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...this song got any airplay?

Assuming the train wreck continues, and then the smarter pieces of the UK of GB & NI start to realize aligning with England is less exciting (profitable) than aligning with Europe, does there eventually just become "England" again and the certainly the "Great" part of GB will go the way of the Dodo? Will "British" remain, but really only refer to the English? Do the Scottish even care? I know the Welsh are a bunch of hooligans, so they must have something up their sleeves? And the Irish are always looking for a fight!

...to guys like @dennis! Cervelo is "refining" gravel

Part of Outside's "Ultimate Bug-Out Bag" is their recommendation for making fire. I think they need to rethink their 20th century "stuff found around the house" re-purposing idea: Fire Pack three kinds of fire starters: a Bic lighter ($7 for five), UCO Stormproof Match Kit ($8), and UST BlastMatch ($20). For tinder, stuff petroleum jelly–soaked cotton balls into a couple of film canisters.

Looks like credit cards are growing in this graph, but debit looks to grow even faster are a larger portion. I still wonder what I am missing, since they seem like the worst of both world (cash & credit). Still, it is good to see cash dropping further below 50% - even with the increased threshold. Likewise, this is heartening as well: “Major card issuers have made a big commitment this year to deliver contactless cards to their customers, so I think the more people are concerned about speed, the more they should be looking at either mobile payments or contactless cards,” Rossman said. Mobile payments are also typically even more secure than chip-enabled credit cards because they usually require biometric authentication, such as a fingerprint or face scan.

...for @Dirtyhip, @Dottie, and even @dennis (the Triple D's!!!!!) at this un-meeting. Really, Portland isn't too far from you all, is it? We’re looking forward to this year’s Bicycle Quarterly Un-Meeting – our annual get-together to share the joy of riding off the beaten path. It’s not an organized event – we just publish a date and time, and everybody is welcome to join. There are no fees, no registrations, and no services are provided. The photos here are from last year’s Un-Meeting, when we spent a great two days along the Hood Canal and in the Tahuya Hills. This year, we’ll meet near Portland for another weekend of riding. Here are the details: When: Sept. 14, 2019, 9 a.m. Where: Stub Stewart State Park, Buxton, OR 97109 What: Rides from 40 to 70 miles (65 – 110 km) Stub Stewart State Park is 15 miles (24 km) from the end of Hillsboro MAX rail line, so it’s easy to reach from Portland. (And Portland is at the intersection of several Amtrak lines, so it’s easy to reach by train, plus there is an airport, too.) On Saturday, we’ll start the day by riding together to the Black Iron Coffee House in Vernonia for breakfast. From there, we’ll have several route options that include pavement, gravel and dirt. We’ll publish details about the routes in the coming weeks.

I have someone in mind (and shockingly it isn't jsharr!)...

I see trouble on the way I see earthquakes and lightnin' I see bad times today I knew it was coming the second time and got a heckuva chuckle.

Definitely would need to be in a flat and dry area, or, at least, quick and well drained. Grass Velodromes.

...but I'm sure some of you knuckleheads won't. ‘Nature Can Wait’ by PAUL BLOW July 21, 2019, issue: “So many of us sweat it out while confined within four walls, rather than outside, where nature can heal us. I cycle and run; for both, I just need to step out my front door. Exercising inside, on a machine, seems sacrilegious.”

I've seen this guy before, but I ran across him on yesterday's ride and was happily surprised at the nice little draft he offers. I'd usually just pass him and keep rolling, but we were on a slight downhill before the trail turned up again, so I just enjoyed a minute of peaceful drafting. After I passed him though, I like that he tagged along for a bit before the elastic snapped. Definitely an interesting set-up with the MTB frame, but little stubby aerobars on the middle of his flat bar. And a pretty quiet set of tires despite their width. Usually MTB tires make quite a hum, but his tires must have a smooth strip in the center of the tread.

