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See an amateur like me or you would spec 650 48 + guards but that would just encourage greedy piggies to fit 27.5 X 2.1 without guards, ride around in some godforsaken bog path in November and say things like "full send"
650 X 42 means you're forced to use overpriced, fragile and imported tyres like Rene herse or gran Bois which you can nurse around lanes, as God intended.
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I did some MOUNTAIN BIKING (tm) today.
I even took my helmet to try and get that big ol placebo in safety protection, and let some air out of my front tyre to maximise that contact patch.
If you’re familiar with the county of Berkshire you’ll know there are no mountains, nor are there really any hills. We’ve documented this many times now in this thread. What there is however, is very steep mounds of dirt, you’ll never go down more than 50 meters or so, but you’ll climb and descend that 50 meters 4 or 5 times in the same trail.
This became painfully apparent to me on my first detour into one of the DIY trails over by hut hill, lots of twisty and tight trails with short and steep kickers, gears were clunking over time, manageable but no sweet down country. A couple hundred meters of this and then You hit a steep climb to the trail head.
At the start I assumed I was just doing this backwards, but after doing this another 2 or so times I realised that they all seemed to be bi directional and neither direction was a sweet no effort roll down hill.
Maybe this is different on the formal trails?
Hucking over to the infamous blue tech bit, first time on my big bike; recently CRUSHED on my single speed, I got to it. As you can imagine it wasn’t as riveting as on the 35c tiny bike, but much like my original review, there was a comforting amount of plush carrying around berms and over the lumps. It didn’t feel like the fight for survival it did in the previous review of this section
“Time for a red”
At the back of this trail you can ride 20 foot and be into a red section, i chose to do this. It was much more of the up and down roller coaster trail building previously seen but with a bit more of a deliberate design. I was getting into it at this point, getting a little cocky, luckily the builder saw yuppie monster cross riders like me coming and had built what can only be described as a meandering gutter of wall rides as a finale.
“What the fuck?? How does one ride this”
As if the mountain bikers heard such a call from a gravel biker and were looking to score a nice 3 pointer from mid court a full suss project manager steamed by and and rode the feature effortlessly.
“Oh like that i suppose”
While I gave it a go I kept getting caught out by the uphill sections, 2 foot downs, absolutely no chance of a medal position score. To my credit however, I did finish. It wasn’t pretty but it was empowering, I sought out another section and this time it’s token feature was some raised decking, a “skinny” I believe they call it.
“This is ableist, absolutely disgusting, how is a dyspraxic woman who can barely keep it on the road supposed to ride this???”
The answer was simply “I didn’t” I edged my bike around the side shaking my head, choosing to double down on out woking the trail feature instead of admitting my fear and lack of skill.
One thing had become clear in this point however, other than my lack of talent, it’s that I had received a suspiciously low amount of waves and thank yous from the Santa Cruz gang, shed hard tail gang? They were throwing them out if you even made eye contact. The Santa Cruz gang tho, might as well have been a Windsor chain gang.
Disgusting, must be the micro plastics from their carbon rotting their brains.
At this point I was bonking hard, to be honest I had been bonking since I left, I had a slap up breakfast but not much yesterday and I was feeling it.
I was out of tea, I’d eaten my pbj, my homebrew lucazade was half gone and I had a bag of prawn cocktail left.One more DIY? Yeah.
I went back to the hut hill side and found this swweweeeet' double drop down gutter run pushing up from a different line. Last time I encountered one of these I backed out but not today, I was just dehydrated enough and had my trusty helmet.
Reaching the top I shuffled the bike round and tried the “if I don’t brake I have to ride it as it’s too steep to stop with rim brakes” technique
Worked a charm
The first drop, boing, the second boingier, and the whole time trying not to clip a boutique pedal or bar end, but I did it, it felt awesome. So much so I forgot to shift up my cassette and had to push up the other side. But didn’t stop me smiling.
