've been painting murals on the Trinity River flood gate controllers.
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But on Thanksgiving I topped that with the Thanksgiving Thirty-One.... that's right the ride was a mile longer that Wednesday's ride. I had a slight tailwind, and with the light traffic I managed to get from my house to downtown in about 25 minutes, which is fantastic for me. (That's almost 17 mph average.)

This year's tree is for looking only. NO TOUCHING.
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Another one of those murals.
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And finally, Airfield Falls. I think there's other pictures of it in this thread.
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I heard about that. Trying to figure out how it happened, considering there was a chase vehicle. My theory is the chase vehicle was traveling slowly, about 20, and was being passed by someone doing roughly the speed limit when a third vehicle traveling significantly over the speed limit came upon them and just as the first passing vehicle got by the chase vehicle, the third vehicle swooped into the right lane in front of the chase vehicle, not realizing the cyclists were there. Guessing the collision was at full highway speed (~70 mph).
 
Doohickie said:
I heard about that. Trying to figure out how it happened, considering there was a chase vehicle. My theory is the chase vehicle was traveling slowly, about 20, and was being passed by someone doing roughly the speed limit when a third vehicle traveling significantly over the speed limit came upon them and just as the first passing vehicle got by the chase vehicle, the third vehicle swooped into the right lane in front of the chase vehicle, not realizing the cyclists were there. Guessing the collision was at full highway speed (~70 mph).
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There's a diagram in the Review Journal article linked above
 
So, as motivation to keep me riding in December, I decided to do The Twelve Days of Christmas Lights. It's a way to make me ride at night. I started out the first day, and took a picture of a house with Christmas lights. Second ride I took two picutres... and so on. I'm up to my ninth ride; I took pictures of 9 houses tonight. You can follow along on Facebook if you want to see them. And if you want to look at the rides on Strava, the links are in the captions for the pictures.

Facebook

www.facebook.com www.facebook.com

Here's a picture of the Fort Worth Christmas Tree
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Starting to ride again. 87 miles in the last week.

The Saturday morning breakfast ride group has started up again. That's me closest to the camera.

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And I started riding with the Night Riders again (me in the back in the black shirt)

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And I'm riding on my own during the week

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I've been riding more as well. As a parent, getting time is the hardest part. I've kept my rollers set up in the basement for the summer (normally I'm all done on rollers in April) and have been putting in a pretty steady half hour down there on weekdays. To make it to work at 8, to get everybody ready for the day, to deal with all the transportation and childcare issues that come up, I have to get up at 5:00 to make that 30 minute ride "fit" in the mornings. Kid transportation continues to limit my opportunities to so much as commute to work many days. I usually get 1-2 longer rides on the weekends, but have to be diligent about making the time.

My silly drop-bar fattie continues to be a hoot. I got a shorter stem that I like and have been doing some really great "ride to the ride" rides where a 30somethign mile loop takes me out to and through some good trails and back. Mountain biking trails in my neck of the woods though have really progressed with bike technology, and there are some things that are probably pretty easy on a modern full-suspension bike with slack geometry that are pretty white knuckle on this rig. That's OK. If I wanted it to be easy I'd stay on the couch.
 
Four fatalities in my 350K metro in the past 6 weeks. Drivers love to use the, "well they don't follow traffic laws so they deserved it" card. Anymore, I mostly bike to and from work and mostly trails for recreation.
 
TOFB said:
Four fatalities in my 350K metro in the past 6 weeks. Drivers love to use the, "well they don't follow traffic laws so they deserved it" card. Anymore, I mostly bike to and from work and mostly trails for recreation.
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I avoid cycling on roads for this reason.
 
Regretfully, I haven't gotten outside on my bike yet this year. Pre-parenthood, I used to be an amateur racer and have probably 50-75 race starts over the decade I spent racing, and used to commute by bike as well to get in low intensity miles. 100-150 miles a week was typical for me. Then I had a kid, and the combination of time poverty, daycare dropoffs, and general fear of drivers/lack of bike infrastructure where I currently live have conspired to keep me off the road and consigned to just Zwift indoors and trail running. Any other parents find a way to get back on the bike eventually? I still have a carbon race bike and sweet italian steel fixie just begging to be ridden!
 
MacheteJames said:
Regretfully, I haven't gotten outside on my bike yet this year. Pre-parenthood, I used to be an amateur racer and have probably 50-75 race starts over the decade I spent racing, and used to commute by bike as well to get in low intensity miles. 100-150 miles a week was typical for me. Then I had a kid, and the combination of time poverty, daycare dropoffs, and general fear of drivers/lack of bike infrastructure where I currently live have conspired to keep me off the road and consigned to just Zwift indoors and trail running. Any other parents find a way to get back on the bike eventually? I still have a carbon race bike and sweet italian steel fixie just begging to be ridden!
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I can't tell you there's an easy way, but it does get better. I'd say it's OK if Zwift/Indoor is your default for baseline fitness. Get out when you can,. Be ready to go at a moment's notice (when spouse says: "sure, go for a ride, just be back in an hour." be ready to do that). I tried it all. Kid trailer, kid tandem, etc. Build up a bike like mine that's heavy an slow- it's more of a workout! Any pump tracks nearby? Build up a craigslist mtb and get out there!

Keep riding that fixie!
 
OK. Son off to college. I am done with the play I was in. Local town annual fest over. Time for some serious biking the last couple months of the season.

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This is from Great Falls MT's trail which runs along the ridge. It was only a 12 mile ride, but had a couple of tough hills.
 
I'm sure I've mentioned the Night Riders group I do pub crawl rides with. Sometimes we go to bars, but sometimes we do "hobo stops". Hobo stops are either at a park (with a stop at a convenience store along the way) or in someone's yard. The host typically provides beer but it's kind of like those Little Free Libraries: Take a Beer, Leave a Beer. Anyway, it was kind of fun to have a dozen people or so randomly show up at the house, drink a few beers in the back yard, and ride off.
 
The reason for the stop at my house is several people wanted to see the new bridge installed just down the hill from me.
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That's a crappy picture of the bridge; here's a better one:
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And then to my place for a coupla beers before heading out to the next stop
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Doohickie said:
I'm sure I've mentioned the Night Riders group I do pub crawl rides with. Sometimes we go to bars, but sometimes we do "hobo stops". Hobo stops are either at a park (with a stop at a convenience store along the way) or in someone's yard. The host typically provides beer but it's kind of like those Little Free Libraries: Take a Beer, Leave a Beer. Anyway, it was kind of fun to have a dozen people or so randomly show up at the house, drink a few beers in the back yard, and ride off.
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Sounds like the Full Moon ride I do here in Chicago. Meet at a local bar at say 8, then a park stop, then a bar stop. Tends to be dives, though maybe not quite as strict on that as when the ride first started (years ago it could easily get 50+ riders in the nice weather, and the ride was planned out in advance). If anyone still wants to hang out longer sometimes there is an extra credit bar...
 
jsk1983 said:
Sounds like the Full Moon ride I do here in Chicago. Meet at a local bar at say 8, then a park stop, then a bar stop. Tends to be dives, though maybe not quite as strict on that as when the ride first started (years ago it could easily get 50+ riders in the nice weather, and the ride was planned out in advance). If anyone still wants to hang out longer sometimes there is an extra credit bar...
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We're coming up on our 1300th ride. :) We ride Sundays and Wednesdays, although I haven't made many of the Weds rides since the pandemic.
 
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