Not the GOAT (Yet)

At this point, I think we can safely say Tadej Pogačar has entered the conversation as one of the greats. Today he completed yet another long solo breakaway to win his second consecutive world championship.

There are plenty of people who have already crowned him the GOAT, but that is crazy. Merckx racked up an astounding 525 wins, exactly five times as many as Pogačar's 105. This recency bias is pretty normal, though.

In baseball, players from more recent times are often celebrated as better than the old timers even if the numbers don't support it. I have heard baseball pundits say, "Ruth played against farmers and plumbers." Sure, the game was different in Ruth's time, which makes direct comparisons difficult, but he absolutely dominated his era and literally changed the way the game was played. In 1920, when Ruth hit 54 home runs, he was the first player in MLB history to reach THIRTY home runs. The next best player that year was George Sisler with only 19 home runs.

Many say Ruth couldn't hit in this era. Maybe. To be truthful, few players can hit in this era. Pitching has never been better. However, if you insist on making this comparison, you have to acknowledge that Ruth rolled out of bed, often hung over (or still drunk) from the night before, and still dominated. Because he could. Why live like a monk when you can eat and drink whatever you want, stay out all night, yet still be great?

In this era the expectations would require Ruth to be in the weight room, eating sensibly and making curfew. And I have little doubt given these modern requirements of the game, he would compete and perhaps even be a dominant force in this era.

Which brings us to the ridiculous notion that Merckx could not compete in this era. Similar views as with Ruth have been voiced: "Eddy raced against farmers and plumbers." Again, give him modern training and nutrition practices, and a carbon fiber super bike, and Eddy would be just fine. Those 525 wins didn't happen by accident.

Even though Pogačar just turned 27, he will never come close to matching Merckx's win total. I think even reaching 200 wins is a stretch. Because today you MUST live like a monk to compete with all the other monks. Eventually this will become too much for him, and I believe he will likely retire quite young.

When he does retire, and the dust settles, maybe we can return to this GOAT talk. For now I will simply appreciate Pogačar, and marvel at the beauty and audaciousness of his long attacks. Like many things in life, like my own individual cycling mortality, I will enjoy it now while it lasts.

Later.

Pelagic Passage

We go to Monterey so often, I am running out of synonyms for "ocean" to use for titles.

Another trip to the coast in the books.

We drank beer:

Walked around and took pictures of stuff:

Had coffee:

Rode along the ocean:

Had more beer:

Had more coffee at a French bakery:

Dealt with a proliferation of every one of these things on the trails:

Saw some otters up close right near shore:

More sightseeing:

And even more beer:

Not pictured: way too much remote interaction with our Nevada real estate agent as we navigated a weird sale. Otherwise, we had a really good time.

Later.

Gravel King

After the success of setting up my very old Mavic wheels tubeless by utilizing Schrader valves, I decided to replace my tires. This was long overdue as they were over seven years old and the rear was pretty bald.

I chose Panaracer GravelKing SS tires mostly because I got them for a song on clearance. I went with the 43mm width, a 3mm increase over my old 40mm tires.

The first GravelKing fit very loosely on the front Mavic rim. I could not get the tire to seat. I ordered more rim tape and started adding layers. Still loose. At four layers of tape I resorted to using an inner tube to at least get one side of the tire seated. Then I pulled the tube, reinstalled the valve and tried again. After a lot of soapy water, profanity and wrestling I finally managed to get it seated with the compressor.

The rear wheel was impossible even with SEVEN layers of rim tape. The bead was ridiculously loose. I finally resorted to fishing my old Teravail front tire out of the trash. Of course it seated right up even though it was over seven years old.

I rode the bike a few times in this configuration, frustrated that I couldn't use both new tires. When I returned home after one ride, I eyed my son's mountain bike hanging in the garage. It's the only other bike left with quick release wheels. Surely the Velocity Blunt 35 rims were too wide for gravel tires, right? To the internet!

The Velocity rims are 35mm external with a 31mm internal width. After consulting various charts and gravel web sites, I determined that 31mm was just on the edge of acceptable for a 43mm tire. I decided to give it a shot.

