aerius

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.

That's gotta suck. Problem with DH riding is that when things go wrong, they go wrong in a hurry and unless you have the instincts & experience to react correctly it often results in serious injuries. Full body armour helps but it only goes so far. I've seen a lot of weekend warrior types get maimed at the local DH biking resorts, every time I've been on the hills I've seen someone get carted away in an ambulance, it's very easy to get in over your head without realizing it and before you know it you're waking up in a stretcher. New school trail design doesn't help either since the trend towards bermed flowy jump trails makes it fairly easy to hit very high speeds without having it register, one mistake and you're flying into the trees at 30mph. Worst one is the resort which has a large tabletop jump at the end of a long downhill straight, if you don't slow down or squash the jump you'll completely overshoot the landing and find yourself 10-15' in the air with nothing to land on.

How much mountain bike experience does he have and has he done downhill riding before? Hope his injuries aren't too serious and that he gets better soon.

Got a couple good rides in today, went for a cruise along the creek in the morning to enjoy the weather & scenery, then my friend dropped by in the afternoon and we went for an aggressive full speed rip on the local trails. Neither of us wanted to cry uncle so we ended up pushing the speed to the point where we were scrubbing the jumps to stay on the trail and drifting through most of the turns. it was intense, one screwup and it would've been an instant hospital trip. Couple pics from the morning ride

How to ride a rental Citi Bike

I have no need for another bike, but this was selling for a price I couldn't resist. Classic frame in Reynolds 853, from the twilight of the high end steel hardtail era.

I used to build & rework circuit boards for a living, the solder joints on the Liquid Lightning board are pure junk. Not only are there cold and/or contaminated solder joints, there are numerous joints with less than a 50% fill, there's a dab of solder on one part of the joint and the rest of the solder pad is not only unfilled, it's clearly empty with visible gaps. That's just asking for the component to get torn off the board, among a host of other problems. It's like someone dabbed it with solder and didn't even wait for the solder to melt, let alone flow and properly fill in the joint. I have rarely seen such shitty work. If I saw a board like this at my old job it would go straight into the scrap bin and I'd want to know who was building the crap so that they can either be put somewhere safer or fired. Trying to rework the board would be pointless, it's FUBAR and the labour required would be worth far more than the board itself. And it ain't lead free solder, especially now that we have the alloys and flux formulations dialed in. The joints weren't this bad even back in the old days when lead free was just making its entrance into the industry and we were using nitrogen purged reflow ovens just to get things to flow & stick. Garbage, pure fucking garbage is what it is.

Helped lead a large group ride on the local trails today. We started with over 20 riders and ended with around 10. Fun times!

For future reference, when you're pulling at the front you should only go for as long as you feel good. Unless it's a pretty hardcore group or a training ride there isn't any limit for the minimum amount of time or distance that you must spend up front; stronger riders will take longer pulls while less fit riders may peel off and drift to the back after less than a minute. Most road riders, especially experienced ones understand this and they won't get upset at you if you can only take a short pull at the front as long as they can see that you're putting in an honest effort.