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@rcannon100 21720 wrote:

It’s 8.15 pm. The sun is going down. Spent the day exploring why the garden drain was not draining (turns out the garden drain pipes have probably not existed for 20 years… nothing but mud). Do I give up on NatBikCha? Do I give up my 20 points per day on a bike?? HELL NO! Drag the carcass onto the bike. Forget my helmet (oops) and forget my glasses (oops). And put in 2 long painful mournful terrible despicable atrocious miles! #IWillNotBeDropped #WellMaybeNextWeek

On those days I usually do just a smidge over 0.5mi so I get my 20 points. And yeah usually without anything bike specific, other than a bike and my Garmin.

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Well, it was a fun ride. Although any ride is when they have to close off city streets and open them to a flood of cyclists

I managed to see/talk to MB, Tim, Dave K, Mega Beth, eminva, dbb, consularrider, and both Kathys!

Sad to hear they ran out of gold medals though (and water on the Air Force Memorial stop almost 1hr before the end)! But according to their last email blast

Quote:

In order to accommodate the surge in demand on participation, we will be allowing another 150 walk-up registrations on a first come, first serve basis. However, this may result in a shortage of finishing medals. If this does occur, we will mail medals for those who request one. Medal requests will need to be sent to: info@arlingtonsports.org, and must include bib number.

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Anyone figured out these timing chip thingies yet?

There was an older gentleman in front of me in the queue remonstrating that his bike shoes didn’t have laces and he wouldn’t be able to attach the band easily.

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Gearing can be as simple as the ratio between your front gear (chainring) and your rear gear (cassette).

If you are riding with a 34 teeth front gear and a 34 teeth rear gear then it’s 1:1, and with each revolution of your pedal, your bike will cover the circumference of your rear tire.

I like using gear inches http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gear_inches because the numbers end up coming out on a convenient scale. 100 gear inches is a high gear, and probably enough for say, most commuters. 35 is a nice low gear enough for non-extreme hills. A bit like 100F is damn hot and 35F is c-c-cold. There are online tools that can calculate the gear range of a given bike (given the front chainrings, rear cassette, and tire size) in various units, including gear inches. e.g. http://sheldonbrown.com/gears/
Incidentally Sheldon Brown’s site is a great repository for bike info, although understandably a little out of date with bleeding edge stuff.

The actual number of teeth on each gear in a cassette is sometimes hard to find out, but here’s an example (SRAM PG 1050 cassette) from
http://www.competitivecyclist.com/product-components/2011-sram-pg-1050-cassette-%2810-speed%29-7736.22.1.html
The 11/23 includes: 11,12,13,14,15,16,17,19,21,23
The 11/26 includes: 11,12,13,14,15,17,19,21,23,26
The 11/28 includes: 11,12,13,14,15,17,19,22,25,28
The 11/32 includes: 11,12,14,16,18,20,22,25,28,32
The 11/36 includes: 11,12,14,16,18,21,24,28,32,36
The 12/25 includes: 12,13,14,15,16,17,19,21,23,25
The 12/26 includes: 12,13,14,15,16,17,19,21,23,26
The 12/27 includes: 12,13,14,15,16,17,19,21,24,27
The 12/28 includes: 12,13,14,15,16,17,19,22,25,28
The 12/32 includes: 12,13,14,15,17,19,22,25,28,32
The 12/36 includes: 12,13,15,17,19,22,25,28,32,36

You can change out cassettes/chainrings on a bike so as a specification, it’s not the most important thing when shopping for a bike. It’s more just an indication of the intended audience/use of the bike.

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Rode by this refurb this morning. Very nice.

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Sad, but true.

But real progress is never easy.

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@OneEighth 21499 wrote:

Trust me…the zombies are chasing you just beyond your peripheral vision…

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Personally I like having one universal set of interchangeable cleats + pedals and walkable shoes. But each to their own/YMMV

I have 3 sets of Crank Bros pedals/cleats. Never failed me yet, and clips in a lot faster than most of the casual road pedal group riders.

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OnGuard has changed a bit over the years. My OnGuard from ~5 years ago is still rock solid and the one I leave at the rack at work. I bought a newer one last year and the key definitely does not turn as easily each time. There may be some options to touch it up that I need to explore.

I’m actually tempted to get one of the $100 Kryptonite 10/10 rated Fahgettaboudit chains since I never really need to take my work lock with me, and that way I will have 2x OnGuard U-locks for whatever other errands I’m running.

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@consularrider 21469 wrote:

What happened last Friday and Saturday? Just about all of those miles were mine. Did nobody other than me ride on Saturday, it was a seriously beautiful day to be out on the bike and I enjoyed looping around Arlington!

Friday did have the storm but I thought the dearth of Saturday miles was odd too. I guess it was a conflagration of non-biking events/duties. I was busy with my son’s 4th birthday party.

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I think if you just create a “Club” and invite your friends you will be able to see just your group’s times on segments. Not sure there’s anything with monthly mileage though.

(On the segment leaderboard page, there’s a filter on the left which includes “My Clubs”.)

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@Dirt 4029 wrote:

I can stop buying bikes any time I want. *Reflexively scratching my track(bike) marks.*

Yeah I’ve bought 2 new ones in last 12 months and I’m already looking online at titanium CX bikes… although I am promising myself this could be a “do-it-all” bike.

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Good to see almost all the A team checking in!

It’s interesting to see combined daily miles in the team, and the daily variations. I don’t think you can see them for other teams, so here’s some recent days from the A team:

May
27 – 128
28 – 242
29 – 208
30 – 173
31 – 195
Jun
1 – 52
2 – 34
3 – 171
4 – 180
5 – 201

The highest I’ve seen is 488 miles on May 20.

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I went via 4MR this morning. It was flooded for some decently long sections and yeah to a depth of around half a foot. Glad to have my fenders on!

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I signed up for my first ride this year to get some catch-up/riding time with a ex-colleague I don’t see much anymore (who also commutes by bike). Not really sure what to expect, but I know there are at least a few others on here who’ve done the ride before.

I expect the first lap will be slooow to get started and then it will thin out.

I’m sure there will be water but not sure what else will be catered. For 3.5 hrs I’ll definitely need some top-up calories.

[Author]

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