A full moon on Saturday night meant it was time for an evening ride. I met Chris and Root out at Wailuna in the late afternoon. Ckucke, Jeff, and Sara were off-island, and Scat was otherwise occupied. A small group and a fast pace would be advantageous, since I discovered at the last minute that my Niterider battery had an issue. I had plugged it in the day before after Chris called me with the ride plans, but it was still flat. The multimeter said the charger was turning out the correct voltage, but the battery was only outputting around 6 volts. The battery was quite old, so one or more cells had probably gone bad. As we rolled out, the sun was still high in the sky, but the temperature was bearable. A strong wind was blowing downhill. The road climb from the park was quick, and the trail climb went smoothly. Either our pace was a bit higher than normal so I didn’t have time to fully recover, or I wasn’t quite on it. Many of the climbs took the wind out of me and sent the legs into burn. Continue reading ‘Ride into Twilight’
Author Archive for risu
Page 72 of 95
I know I’ll take serious sh!t for writing this, but are “Harajuku Lovers” bags and “tokidoki” bags from Le Sportsac the exclusive realm of overweight older single women?
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Really.
I don’t think there is anywhere in the world where this is acceptable. There is no way any responsible person with even rudimentary mental functioning can see this and deliver it as-is and not return it to the sender. WTF!
This is simply the best bicycle frame bottle available. Period.
It doesn’t make your water taste funny, nor is it currently known to leach weird chemicals into the water causing man-boobs, cancer, or whatnot. The cap screws on easily and doesn’t leak. My original one is around two years old, and it is still working fine, even though it is looking pretty beat-up cosmetically. Jarrel got some in at McBike, so I picked up a new one. The cap is a little different on the new one. I’ll see how it fares over time, but I imagine it will be as bulletproof as the original one. The cap threads are the same as Nalgene “standardâ€, so stuff like aftermarket caps or water purifiers that attach directly to bottles will be compatible. It seems that the hardness of the material would make printing on this bottle impractical (the ink/paint would just scrape off), so don’t expect to see it as a logo bottle. Just buy the advertising-free original!
Four out or four skulls
Highly recommended
About $5 USD
I got one of these as a gift many, many years ago. I remember “back in the dayâ€, the King ti cage commanded serious mojo, as it still does today. It cost all the money and was amazingly light at an advertised 28 grams. Supposedly, it didn’t mark up polyethylene bottles and make them all black, since ti was inert and oxide free. This cage had no place on the Freeride rig, and the XC bike had a wonderful (but now discontinued) metal-matrix Blackburn Chicane MTN cage, so appropriately, the retro King cage found its way onto the Bridgestone MB-1. Continue reading ‘King Titanium Bottle Cage’
Shafts of sunlight cut through the clouds above the Ko’olaus as I made my way home after work. It was still early enough to turn in a little riding even though I had to make a stop for gasoline. As I went up through the neighborhood, I saw a bike rider at the curb near the park at the bottom of the hill. Rounding the turn, I saw the infamous entropy herd stacking up at the end of the street. Not them again! I almost gave up on riding for the day, but I wasn’t about to let them spoil my fun. I geared up, pumped up the tires, and hit the road.
The beginning of my ride went pleasantly with no signs of them as I spun through the neighborhood and ripped down the highway. Climbing up to WCC, I spotted a pair of them at the circus at the entrance to campus. I gave them a wide berth and went through the lower parking lot and worked around them via the back road and climbed to the top. Happily, I didn’t see them for two laps. Smiley security guard was walking his rounds and was as cheerful as usual. On lap three, I saw the horde going up the climb. A couple of show-offs had gone blitzing it up the hill, but I had to carefully work my way around the slower riders as they weaved haphazardly up the narrow roadway. One person was pushing her bike up, and she was the only one moving in a reasonably predictable fashion. On lap four, they were clogging up the top road, making life unhappy for car drivers. I gave them a lot of space when I passed them and put them well behind me. On lap five, they were lingering at the blind corner at the end of the road under the mango trees, circling and turning like a roiling whirlpool of cheap metal, rubber, flesh and sweaty lycra. My knees were hurting a little, so I bailed home through the park and did a little weight training.
D = 13.97 km (8.68-miles), Vavr = 21.1 km/h (13.1 mph), Vmax = 51.1 km/h (31.8 mph), T = 40-minutes
I’ve seen the television commercial, and I know that the bleached haired dude on that locally-produced travel program about Japan on OC-16 is the franchise owner, but until this Monday, I have never been there. Actually, I didn’t even know here it was. JT had mentioned it recently, so I was curious if nothing else. After the muddy Monday DH ride, Ckucke, Root, and I were in need of some nourishment, so we headed down the hill into Kapahulu to Tenkaippin. It’s located in the building on Kapahulu with the bad coffee chain store across the street from the HD&C building… okay, how about makai of Jack, and catty-corner from Snorkel Bob’s? Know where it is now? Continue reading ‘Tenkaippin Ramen’
Introduced this season, MRP’s new bottom-bracket mounted chainring guard is ideal for All-Mountain/Trail/Long-Travel XC bikes with triple chainrings. I had a difficult time tracking one down, but Jarrel managed to find one from one of McBike’s distributors. It wasn’t the gold I was hoping for, but it’ll still do the job. The guard is essentially an aluminum plate that mounts between the bottom bracket shell and the drive side bottom bracket bearing. In the case of external bearing type bottom brackets like current Shimano ones, the plate replaces the spacer on the drive side. On the underside of the plate is a curved section of high-impact plastic that extends past the arc of the outer chainring. It’s very similar to the e-thirteen Light Guide, but without the roller/tensioner and upper guide. If e-thirteen had produced a guide-only product similar to this, I’d be reviewing that now instead, since I prefer their products. Continue reading ‘MRP XCG Triple Bash Guard’
I got the cheapo laptop, so it didn’t come with Bluetooth built in. I was going to get the official Toshiba part, but the third party that handles all the Toshiba part/component orders has a minimum order amount well above the $35 part, and the shipping is nuts. Fabio showed me the tiny USB Bluetooth adaptor he got when it first came out over half a year ago, and I thought that would be a fair alternative. The boutique Kensington one (as opposed to the mystery PRC no-name ones that are probably from the same factory) went on sale at the red colored discount electronics store, so I picked one up. I would have rather bought it at the blue and yellow store since the red store’s politics suck, but it never went on sale there. It’ll probably go on sale next week now that I bought from the bad guys! Continue reading ‘Kensington Micro USB Bluetooth Adaptor’
If the mud ride on Sunday wasn’t enough, ominous clouds and rain in the back of Manoa and Palolo did little to dissuade us from riding on Monday. When I showed up at Ckucke’s and told him about the impending rain, he seemed unconcerned. Like on Sunday, I adopted an “OK, whatever – you suffer, I suffer, we all suffer†attitude and we loaded up. Root arrived and we headed up to the top of St. Louis. Continue reading ‘Monday Mud’