Friday News And Views

Dang it! I hate when cool new frames are offered! (Bike Acquisition Syndrome kicking in!)

Advocate Cycles Announces Limited Edition Hayduke to Benefit IMBA:

There are some really great bicycles and frame sets out there these days. So when you see news of something new, it kind of goes without saying that much of the stuff I see is "just another bike". More "same-ol-same-ol", same deal, different day sort of feeling. However; there are those bicycles and frames that, for whatever reason, just jump out at me and make my knees go wobbly. The newest effort from Advocate Cycles has done just that.

So, what is it? This is a Hayduke with a special paint job honoring IMBA. In fact, 100% of the money from each Hayduke IMBA Special goes to support IMBA. (Side Note- Super cool, Topeak-Ergon Racing Team member and former mtb Pro racer, Dave Weins just became IMBA's new board chairman.)

I really was attracted to the wildest paint jobs on steel frames back in the early 90's. I recall Team Fat Chance bikes being some of those favorites in that vein, but there were others. This Hayduke just transports me back to the days when mountain biking was about fun and escaping reality. Not that it isn't that for many today, but that's pretty much all it was about back in the day. Anyway, that crazy paint job just takes me right back to the feelings I had about mountain biking in the early days of my enjoying the sport. Oh.......and I hear this isn't a bad riding bike as well. $800.00USD and the frame is yours. Tooooo tempting! Ahhhhhh!!!!

Waiting........

Gizmotron Update: 

I've been using the new Lezyne Super GPS off and on while learning the ropes behind the thing. Frankly.......I don't get the appeal. Yeah, you can do this, that, and the other thing, but it is all pretty meaningless drivel unless you have to follow a GPS track, which I'd get along just fine without.

It's probably just me. I know this because so many folks are hooked on Strava, looking at elevation gains, max speed, time over distance, power, yada, yada, yada. I guess I am really just a retro-grouch.

Okay, I suppose I should just focus on the positives. It has an accurate clock. I like that. It tracks mileage very well. It tracks your speed, which can be useful at times. (Just not under heavier tree cover, because then the speed indicator goes wonky.) You can make cool designs with the GPS bread crumb ride tracker, like geometric patterns, dog faces, or you could write someone's name, if you were industrious and so inclined. Otherwise it seems to be a big distraction from enjoying the ride for the ride that you are on. You remember riding for the joy of it, don't you? Do we really need more than that?

Well, being able to move it from bike to bike is nice. That's really the biggest reason I got it. I can swap it from one bike to another within a minute. Easy-peasy. So, I saved money in terms of not having to outfit ten bicycles with computers so I can keep track of my mileage over the course of a year. Not that I do that. I don't, but I do like to know how far a particular ride I might do is. That's all, really.

That said, I'll keep probing away and trying this new gizmotronical way of cycling. More soon......

Adventuring

Alternate (Easier) Paths:

Trail "sanitization" is an issue that plagues many a trail system and this local area has suffered from that sort of activity since I've been riding off road around here. Take George Wyth State Park, for example. Years of cutting corners, lenzing out low spots, and outright rerouting of trails has made that area less rad than it was back in the 90's. That's a fact. It's a constant battle, I am sure, even up to this day out there.

Well, over here in the Green Belt we've had so much erosion due to the unruly Black Hawk Creek's many out of banks experiences that trail changes are generally forced due to.......well, lack of Earth! The trail actually gets washed away.

There is one spot though that, if you remembered your Green Belt history, has always been a ditch you had to cross. Well, there was the five or so years that a cement culvert was there and covered with gravel. That got removed.....washed away? Something happened to it. Anyway, it is gone now again, and someone figured that to make it so it was easier, there would be a bit of a trail extension put in.

Bah! I'm not having anything to do with it. That ditch has been there since 1989, for sure, and probably long before that. The trail has always crossed over it at the point I show in the image above. So you have to do a little scrambling to get across?

Wah! 

It only adds to the adventure, in my opinion. The Green Belt is pretty much a cream puff of a trail, when it comes to technical difficulties, so why take out one of the coolest, toughest spots by making a reroute, that is across the same ditch further up, and probably will erode to depths similar to what we have had back at the original crossing spot. Heck, you already have two other spots you have to dismount and tip toe across water on stepping stones to get across, what's a bit of a ditch? Sheesh!

That's all for today. Have a great weekend and ride those bicycles!