all purpose gear thread

what type of mtb is this ? a cross-country/hard tail ?
https://www.instagram.com/p/B14VNAbotO6/?igshid=rmyorek41rzn

Yes, with 29" tyres I would say.

saw the bianchi aria e-road in the flesh today.... kinda.... want one ?

I larfed the no ebikes sign at 3100m in the middle of nowhere yesterday. Shows up here at 53 secs.
https://www.relive.cc/view/v36AreXQEZq
In 5 years there will be no such signs- the industry will unitize bikes and e-bikes/mopeds. the counter effect might be larger areas of public land made off limits both, who knows.

anyone got any thoughts on electric cargo bikes for hauling kids among other things (i'm that guy now)?

i'm looking at things like https://www.radpowerbikes.com/products/radwagon-electric-cargo-bike/?view=radwagon and https://www.xtracycle.com/the-stoker/.

I don't have one, so can't offer an informed opinion, but as soon as I'm in a position to bike commute again, I wanna get a cargo e-bike. I have a few friends in portland/chicago that have invested and they're all super stoked on them. CT likes them: https://cyclingtips.com/2019/10/yuba-electric-supermarche-e-cargo-bike-review-the-smile-machine/

this is the one i'm lusting after: https://www.urbanarrow.com/en/shorty

cargo moto-bikes are cool tho not sure the moto is necessary for me now. like commuter motos make total sense to me so you dont sweat at all, but like, i dont need to make the scene at sprouts or safeway, so pedal for real, bitch.

yeah, but if i got that UA shorty, I would use it for commuting and then doing errands after work or w/e, so the no-sweat thing would still be attractive

yup that's convenient. looking at that motocargo, i wonder how much sustained power that can really drop for like 30 secs, i mean 750w plus a person at 200-250W would be fast enough to be fucking awesome even with groceries. even unfaired that's gotta be low 30s? i know they have some rules about limiters and stuff, but it's america and NO LIMITS FOR ME.

can you jailbreak these things

i think the class 3 ebikes are capped at 28mph?

the powered thing is attractive to me because i have a husky boy son

I've had my eye on https://www.bakfiets.com/ - have seen one in action with 2 kids at a local forest school group - but I'd have to win the lottery or get extremely lucky in the second hand market.

you guys, i now have the most recent post on the 5 or 6 most-recent iltrmb board. where are my people? they have aged-out, moved away, found sweeter fora. or i am, as long i have known, unfun.

but cycling is fun, keep hope alive.

i came to praise covatech duoderm extra-thin 4x4 sheets. i'm sure 4 out of 5 cycling doctors recommend it for those suffering from rubber-side-down incompetence. wash, debride, disinfect, rinse, stick and BE AMAZED. if you're really terrible and you gouged so deep and wide that stitches aren't possible, it's still pretty great, you'll just have fucktons of something called "exudate" for a couple days, which will blow out your dressing sheet to 70% well before the usually recommended 3-7 day exchange period. and also the goo/exudate that floods out is dire. the whole sheet becomes like a soggy, super-fatty piece of un-crisped goose skin. so i know this is yr 2000 tech

*it should be noted this injury was not due to cycling, but my new whole-body workout sideline of "rollerskiing." that shit is ~dangerous~. also, really fun compared to running, but man. it def deserves its own thread, which i will undoubtedly start sometime somewhere. i have yet to meet anyone who does it in denver. so i started a FB group https://www.facebook.com/groups/960730114364491/, trying to find anyone who does it. seems like skimo people should be a bit of a fit, because you can doublepole your lats from a 40.5" to 43"+ coatsize in like 5 months, but i don't know too many skimos. i reached out minimally to friends, but no real interest besides "sounds interesting."

fatmantis out

I ordered a new bike. I've been really slack post tendon resection which is bad for me. Decided to try and go in a more bike packing direction, I want to recapture some of the fun I had as a teenager biking across Ireland and France. Just waiting for a delivery date and looking at some nice weekend routes I can do.

