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800 lumens (Dinotte 800L) on the front for me. I generally run it at medium (400 lumens, I think) while on the road, but I switch it to high on back roads with no other illumination.

My commute these days is all on roads, no paths. Some of the roads are pretty beat up, so I need light to see the potholes and rough patches. Sometimes I wish for even more than 800.

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@DaveK 13568 wrote:

That’s my #1 complaint with LEED certification. Low-flush toilets and whatnot are fantastic, but if everyone has to drive to get there, it’s far from environmentally friendly. Until they address that it’s just greenwashing.

Thats a failure of the environmental movement in general, IMO. They promote stuff like hybrid cars without really paying a lot of attention to getting people to simply drive less. I got into an argument with a coworker at my previous job who was berating me for driving my WRX (mpg=20 on a good day) and proudly stating that she was going to get a prius to consume less gas. I pointed out that I biked to work 90% of the time, and even if I was driving a hummer I’d be consuming far less gas a month than her. She said she couldn’t bike because she had a bad back. :rolleyes:

I call it eco-fashion, though greenwashing is a good term as well.

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@MCL1981 13359 wrote:

Your assuming the person with earphones in can’t hear what is going on around them. I can hear your bike rolling. I can hear your bell. I can hear you call on the left. So if you’re going to protest calling your passes, then that makes you the rude self-centered one. Not me.

:shrug: My experience is simply that, with people wearing headphones, things generally go smoother if I just assume they can’t hear me and don’t know I’m there and pass as quickly and stealthily as possible. I cannot count the number of times I’ve called a pass, and had the headphone wearer get confused (was that someone talking to me or something in the song?) and start looking around, wandering into the wrong lane or god-knows-what. I don’t do it to be a jerk, I do it because my extensive experience says its the smart thing to do.

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@PotomacCyclist 13340 wrote:

Enough people with earphones are distracted on the trails, whether it’s pedestrians or cyclists, that other riders are wary of earphone wearers in general.

Tell me about it! I’m to the point where I look for earphones before calling passes, and I don’t call out at all if I actually see them. Earphone wearers have this annoying habit of looking around with an idiot stunned expression on their faces when I actually call out and wandering into a different lane or whatnot.

Besides, if they actually cared about hearing their surroundings, they probably wouldn’t be wearing earphones. :rolleyes:

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Pedestrians wearing earbuds are bad enough. I cannot believe people actually cycle with them in. :rolleyes:

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I’ve destroyed one set of carbon bars (admittedly on my downhill bike, in a crash). Carbon fiber is an immensely strong material, but very sensitive to manufacturing faults and far more difficult to engineer than metals. From your story, I’m surprised Trek didn’t take care of you. They have a good reputation for service. That said, I think with the down economy a lot of companies have gotten much more stingy with their service. This sure sounds like something that should have been covered under warranty. I think its important to buy from companies that stand behind their products.

I have two carbon bikes. An Ibis Silk SL road bike, and an Ibis Mojo HD mountainbike. Both are very young (built the Silk in september and the Mojo in July) so I can’t comment on their longevity, but Ibis as a company is incredibly good about standing behind their products, so I’m not super concerned.

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@Marcella 12821 wrote:

My experience with PPTC (CC level) rides has varied — some have been good and others have been the type where I was dropped immediately and on my own for the entire ride. I think it has been better in the past year or two.

My main beef was that they exceeded their advertised pace. When I tried the first ride, I looked it up and contacted the ride leader. I think it was either a C or D ride, and advertised pace was 15-16mph. I was commuting regularly at that point and rode 16-17mph all the time on my commutes, so I figured I’d be ok. The ride leader confirmed the pace for me. I showed up, the ride set out and immediately ramped up to 18-19mph. I was dropped within 2 miles, and the pace was still increasing at that point. I ended up turning around and riding home.

Now, I totally understand people ride at different speeds. But there were faster rides leaving from the same lot; if you wanted to ride faster, why wouldn’t you do one of those? I tried a few other rides and all were pretty much the same; even the advertised slower rides would quickly ramp up and take off. If you wanted to ride the advertised speed, you rode by yourself.

It wasn’t a fun experience for me. I’m coming from the MTB world, where people are far more friendly and social, and leaders go out of their way to keep the group together.

Granted, that was a few years ago, so perhaps things have changed.

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@Dirt 12791 wrote:

I always kind of thought it was weird that there wasn’t really a road equivalent. I admit that I haven’t looked or inquired for a while. Friends who started with Potomac Pedalers rides all had tales of getting dropped at the first stop light when everyone ran it on “yellow” but they were not comfortable doing so. Ride over.

Yeah, I’ve tried doing some group road rides several times over the years and have never really enjoyed them. My first attempts with Potomac Pedalers went pretty much like that (and went waaaaaay over their advertised pace). I tried a Reston Bike Club ride this past autumn and kept up ok, but the group just wasn’t much fun (culminated with some old roadie taking issue with something I did and trying to steer me into a bridge on the W&OD, after which I told him if he tried that again I was gonna cheerfully put his decrepit old butt into the pavement :rolleyes: ).

My experiences are that the MTB world is much nicer for new riders. I do plenty of road riding these days, but almost all my riding partners are people I met through MTBing. Go figure.

