Offrhodes42 profile

This is the type of article that keeps us coming back. I hit 50 last year. Racing ended many moons ago for me. There is a small group of us that meet at 5am 9 months out of the year to ride. Going fast these days is much slower than it was 20 years ago. The act of riding bikes with friends is still one of the high points of the day...I still shave my legs though.

I like the tick remover. I have the https://tickkey.com/ on my keychain. So, if I have my keys I also have that on me.

The saying "Pizza is like sex. Even when it is bad it is good." Is that maybe applying to the comparison of these two wheelsets?

My typical ride time is 5am. So, I too use my lights for much of the year. I have run mostly MagicShine lights over the past 10 years and have not had any batteries melt down. I do have two older batteries that just sit on the shelf now as they started to dies around the 45 minute mark on only low or high. I guess I should be bringing those to a recycling/hazardous waste place. I do have the option to see if the local Batteries+ store could replace the cells. Not sure that is the lowest cost route to go though. Has anyone else gone that route and replaced the cells in an old battery pack?

Time ATAC pedals. I have them on my trail bike, my singlespeed, my gravel bike, and the DH version on my DH bike. The one thing missing to really make the list is that pedals are not commonly specced on bicycles.

As I approach 50, so much of this sounds like me. I shake my fist at the clouds. The older I get the more I get annoyed at illegal trail building. As you have stated, we (the mtb community) should know at this point that pissing off land owners, private or public, only leads to closing, banning, downright hate towards us. The Kingdom Trails in VT lost out on a chunk of trails due to a group of a$$-hats feeling like they owned the trails...and the rumor is the landowner was verbally berated on their own property because they were snowshoeing (or something like that). It can take a very long time to get permission for building a trail, and that can be frustrating. What I would like to see in my local area is that people actually work on maintaining what we have so it lasts. Rant over.

It is the latest EQ version.  I love it so far.

I just became the happy owner of a Stumpjumper EVO alloy with a brand new shock and a brand new SR Suntour Durolux 36. I moved all the parts (GX AXS, Reverb AXS, Magura MT Thirty) from my other bike. The price I paid for the frame and fork was just a hair over what Specialized is selling just the alloy elite frame for right now. Deal hunting and patience pay off. Then I got my son a brand new Vitus Mythique as he had outgrown his old bike. That whole bike was a hair over $2,000USD. It is a good time to be a buyer. Luckily for me, when I sell my old stuff I am just looking to get rid of it and typically am lower cost than most other used sellers, so it is a good time to be a seller too if you are not being dumb with your prices.

WTB Trail Boss comes in 27.5x2.6 in the tough/fast rolling casing.

That slab ride!!!!

A little early morning snowmobile trail spin yesterday before boiling sap all day long.