...an adventure in her neck of the woods!!! I never heard of the "Driftless Area" but it sounds BAD AZZ! --------------------------------------------------- IN SOUTHEASTERN MINNESOTA – We left the pavement early on the morning of Day 2, crossed the Root River and came face to face with a mile-long climb on a slurry of mud and gravel. It was late May. Our group of five was a few miles south of Houston, Minn., and immersed in the Driftless Area, an ancient landscape of deep coulees and high ridges connected by long, snaking roads. Formed by 500 million years of wind, rain and snow melt, the region would define every aspect of our 230-mile ride from Winona to Lansing, Iowa, across the Mississippi River, and back through Wisconsin. We would feel every foot of elevation gain as we each hauled 30-plus pounds of bikepacking gear from valley floor to ridge top on a mix of gravel and paved roads. And we would experience more than the usual fare of that landscape-defining wind and rain. But our immediate concern was the climb. Before long, all of us, including Tom McDowell, the strongest, and Pablo Armas, the youngest, had dismounted to push our bikes toward the summit. For Nina Clark, who used her 28-mile round-trip commute as the base for her training, it was an opportunity to see more of the wildflowers lining the road. The rest of us raised our heads reluctantly and admitted they were pretty. The summit offered a new challenge: a sudden, driving rain powered by wind gusts reaching 50 miles per hour. Kristen Paulsen, who toured extensively in the Appalachian Mountains with her husband before taking time off to raise a family, felt herself being blown toward the ditch. Tom showed early signs of hypothermia. We needed shelter and found it in a farm’s machine shed. At the far end, a section of sheet metal roofing lifted in the wind, then slammed hard on the rafters in a rhythmic clanging that didn’t stop until the wind died and the rain backed off to a drizzle. We rode on, leaving tire tracks in the gravel driveway to baffle our absent hosts. Day 1 had been so different: Delicious $5 burgers at the Witoka Tavern, a photo shoot with kids at the Houston Nature Center, a private tour of the International Owl Center, and, to the southwest, a night at Outback Ranch, a campground for horse people. We reset on Day 2 in Spring Grove with an extended lunch and a detour to the local car wash where we lined up our rides, plugged in quarters and sprayed grit from five crud-encased bikes. The weather reset as well. By the end of the day, with nearly 40 miles behind us, we were rolling down a shaded gravel road, past a couple of trout fishermen enjoying a beer on the tailgate of their pickup, and into Dorchester, Iowa. Tom secured a campsite across Main Street from Wings Supper Club. --- the rest and photos here.

...from the recent Mad Bike Skills thread, this just arrive in my inbox:

About 18 miles today and 2000 ft of climbing. Went with a fast crew. Yeah, I dragged ass last. Kept close for a while until I blew up. Walked and pushed my bike through the last bit of a black diamond. You can't really be off your game though this last section and my brain and body were fried. Made challah buns today, no knead bread, tzatziki, and washed produce. Think I did enough today? HAHA Bed will come early. dawn patrol tomorrow. Not going to push tomorrow. OY!

...or, for that matter, @dennis? Was @Dirtyhip in Klamath Falls in 2014? It’s hard to believe that the first Oregon Outback, that incredible 363-mile gravel race, was just five years ago. It’s almost like we live in a different world now, so much has changed… Back then, the idea of running a race that traversed the entire state of Oregon from south to north – on gravel roads! – seemed completely outrageous. So seemed the idea of riding the entire distance non-stop. And the idea of riding a road bike on these gravel roads. More than one rider told me at the start that they were astonished to see me on my Rene Herse for this grueling event. I am sure Ira Ryan, on his Breadwinner B-Road, heard similar comments. A joyful crew rolled out of Klamath Falls on Memorial Day weekend in 2014. Most were on mountain bikes equipped with bikepacking gear. Nobody knew what to expect. Would it take two days or a whole week to reach the Columbia River at the other end of the state? There were few options for bailout; there was no support – this was a real adventure. It did not take long for the race positions to shake out. By the time we reached Switchback Hill (above), there were three riders at the front. Ira Ryan was the favorite, having won the Trans Iowa race in his home state. He was riding on 35 mm tires – which was considered wide! Another strong racer was on a mountain bike. He had opted for narrower 700C tires. I was on the widest rubber, with our just-released 650B x 42 Babyshoe Pass Extralights.