Was never a big presence on this board but by coincidence I have started cycling daily for the first time in about 3 years just last week on my old single speed. So out of shape. Was humbled by a hill I used to do on my commute on friday, felt bad. But I'm just going to keep keep trying to get at least half an hour a day and work my way back up

woohoo keep chipping away jim, it'll come back. i hear vancouver is cycling paradise.

i need to visit bc someday.

can't wait to hear about new bike day, ed. really sorry to hear about tendon resection, i didn't know they do that. they must, like, reattach it somehow? i had my clavicle resected by a cm, but no fastening is needed for that, the a/c joint just scars itself back together and it's pretty normal, fwiw.

i was test riding cargo e-bikes before this all started. going to pick that up again later in the summer.

I snapped the tendon off the front of my foot and they had to go rooting around in my calf to pull in down. They then strapped it back on with some kind of surgical tape and then months in various casts whilst it healed properly. Luckily I didn’t need any donor tissue but they did have some on standby in case I did.

I’m really excited to try this route in the spring.

http://www.adventurecyclingvictoria.com/rides/eildon-mansfield-yarra-ranges

If I extend it a bit I can cycle straight out of my front door and make a nice three days of it. (Plus shout ‘can you feel the serenity’ as i coast through Bonny Doon)

gorgeous, so calm and placid looking, at least in the pics.

jesus! xxp

I cannot recommend snapping one’s tibialis anterior tendon.

I’m learning that this bike packing game is not quite like my touring of old. For starters bikepackers seem to like riding with flat pedals and what look like skate shoes or hiking boots. Which is a bit of a revelation as I spent a good deal of my teenage touring days staying in Irish cow barns and I never truly got the muck out of my cleats.

even hobos need new ways to be fashionably hobo. I draw the line at handlebar bags because those are seriously bullshit, wtf. Cmon.

woohoo keep chipping away jim, it'll come back. i hear vancouver is cycling paradise.

it really is, which makes neglecting to cycle even more unforgivable. kind of back to being addicted now and annoyed I'm too busy this weekend to be able to spend much time on the bike

Detective work. I found a photo from a 2016 forum post that seems to show 32mm knobbies on a 2017 Synapse, and it looks like Mavic Aksium has worked with 32mm since 2016, so I'm gonna try some dirt.

even hobos need new ways to be fashionably hobo. I draw the line at handlebar bags because those are seriously bullshit, wtf. Cmon.

― inveterate practitioner of antisocial distancing (Hunt3r), Saturday, 30 May 2020 5:33 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Aw, I always liked my carradice handlebar bag which had all my daily necessities in them, except for the on bike packet of biscuits which went in the front right pannier.

It also had a transparent map pocket on top. Something that seems to have gone the way of the dodo because we all have GPS now. Which is a crying shame, maps contain so much more possibility.

ah, i suspect i’m just an outlier, irritated by bar weighting. also i’m old and sometimes mtb in lycra and other old tymey stuff, and my old prejudices persist.

I am used to weird handling thanks to the stupid long stem on my current bike.

Also I very much see the bar Bag as old times, however I see rapha make one now so I guess we have gone full circle.

Anyway bike initially will be very vanilla. 700X30 wheels and my current speedplays. I wasn’t quite ready to got 650b right off the bat. Although it is Force 1 AXS which is pretty exiting, also it seems crazy that you can get a 1x with more gears than my first few bikes, more useable gears than many of my bikes and almost more range than triples I’ve had.

Also I’m going to have to learn how do I shot tubeless.

i've gotten pretty acquainted with a local adventure/bike packing frame manufacturer. the chief rides 2x, a few of his buddies ride 1x, and i've told him i can't settle for less than the 640% that i get on my ancient but lovely 3x9. i can do that on a 2x11 now i think, but it requires some fettling and fancying. for a while i'd have needed di2, but i think no longer. the amount of gear specialization that's out there now is so incredible.

btw the chief wrote up his most recent event: https://www.bicycling.com/racing/a32433034/what-its-like-to-do-atlas-mountain-race/?fbclid=IwAR0Z8pX7_dIIw0-4777Vm9K0UfmeeqQmxf-OkmCKeQSpwVstBlbs9qxOWkU.

tubeless is easy and great. if you don't have a compressor, a pressure bottle is helpful when you have to mount up new tires, that's what i have. i think some pumps have integrated ones now, i guess. aside from seating new mounts, the only annoyance of tubeless at all to me, and it's totally not a big deal, is peeling dry latex out if you've left it alone for months, and topping off yr sealant every couple months. i use orange shot, it's fine.

