[79pmooney]

in reply to: John Prine #36755

We lost him.

[79pmooney]

in reply to: cleaning the chain #36616

Dale, every new development in Oregon gets fresh asphalt. All the new streets and driveways and all the utility trenches into the old streets. We get to ride the utility trenches while looking at the driveways.

[79pmooney]

in reply to: John Prine #36749

I never followed him. Lost track of country and a lot of other music after i heard Muddy Waters and fell in love with the blues. But I’ve heard his song Angel From Montgomery sung by two women. Susan Tedeschi’s take brings tears to my eyes.

[79pmooney]

in reply to: cleaning the chain #36608

Posted By Cosmic Kid on 03/30/2020 06:13 PM
Hmmm….that seems like a lot of overkill. And in this day and age of thinner and more precise chains, I’d be wary of disassembling every single link.

…

C K, I don’t see the issue with doing this.  But – the new chains have peened pins so you cannot reliably reuse the pins and outer plates.  But, there’s an easy remedy.  Replace the pins and outer plates with quick links.  Done.

I looked at Sheldon’s site.  He beat me to it.  The SRAM Deluxe Kit.  (And a bargain!  Best Power Link prices I’ve seen.  Harris must sell a lot of these kits and have a deal with SRAM.)

Speaking of Harris, the current times and the long hours we sequestered now have to kill – I see a windfall happening.  Lots of cyclists with lots of time to kill.  A whole bunch if chains cleaned right.  There’s gonna be a rush on those $249.95 kits.  (Got hammered with your Wall Street holdings?  Salvage your losses and buy Harris.)

Oh, and Harris/Sheldon is/are really ahead of the curve.  Mechanic is fully outfitted for COVID.

[79pmooney]

in reply to: cleaning the chain #36602

Oh, 3 in 1is locally available. Just not the Canadian Tire I have some (in the older packaging) and I use it. but not for chains.,

[79pmooney]

in reply to: cleaning the chain #36599

Posted By Orange Crush on 03/30/2020 07:30 PM
Wipe with rag. Put some 3 in 1 oil from Canadian Tire on it and consider it done.

Am I missing something?

We’re missing something.  Canadian Tire is mighty hard to find down here.

As I recall, 3 in 1 oil was developed for bicycle chains, sewing machines (and guns?).  Still very good, just low-tech and dirt attracting.

[79pmooney]

in reply to: LBS Rant #36652

Is it true that you may have to bleed your brakes if you turn the bike upside down? I heard that somewhere and it strikes me that could be a real liability, especially for someone like Donna who will be traveling and won’t always be ar her bike when train attendant is shifting stuff around.

[79pmooney]

in reply to: LBS Rant #36644

zoot, time to think custom. (And get a bike with a less stiff forks since there is no disc brake down there. (Tailor a fork to be comfortable? What a concept! (Wait a minute – framebuilders have been doing that for the past 12 decades.)

The new force driving custom frames – disc brakes!

Ben

[79pmooney]

in reply to: The Iditarod mushers are finishing #36898

Posted By Franck A. on 03/18/2020 04:21 PM
… He was a whole pack of mush dogs into one guy on his mountain bike doing and winning the Iditaride several times in the 90’s.

Yes and no. Impressive,yes. But the MTB event was NOT the Iditarod and no human comes remotely close to ever one of those dogs, let alone a team.. The MTB race – less than 300 miles. (Edit: His wns of 1997-2000 were on 350 mile versions.) The dogs do close to 1000. One dog burns nearly 10,000 calories a day, approaching a high mountain day for a Tour contender – at 45 pounds! VO2 max/kg is three times a pro rider.

Crude math: 10 dogs, 10 days, 10,000 kcal/day. 1 million kcal, At 3000 kcal/lb for fat burning – 333 lbs of fat burned (by 450 pounds of dog!)

[79pmooney]

in reply to: The Iditarod mushers are finishing #36896

Idiitarod, aka the great Alaskan experiment in social distancing , has just been won. 12:37 am Unalakleet time. A Norwegian, THomas Waerner finished with 10 of his (I presume) 12 dogs.

I haven’t followed IIditarod for years. I used to do my best when Susan Butcher was winning regularly because I loved the story of her love of her dogs and how they responded. (The top IIditarod dogs make TDF riders look like couch potatoes. For their incredible sustained power, immunity to real cold and the heart of a true athlete.)