The tires were still a pain in the ass to seat on the Velocity rims, but at least not impossible. I thought that the tires would look ridiculous on the wide mountain bike rims, but they look pretty normal.

Clearance is a bit tight on the fork, but there's plenty of room in back. At most I think I could run a 45mm up front.

After a few rides, here are my thoughts: wide rims are awesome.

My sample size is still very small, but still, I really don't see any reason to use anything but the widest possible rim on a gravel bike. The change is that dramatic. Going from 19mm to 31mm completely changes how the bike behaves.

With the old rims I was running 43/45 (front/back) PSI just to keep the tires from squirming too much in the corners. When climbing out of the saddle I could still feel the front tire folding over, which was annoying.

Now with the same tires I am at 38/40 and I could probably go even lower. The ride is so much smoother with the added air volume and lower pressure. Cornering is confidence-inspiring with the larger contact patch and no tire squirm. I didn't feel any discernable difference in straight-line speed with the wider rims.

There is a 80 gram weight penalty per rim, and I can feel that a little. It works out to about one-third of a pound of rotating weight, and it's noticeable when climbing or accelerating.

It's been an interesting experiment and another example of how the learning never stops in this weird sport, even if you've been at it for over four decades.

Later.

Vibes

We experienced some coastal vibes on our ride yesterday. Every once in a while the marine layer finds its way deep into the Sacramento Valley in the summer. I did not hate the cool start to the morning.

It definitely made me yearn for the coast a bit. Maybe we should do that.

Later.

Stan's Dead, Jim

I was airing up the tires on my gravel bike before a ride and one of them exploded. I had an idea what the issue might be. After pulling the tire I was right: the Stan's rim strip failed. It had rotted and split due to old age.

If you don't remember these, I don't blame you. Back in olden times when tubeless was just hitting the scene, we used these strips to convert non-tubeless rims. They looked like this:

My Deore XT/Mavic TN719 wheels date back to 2011 and they were used on various mountain bikes until I built the gravel bike in 2018. With an internal width of 19mm, they are narrow even by modern gravel standards.

One of the reasons I used this method over rim tape in 2018 was the Mavic TN719 rims are drilled for Schrader valves but used a plastic insert for Presta.

There was no way to seal a presta tubeless valve against the rim due to the split in the adapter. Here is the doodad removed:

I tried to find replacement strips, but they have pretty much gone extinct, especially in the narrow size I needed. Then it occurred to me there was a more modern solution for these very old rims.

I was already using Schrader tubeless valves on a couple bikes, so I decided to give it a go on the gravel wheels.

With a new layer of DT Swiss tape and valves installed, the old tires mounted up OK. Since the tires are well over seven years old and likely stretched out a bit, it took a little work, but not much. The increased airflow of Schrader valves certainly helped them seat.

These tires really need to be replaced, but I was hesitant to remove them because I knew the Stan's strips were likely to fall apart if I did. Now that I have a solution, I will look for some new tires.

Later.

Fort Bragg

Jennifer and I ran up to Fort Bragg for a couple days to see her cousin's new(ish) brewery.

Patrick was the longtime brewmaster at North Coast Brewing (which is located right around the corner from Tall Guy) before opening his own brewery.

We had a nice visit with Patrick and took the grand tour. The beer was great and the location is one street removed from Highway 1 in a quaint part of town. I already want to go back.

We only went riding once, but this was by design. We both rode a lot leading up to this trip, so one mellow ride was just what the doctor ordered.

The trail along the ocean was only a couple turns from our hotel. Within a couple minutes we were riding along the water.

We reached the end of the trail to the north and turned back after a selfie.

The riding shares some obvious similarities with Monterey, but it was different enough that we slowed down and looked around a bit more.

After reaching the southern end of the trail, we headed into town. I was looking for a haul road I found on Google Earth that runs east out of town. After a few wrong turns, we found the somewhat hidden entrance.

The road follows the Noyo river upstream. It was paved until we hit the bridge.

