mikeferrentino profile

Magnesium was something I never paid much heed to until Yuri Hauswald informed me that it was one of his recovery secret weapons. Bone health, muscle recovery and sleep seem to be some of the big selling points. What I noticed after starting them was mainly muscle based - I hurt less the next day after solid rides. Same goes for BCAAs - less muscle pain, more complete recovery.

I am close enough in age to be considered "boomer cusp", and man, the way that SO many people, be they boomer or gen-x or whatever, happily chomp down NSAIDs without a second thought - for everything from headaches to barely even raised temperature to modest aches and pains - kind of blows my mind. Enough people are downing this stuff in large enough quantities that ibuprofen and acetomeniphen are showing up in most of our water supplies now. Ick. Not sure if it's the old school "suffer through it" kiwi upbringing, or the notion that I don't really consider non-prescription NSAIDs to be "druggy" enough to warrant consumption, but I'm just not a fan.

Ah yes - those are the ones that somehow escape detection in the bathroom mirror (cue joke about reading glasses), and you don't realize are out there signaling to the whole world like some giant cockroach antenna that you are old and don't have a personal grooming attendant. At which point, upon becoming aware of the offending hair; glance down, make sure shirt is buttoned correctly and fly is zipped up. Just in case. These things usually happen in series. Dementia is going to suck, for sure.

But we don't abrade quite the same was as road riders do. More clothing, lower speeds, no pavement. Even still, the road rash argument for shaving seems like pretty thin ice to me.

I was so geeked out on everything about cycling that even though I didn't even own a road bike for the first five or six years of "my life as a mountain biker", I was totally down the euro road/cyclocross pro worship rabbit hole before I really had a chance. But I am pretty sure that leg shaving roughly coincided with my move to San Francisco and subsequent immersion into bike shop serfdom - I recall showing up for a ride with my old construction working friends from down the peninsula, and upon catching sight of my shaved pins, my buddy Dean arching an eyebrow and asking "so, how's life in San Francisco ? "... with an exaggerated lisp.

Growing up down there, I recall Santa in jandals on the beach. And Selwyn Toogood joking that about the weather: "if your neighbors went to the south island for their summer holiday and came back looking tanned, don't be jealous. It's probably rust."

I generally avoid crowds, so I'll stick to glissade...

The truck was found a couple weeks later down in Mexico, towed back across the border. All my stuff was predictably gone. Insurance and I are doing the dance of death right now, since they are unwilling to pay to test for fentanyl or meth contamination, or to have the diagnostic codes read, or the collision sensors checked, or to perform an engine oil analysis, and for my part I am unwilling to drive a vehicle back into Mexico that is probably known to the cops down there as a stolen vehicle.

"the linearity..." nicely phrased. I have had trouble in the past, most easily identified with Devinci or Transition test bikes, of not being the type of rider who could use all the travel on tap because it would get so rampy at the end of stroke. I acknowledge this about my own riding - I tend to ride soft, and tend to set my forks up softer than most guides, and am that guy who usually backs the compression adjusters all the way out. Some of that is that I am not a pro downhiller, some of that is that my riding style is more carve than smash. To each their own. I think it's great that people are building bikes that allow riders to hit shit so hard that they crumple rims peel off tire sidewalls, and the suspension keeps on keeping on.

I also appreciate a bike that lets me use most of the travel and still manages to handle really well and feel really civilized. And no, I've never once in my life wondered if brake jack is ruining my ride.

I am surprised that the Starling works as well as it does with a coil, given the linear or maybe even falling rate nature of the design. I also say it "works so well" within my own limited parameters of riding - meaning I don't smash jump lines or really put the suspension to the same test that really fast ballsy riders do. And I suspect it would bottom out a little too easy for those riders.