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I think I’m going for a New Year’s Day bike ride in downtown Pittsburgh. Judy wants me to spend New Year’s Eve with her so I’ll be right down there. I’m not crazy about riding in the city but traffic should be light on NYD. The Western PA Wheelmen's annual New Year's Day ride. We start in Southside Works near REI. All are welcome. Meet at South Side Works near REI nominally at 10:45 AM, with the ride leaving at 11 AM. Please arrive early. Exact route and distance depends on weather conditions. Continuing recent tradition, we'll collect a $5 voluntary donation for the Community Human Services food pantry (www.chscorp.org/) A baseline route is here: https://ridewithgps.com/routes/29092849 From South Side Works ride to the Western End Bridge, then through the North Shore area to the 31th Street Bridge. Then along Penn to the end, when we cross over to Boulevard of the Allies. Ride on roads relatively free of cars during the holiday. Roads will likely be safer than trails in icy conditions, but we will play it by ear. Use common sense. Helmets required to ride and all riders please sign in for insurance purposes when you arrive. An event of the Western Pennsylvania Wheelmen (WPW). All are welcome. Even you. Really. Icycle Bicycle is a WPW club tradition spanning decades. We usually grab a table or 2 after the ride at Hofbrauhaus after the ride

How are you doing on your cycling/exercise goals for the year? I had planned to ride 4K this year, 3K at the very minimum. But I am now only at 1.85K and am just looking to make 2K at this point. This is the fewest miles I have ridden since 2017 (1,821 miles), when I inexplicably abandoned riding for walking for the last third of the year. This year, it has been major back problems. I couldn't exercise very much for most of the summer. Even now, I can't risk riding outdoors due to my back/spine problems. But it could always be worse. I am thankful for that.

...and are you headed to the US Nationals CX races this weekend?

...off my rear wheel (eventually). Still gotta find a wheel building class and/or spend a lot of time with trial and error, but at least the replacement rim arrived and the winter is approaching! Old Zipp that cracked @ ~593gm: New Carbonyl rim at ~531gm: Side by side with very similar depth and a fancier grooved rim on the new rim: With the stripped Powertap waiting for the spokes and build to commence:

. Not sure how it knew I was getting to go for a ride. I think SIRI snitches on me. Anyhoo lots of songs like this one. Way too much MFing on most of the songs. I discovered it does make me go faster. Got a PR and a 2nd place that was only 26 seconds slower than PR.

I wish that I'd have this idea for a TV show. The guy rides his bike around cities visiting different restaurants. You've probably heard that almost everything tastes good after riding 30 miles, but the food he critiques looks amazing. So far he's ridden in the following cities: Asheville, NC - Boston, MA - Bozeman, MT - Eugene, OR - Minneapolis, MN - Savannah, GA - Solvang, CA - St. Louis, MO I haven't seen the St. Louis episode yet. It's on EarthxTV.

Uh, not so much Honestly, while I like the convenience of a box delivered to my door and that it can be broken down and reused later, it seems WAY more convoluted and probably pricier (not sure what it costs) vs just hitting up an LBS for a free box.

Alexey vermeulen wins again And I several friends who race it. Couple age group podiums 👍 https://www.athlinks.com/event/35208/results/Event/1034763/Results

I had a spoke replaced in the rear wheel, and I noticed on my second or third ride that there was a tiny bump on TWICE on each rotation - with an apparent high spot on opposite sides of the wheel. Out on the road, I basically put my finger on the brake bridge, and gave the wheel a spin. I could get it so the tire contacted my finger twice briefly on each revolution, but I haven't looked at it at home yet. You barely notice climbing at 8mph, but descending at 30, it is fairly obvious. @Rattlecan or others, is it likely that spoke tension when the wheel was fixed would do this? I thought it might be the tire, but before I replace a tire (it still has a little meat on it) I want to eliminate (or blame) the wheel).

I was riding going west with the sun in my eyes right at sunset. I worry about people being blinded by the sun and not seeing me. A truck pulling a large horse trailer comes out the road to my left. He stops at the stop sign, pauses a few seconds and then pulls out right as I was getting to the road. The sun wasn’t blinding him, I was to his right, the sun was to his left. As I hit my brakes the horses stomped their feet as if they agreed with me that the driver was an idiot. I came within two feet of hitting him.

I have Shimano GRX hydraulic disc brakes, and I'd like to move regular maintenance or even upgrades "in house". Since my MTB is rim brakes as is my road bike, I have zero experience and no tools for working on them. I'd think there must be a core set of tools that make sense for maintenance but also other brake work. What do folks suggest be in my toolbox? What is overkill?

We knew he was going, now it is semi-official and he ought to be on a Tour-invited team, so he might have a real shot in 2023. We'll see! British rider Mark Cavendish, targeting a record number of Tour de France stage wins, is set to join the B&B Hotels-KTM team, a source close to the French outfit said Monday. The 37-year-old is at the end of this contract with the Belgian Quick-Step team who overlooked him for the Tour de France this year. Cavendish made a resounding comeback in the 2021 Tour de France, winning the green points jersey as well as four stages to equal Eddy Merckx's record of 34 stage successes. He only needs one more to surpass the Belgian and has shown again this year that it is within his reach, becoming British champion nine years after his previous title. He also won Milan-Turin in March and his 16th stage of the Giro d'Italia in May. Cavendish will pen his new contract on October 26 in Paris, on the eve of the Tour de France presentation.

