On 12/17/2018 1:44 PM, jbeattie wrote:
On Monday, December 17, 2018 at 10:09:48 AM UTC-8, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 12/17/2018 9:45 AM, jbeattie wrote:
On Monday, December 17, 2018 at 5:16:03 AM UTC-8, duane wrote:
On 16/12/2018 8:50 p.m., jbeattie wrote:
On Sunday, December 16, 2018 at 3:20:48 PM UTC-8, news18 wrote:
On Sun, 16 Dec 2018 12:28:42 -0800, jbeattie wrote:


I do those three times a week. And them I'm not too good to ride with
the old and slow group. I did a ride before the big fires here where I
generated 340 watts for almost 10 miles. That may not be much around
here but it sure as hell is a great deal more than you loud mouthed
experts.

Me too, when I won the Cat 2 districts this year. Do you actually own a
power meter? Also, you need to tell us how long you were holding 340
watts. Distance doesn't tell us much.


Oh Jay, it was downhill, obviously.

BTW, I gave that number to my son
and told him it was a 74 year old recreational rider, and he said
"nope," not at 180-190lbs. He looks at power data day in and day out as
a job. https://stagescycling.com/us/support/

I think Tom shared with us that he is 180lbs, to which I say, kudos. I'm about the same height and 15lbs more. But assuming 180lbs, that's about 82kg for about 4.15 watts/kg for 20 minute power, which places him solidly in Cat 2 -- at age 74. Scary. If I were him, I'd skip the whole return-to-high-tech thing and round up some sponsors for Masters Worlds. My brother was in Master Worlds DH in his 60s and couldn't knock out those kinds of watts, although his thing was going down hill.

I don't care about power since I'm not training for anything. Today, my power meter was "faster than one guy, slower than another." Everything hurt after a hard ski yesterday and too much Christmas cheer last night, but I managed to hang in for a nice rain ride on my made-in-USA HED Ardenne disc wheels which roll really well. Great mid-weight road and gravel wheels.


I have the Ardennes SLs and 23s and they've been great. At around
40,000km I have not had to have them trued and this is on Quebec roads.

I came home and sprayed off the bike with a hose, which is SOP -- notwithstanding the hose-fear expressed on this NG.


Riding a dirty bike is like driving a dirty car I guess. Though I'm
more apt to wash my bike than my car...

People vary. I wash my bike about as often as I wash my car, which is
not very often. But I have a friend who keeps his motor vehicles so
pristine that the outgoing message on their phone is "I can't get to the
phone, and Fred is _probably_ outside washing his truck..."

I use fenders, and they get packed with leaves/needles and mud, so it's nice to blow them out.

I use fenders, but I must ride in much cleaner surroundings. I cut
though our little forest park pretty often, but that's mostly on gravel
paths so the bike doesn't get very dirty.

This is the MUP on the way back to my house through Tryon Creek State Park. https://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/me...all-colors.jpg Lots of maple and some fir needles, blow-down and the like. I don't have a lot of fender clearance with 28mm tires on my Synapse, so the fenders can get packed-up, but not enough to lock up the wheel. The Sunday ride also involved some brief gravel, mud, single track stuff, but not a lot.

Speaking of discs, they're great in the rain. One of the guys I was riding with yesterday was on a Kona CX bike with cantis/STI and aluminum rims. The brakes howled and didn't stop him. On one downhill, he had to bail out into a parking lot because he couldn't get the bike to stop at the bottom. Getting cantis and STI just right takes a lot of fussing, and they never stop that well IMO.

I wonder what pads he had. Most of our bikes have Kool Stops and they
work well in the rain, IME. The guy's howling brakes may give a clue to
his problems. I'll admit, cantis are fussy to set up. Perhaps he just
botched the job.

Could be. He's not a great wrench.


But there's never been a time in my life when I could have justified
switching from cantis to discs. My only memory of being unable to stop
in the rain was about 1974 or so, when our "ten speeds" had hard rubber
pads scraping on dimpled chrome steel rims, cheap Balilla center pull
brakes, and we were riding in a waterfall of a thunderstorm. Most of
those conditions are never going to be repeated.

I've been unable to stop on cantis while pulling my son in a trailer. I've been unable to stop with cable discs because I failed to adjust the pads as they wore -- which was a terrifying object lesson coming down a sled hill in the rain. My cantis of various brands from high-end Pauls to el cheap-o DiaComps never worked that well with STI levers. Certain pads and adjustments just made them suck less.

I could justify changing to discs just to save the cost of replacing rims. Rim brakes in wet dirty conditions are like lathes. Even if I wasn't wearing out rims, discs are so superior in wet weather that I would make the switch anyway. No great benefit in dry weather, but worth the added expense on the wet weather bikes. Hydraulic discs on a road bike are a luxury item. You don't have to worry about pad adjustment, cable drag or weak return springs, which is nice but perhaps not worth the fuss to some. A nice pair of cable discs with fresh pads still stop really well. I'm all hydraulic now.

Same here, maybe it's an Oregon commuter thing.

I re-rimmed my cantilevered Univega commuter at least twice, maybe three
times. But I learned the hard way to be careful after I left its first
rear rim to grind away to the point of failure - a blowout peeling off
about 18" of the top half of the brake track, fortunately at low speed.
That was well /after/ switching to Kool-stop salmon pads, which seemed
to wear rims less than the early ~1990 Shimano rim-eating pads.

When the Univega died of old age*, I replaced it with a Surly Disc
Trucker. The improvement in wet braking was astonishing.

About 1/4 mile into my commute there's a steep downhill block with a
stop at the bottom. On one rainy day I found myself reflexively
"testing" the brakes at the top to sweep the rain off the rims. and
smiled when I realized "I don't have to do that no more!"

Mark J.
[*] At ~24 years, the Univega developed large cracks in the unicrown
fork, noticed only b/c the crown sagged and pushed the fender down onto
the top of the tire. Angels look out for fools and children, so there
was no crash. I /had/ crashed the Univega about 15 years before and had
to realign the fork tips, but only about 1/2". If that caused the
failure 15 years later, it sure took a long time. I'm not complaining,
I got a lot of use out of that used-bike purchase.