I would catch up faster. But apparently the super-tuck has been banned…!!
Second try today, this time with a little more preparation. Had a decent lunch before and packed a lot of food and water, plus I rode a much more conservative pace on the way to the climb, and I also slightly changed the route to circumvent the steepest part, which is inconveniently situated right at the start of the climb and completely murdered me last time.
Looks beautiful …and cold.
In perfect April fashion, there was moderate snowfall at the peak, and I forgot my long gloves at home. Riding down was not pleasant.
Took a wee gravel ride in the late afternoon. I had been doing yard work and was pretty tired, but the day was just too nice to give up on. Our gated community has some beautiful trails among its 600 acres, and I now have the right bike to explore them.
After a couple of false starts, I finally converted to a tubeless setup, and popped on some Panaracer Gravel King SK tires. I wanted to run the SS version, which is closer to a road tire, but the trails around here are mostly sharp rocky type gravel and marble chips is some places. I did the conversion about a week ago, and thought that I had botched the front wheel when I went to ride today and the front had lost most of its air. But I was able to inflate it with some aggressive hand pumping and it showed no indication that it was getting soft. Perhaps the off-road ride helped distribute the sealant.
There is a bike in there somewhere.
There are few bridges in the woods on which I’ve learned to respect, especially when wet.
This one crosses a long section of marsh. During Black Beard’s era, the British captured a contemporary named Stede Bonnet (1688-1718). Nicknamed the “gentleman pirate”, he was captured during the battle of Cape Fear River (NC) between the British Navy and pirates in the Cape Fear estuary. He was taken to Charleston , then Charles Town, hung and thrown face down in the marsh. Hence the name of our first barrel aged stout, Face Down in the Mud.
These woods are teaming with deer. During the dusk feeding hours they are quite bold, to the point of acting more curious of humans than afraid. I guess that by now they’ve determined that home owners are prohibited from discharging firearms. I can’t imagine how plentiful game was two or three centuries ago.
Nice ride. The weather looks perfect.
Today I’m torn between wanting to do a virtual ride as it’s part of a program I’m doing and getting out there.
There’s a couple of things it could be:
The tyre bead may not have been seated properly on the rim.
To fix this when you first put the tyre on with the sealant, you over inflate a bit. With MTB tyres you do it until the tyre pops, but they are 2.25-2.75 inches. This gets the bead of the tyre properly onto the rim.
You can get track pumps that have a priming bottle for the initial tyre inflation. There’s a pressure vessel you charge up, then press a button and it’s released and seats the tyre.
The other thing it could be, was that the sealant hadn’t plugged the minor leaks. After you’d done the initial tyre inflation, did you spin the wheel to distribute the sealant? As you say, the ride probably sorted this for you.
You might need a NYT subscription to view this. It’s a series of artistic self portraits taken by an English cyclist throughout 2020.
Paris-Nice Stage 8…whoa!
What a great stage…you don’t often see a change at the top of the GC on the final day… Roglic really took some rough falls - he is human after all! Bora with a great drive with their train to move up Shachman…
The proper way to watch Liege-Bastogne-Liege…
Question for the Zwifter nation, what does it mean when at times the gradient was jumping all over the place, like from 4 to 12 to 30 and back to 4 degrees over 10 seconds? Have never seen that before.
I just checked what course you were doing, Richmond… I think its a bit lumpy along the water front, then climbs at a nasty gradient after you’ve come back on yourself before dropping back down into the city.
I don’t recall the massive jumps up to 30, I think Richmond tops at 17% for 20 metres or so on the bend on the climb.
I’ll give it a run today, I’ve been off the bike for 3 weeks.
Lovely setup BTW.
Regarding bike-friendly infrastructure: crossings with a banana and French fries cone:
Meanwhile introduced at more locations.
In short, “People on 2 wheels behave much more human.”
PS
Example of First-World (= people-centric) infrastructure: seperate cycle lanes trigger “dressed for the destiny, not the journey” too…
With people-centric infrastructure we‘re not the same, but we‘re worth the same: streets and public spaces are equitable and accessible to everyone, whether they ride a £ 50,000 Mercedes or a £ 50 bicycle…
“We can do things differently”:
In The Hague, the city with the International Tribunal, Anna Hooligan (Holligan, sorry!) is a BBC foreign correspondent and journalist from Scotland.
Since April this year, Anna has almost every morning short “Dutch news from the cyclepath” via her Twitter-account. (She uses a selfie-stick on her cargo-bike). Meanwhile number of views about 10k.
The link: https://twitter.com/annaholligan
The simple setting of miss Hollligan on her cargo-bike:
My source:Only in the Netherlands could this BBC correspondent bring us the news by ebike (thenextweb-dot-com)
Now I’m angry. Does anyone know where I can watch recorded stages of the Giro (pay service is fine)? This is getting ridiculous. I have NBCSN for the TDF, FloBikes for the Vuelta, and neither carry the Giro.
GCN+ is the only way I know of. I installed the app last week, but have been so busy with work/family that haven’t had time to dig into it. Having said that, as much as I love watching the Giro, there doesn’t seem to be the usual star contingent as in previous years. On the other hand, if you haven’t had time to watch the replay of this year’s Fleche Wallonne “semi” classic on NBCSN, it’s really great.
GCN+ Race TV US sub: $49.99 / yr or $8.99 / mo
What I don’t know yet is where we will watch the Tour and Paris Roubaix (10/3/21).
I’m on Stage 2 of the Volta a Catalunya - talk about star power! Wow…what a packed field…!
When you get a moment…let me know how the app is - like will it run fine on an iPad. And let me know how the commentary is - is it EuroSport doing the announcing?
Sigh. I just wish I could buy one app to watch all of them. I’d pay triple the price rather than spreading accounts between NBCSN, FloBikes, and probably now GCN+.
Thanks much Keets. The small monitor is USB and perhaps there is some lag with this setup. The computer is also on WiFi and although the bandwidth is not horrible at ~250 Mbps, the latency is 41 ms. Not sure if that’s acceptable, but haven’t had an issue until now. I rode London the next day and although not as bad, still had a little wonkiness. Maybe time for a spin down test? Doubtful but worth a try.
So, unfortunately it appears to be a phone app that runs on an iPad.
You can make it full screen…
…and YT videos are full screen, but the resolution is lower than it should be, IMHO. Perhaps a better test would be to cast it from your phone to a smart TV. I’m a fan of GCN, but I feel like they could do better. I haven’t done the paid version yet, but after spoiler removed won today, resistance is weakening. Maybe the smart play is get the $9 monthly plan and see how you like it.
Screen capture from today’s stage live on my iPad. The video feed is actually quite good and better than this image. I think that Sean Kelly is one of the commentators.
Cool.
Hey…does the app allow you to replay the previous Stages? Since I’m obviously behind…