Christian Vande Velde rode this bike yesterday. IMO this is one of the best looking bikes oot there. Always liked the polished stays & fork

...by the mother-effing weather app but it was my own damn fault as well. Weekends are for riding, so looking at the forecast a few days in advance - Fri "nice", Sat "nice" and Sun "rainy". Plus, Sun was visit family in the afternoon, so ride on Sat was the best option. So, I do my thing, get my rides in, and am happy on Sat's ride UNTIL I get home and my buddy texts me. A guy we sometimes ride with - Type A hammer young 'un - is interested in riding on Sun and wanted to know if I'd take him on some local gravel. Well, damn, weathers going to be yucky, I'm not gonna feel like chasing a kid up and down hills, and I have the afternoon thing, so it would be tough. Maybe next weekend? Well, Sun starts. The weather gets CONTINUOUSLY better, and I get some odds-and-ends sorted early, so after an early lunch, I head out for a walk to at least get some fresh air. Midway into the shortish walk, my wife calls saying they moved the family stuff to later in the week, so I didn't need to be home by a certain time. Long story short - had the app said Sun would be glorious, I would have ridden easy Sat, ridden with the youngster on Sun, and been happy as a tired clam. Instead, I'm sure the effing app will again make me think bad weather is looming and cause me to screw up my plans. I need @BuffJim to start sending my real and accurate forecasts instead of the nonsense I rely on.

I’m going for a ride. Anyone want to join me? I should be back before dark.

Heck, this moran didn't even realize it's easier to FLY! Duh! Spring Break is about MAXIMIZING booze drinking and meeting ladies!!! There are 2445 miles stretching between the loblolly pine trees around Jacksonville, Fla., and the waves crashing upon Imperial Beach south of San Diego, Calif. Between lies the rolling white dunes of the Gulf Islands National Seashore, elegant saguaro cacti of the Southwest, and the towering In-Ko-Pah Mountains in Southern California. To make it from Jacksonville to San Diego in two weeks, one would have to travel an average of 175 miles a day, so while it is a long trip, it would be relatively easy in a car. But when Artie Carpenter ’25 made the trip over spring break, it wasn’t in a car; it was on the back of what he described as his “trusted steed”: his bicycle. While this cross-continental ride isn’t Carpenter’s longest trip — that title goes to the 3100-mile trip he took on his gap year in September 2020 from Brooklyn, N.Y., to Marin County, Calif. — it is his most intense, since he needed to bike for more miles per day to make it in time. This trip was the latest of a series of biking adventures that extend all the way back to his childhood. In ninth grade, Carpenter went on his first long-distance bike trip. Together with a friend, he decided to bike 50 miles north of his home in Brooklyn to Bear Mountain State Park, N.Y. It was disastrous, to the point where the two ended up taking a full day to reach the park when it should have only taken them a few hours. Despite the unexpected detour, Carpenter was hooked. “It was still a lot of fun,” he said. “It was the longest I’d been on a bike in one day, and then it just continued from there.” Trips these days for Carpenter range from cross-country voyages to casual rides up into Vermont or down Route 43 to something in between, like a trip he took to the border of Canada during reading period last fall. “I set these kinds of destinations for myself that don’t really matter,” he said. “They give me enough time where I can really have a fun, memorable journey there.” Carpenter barely does any planning for his trips, either, preferring instead to explore whatever place he finds himself in while on the road. “In general, it’s extremely simple,” he said, speaking about his most recent bike ride to San Diego. “You just wake up, and you bike west. That’s it.” That mindset has taken Carpenter to some interesting places, like a lively restaurant in Lufkin, Texas. With his biking gear and attire, he naturally drew the attention of the patrons, who asked him what he was doing. From there, he was sucked into conversation, and they even bought him a second dinner. “It puts people in a good mood to hear about something that they don’t encounter in everyday life,” he said. According to Carpenter, this kindness isn’t an uncommon occurrence. “They see [me] and [my] position, and the kind of mileage [I’m] doing, and they want to help out,” he said. “Whenever I’m buying more Clif bars at a grocery store, often people ask me what I’m doing, and I tell them, and then they’ll say, ‘I’m gonna pray for you’ or things like that.” Of course, not everything goes perfectly. Because of the distance he had to travel every day on his trip from Florida to California, maintaining his energy was a challenge. “It was two weeks, but it felt like two months, just because I was awake for so long,” Carpenter said. “I was getting six hours of sleep a night.” This was made worse in West Texas and New Mexico, where strong headwinds slowed him down, and he had to stay on the bike for longer to make up for lost time. The weather also wasn’t always nice; Carpenter recalled a day when the temperature jumped from the upper 30s to the mid 90s in the span of half a day. He also had to deal with multiple flat tires, once because he ran through a patch of thorns that took out both tires until he could repair them. Perhaps the most extreme aspect of these long bike rides was the lack of human interaction for hours on end, but Carpenter said that he took it all in stride. “You can’t expect it to be seamless, doing that distance in two weeks,” he said. “And so it was just kind of like another challenge that you deal with.” “That’s one of the elements that makes it memorable, and that makes you really feel like you’re doing something that you’re not gonna forget and be able to tell stories from it,” he added. To get through the hardest parts of the journey, Carpenter said that he developed a strategy. “I see a signpost, and I say, ‘Alright, get to there,’ then make it to the next little feature in the road, and you just kind of keep building,” he said. “You build on small wins in that way. And then eventually, the miles just tick by, and you’re able to make pretty long distances.” At the end of the two weeks, Carpenter had made it to the shores of Southern California. It was cold and cloudy, and he couldn’t see the ocean until he was 20 seconds away from his destination, but that didn’t take away from his feeling of celebration and accomplishment. “You’ve done something crazy, and now, you can just rest and take a break, and you don’t need to get back on the bike the next day,” he said. For now, Carpenter said that he hopes to bike more often around campus as the days get warmer and continue competing with the cycling team. But once summer arrives, it’s practically guaranteed that he will be back on his bike for hours on end again. “These big trips are like an ode to a bicycle,” he said. “It’s just like an amazing piece of machinery. The more I go, the more I’m like, ‘Holy crap’… The more people [bike], the better off we’ll be.”

