aerius

Doing bar tape is easier than it looks as long as you have the other side for reference. Watch a few videos on youtube, pay attention to how the bar tape fits on the bars when you take it off, and you should have no problem putting the new ones on. It may take a good 20-30 minutes to do your first set and the figure-8 crossover at the hoods can be a bit tricky to line up, but overall it's not that hard and it's a good skill to have.

Lapierre Spicy 727, with the fancy electronically controlled rear suspension. It is really freakin' cool, it adjusts the settings of the shock in real time based on feedback from various sensors on the bike, and it works seamlessly. I tried to fool it by doing all kinds of things like manualling the front wheel over roots to see if the rear wheel would stay locked out on a climb (it didn't), pedaling in mid-air after going off a drop, doing gratuitous wheelies, and every time the suspension knew where to set the rear shock for best performance. You don't notice how well it works until you turn off the electronics and put it on a manual setting, then it's like "man, what happened?" It still rides well but doesn't have that extra zip and the bike bobs more and is slower. Wheelie pic

Polarized lenses can help on wet roads, it keeps the road surface from turning into a giant blinding mirror when the sun is in front of you. It also helps on busy roads, keeps car windows from acting like mirrors and blinding you. If you're not going to see much of either then polarized lenses won't really make a difference, but if you ride in the above conditions a fair bit they're worth it.

Looks like UPS is doing this to all your parcels. I'm not entirely sure going with FedEx would help...

Going by the colours they look like 2013s. Manufacturers will start clearing them out in the fall, and over the winter & spring they'll have some mega blowouts on previous year bikes. If dealers have the cash & space they'll buy'em up and sell them to their customers for a good discount. It's mostly hockey for me right now but I try and get out for a ride every week or 2 to spin out my legs a bit. Last week wasn't bad, this week was a hike-a-bike session.

Hey now, at least I didn't replace all the tubes with transistors like Mr. Pimm here. But check it out, no capacitors in the signal path!

Or you could measure the capacitors... http://diyaudioprojects.com/mirror/members.aol.com/sbench102/caps.html Signal path capacitors don't really matter to me once I get to the $5-$8 point since I'm not using high-end super resolving headphones. As for power supply caps, going to oil filled motor run caps was a significant upgrade, even on my push-pull amp. So was getting rid of cathode bypass caps & resistors and replacing them with LEDs. I took both steps around 10 years ago and never looked back.

Clearly, the solution is a guitar that can tune itself.

I think this sounds pretty good, though I admit I know little about guitars.

Even with live unamplified music, there's still the question of what's "neutral" or "right". Move the same musicians to a different venue and the sound changes; which one is right? Other than something blatantly awful like a bathroom, we could have endless discussions on what's "right" based on our personal preferences, and I think that carries over to some extent in our headphone & audio gear choices.

Wet weather riding is why I'll never go back to rim brakes. Koolstop salmon pads and aluminum rims are my minimal acceptable standard in the wet, and that's with mountain bike V-brakes. Road bikes & carbon rims? No thanks, not for me, not when it's wet. Hydraulic disc brakes all the way.

I think it's time to start drinking.

Definitely some unexpected measurements on them. I'd like to take a listen to them at some point but I can't say I'm in a real hurry to do so based on the impressions & measurements so far.

Good luck if you ever have to true the wheels. Hidden spoke nipples on a tubular rim turns a 2 minute truing job into a day of work since you need to peel off and reglue the tire. Better hope that the wheel was built right, fully stress relieved, and that you never knock it out of true, cause if you do you're out a wheel for at least a day while the glue dries.

Now you know why road bikes are going to disc brakes. Also note the platform pedals.

Just got caught up on this thread. First off, sorry to hear about your bad crash Justin, and it's good to see that you're on the road to recovery. Broken collar bones suck, and that x-ray looks brutal. Looking at the video of the trail and going by your description of the crash, it sounds like you hit those bumps at just the right speed for the front wheel to nose into the face of the 2nd hump. Same thing almost happened to the rider in the video but he managed to save it. Next time, either go faster and treat it as a gap jump and land the bike on the back side of the 2nd hump or go slower so that the back wheel doesn't get kicked into the air just as the front is going into the dip. Another way is to lift the front wheel a bit so that it doesn't nose into the face of the hump and cause a crash. Nate, congrats on scoring a sweet bike! Don't listen to all the folks who say slam the stem unless you're a racer or plan to be one. Put it where it's comfortable and feels right, in the long run a comfortable position is better since you waste less energy trying to hold the position and get more power down on the bike. Plus suffering on the bike is not my idea of fun. Me? I had one last glorious weekend on the bike, did 5 rides in 2 days and nearly 100km on the trails. Everything fucking hurts today but it was worth it for an end of season celebration of riding. Shorts weather in the middle of November, that was a gift from the weather gods that I wasn't going to waste. Which was pretty much what every mountain biker in my area was thinking, I spent the whole weekend driving from one group ride to the next. My bikes are dirty, my body aches, but goddamn I haven't had so much fun all year!

Well, I'll take my best shot at getting it down to 5 In no particular order: R.E.M. - Eponymous. All the best songs from their IRS years, I was going to go with Reckoning but I think this one is just better and the flow is almost as nice. Red Army Choir - Russian Favourites I can't understand a single word, but the power, emotion, and majesty of the music transcends any language barrier. It's like hearing & feeling the entire soul of a nation and its people. Nightwish - End of an Era. The first half is a bit uneven though still pretty good, but once you get to "Nemo" it really takes off. Also has the best "Phantom of the Opera", ever. Sarah McLachlan - Fumbling Towards Ecstasy. Great songwriting, Sarah was at just the right place in her life to get a perfect mix of maturity & raw emotion put down into music. 20 years later and it's still as amazing as it was. Black Sabbath - Black Sabbath. Because it's goddamn fun. Cruising down the street with the windows down while blasting "Warning" just makes my day.

That's what I try to tell myself since every one of my DIY projects resembles a ball of spaghetti. I have great admiration for people who can do neat PtP wiring, it's a skill which continues to elude me.

Probably just uses whatever tubes are on clearout from his suppliers and/or trendy and kludges an amp around it.

All of my mountain bikes are setup with the bars higher or level with the seat. Low bars on a mountain bike don't make sense unless you're doing XC racing. For all other riding you want to be more upright for better balance and so that you have more room to move your weight around to control & balance the bike in rough terrain. Trying to have a road bike position on a mountain bike is stupid IMO, unless all you're doing is riding gravel roads in which case you should be on a cross bike.

Went for a ride today with a couple guys from the local shop Log ride Bike drop "Never underestimate the power of a wheelie"

The Odonata is a carbon & titanium bike, $1600 is a fucking killer price for one. The frames alone were about $3000 brand new.

Some of you guys have power meters or computrainers. Friend of mine just informed me that they now have virtual internet racing, and they're getting a setup for the shop. This looks like fun, the thrills of racing minus the crashes & road rash. http://tourdegiro.com/

No kidding. The sad part is their $999 WA7 DAC/amp will sound better unless they screwed it up or deliberately crippled it.

6SN7 driving a 300B. That's guaranteed awesome right there! It's like they're not even trying anymore.