...from the world of @Dottie's neck of the cycling universe: Semper Porro's Cory Lockwood has denied allegations that he intentionally caused a crash last week at the Cascade Cycling Classic, telling Cyclingnews his disqualification from the race sprang from a misunderstanding and that none of the USA Cycling officials, fellow riders or team directors involved – including his own – approached him to get his side of the story. The incident in question occurred on the final climb of stage 3 at the USA Cycling American Road Calendar event in Oregon. Lockwood, who won the overall at the Redlands Bicycle Classic in March, was in a chase group languishing nearly six minutes behind a seven-rider breakaway that was riding away with the stage win and eliminating all but a handful of riders from general classification battle. Lockwood was on the front of the group on the long, gradual incline when, several riders say, he locked up his brakes and caused a crash among those behind him. USA Cycling officials disqualified Lockwood from the race, and the governing body told Cyclingnews it has started an investigation into the incident, with a suspension for Lockwood a possible outcome. In a phone conversation with Cyclingnews on Wednesday afternoon, however, Lockwood denied intentionally causing the crash. "That didn't happen," Lockwood said. "Actually, the race had been over for some time, and I was basically out on a training ride and I was trying to tell people I was out on a training ride. My teammates and I were riding, the break was up the road, the race was over," he said. "I made it explicitly clear, verbally telling people, hand gesturing, waving – and not hand gesturing with the middle finger, like somebody else posted. That was nonsense. I never did that. I was hand gesturing people to ride around me. "I even made an attempt – and not like when you see people on television where they swerve across the road to get people off their wheel; I wasn’t doing any of that – I moved over to one side of the road, completely outside of the peloton, and the other riders would come over to me, go around in front of me, and then slow down in front of me. And so I'm trying to just go to the other side of the road and stay away from them, train on my bike, tell them what I'm doing, and they would pin me on the front. I'd slow down and move away from them," he said. "This happened so many times to the point that I think we were going 12 miles an hour up a hill, and I think it clustered and ran into the back of me while they were doing this, after they came across the road to me, rode in behind me and then ran into me – the giant six-foot-three-tall rider in bright-red riding gear with his hand up motioning them around like we’re on the bike path." The crash took down two-time Cascade winner Serghei Tvetcov (Floyd's Pro Cycling), Luis Villalobos (Aevolo) and Hangar 15 guest rider Daniel Lincoln, a 39-year-old physician who was a 2004 Olympian and former American record holder in the 3,000 metre steeplechase. Tvetcov, Villalobos and Lockwood were able to quickly remount and finish near the front of the chase group, while Lincoln suffered more damage to body and machine and struggled across the line more than a minute down on that group. Aevolo and Hangar 15 immediately registered their complaints with chief commissaire Dot Abbott, and the race jury decided to disqualify Lockwood. Semper Porro manager and coach Jordan Itaya posted on social media that he would have pulled his rider from the race if the officials hadn't done it for him. Lockwood took issue with how the disqualification was handled, saying no one consulted him or asked for his side of the story before making the decision to remove him from the race. "I made sure I went back and made it clear and talked to the Aevolo director," Lockwood told Cyclingnews. "I even went over and gave the kid a hug. What was his name? Villalobos? I offered to fix his shoe and buy him a new shoe. I even bent over and straightened up his sock on his leg. I went over and shook [Aevolo director] Michael Creed's hand and talked to him. I went over and talked to the Hangar 15 guys. I didn't find the Floyd's guys, so I didn't get a chance to talk to them. "I made sure I went and smoothed it all over. Then, in the meantime, I motioned to my team director that I was going to go back down to the van to go load up. I never saw him, I never talked to him. They then went over and had a collective decision to remove me from the race without even talking to me, which is fine. It’s their right to do that. Maybe they should have consulted me first and got my side of the story. I’m not really angry about that at all. I guess I’m more disappointed that nobody approached me and got the facts first before they did all of this." Lockwood said the allegations of intentionally causing a crash would be completely out of character for him, and he would never intentionally try to crash another rider. "I've spent my entire life riding a bicycle," he said. "I literally wake up at five o'clock in the morning, do everything from measuring my food on the gram scale to going outside and riding for four or five hours, posting on Strava and doing my Instagram. My whole thing is that I just want to race my bicycle, because I feel it is a journey and I want to share it with people. I'm not trying to do anything malicious here. And, unfortunately, things happen in racing. Sometimes there's accidents. That's by definition why it's called an accident. People run into each other and you didn't mean to do it. "I wish they would have come and talked to me, but nobody has reached out to me," Lockwood said. "My team manager hasn't reached out to me. He's my ex-coach now, because I don't agree with the way he's been representing me online. It's just unfortunate that a lot of things are just coming to a head right now, and it's boiled over onto social media, and I feel like it’s turned into this giant forest fire. I don't even know what to do with it right now."

