aerius

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.

That's the mayor of my city. Nothing can make that pig look good, well, nothing short of making him into bacon.

Get some Ozzy Osbourne posters and scarecrows, that should keep the bats away.

So the weekend was pretty fun. Met up with some random people on facebook and went for a ride on the trails. The less experienced riders had a bit of a rough time on some of the muddy spots & tree roots, but we all stuck it out, finished the ride, and cracked open the beers at the end.

SRAM has gone seriously downhill from the Sachs/Sedis days. I had a bunch of Sachs chains from just before SRAM bought them out, they would usually last about 1200km before wearing out. My stash ran out a couple years ago and I ended up buying some SRAM chains, they only lasted 700km or so before they were toast and that was in good weather too. Then I went to KMC since they also have a quick connect link, they go about 1000-1100km before they fail the ruler test. For $15 I can't complain. I haven't used a Shimano chain in ages but as I recall they lasted about as long as the old Sachs chains.

2000 miles on a chain is a lot, most of the roadies I know max out at around 1500. For mountain bikes it's even worse, I'm happy if I can get 800 miles out of a chain before it wears out, and in bad weather I've toasted a chain in under 300 miles. MEC sells chains for $15-20 so I just buy a stack of them and change them out regularly, it's a hell of a lot cheaper than replacing chain rings and cassettes.

Since everyone else is giving updates, here's how it's going for me: And a new goal: Don't put myself in the hospital. I've had way too many close calls this year from riding over my limits.

http://www.cervelo.com/en/engineering/ask-the-engineers/the-four-and-a-half-rules-of-road-saddles-.html Read through the article, then break out the measuring tape on the saddles that work for you. You should find that they have certain things in common, and from there you can figure out what a new saddle will need to have to be comfortable for you. Using myself as an example, I've found that any saddle with a significant curve simply will not work, and that narrow saddles are also a pain in the ass. Since I now know what to look for, it makes saddle shopping a lot easier, though there's still some trial & error involved.

Traffic lights are still out in some places and we're supposed to have some rolling blackouts so that hydro crews can do a proper fix of the grid. We got off pretty lightly my area since we're on higher ground, the lower areas in town got slammed. There were places where houses had water flowing in through the doors & windows and cars got washed off bridges in the southern part of the city. We set the single day rainfall record yesterday, beating the previous record which was set when Hurricane Hazel went through Toronto in 1954. I did a ride around my part of town today to check out the damage, there's still traffic lights out and areas without power. Lots of trees down everywhere and several pedestrian bridges had their guardrails taken out by giant logs & trees which got uprooted and carried downstream by the current. A local golf course also has a ton of new water hazards and it's missing at least one hole. Didn't get anywhere on the bike trails since they're either blocked by fallen trees, flooded, covered in a layer of silt & mud, or simply gone. Mountain biking on my local trails is probably a write-off for the summer, it's going to take a while to clear out the mess and rebuild everything.

This was my street yesterday evening. Let's just say there's not going to be any riding for a while. Oh yeah, and it's forecast to rain some more.

Totally fucking mindblowing

Road riding just doesn't do it for me, it's about as fun as running on a treadmill or riding a stationary bike. Lots of other people love it and I can see why they love it, but it ain't for me. I'll do it if I absolutely have to, but I'd rather rollerblade, run, or workout in the gym. There's a reason I have 4 (soon to be 5) mountain bikes and zero road bikes.

It's getting goddamn depressing, the endless rain we've been getting has turned all the trails into giant swamps & mud bogs, and oh yeah, it's gonna rain again tomorrow. My bikes haven't been on the trails in weeks. If this keeps up I'm going to take up kayaking or something like that.

Look sweet! Nice technical sections and yet there's still lots of possible line choices through the rocks and tricky parts, it's something I don't see very often.

If you're headed over to Montreal, you need to get your ass to Bromont for some serious downhill riding. It's less than hour east of Montreal and has the best developed DH trail system in Canada outside of BC. They used to host world cup DH races there until about 4 years ago when the UCI got pissy and reshuffled the venues.

First offroad ride of the year from a couple weeks ago. I'm the one wearing shorts on a green hardtail.

I think Dura-Ace is the right choice for your bike. Shimano parts aren't as light as SRAM but their smoothness & quietness is more in keeping with the character of your bike. To me, Dura-Ace just feels nicer and more polished than SRAM Red, and it has a more classic old school look whereas Red has a high-tech and rather gaudy look. And also, congrats on your weight loss, good luck on your continued recovery, and congrats again on your new bike!

The pedals you have are just fine. Ride them for a couple months while you get used to your new bike and get the suspension and everything else dialed in. At the end of that time, think about what you like or don't like about the pedals (and everything else) and what you need for your bike to do what you want. Swapping parts on a bike which you've barely ridden around the block is just throwing money away.

Decided that I wanted more braking power on my bike. Stuffed a set of Shimano Saints on the front. Quad ceramic piston caliper with radiator finned brake pads. Totally overkill, but as they say, you don't know what's enough until you know what's too much.

Dude, those are riser bars, not mustache bars. When viewed from the front, the straight outer half of the bar should be level or slope slightly upwards, and the brake levers & shifters should slope downwards by 30-45 degrees when viewed from the side. Couple pictures for reference https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-iivXavJa8q4/TPqQNzYrfPI/AAAAAAAACa8/qG7nryLXIrk/s800/IMG_0791.jpg https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-dxRKSll5tTI/Tt7e0T392mI/AAAAAAAADCQ/ugUcEsgFnr8/s800/IMG_2345.jpg

See if you can find some Specialized Armadillo tires somewhere. They're heavy, they don't have the greatest ride by any means, but they're seriously tough. The shop I used to work for sold a ton of them to commuters and we rarely ever saw a flat on one of them. Continental Gatorskins work too but the sidewalls on them aren't as tough, they are lighter and ride nicer though so that's the tradeoff between them.

Just be aware that Superflys are notorious for cracking apart at the chainstays. Trek has allegedly fixed this issue for 2013, but they've been saying that since 2008 if not earlier. Trek will take care of you if the frame cracks apart, but that's something I'd rather not deal with in the first place.

Just curious, did anyone turn their door into a beer fridge?