General Bike Thread (Desiderata, Questions, Pics)

[Fueco]

I'm doubt the words "sword", "wheelbarrow", and "jogger" were ever previously together in a sentence in human history; you can't make this sh!t up.

Normal Person: “That can’t be done!”

Florida Man: “Hold my Coors Light!”

 

[HRoi]

The jogger wouldn’t let the cart go even when the other guy unleashed a swing that would have taken both his arms off at the elbow

 

[Texasmade]

If you’re a pedestrian, you’re supposed to go against traffic. This is so you can see on coming traffic and react. If you’re riding a bike you’re supposed to with traffic.

In my neighborhood, the bike trail is shared with runners and walkers. Typically the biker is supposed to yell “to your left” to let you know they’re riding up on you and to move right. I find it annoying as **** when I’m out jogging or walking and bikers just zoom by without letting me know they’re coming up so I can move out of the way.

 

[Piobaire]

If you’re a pedestrian, you’re supposed to go against traffic. This is so you can see on coming traffic and react. If you’re riding a bike you’re supposed to with traffic.

In my neighborhood, the bike trail is shared with runners and walkers. Typically the biker is supposed to yell “to your left” to let you know they’re riding up on you and to move right. I find it annoying as **** when I’m out jogging or walking and bikers just zoom by without letting me know they’re coming up so I can move out of the way.

I swear to god if you do the "to your left" half the time they step left and I end up yelling, "NO, YOUR OTHER LEFT!" With the new Zipps I just coast a bit as the angry bees sound really carries.

 

[Texasmade]

I swear to god if you do the "to your left" half the time they step left and I end up yelling, "NO, YOUR OTHER LEFT!" With the new Zipps I just coast a bit as the angry bees sound really carries.

It's just like traffic where the faster vehicles use the left lane and slower people use the right lanes. I don't get why it's so hard to understand for bikers, walkers, and runners.

 

[HRoi]

Just to be clear, this is the kind of setup I’m talking about. This is a different part of Florida - maybe next ride I’ll take an actual pic of ours - but it’s pretty much the same. With less vehicular traffic on a Sunday morning , to be fair.

Imagine encountering runners running against traffic in that entire green bike lane plus half of the lane (for cars) beside it. Sidewalk is as empty as the pic below.

oh and further east (where there are golf courses), I saw a golf cart traveling against traffic in the bike lane. Thankfully I was traveling in the opposite direction.

 

[smittycl]

I swear to god if you do the "to your left" half the time they step left and I end up yelling, "NO, YOUR OTHER LEFT!" With the new Zipps I just coast a bit as the angry bees sound really carries.

I really hate folks who wear ear buds, which is literally everybody now, as I have no idea if they hear me calling out or ringing my bell. It’s only a matter of time before someone does a Crazy Ivan right in front of me.

 

[sugarbutch]

( quick background: 20+ year MTBer about 2/3'rd of a year in on a Domane, my first roadbike...)

So, the good news is that I didn't wreck...

Cooler weather this morning for my sprint run so was at it hard (I love cool/cold weather). Out of the saddle on the hoods, got aggressive while way over on a turn at speed and - wham - really hit the bottom peddle into the pavement. Foot instantly off, my mtb platforms spin around and whack a chunk out of my shin. Being up and over the front, the rear came loose and, honestly, thought I was going to high-side it and go over the front but managed to settle it and ride it out. Didn't even stop, completed the remaining 8 or so of my 14mi in decent time (!!!)

Wish someone got it on video because I'm sure it would have looked like I should have wrecked; got lucky for once! Well, almost, a visit to Centra Care and 9 stitches later and my leg is throbbing as I write this. Ugh, cool weather and I can't bike for at least a week...

Ok, the real reason I write this - I'm used to getting way over on my mtb or even my more recent DualSport and pedaling through and almost never ever hitting the pavement. Maybe a glance once a year at most but now I've done it a few times on the Domane in less than 8 months, today's being the worst. I'm wondering if...

1) Is this bad technique on a road bike? Maybe I'm just treating it like a higher clearance MTB and I shouldn't be and I need to unlearn hard pedaling while leaned over in turns.

2) My bike is too small? I got an L instead of an XL; would the XL have a standing higher clearance meaning it could lean further before bottoming out the pedal? I'm 6'3 and the L feels like the right size (and my shop agreed)

3) I'm platform pedals forever but have my MTB ones on with metal spikes; going to be switching them out for something rubberized pronto (I've had other shin impacts that required stitches for other reasons and am really over losing chunks of my leg). I suspect they are too wide and I should look at specifically getting narrower ones.

4) Maybe I should get slightly shorter length crank arms? I'm very comfortable with my current sizing and doubt saving just a few mm is going to make enough of a difference to throw my pedaling geometry out the window.

Anything else I'm missing that could alleviate this? Really, really don't want to have it happen again and - dammit! - going aggressive into and out of turns (especially the S's) is my favorite part of riding - I don't want to have to dial it back.

I think there are probably a few factors at work here. On your mountain bike, if you're that far leaned over, is the turn a bit banked? If so, there's going to be more clearance for your pedal even without the higher bottom bracket. Platform pedals are definitely going to eat into your maximum lean angle. Power and efficiency aside, clearance is definitely an advantage of road clipless.

 

[otc]

I really hate folks who wear ear buds, which is literally everybody now, as I have no idea if they hear me calling out or ringing my bell. It’s only a matter of time before someone does a Crazy Ivan right in front of me.