...from my LF days??? I DO keep improving!

...on this NUT JOB!

Any of you guys following Kate Courtney? She is the current women’s MTB XC world champ and just won her first World Cup race last weekend beating several of the top women racers like Annika Langveld and Jolanda Neff. This young American is absolutely killing it on the XC circuit right now.

LBroke my bike yesterday. My buddy loaned me his spare bike at camp. It was an ebike. Before anyone rips me a new one, I was in a legal zone that allows e bikes and regular bikes. The zone is already trashed. Logged. Skidded. Abused. It has a nice trail network through it now. It is well known. It has one of the hardest black diamonds in the state. Some people say it should be double black. I ran the bike on eco mode which is the least amount of assist. I went out with three very strong dudes. I had to soft pedal all day or I was just gone. The beast absolutely sucks on the downhill except for it making me 50 pounds heavier so I rolled pretty fast on it. Usually my weight is a negative for most downhill compared to heavier people. I have to pedal like mad to stay on bigger people. It was heavy to toss around on jumps and berms. The bike was a large. I had to lean it to get on and off. Top tube was on my crotch. I handled it pretty well. You don't ride with your feet on the ground. All good. It was fun. I won't lie. He said I would have to buy it if I destroyed it. I rode the shit out that machine and kept it upright. I am not buying one. I still want to be the engine. @Dottie

Passive aggressive because we don’t refer to them as “Sanitation Technicians”? I came home in the pouring rain on trash day, only to find all my trash cans filled with water, their lids flipped back after being emptied in the morning. Is it that hard to close the lid on the can after emptying it?

It's like watching paint dry. I've had way more interesting stuff to watch. Another fun race.

And it was the title that roped me in! Could have done with some better visuals, but overall good story. ‘I had a huge swelling’: why my life as a female cyclist led to vulva surgery The plastic surgeon, in that particularly endearing way of surgeons, was trying to reassure me that although he had never operated on an endurance cyclist before, he had seen “presentations” like mine. “I’ve seen chronic inflammation and long-term trauma to the vulva like this. You know …” he paused, “in patients who compulsively rub up against bedposts.” Silence. I decided against explaining that the relationship with my bike saddle did not, perhaps, deserve to be in among the psychiatric cases in his cognitive filing system. However, he had a point. While there is no love lost between me and the necessary evil that is my saddle, I have continued to train, despite huge amounts of destruction to my body, pain and trauma. ... When should I have sought help? At the first sign of swelling? That was when I was a potential talent trying out for the British Cycling team in 2014, staring at the large amount of skin and hair that had just sloughed off my vulva in a hotel bathroom. Fortuitously, I was on the toilet at the time. This is not as painful as it sounds: if you dry out too much down there due to chafing, this is generally what happens. I wish I could time travel and yell “chamois cream” at myself. British Cycling gave us great kit – nice shorts, shoes, gloves, but no anti-abrasion ointment, no medical chat about the dangers of chafing our cha-chas out of existence. The message was: show weakness and you’re out. I pulled up my knickers and flushed it all away. The consensus is that when you first start cycling on your good-as-new, unbruised foof, it is going to hurt. After a “breaking-in” period, the pain-to-numbness ratio becomes favourable: as long as you protect against infection, wear padded shorts with a generous layer of chamois cream, no underwear and make regular offerings to the ingrown hair goddess, things are manageable. This is wrong. While valuable parts of the male genitalia can be moved out of the way, female cyclists sit right on the money.

We need this for the Cafe! Sure, it's for 50+ folks, but I'm sure some of us n00bs could join in anyway??