After the bridge it turned to gravel and there wasn't much enthusiasm to continue. On our Jones bikes it would have been fun, but the mini velos were out of their element on the bumpy, rutted surface.

We turned around and headed back to our hotel. Normally we aren't satisfied with only 17 miles, but it was a perfect ride for this trip.

I broke out my little Canon PowerShot SX210 IS for this trip. Most of the pictures in this post were taken with it. This is a camera that has traveled the world with us for 15 years, but I think there are probably better options now.

When only carrying my iPhone, I often get frustrated when I can't zoom in on an animal or some other interesting subject.

The 14X optical zoom is nice for those situations, something you can't get with a smart phone. (The current iPhone 16 Pro still only offers 5X optical zoom.)

The compact size is great. It's smaller than my phone, but twice as thick. With that compact size comes a small sensor that only performs well when there is plenty of light.

The image stabilization works well for photos, but not for video as you can see below.

If you made it through that without getting motion sickness, congratulations.

Anyway, the TLDR version: Tall Guy has great beer, Fort Bragg is a cool place to visit, and the perfect camera does not exist.

Later.

Mini Biking

I "finished" building the Neutrino some weeks back, not long after finishing the condominium renovation in Tahoe. It isn't in its final form yet as evidenced by the uneven color scheme and a couple ancient parts, but close enough.

So far I have used it for errands and a couple rides, one around 20 miles and yesterday a flat 37 mile ride along the canal. This was a test of sorts because the ride around Cozumel is over 41 miles with very little elevation change.

The bike itself passed with flying colors, albeit with a couple caveats with component choice. 

As for the platform itself, the mini velo with 20-inch wheels is really just a bike. Your brain adjusts pretty quickly to the twitchy steering, and this is coming from someone who regularly rides what might be the longest and most stable bike around in the Jones LWB (long wheel base). Once that hurdle is out of the way, you simply ride. It's just a bike.

Considering my main ride, the aforementioned Jones LWB, is a steel behemoth with three-inch knobby tires, the Neutrino is downright fast. In fact, towards the end of the ride yesterday I held off a guy on a road bike for a couple miles until he out-geared me on a downhill. The 42x11 high gear combined with 20-inch wheels simply isn't made for racing speeds. I spun madly while he pulled away.

In many situations the Neutrino would be far superior to the 26-inch travel bike it is likely replacing. The only time it would be inferior is when the pavement ends. I would be pretty comfortable on anything but the roughest gravel roads, but I know Jennifer would not. The instability of the little wheels would definitely make her uncomfortable.

One interesting aspect to the mini velo is how well it climbs. Well, once you figure out how to do it right. It climbs fine in the saddle, but really excels when you stand. When I first tried standing it felt horrible and sketchy, but I quickly figured out that you really need to saw the bike back and forth like a BMX bike. When you do that it feels very natural, but maybe that's because I spent many years on a BMX bike. The other thing I noticed is you don't need to shift for hills. Simply stand up and start cranking, and the little wheels rocket right up the incline. This makes me believe it would perform very well as a single speed, which would be great for traveling.

Back in the day, the WTB SST saddle was my favorite. 

This one dates back to 2003 when I built my Santa Cruz Blur.

Perhaps in 22 years the foam has hardened up or something, but I found it very uncomfortable on our 37-mile ride yesterday.

The only other component of note is Steve Potts Siskiyou handlebar.

I thought it would be very similar to the Jones bar, but it really isn't. It's a couple inches wider, yet the grip section is much shorter, meaning a "regular" grip is in order. Part of the Jones appeal is the ability to use long (205mm) grips, which allow you to move your hands around. The sweep is 30 degrees to the Jones 45, and I prefer the greater sweep of the Jones. Also, I feel a little naked without my bag in the middle of my Jones bars.

The upside is I really dig the cow horns. It may seem dumb to have an "aero" position on a mini velo, but I appreciated it while riding into a stiff headwind. I use a similar position with the Jones bars, but these are better. I will miss that particular aspect of these bars should I change them out.

Later today we are heading up to Fort Bragg and taking the Neutrinos. We don't plan to do any serious riding, but it will still be a good test.

Later.