Living in college-town paradise continues to be everything I ever wanted in a location and apartment. We had a nice visit from friends yesterday and I walked to a movie. I slept for a lot of the day to recover from the 12 hours of bike riding over the previous 2-days (after having done practically no real riding for more than a month). Routine suburban bike riding on easy trails and happy little streets (no stroads) has always made me the happiest. If I’m completely honest, a little gravel off-road connecting paved streets is the only loaded off-road riding I really enjoy. Bikepacking kinda sucks unless you do it ultra-light. It’s not as fun as trail riding or enduro, and not as immersive as bike touring or backpacking. Hopefully, living in an apartment will allow me to save some money for “credit card tours” with friends (since owning a home is just stupid in 2024). Keshy is, therefore, getting setup for routine suburban rides.
We had our first visitor yesterday, a close friend and her toddler son. They are back from Europe where they were visiting. I’m so looking forward to actually learning how to fly fish from her husband. He’s also quite the endurance athlete so we might be able to pair up on some training here and there.
I walked to Alien: Romulus movie yesterday. It was horrible.
The walk, however, was glorious under a full moon. Being able to walk to anything I could ever need or want is unbelievably amazing.
The only way that would be better is if there was a storage unit closer. Looks like I just found one that has 24-hour access (unless the current one) so I’ll be moving units as well. That will mean I can do all my bike shop mechanics stuff about a block from the best local bike shop.
I’ve been through the cycle of preparation instead of riding twice now (and blimped out losing all my fitness in the process). Something about all the stress of preparation not only robs the ride of all the fun but also increases my cortisol to critical levels.
You’d think I would have learned all this by now. The best way for me to bike is to do it daily, usually on the same suburban route. It takes the least amount of thought and the familiarity and regularity of it is calming, like a toddler obsessed with repeating the same action because it is calming. I don’t have to even worry about anything because I know exactly what to expect.
Plus, it’s absolutely the best possible thing for my health. Three hours of zone one and two heart rate is the single best regular activity I can do for my health except some sort of regular strength training to counter my age-related loss of muscle.
Leaving at or around 3:30pm every afternoon and not riding more than 30 miles ensures I get at least three hours of riding in before dark, no matter what time of year. Now that I can walk out of my door and start a bike ride it’s just so easy.
After riding several hours on gravel roads these last few days (and going down hard because of gravel + bad tubeless) I realized something: I hate riding off-road with any weight on my bike at all. After a ton of testing, I’ve concluded that Tour Divide with a touring bike as heavy as mine carrying livestreaming gear (even with the Mini) would be disastrously horrible. I just liked the idea of it, not the reality. The only way for me to ever attempt something like Tour Divide (while live streaming it) would be to do the very slow GDMBR instead and also buy a new carbon bike that I can easily lift over my head. Perhaps someday, perhaps not.
Tour Divide riding allows for the fun of riding a trail bike but only if you drop the cash for a bike that weighs enough fully loaded to hold over your head. Anything other than that is just to heavy to allow the ride to be enjoyed. Instead, slow bike touring the GDMBR with a loaded touring bike in the way to go. The problem with the GDMBR is that is has several sections that are more than 50 miles between resupply making riding it as a DNB, even an UDNB just untenable.
I am putting on the gravel 700x38c tires back on. With slime tubes they are significantly lighter than 29x2.1” Mezcals—especially considering rotational weight. The Mezcals did prove to be the perfect tires for riding gravel+ chuncky roads with occasional single-track, the Tour Divide type stuff. But they come with a huge cost.
The heavier and wider Mescal tires rub on the frame just a bit on occasion. No matter how well centered I get them. They flex enough to make contact. The flex is nice for smoothing out the bumps but horrible for corning on concrete and tarmac. Not having the exact best pressure can easily end in going down on a turn. The gravel tires are exactly perfect for this scenario. Grippy enough to take corners and still knobby enough to not have a wet leaf or mossy forest trail bridge slide out (unlike Nina who has no tractions whatsoever on anything but dry pavement). Plus, no more asinine tubeless.
Thinner tires means I can put my kickstand back on. That’s right, a kickstand. People can say whatever they want but people who actually ride their bikes daily for hours to do anything and everything absolutely know what I’m talking about. Pros and posers can talk shit all they want about my “gravel dad bike with a kickstand”, but I put in probably 10 more hours a week on my bike than their super-hero, can-tell-if-their-Jewish-or-not, beer-bellied bodies stuffed into spandex sausage casings.
Aero-bars are coming off. They are very nice, but not necessary when only riding three to five hours average per day on mostly paved roads. They also make live streaming harder.
Headlight is going back on. It makes for better visibility and will keep me on the bike after dark around town on occasion.
No helmet. My rides, while long, are not ever in places where a helmet would make any difference at all. People forget that wearing a helmet in Amsterdam is laughed at because of how unnecessary it is. It is more important to change the way I bike and the routes than it is to build a false sense of security by putting on helmet. It means hitting the brakes much more on descents, taking sidewalks instead of questionable bike lanes, and becoming essentially a pedestrian on a bike. People don’t wear helmets when they go trail running in places they are bound to trip. People drive 80 mph on highways when a tire could blow up and send the car rolling in ways no seat-belt or airbag would save. In fact, the airbag is likely more dangerous than riding without a helmet all by itself.
With the median house price at 450 thousand the ability for anyone to pay for any house at all and not have it consume more than 30% of their monthly expenses is impossible. Real estate investment has pushed the price of a home way beyond that of most people, even double income, well-paid technologists. Even though our combined income is well over a quarter million dollars a year it still makes no sense to own a home in 2024 (unless you got in 12 years ago when prices and rates where reasonable). This apartment living is absolutely perfect.