Post Punk Kitchen Forum

it kinda depends on how hard i'm working. climbing anything reasonably challenging usually has me breathing through my mouth, the rest of the time it's through my nose. i'm starting to think that might be it. my last two rides were 30.7 miles with 588 feet climbed and 28 miles with 1064 feet climbed. i wasn't hacking at all after the first, was after the latter. i'm guessing: keep my mouth shut.

how edifying an image does this paint btw? ha!

That could be it. Try to work on breathing in through your nose and out with your mouth. See if that helps alleviate your post ride coughing episodes.

So I test rode a Salsa Casseroll and a Surly Cross Check today. I am in love with the Casseroll. I'm trying to hold off on purchasing it until I sell my current bike, but it's going to be a hard struggle.

Only twenty minutes each way. It was a temporary job and I haven't been using the bike for the last week or so. When I cycled to school (a few years ago, on the same bike) it used to feel uncomfortable getting back on after a weekend, as though a couple of days off had given my muscles time to stiffen up, but the time I spent sitting in school during the day or sleeping at night didn't do that. I found it kind of odd at the time, but it obviously wasn't bad enough to make me do anything about it (and isn't worse now).
My saddle isn't new, but a friend did say it was 'the least comfortable saddle ever' when he borrowed my bike.

measure your sit bones and get a new saddle :)

cheers man. i'll try to put my mouth-breathing days behind me...

I got my bike in August, the other day I googled my bike (Fuji Cambridge) and I realized that the previous owner had adjusted the frame so it would be a step through. This made me smile because I really appreciate the step through! Gosh I love my bike

Its a ladies version, they came from the factory like that.

My bike is ready to go! I will take a picture today and post it.i am so excited!

The utility bike right? Im intrigued!

Ugh stopped by our teams bike shop and started testing out/spec'ing a mtb...

Here it is! Pretty soon it will have a baby seat (peapod) on the back, hot,I know.

Awesome!

ahh very jealous! bike looks great. post some pictures when its fully equip soon.

Sexxay! Happy trails!

besides Fuji and Surly, does anyone have much of an opinion on touring rigs? 700c, front brazeons, but pretty open beyond that.

I love Surly and Salsa and they both have great touring bikes. Someday I want a Casseroll. Outside of those our most recent Adventure Cycling magazine had a big list of touring bikes and the ones that jumped out at me were the Jamis Aurora, Kona Sutra, and Raleigh Port Townsend (cheaper for a touring bike - $800-900). I've heard good things about them on message boards but my bike shop doesn't carry them so I've never ridden any.

Once you figure out what bikes are in your price range do as much research online as you can and test ride as many as you can. For a touring rig that you'll be spending hours and hours on fit is key over brand imo. They all pretty much have the same good as far as braze ons just different geo and components which you can easily change up.

Plans of 400mi this weekend. My knees are already hurting thinking about it :)

taking this week off from commuting. havnt been off the bike this long in many months but the ~540mi last week took its toll.

anyways started specing out a MTB, unfortunately Niner frames are sold out until the end of the month roughly. might end up going used as im chomping at the bit. well see though!

So, I competed in my first bike race, and it was a mountain bike race! It was insane! But fun! I wasn't planning to go, but when husband got called in to work all weekend, I figured I'd catch a ride up to Boggs forrest for the Boggs 8-hour mtb race (http://www.bikemonkey.net/events/boggs/). I was planning to just camp and hang out and then do the recovery ride the day after the race. It was a surprise when I showed up late the night before the race and was greeted by a teammate saying, "Good news! You're racing with me tomorrow!" I only did 2 laps of the 8-mile course (remember I've only been mtbing for, oh, 4 days), but it was fun! The most stressful thing was definitely constantly getting off the bike to let the many, many faster people by. I would have done a third lap, but I was stressed about getting on the course when so many people were trying to put in their last lap(s), plus, my bike started shifting badly, which made it really hard to deal with the steep run-ups and stuff. I am looking forward to going back next year when I've been riding for more than a handful of days!

Bonus: we got out team kits right before the race. Here's me and two teammates modeling the goods:



My favorite part is on the back: a yellow stripe with the text "what could possibly go wrong?" on it.

Badass Jordan! howd your team do? Howd your legs feel? 16mi is no joke on a mtb! Also the kits are legit! love the split color. itll be easy to spot your team in the rest of the field

Finally found the lady a cx bike over the past weekend at a bike swap. Very jealous of her race rig as im not sure I can have her owning a nicer cx bike then mine! :D

The team did pretty well. No one was really racing to win; Boggs is regarded by most as a fun race, so there's more focus on whiskey hand ups than winning for most people. That said, one co-ed pair on my team took third in the pro category, and one guy took third in the men's pro solo category. Lots of other teammates finished in the top 10 of their categories.

Nice cross bike! I'm seriously considering selling my Kona Jake and getting a new Marin Cortina, since Marin is a team sponsor, and we get a deal. I like the Jake, but I can't deal with the Tiagra brake levers/shifters (they are way too big, even shimmed), and I realized swapping them out would cost about the same as a substantial upgrade to the Cortina.

Oh nice. Forget that people are nice in the mtb scene. I need to get use to that asap!

Ive never seen one of those before but its got a legit build on it. I agree that the older shimano hoods are very large compared to sram/campy. I think the newest shimano have smaller hoods? could be wrong though. Have you ever used sram road before? I thought the transition from shimano to sram was very easy and going back and forth isnt an issue.

I test rode a Sram bike once, but that's about it. I have Shimano 105 hoods on my road bike, which are pretty good (I have heard they're supposed to be more like Srams). My plan was to try and just get some 105s off ebay and swap them for the Tiagras, but I don't know if it's worth the hassle when I could upgrade for the same price...

Are your shimano 105 shifters 5700? If you can upgrade for about the same price I would definitely go that route as that marin has a solid build that doesn’t need any upgrades.