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Leaving Your Comfort Zone
Over the years Ive been fortunate enough to ride in some exotic locations.Ive cycled the Swiss Alps on a luxury tour:Ive traversed Mt. Tamalpais on a Rivendell:And then there was Cleveland, which makes everyplace else seem positively pedestrian:And this is but a small selection of the trips my former life as a semi-professional bike blogger has afforded me, to say nothing of the races and rides to which I traveled in my former former life as a lousy Cat 3/B-Field/Sport-category hobbyist.Things are different for me these days. Now I just stay close to home and ride in my natural habitat, and thats the way I like it, by Jove! Riding my regular routes is like eating pizza: I never get tired of it, even if I do it every day, and even if I slowly put on weight in the process. Sure, I could still take day trips by car or train to ride some less familiar terrain, but even if I had that kind of time, Id rather spend it riding than traveling.But every so often an opportunity to ride elsewhere presents itself, and such was this case this past weekend when I had to take my son to an event about two hours away. Hed be busy for much of the day, which meant Id need to occupy myself somehow. And while being a cyclist comes with its share of indignities, one of the more convenient things about it is that youre never bored. See, a normal person stuck in a strange town all day might have to resort to going to the movies, watching a sporting event at a bar, or if they were really desperate, sitting in a coffee shop and doing work. But cyclists dont even have to think about what to do with themselves, because obviously theyre going for a ride.This isnt to say such a situation is a total no-brainer, because you still need to figure out where to ride and what bike to bring with you. In this case I wasnt exactly familiar with the area, though I did know that both on- and off-road options should be fairly plentiful. One solution in a scenario like this is to choose the bike first and let that dictate the rest. For example, Im currently having a love affair with this bike, so I thought maybe I should just bring it and find some singlespeed-friendly garvel: However, I soon dismissed this idea, because you need to know an area intimately before you can properly enjoy it on a singlespeed bicycle. Its like taking a trip and packing nothing but a t-shirt, a bathing suit, and a pair of flip-flopssure, you can do it, but you have to know exactly what its like where youre going and what the weather will be. You dont want to ruin your vacation because it turns out it gets cold at night and none of the local restaurants will serve a dirtbag in flip-flops, and you dont want to ruin your day of riding because your gearing is all wrong and you keep having to get off the bike and walk.But even on a geared bike off-road routes can be risky if someones expecting you at a specific time. This is because its hard to plan one and know exactly how long it will take you to complete it, and you cant really learn anything meaningful about a trail by looking at a map. Have you ever set out on a new off-road route you were sure would take three hours only to learn halfway through it would be more like six? And have you then tried to send a text to a spouse or life partner to that effect, only to find theres no cell service in the forest? They really dont like that, and by the time you finally get home you found theyve already had the funeral and all your stuff is in probate. So the last thing I needed was to find myself running late or stuck with a mechanical and with no way to relay this information to my son or anybody else, because before you know it everyones drawing the only obvious conclusion:No, clearly the responsible thing to do was ride on the road. Unless theres a giant mountain or an insane headwind or something I can look at a road loop on a map and know pretty much exactly how long it will take me to finish it. In fact, the entire reason road riding exists is that type A people who schedule their days right down to the minute can ride for as long as possible. Furthermore, unless youre really far from civilization (which this place wasnt), its unlikely youre going to be out of range of a cell signal on a road ride, meaning you can count on being able to a text if youre running a few minutes late due to a flat, or you can consult a map on your phone if you get turned aroundplus youre always passing stores and stuff, and if you manage to break your bike or yourself you can always call a taxi or even utilize an app-based ride hailing system of some kind. For all these reasons and more, its always good practice to familiarize yourself with the roads in a new area before you make forays into the interior. (Unless the road riding sucks where youre going, which in this place it doesnt.) Of course, there is always the chance on a road ride that youll get run over by a truck, but at least in that case word would probably get back to the family pretty quick and my son wouldnt be waiting around wondering where I was.But I still needed a route. I thought briefly of joining a local shops group ride, but years of riding in solitude made such a proposition seem frightening. So instead I just combed a popular cycling route application and downloaded one to my aging GPS thingy, which I received back in 2020, when there were still people in the cycling industry who thought I was relevant:So now, six years later, heres my mini-review. It still works! However, its a little buggy. For example, sometimes it wont actually start recording for a long time. See the image above? Youll note it shows that Ive been riding for 43 minutes, and yet its showing zero miles, because it only just started registering. (Fortunately this didnt happen during my field trip this past weekend.) Also, it used to relay my phone notifications, but it hasnt done that for years. I realize most people dont want to be interrupted by messages while riding, but as you may have gathered from how neurotic I am about being out of touch with my family, I dont like to miss texts asking if Im still alive. So I sort of miss that feature, even though I have a so-called smart watch to glance at. There was a time when I used this computer regularly, but then I took a break from Strava back in 2023 and never returned to it. So since then I pretty much only use this if Im riding in unfamiliar territory and I need a route to follow. Anyway, it guided me turn-by-turn through this route just fine, and for all my complaining about batteries and electronics taking over cycling, I would say that navigation is one area in which I very much welcome itespecially since if youre like me you can not use it 99% of the time, but its there when you want it.As for the ride, I couldnt have asked for better conditions:Or better scenery:And while the only gravel I encountered was ceremonial:A day on the road is just fine with me:Best of all, I timed the ride to perfection, returning with just enough time to have lunch before picking up my son.And now that I have the lay of the land, perhaps if I find myself there again Ill venture onto some Very Small Rocks, though of course Ill need an appropriate bicycle:The designers of this bike eliminated the seat tube to produce a suspension effect, and its unlike any bike youve ever seen before:The actual reason for the curious silhouette is not to stop cycling journalists in their tracks on a Thursday afternoon, but to combat rider fatigue without sacrificing speed. Thats all thanks to Silverbacks S-Tec, it claims, that sees a conventional seat tube replaced with a section that bolts onto the main frame, with no contact between the seat tube and down tube: Combined with larger-volume tyres, lower standover height and engineered frame compliance, S-Tec creates a synergistic comfort system that absorbs vibration and road buzz while maintaining efficient power transfer, says Silverback.Except this one:And this one:You wont like to hear this, but a cantilever brake version of the Y-Foil with enough clearance for cyclocross tires would have been absolutely fantastic.
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