Great early morning ride again…this time Marisa joined me since she was off today. Again, trying to get the ride done in the morning given the lower temperatures. We did about 17 miles today and combined it with going to a local place to grab a sandwich and some iced tea.
My Raleigh Willard 2 gravel bike…really starting to fall in love with it. In the next day or two I’m changing out the pedals for someCrank Bros. Doubleshot Hybrid pedals that allow for both pedaling with flat shoes and clipping in…
Most of our miles were on the Kings Mountain Gateway Trail…a nice crushed gravel trail that we can access directly from some back roads from our house. Part of it circles a quarry which is off to the left in this pic…
Toward our end of the trail the finer gravel changes over to way coarser gravel. A bit more of a heavy vibration ride, and you have to be pretty careful on corners and downhills. Here is a steep downhill (errr…and uphill) segment where you have to keep on the brakes unless you are ultra-confident on a mountain bike maybe.
Good morning ride in the cooler temps. Spent much of my ride fiddling with my Garmin Edge 830 trying to figure out why it wasn’t mapping my ride. Apparently it wasn’t paired to my phone or something…or something… I have to figure out all the settings. Routie did record my track though. I’m wondering if I should switch to Strava since I think it has Garmin integration though…
Had a great ride this morning with Marisa - we did a bit over 17 miles on a mix of gravel and road. We put our bikes on the car and took them over to the nearby Kings Mountain State and National Military Park. The roads in there are 25-35 MPH and traffic is generally light and respectful. Some of the offshoot roads are gravel. The roads are rolling and I was surprised to see we had climbed about 1,700’ total over the 17 miles…
Started to warm up quite a bit near the end of the ride, but it is largely in shade, so it wasn’t bad. My Garmin 830 said I burned 1500 calories…so its time for a margarita…
Rain! What is this cool wet stuff coming from above!!? We haven’t seen rain in probably two months! Wanted to try out the mud guards / fenders and they worked great. Got in almost 17 miles and it was nice to not have blistering heat…
Yeah…the bigger tires and more aggressive tread pattern on the gravel bike give pretty good piece of mind…even on our newly paved community roads that are very slick. The Clement X’PLOR 700 x 40cc tires are nice…and the disc brakes were really useful today…
They are like flush mounted skewers…they work essentially the same but the nut end is embedded in the fork… They do use a hex wrench on the flush mounted side to hold the nut when tightening and loosening… I guess Raleigh doesn’t trust my finger strength? LOL…
Oh…ostensibly it is to make the wheels harder to steal…LOL…
Actually…I just took mine apart…and it is a Thru-Axle Quick Release…which means it runs through the axle and then just screws into the opposite side fork…like this:
Two weekends ago, we rode Levi’s Gran Fondo, which started and ended in Santa Rosa, CA. I shot some video, and made this out of the clips: https://youtu.be/k7q9g9o7Kcw
***I"m a professional cycling coach focused on recreational cyclists, so if anyone has questions, don’t hesitate to call or text me.
Here’s another one I made today, after getting some flying in with @Sryan on the F-16. This was all mountain bikes, but it includes some images from one of the best trails in North America - the Flume Trail at Lake Tahoe. The rest was taken right outside my front door - literally - out on Peavine Peak in North Reno.
Those are awesome. My wife and I are doing a 7 day ride from Pittsburgh to DC in November via the GAP and C&O trails. A lot of miles, but we are staying in B&B’s along the way…so it will be some good food and wine at each stop I hope. Praying for good weather…I’ve read that the C&O can be a mud fest if it gets ugly. And lets not even consider snow…
Curiosity… I’m going to see a doctor tomorrow morning- but…
Has anyone of you ever experienced a sudden hypersensibility to any sort of sound?
Like- one of your ear suddently is earing everything so loudly that you’re suffering from absolutely normal sounds?
Even simply talking or typing on the keyboard is making me nearly dizzy- now… I know this sounds like a joke but working in a place with all women, you can understand the level of chatter.
Side notes: no pain, like- no inflamed anything. Just like a loudspeaker directly into my ear that makes my brain literally go vertigo.
No fever no other funny symptoms.
Not completely analogous, but I get it. When I was in college I worked in a mall music store selling records and cassettes. Going in I thought that it would be a pretty good gig, because who doesn’t like music. It wasn’t a bad, but an unintended consequence is that when I got home, I just wanted quiet. The last thing I wanted to hear was music.