At this point I was pretty zombified I rolled to the edge and took the quick way home. Soon to pay for my day of fun with a tumble as I forgot to put the air in my tyre before leaving, causing me to wash out on the cycle path. I only realised it was more the air than my physical state when I jumped off a kerb and pinch flatted my tube for a further delay.
But it was nice, I was in one of many parks and I didn’t have tubeless tyres so i could actually change them without peeling the skin from my thumbs.
I only took two pics today, which I suppose shows How much fun I was having, or how carb deficient I was, I’ll let you decide.
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https://cyclinguphill.com/100-climbs/streatley-hill/
I think Streatley is in Berkshire
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@andyp i refuse to believe this, it makes my world view easier
@Tijs adds to the supple ride quality allowing it to flex
today i took a ride to the edge of london, not usually a destination spot one would map for but I had some motivation due to the lovely @jimalex . they dmed me a couple of weeks ago saying they had bought some pedals for their lovely crust build and decided against flats, that if I wanted to come collect them and make a donation somewhere, i could have them.
honestly i was a bit like "damn..", it was very kind and i do love pedals.
it took a couple of weeks to organise as they seem to be a very busy person, or at least, unlike me, don't dedicate their whole lives to writing verbose posts in a build thread. When we finally found a mutual date I was informed they were isolating due to having been out the country for work and they'd leave them by their gate.
It wasn't a very inspired route I took, i plotted gravel bike ride on komoot between our two addresses and got to it, it was nice to retrace some roads i had taken a couple of years ago when i first got into riding as well as some new ones.
when i finally arrived at their street i was having some trouble finding their address, and their elderly neighbour, suspicious of this person hanging out looking at their phone, frantically sucking on a water bottle asked if they could help. to their credit and curiosity they could, i was informed i'd cycled past it and i should head back a little, there it was!
i left some stickers, put the pedals in my stem bag and folded the box into my interior vest pocket and set off home.
The ride was all down hill and tail wind out, other than a few lumps around thorpe and virginia water it was a blast and fast, coming back however my gearing just about coped. I was shocked when i made it up cheapside hill, if anything, the short sharp climb was better for the legs than the endless 1-3% drags around it.
it ended up being the longest ride in a while; im feeling it now in conjunction with my fall yesterday. but it was good to do none the less, the pomp is a great bike! made all the nicer by @jimalex
here is a video of them spinning
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Lovely hillclimb
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rode some gnarly stuff today and ate and entire sainsboss taste the difference, free from, butter scotch chocolate bar. i recommend doing both if you get the chance, but if you can only do one, go for the chocolate bar.
found a nice DIY run which makes use of a red route section to take you back up, but provides something a bit more fun/ less rocky when going down. got to admit the features either side of this photograph took me a few dry runs to work up the courage to go over the step down. the final push was when a full sus guy came past, shouting hi and just sailing through all of it.
one way is a step down into some roots and then a steep up hill, the other is a choice of a gully like berm switch back with a step down in, or are very rooty and fast long corner, i took the rooty long corner.
felt pretty rad tbqh, but made me want a helmet with more head protection to avoid cracking the melon.
I also found out how the one forest path trail works over by hut hill, so you can go up over a technical section, then down the fast side of the hill through this tree tunnel, was a really good way to finish a couple of hours pottering about
highlight of the day was seeing a man on a mtb unicycle taking on the blue trail, seemed more confident than me on his respective bike.
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Yep. Steel bars are great on rigid bikes, especially Stooge steel bars. As is a really upright position atmo.
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No-one can tell how bad your coffee is when you drink it #outside
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What @yoshy said.. Crash pad to match the paint is the BlueLug way.
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About
MAJs gay bikes [she’s in her fitness era]
Posted by
@Maj
Only adjustment I'd make is clearance for 650x48 and guards, other than that you've got it pretty much spot on.
Maybe you should design bikes for a job, you seem to have a knack for it.