I saw a documentary taken at the finish a few years ago. Top dogs just cruised across the line. “Done. Next challenge?” Mid pack an Iditarod veteran crossed with hie team of experienced dogs. No, these were not the top ones. They worked good and hard to finish mid-pack. Leader was 10, 12 (?) years old and running his last race. He was plumb tuckered out! But his love for his owner and love of that race was just as obvious as his gratitude for being done. (The night before the teams crossed the frozen sea in a full storm, conditions as tough as it gets. That mushers don’t regularly die crossing that sea is a testimony to those dogs.)

13 “man” teams where the stars are the domestiques.

Ben

[79pmooney]

in reply to: Can we still ride outside? #36515

Posted By Frederick Jones on 03/17/2020 10:42 AM
Posted By Frederick Jones on 03/17/2020 10:42 AM
SARS went away after one appearance.
Cousin MERS that showed up later is seasonal, like the flu.
Both are Coronaviruses, and both are much more lethal but much less contagious than covid19. That high contagiousness of 19 is making control so difficult. A lot of experts agree with OC about the duration. An unknown is durability of an immunity after infection. If it’s durable and half the world gets it this outbreak, it will fade. But if immunity is not durable, yikes.

Sadly, I think you are spot on.  The current two week closures?  Yeah, right!  (It is necessary to lower the bell curve but we won’t have even hit the steep part in two weeks.)

I’ve been reading books that put this into perspective.  Life in Europe during the two world wars.  No, this won;’t be nearly as bad.  This isn’t a killer of high percentages or (for most of us) permanently life altering.  But we are going to see shortages and what we see as lost liberties that we haven’t seen (here in North America) since WW2.  Elsewhere, the long term is going to be far worse.  (And you heard it here first – serious PTSD issues for Italian and Spanish health workers far into the future from making daily decisions as to who lives and who dies.)

[79pmooney]

in reply to: Can we still ride outside? #36514

We have need of the next line of defense – our immune systems. We are very close to pigs. Convenient for study purposes but it does mean we are susceptible to the same viruses pigs are. Now bats are a different story. The corona virus don’t seem to affect them much. The bat woman found a bat that was harboring 3 or 4 coronas that would each be a serious issue for us – simultaneously. Apparently with no ill effect.

So for the next avenue of gene therapy – the evolution to a more bat-like sequence. (And if that comes with useful wings – cool!)

And seriously – I hope the immunities come and stay because we now know there is a roughly two day window before any symptoms where a person is contagious.

[79pmooney]

in reply to: Can we still ride outside? #36505

Posted By Orange Crush on 03/16/2020 01:48 PM
…

Also no snot rockets

It’s time., once and for all to get the terminology right.  They are NOT snot “rockets”.  They are snot projectiles.  Rockets are self propelled.  (Example – mortar shells.  Without the rocket fuel in the shell, they would never leave the mortar.)  Snot on its own does little more than drip.

I propose we call them snot shots.  Then we can talk about things like range, muzzle velocity, arc, scatter,  pattern etc. in meaningful fashion.  (Even things like recoil and decibels.)

[79pmooney]

in reply to: Bat Woman to the rescue! #36903

Shi Zhengli. No,she’s not going to save us from COVID but her work may well stave off a future coronavirus.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-chinas-bat-woman-hunted-down-viruses-from-sars-to-the-new-coronavirus1/?utm_source=pocket-newtab

Dedicated soul! She’s spent hundreds of hours crawling bat caves, catching bats, sampling bat fluids and excrement and documenting the antibodies and pathogens they carry. (Talk about putting yourself on the front line!) She has now retired from that front line but will continue to build a database of coronaviruses that is probably beyond anything mankind has done before.

Ben

[79pmooney]

in reply to: Can we still ride outside? #36503

It’s not about being outside. Its the risk that you might crash and need hospital services. Someone might have to die for the attention you need.

I read an article the other day that the decision as to who gets attention and who is ignored in Italy is being made, not by the doctors, but by often by staff lower down simply because they are so overwhelmed. Also that otherwise healthy cyclist is being taken to a place with high risk of COVID infection and quilte likely simply adding to the big problem.

I understand that part. The tough on is seeing the near empty roads!

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