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NEW BIKE
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DRIVING TO SPOKANE
After camping in Shoshone, I drove back to West Yellowstone.
Leaving my campsite:
I had some mail there. I had also ordered a new micro SD card for my GoPro. When recording, the GoPro was often pausing for a little bit and putting gaps in the video. Although I think the card I was using has a high enough transfer speed for HD video, after making sure it wasn’t due to overheating, that was the next thing to try.
Once in West Yellowstone, I realized that the carrier for the SD card was UPS, and that they won’t/can’t deliver to the post office as General Delivery. (I assume now that the Post Office refuses since they would be rendering me service with no pay). So I drove up to Bozeman Friday evening to pick up the package before the UPS place closed for the weekend. Then I hung out in Bozeman a couple days. It’s a nice town.
After a couple days in Bozeman, I northwest. I took the Interstate to Missoula, and then 200.
200 was a nice drive. Next summer I definitely want to spend more time around here, and also along the area between West Yellowstone and Bozeman. I stopped for a night in Noxon
NEW BIKE
I brought a road bicycle along with me. I prefer riding outside of cities - out in rural areas on roads without a lot of traffic. This results in me wanting to ride more while I’m outside of cities - while i’m out in a camping spot. That means that I’m out on forest service roads. I went for a ride from a camping spot in Colorado once. It was a wonderful area. The forest service roads weren’t that bad, and there was a gravel road that I wanted to explore. I’m used to riding road tires on crushed stone paths - which are generally very hard packed and have just a little bit of loose rock and only a few sections of what I’d call normal gravel. Riding on real gravel roads is another thing. The road I went down had a LOT of washboarding, and had some pretty deep/soft gravel. I went too fast down some washboard sections which resulted in a flat tire and my saddlebag attachment breaking and the bag falling off. (The bag attachment part is plastic and it was already cracked, so I was worried it would break).
I gathered that I need to use wider tires. My road frame could probably accept tires around 25mm or MAAYBE about 28. I want to be able to use wider. I started looking at Cyclocross and Gravel bikes. I don’t want a full-on Mountain bike because I will still ride on paved roads and I don’t want to be limited by the gearing. This also meant that about half of the cyclocross bikes (which have only one chainring) wouldn’t work either. I searched the Craigslist postings for Bozeman, Spokane, Seattle, and Vancouver, and found some good options. Vancouver was a very real possibility because of the favorable exchange rate. I’d saw a bike I liked in Spokane and made plans to meet the guy to check it out…
The bike looked good, and I bought it. It is a Felt F65x Cyclocross bike. It’s a mid-level bike. I love buying things at prices that are nearly fully depreciated, and that’s what I did here. New, the bike costs $1,500 or more. The guy had a $1,000 price on his ad. We agreed on $700. The bike was practically new. He got it a year or less ago, and has a lot of bikes, and it appears he didn’t get around to riding this one much.
Here I’ve started moving components over from my road bike. I moved the seat, handlebars, stem, pedals, and bottle cages. Because of the angle, my road bike looks like it’s smaller than the new bike. It’s actually not, other than a slight different in the wheelbase.
My 23mm road tires vs the 33mm tires on the new bike. The next set of tires I get may be 38mm.
With everything moved over (except bottle cages) and the bars taped up.
This bike has a lot of modern bike features that I’ve never experienced before: 11 speed drivetrain, disc brakes, internal cable routing, tubeless comparable wheels (though they don’t have tubeless tires on them now).
The frame is definitely not as nice as the old bike (it doesn’t smooth out the bumps nearly as well), but the wider tires with less air pressure will make up for some of that.
The van was a total mess inside while I had the two bikes. I got a cardboard bike box from a shop, packed up the road bike, and mailed it to a family member to store in their basement.
I’ve wen’t for a few rides now on the new bike and it is working great. My knees are giving me a bit of trouble - hurting after the riding. I think some of it is due to small differences with the new bike (probably some slight difference in bottom bracket and crank arm widths - which cause the pedals to be slightly closer or further apart), and some of it is because I’m just using them a lot more and differently than I have been over the last couple years. So I need to make sure I work up my use and intensity gradually.