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I came into cycling through the MTB world. I bought a bike somewhat on a whim in 2003 and started sporadically riding Wakefield after work. Back then, MORE (regional mountainbike club) ran casual rides on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and I kept running into them in the parking lot and on the trail while I was riding solo. The weirdo who was leading them at the time would always make a point to say hello and invite me out whenever I saw him. I eventually took him up on his offer, had a great time, and eventually got super into mountainbiking (and through that into commuting, and then into road cycling…).

Now its nine years and tens of thousands of miles later and my basement contains nine bikes (number ten is clamped in the stand being built) and resembles a bike shop more than a rec room.

I’ve made some great friends through cycling, and in fact that weirdo I went on my first group ride with and I are still very good friends. I did an 80 miler yesterday with him.

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@KLizotte 12532 wrote:

I’m really surprised to hear you say this since there are bike racks all over the property. I’ve been there about 4-5 times now and have ridden all over the place without a problem (but I kept to the streets and stayed off the pedestrian areas). Since they have apartments there I presume security is going to have to relax a bit since I’m sure some residents are going to have their own bikes.

FWIW, I’m the friend Dirt is talking about here. Last year I led an early spring ride of a bunch of MTBers from EFC Metro over to national harbor and back. We had maybe 12 people, and when we arrived we stopped to check out the beach area. The place was deserted, but a security guard immediately came over and said we needed to get our bikes off the sidewalk for “safety reasons”, because we might hit someone (which is odd, because we were walking the bikes on the sidewalk). I didn’t see an issue, but I shrugged it off and we got out in the road and rode over to the coffee place for our rest stop.

The same guy came over and started telling us that we couldn’t have our bikes there, that we needed to walk them back and lock them up at the entry. He specifically said a few times that “bikes weren’t allowed here, thats why the racks are all in the parking lot”. I finally got pissed and told him that we were just getting coffee, and that if he continued harassing us I was going to walk into the coffee place and tell them they were losing all our business because he was being a jackass, and that the first thing I was going to do when I got home was email the management of national harbor and let them know the same thing and who was responsible for telling us that “bikes weren’t allowed in National Harbor”.

At which point he got extremely apologetic and said we could have our bikes there, as long as we staying on the center median and not on the sidewalk next to the shop. :rolleyes: I have no idea what the actual policy is there; I’d be surprised if they actually have a “no bikes” rule (which would be monumentally stupid). I suspect it was just some rent-a-cop on a power trip, but I’ve had issues riding over there before with their stupid security folks, so I pretty much wrote it off and haven’t been back.

Which is a shame, because its actually a nice ride.

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For on-the-bike chain cleaning, I use one of those park chain-cleaning doohickies. I get citrus-degreaser by the gallon from Advance Auto and use that. Run for a minute with pure degreaser, then do a minimum of two minute long cycles with clean warm water to rinse the chain before drying it with a rag. Not difficult at all, and the degreaser is way cheap (like 6 bucks a gallon).

For more potent degreasing, I use mineral spirits. I keep a small tub full of it and soak parts that need extra cleaning.

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Yup, Mobil 10w30 Synthetic. Works just fine, although homebrew lube seems to be a hotly contested subject on many bike forums. I figure its more important to keep the chain clean and lubed than it is to worry about exactly what you’re lubing it with. And homebrew lube is really inexpensive.

I have the exact same ultrasonic you do. I use it for other things too (mostly cleaning fountain pens and gun parts). It is nice to be able to get a cassette really clean.

I have to say I don’t do the full ultrasonic on the drivetrain very often. Usually just a wipe down and relube keeps things clean enough. But its nice when things get really gritty and nasty.

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How much are you thinking of spending?

Before I got my Garmin (early 2007), I used to run Planet Bike Protoge computers. They were cheap wired ones; inexpensive enough that I had one on each bike and didn’t sweat it too much when one got broken or lost.

Since then I’ve been running Garmin Edges (a 305 until I got my 800 earlier this year). They are worlds better and easy to transfer between bikes, but obviously more expensive. Downloading rides to the computer is very nice and much more sophisticated; its cool to see how many times you’ve ridden a particular route, what your average speed was, etc.

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I do pretty much what GuyContinental does, except I use homebrew lube for the soaking (2 parts mineral spirits to one part motor oil). Much cheaper than prolink, though I do use prolink for intermediate lubing. I also have a bin of mineral spirits I use as a degreaser for especially nasty chains/cassettes prior to throwing them in the sonic cleaner with some dish soap.

EDIT: Oh, and to agitate the lube into the chain, I just set the jar with the lube/chain in the ultrasonic for 5 minutes or so.

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@lclarkberg 11983 wrote:

Regarding whether ebikes should be allowed on trails: I think we need to restrict the behavior, not the type of vehicle. If someone is riding dangerously certainly restrict that behavior. I wonder if people are imagining some hairy ebiker tearing up the trail at 30mph.

I don’t think there is necessarily a problem now, but as motor and battery technology inevitably gets better and cheaper I definitely think we will need to have some regulation of e-bikes on MUPs and paths. Even well designed paths like the W&OD are simply not designed to have steady 30-40mph traffic. I will be unsurprised if e-bikes are approaching entry-level motorcycles/mopeds in speed within the next decade.

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