...about why we might not hit the same number as last year. I, for one, know I will end the year with fewer miles than last year - probably over 500 less - and sort of know why. Crashing and COVID really kiboshed some late spring riding plus a few vacations. 2021 I got to ride in CA for March through June, so, with perfect weather, my early season numbers were up for sure but I also lost time to ride with driving back and forth across the US and other vacations. March 2021 was about 600 miles, but March 2022 was 235! April was closer, but 2022 was still behind 2021. Damn CA ☀️🌴 So, all things considered, I guess losing a couple weeks due to injury & illness, plus not having nice weather in March and into April probably hurt my totals and my contribution to the Cafe's goal of 50k. How about you?

Headlight season is BACK Jeebus - can't even easily start a ride after work now without using a headlight. Winter is coming and, sadly, Fall is here. Adios prime cycling season. Hello hibernation and dodging critters in the dark.

...or rather, please don't be a dick when passing me on a road while I'm riding. I was like, "Should I bother?" and then I was like, "a parent might - just very slightly might - GAS what their kid(s) are up to." Thank you for using the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office Traffic Complaint Form. The Traffic Safety Section has received your complaint in reference to the area of Dry Mill Road (approaching Shenstone Run Ct). A deputy will be assigned, and you will receive feedback.

...and stealing his KoMs! Another reason to hate the Brits!

...but maybe next year The FNLD GRVL Dates Have Dropped The date for the inaugural FNLD GRVL is set for June 10, 2023 in Lahti, Finland, when our new world-class gravel event debuts in Northern Europe. The brainchild of Formula 1 driver Valtteri Bottas and the team behind SBT GRVL, FNLD GRVL will feature three course distances with a 20k Euro pro prize purse. Registration for FNLD GRVL will open on November 15, 2022. The Main Event Just like SBT GRVL, FNLD will be a one-day race wrapped in a four-day event. Starting June 8 and rolling through June 11, a full weekend of activities and entertainment for all will include social rides, an expo, a packed schedule of events and will be tied to advocacy efforts including environmental sustainability & climate change. Stay tuned to Instagram, Facebook, and emails for more information. 2023 FNLD GRVL Pricing Will Be as Follows: Midnight Sun 177k course: $200 Lakes 77k course: $150 Forest 40k course: $100

...sort of sucked. I expected it to be sketchy and not super awesome as it is the first time, but I gotta say, my local gravel would have been a FAR FAR more competitive and interesting race course. The one in Italy was just dopey. Beautiful from an ARCHITECTURAL standpoint, but not even remotely "gravel" in look or feel I think @bikeman564™'s Waffle Ride (or the original Waffle Ride or DK race) would be INFINITELY better as World's championship race course. Sure, not gonna get the Euro pros at the races in quite the same levels, but really, is it important to have ROAD pros in the GRAVEL races?

Belgium Waffle Ride did their first MI version this weekend. They have a 75 & this 135 version.

Why does cycling go so well with beer and with coffee? Seems pretty awesome, eh? Anyway, this video got me chuckling (and maybe @Old No. 7 too?). My favorite, though, is ee-in Prosit

From Trek Travel: Do you know someone that is looking for a serious road bike upgrade? Are you looking for a great deal on the best bikes in the business this holiday season? We have you covered! We are updating our bikes for our 2023 season, which means YOU or a loved one can receive up to 40% OFF on either a Domane SL7 Disc or our electric-assist Domane + LT. At this price, these bikes will not be around for very long. Sign up to be the first in line when these bikes become available! Maybe @Square Wheels could get an e-boke for his commute?