[jabberwocky]

Wakefield is a good recommendation. Its generally easy, and the trails are concentrated in a pretty small area, so very easy to get back the car without a long trek.

Two other recommendations near Alexandria are Laurel Hill (in Lorton) and Rosaryville, in Upper Marlboro MD. Laurel Hill is an excellent, very beginner friendly trail system on the site of the old Lorton Prison. Rosaryville is not very technically challenging, but a loop is about 10 miles and has a moderate amount of climbing.

[jabberwocky]

@ShawnoftheDread 101833 wrote:

What are you doing about hoods if you don’t want a rear brake? Dummy hood? Unconnected right lever?

Everyone I’ve seen does the unconnected right lever. Or you could ape Dirt and hook a rear facing squirtgun to the right lever.

[jabberwocky]

For me, I’d always give stopped riders a look. If they have the tube and pump out and obviously have things well in hand, I leave them alone. If someone is pushing a bike with a flat along the side of the trail, I’ll slow down and ask if they want a tube or help changing the tire. In between, I try and use my judgement, but probably err on the side of asking if they need help if I’m not sure, just because I’d feel bad riding right past someone who I could have helped. I usually just call out something like “everything ok?”, or “got everything you need?” or similar. I had a few times riding to work where I was short on time where I just gave someone a patch real quick.

I do remember a few years back I had gone out in the summer to do an exploratory ride with Dirt (this was while he was putting together the KB century and was exploring hills). I was utterly not in shape for it and it was one of those summer days where it was pushing 100 degrees. On the way back to Reston I started getting dizzy and lightheaded and pulled over on the side of the trail to let it pass. I laid in the grass for maybe 20 minutes, and I think almost every person who walked or rode by asked if I was ok. A bit annoying in a way, sure, but it was really nice that to know that most people wouldn’t just ignore someone obviously suffering on the side of the trail.

[jabberwocky]

If I see someone obviously dealing with a mechanical issue, I’ll slow down and ask if they have everything they need. I’ve helped several people (mostly in my old commuting-on-the-W&OD days) with minor adjustments or flat tires. If they look like they have everything in hand I generally leave them to it though. I’ve found that most people offer to help when I’ve stopped to deal with something, which I appreciated even when I had it under control. I don’t really mind when people don’t offer though.

[jabberwocky]

@wheels&wings 101754 wrote:

Does anyone have any tricks for getting Ninja drivers’ attention? My batting average is not so good.

Its not very Dirt-like, but I find a few good kicks to the passenger door gets their attention pretty effectively. And it gives them something to remember you by, especially if you can connect with a cleat!

[jabberwocky]

30 bucks is pretty reasonable, but as others have said its a very simple job to do on your own. I prefer the kool stop salmon pads for my road bikes. The inserts for road caliper brakes are usually under 10 bucks a pair and it takes all of 5 minutes to swap them out, and that includes cleaning the rim off while I’m at it. I keep half a dozen pairs of pads in the parts drawer.

[jabberwocky]

@chris_s 101717 wrote:

And throw your weight backward. In an absolute emergency I slam both brakes and scoot backward off the saddle to sit on my rear rack. Takes practice though, gotta be muscle memory. Learned that in WABA’s Confident City Cycling 2 class.

Right, that too. After many years on the MTB I do this without thinking about it, but you obviously have a lot of influence over the center of gravity of the bike, since you are most of the weight. Shifting back under hard braking will both keep the rear wheel on the ground (always nice) and distribute braking better over both wheels. In extreme cases, you can actually let the saddle pass between your legs and get your butt almost onto the rear wheel. A technique that is almost necessary on extremely steep MTB trails, BTW.

[jabberwocky]

The vast majority of your braking power comes from the front wheel, but the rear contributes something, at least until the point that it leaves the ground. If you want to stop in a hurry, you want to use both brakes, ideally modulating the rear to just under where it starts to skid.

[jabberwocky]

@PotomacCyclist 101696 wrote:

The rear brake can help with bike balance issues, i.e., preventing a header over the handlebars. This is more of an issue for lighter bikes, and especially with a time trial/triathlon bike. (I know most people aren’t commuting on time trial bikes.)

My mountain bike is fairly heavy, so there isn’t much risk of flipping over the handlebars. Same thing with CaBi bikes, which might weigh around 50 lbs. But a month after I got my tri bike, I flipped over the handlebars when I clamped down on the front brakes too quickly. (I was lucky that I didn’t get seriously injured that day. I changed a few practices and I’ve never had another accident like that. Of course, I don’t ride the tri bike that often now.)

This is much more a geometry issue than a bike weight issue. For various reasons, mountain bikes tend to put the rider center of gravity much further back than road bikes. That makes them more difficult to endo on. Racing style road bikes (and time trial bikes) put the rider center of gravity much further forward, which makes it much easier to get the rear wheel off the ground under hard braking.

[jabberwocky]

Instead of using your brakes, stop by ramming the nearest stationary object.

[jabberwocky]

Back on the bike this morning after a week off to recover from a respiratory infection. It was glorious, wind and all.

[jabberwocky]

@mstone 101600 wrote:

Yeah, the true temper OX is their equivalent to reynolds 853, and shouldn’t get weaker just because it’s welded. It’s likely that it was just too thin for you. (The highest stress areas happen to be near the welds, so any breaks are more likely there than in a low stress spot in the middle.) If you ever do get another steel bike you should make sure you tell them that you eat frames so they spec a thicker tubing.

FWIW, the custom steel MTB frame, I told them not to worry about weight, and that I was an aggressive mofo and wanted a strong frame. Not sure what tubing they used, but it wasn’t all that light. Still broke that one. They warrantied it and built me a whole new frame, with additional reinforcing. I broke it again, in the same spot. I’ve decided to stick with carbon and aluminum for the mountain bikes. Never had an issue with either aside from snapping an ISCG mount off the aluminum DH bike.

[jabberwocky]

@mstone 101588 wrote:

Depends on the alloy & treatment–some get more brittle at welds, some don’t.

Yeah, I’m not totally up on my steel welding, I just know what the manufacturers have told me when I talked to them post-break. All three were relatively high-end bikes (one was a true-temper OX Lemond and two were custom MTB frames). All were sort of lightweight for steel, which was probably what doomed them. My DJ bike will likely last forever, since the frame weighs like 8 pounds.

FWIW, two were replaced under warranty, and the third hangs in my shop as a reminder to stop buying steel frames. One of these days I’ll find a framebuilder to cut the top tube out and replace it for me, but I just haven’t been motivated enough to do so up till now.

[jabberwocky]

@Orestes Munn 101583 wrote:

Don’t steel frames break at the site of small cracks or defects, which develop crevice corrosion? That’s not exactly a wear issue, if true.

All mine have been adjacent to welds, once on a downtube and twice on the top tube, both right near the headtube. My understanding is that welding steel weakens it somewhat (the point of butted tubing is to increase material at the welded ends for that reason), so breaks are usually there. None were corrosion related.

[jabberwocky]

@Steve O 101570 wrote:

Wow, you have bad luck

So I’ve been told.

My two fixies, touring bike and DJ MTB are currently all steel, but none are very high mileage. I’ve broken one steel fixie frame and a few MTBs though. From a materials standpoint, steel has good fatigue resistance but it isn’t very strong. It has pretty much the lowest strength to weight ratio of anything bikes are commonly made of.

To be fair, my highest mileage steel bike (a Lemond Poprad disc) was over 5k when I sold it to a friend, and as far as I know its still going strong.

[Author]

Posts