(i seriously wouldn't bother with tubeless at road widths/pressures, it's not that much a benefit imo, but that's not a popular opinion with everyone).

still cycling away but (as ed knows from the slack) I’ve been struggling with shoulder/neck issues, which have recurred following the injury I sustained last august when trying to ride from the bottom of scotland to the top (!) on an ill-fitting bike. sucks. and I can’t even get a bike fit for obvious reasons -
shouldn’t have put it off over winter.

thinking about taking up pilates (and getting physio when I can) AND eventually getting proper fits on all my bikes. can still ride about 35-40 miles but that’s max before it flares and tightens :/

I shot tubeless on my bikepacking gravel bike (christened the goblin) - it is so awesome. fiddly, with a learning curve but once it’s setup... ahhhhh bliss

My bike now has a ship date but not for a couple of weeks (boo). However we did just buy my wife a new electric town bike and boy is it fun. I stole it to visit a rival electric car charging site that is being built across town (and to search for organic parsnips). It’s a lot of fun effortlessly pedalling at 25km.

i toooo have recently acquired a bikepacking bike lol

starting to plan my next bikepacking trip

here's mine last summer, in full splendor
https://i.imgur.com/9GUoZqc.jpg

New bike is here and setup.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CBz7gTTAOO1/?igshid=5mtbm2r95nbp

Learning a bunch of New things: tubeless, electronic shifting, disc brakes hydraulics. It amazes me that the big rear cog is bigger than the big ring on my road bike.

Next is to get myself in the position to bikepack.

should I buy one of these so-called "mountain" bikes

nice Ed. tubeless scares me.

and yes, mountain bikes are fun, get it.

I've solved my biggest tubeless woe which was getting enough sealant into the back tyre to make it seal. I got a Stans syringe doodad to inject the sealant. This seems like a 100% necessary tubeless item.

tubeless is the bommmmmmmmb

puncture the other day on the rear. no worries - keep riding, seals itself, no drama

I inject mine using an old 60ml stans sealant bottles

What do you have in you luggage?

for daily rides, I carry a stupid amount of stuff really (all stuffed into the frame bag) - frame pump, tube, multi-tool, lube, patch kit (with patches, tire boot, painkillers, presta-schrader adaptor), cable ties, etc

for bikepacking, all of the above plus: terra nova wild country zephyros 1; alpkit mattress; decathlon three season down sleeping bag; flip flops; fujifilm X100; etc

top tube bag = battery pack; wallet; sweets/nuts

sleeping bag goes into the handlebar bag. it's only a small 1.5l lomo bag. might upgrade it to the 14l apidura expidition bag.

tent gets stuffed into bottom of the seat pack. mattress, down jacket, some off-bike wear in there too and toiletries

frame bag fit to bursting with spares, tools, etc.

think I'll throw some 43mm bruce gordon rock n' road tyres on for my summer bikepacking... unless I get that mtb

maybe dishy rishi will give us all a 500£ handout on weds I can put towards that

Ed how is yr bike going? Did you see the Petervary vid i threw up, it’s a pretty good take on your “what’s in yr luggage?” q above, eh?

In case you’re gettin ready to ride https://atlasmountainrace.cc/ 👍

Bike is going great. Although I haven’t left the city, because I am not allowed. Just doing loops around town and up and down the bouley at the moment. Planning what my first long rides should be, there’s a nice unsurfaced climb up the back of kinglake which I want to go back to. Originally I was thinking my first overnight would to a B&B, but given the situation wild camping might be the only way to get out of town this year.

I guess the major revelation is running such a big (30mm) tyre, it makes everything feel much less fraught.