I literally had to yell at a woman on the trail a few months ago because she couldn't hear my normal voice or my raised voice.

 

[patrick_b]

The jogger wouldn’t let the cart go even when the other guy unleashed a swing that would have taken both his arms off at the elbow

Free **** is like PCP...gives some people superhuman abilities.

 

[patrick_b]

I picked up a Wahoo Kickr this weekend. Hadn't been on the bike in 10 days with our awful weather so it felt great to ride again. Set up to communicate with PC was super easy. Bluetooth marries the two in seconds. I am amazed at how smooth and quiet it is.

Not sure I love the zwift video game-like animation but the simulated hills feel like an actual ride so I hope to get used to it. Surprisingly, I kind of like seeing power numbers. It's cool to see the watts drop and spike as you descend or climb. Not interested in a regimented training plan but want to mimic actual riding. I love the idea of virtually riding the Alpe d'Huez one day.

Had no idea how many different platforms there are (Sufferfest, Fulgaz, BKool,Trainerroad). Fulgaz looks like less virtual reality and more actual video of rides. I'll give their trial a shot as well but I can't imagine the 2D nature of video is any more realistic than the animated version.

This shows a comparison of fluugaz/zwift.

 

[otc]

I'm feeling kinda let down by the Bolt v2 on the MTB side of things.

The lack of trailforks-type integration really sucks, and because it can't figure out where trails are, stuff like strava live segments are also mostly useless offroad.

Here's a shot from a youtube video of a garmin 530 that has trailforks integration...

Maybe that's a little too zoomed out to be useful, but it tells you what trail you are on, and it tells you names (and color ratings) of the trails that you might encounter at a fork/trailhead. The names thing alone would be helpful when exploring...if you find yourself on a stretch of trail and think "this is super fun, I wonder which trail it is", you can just look down rather than stop, pull out your phone, open an app, wait for a GPS fix...

On the Bolt, if I know which trails I want to ride in advance, I can go on the Trailforks website and draw out a route (or download a "recommended" route from Trailforks or MTB project) and load the .GPX file into the Elemnt app. This gives you enough guidance that you can usually figure out where you are going at a fork and will usually give you elevation data so you know if you have big climbs or descents coming up. Although because it doesn't know the trails that are not on your route, you can still get mixed up at forks ('does that bend in the line on the map mean slight left or hard left?') and have to backtrack.

And that leads to another place the Wahoo suffers. If you end up off-route, it freaks the **** out. Whether that's because you took a wrong turn, wanted to explore a b-line, or because the GPS track simply doesn't perfectly line up with the actual physical trail...all it knows is suddenly you are off-route and need to be rerouted to the final destination.

In my area, the stock maps might include handful of trails in a given system (usually multitrack/fire roads, maybe some long established multi-use trails). So the second you are off-route, instead of just saying "hey, you're off, but you're still travelling in the right direction and your pre-set route is 100' to the right of you" it beeps at you a few times and says "HEY! STOP! You need to turn around, get on this fire road, take it 1.5 miles west, turn right onto this walking path, and take that .5 miles until it intersects with the trail you are supposed to be riding on".

If you could just download all the trails in a network, the whole thing would work much better...Garmin seems to have no problem supporting that feature.

 

[otc]

And for the record, this was my ride yesterday...lot of wrong-turn potential in a place like this:

The Bolt only really recognizes the brown/tan lines and maybe a couple of the greens that are somewhat official (but not that one on the bottom left that is perfectly straight and clearly an access road...)

 

[razl]

I think there are probably a few factors at work here. On your mountain bike, if you're that far leaned over, is the turn a bit banked? If so, there's going to be more clearance for your pedal even without the higher bottom bracket.

Good point but not in this case. While I hail from a MTB background, the past 10 years have all been on pavement and the route I nearly wrecked on yesterday is the same one I'd been doing on 2 different DualSports for at least 7+ years. So, int this case, apples-to-apples as far as terrain is concerned

Platform pedals are definitely going to eat into your maximum lean angle. Power and efficiency aside, clearance is definitely an advantage of road clipless.

Hmmm, I may not like it but maybe I need to revisit and give them a real shot...

 

[UnFacconable]

On the biker runner thing, I have some sympathy for both sides. As a runner, sidewalks can be annoying and are worse for your joints. As a cyclist, it can be annoying when you have a lot of runners in your path. On the other hand, some cyclists are inveterate assholes. Not all, but enough to where it's noticeable. Sure, some of all people can be assholes, but I have to say I've almost never come across a mountain biker or a hiker who is an asshole.

I used to run all the time in the bike lane of a pretty popular / touristy thoroughfare in my city. There were a decent number of bikers but it was easy enough for them to get around me. I passed as many bikers on my run as bikers passed me (think lots of slow tourist bikers). The sidewalks were annoying to run on because of all the pedestrians but I would flip up to the sidewalk when I saw a pack of bikers to make it easier for them to pass.

The bike lane was just a normal bike lane and my runs were typically on weekends or times when there were no commuters, so I maybe had a few dozen or so that would pass me during my 10 mile run.

I rarely had any issues with bikers because the vast majority recognized that I was going at a decent clip and they would just call out on your left and ride around me. I probably had a few hundred or more pass me over the years. There were a few assholes who would flip me off or yell at me and one guy even took a swipe at my shoulder. So maybe 1% were problematic.

I guess my point is, people have their reasons for running in a bike lane and unless it's really a safety problem, I would assume you could appreciate that people want to be outdoors exercising and that it's not that hard to slightly adjust your ride when you come across one.