Matt's Bike Thoughts

My bike stable has three bikes now: a Soma Saga touring/commmuter bike, a Salsa Cutthroat bikepacking/gravel bike, and a Salsa Woodsmoke mountain bike. I love all of them. But I've got turmoil about my 2x system, and if I'm going to go 1x, I think I can further optimize. There's a few Woodsmokes around in a size Medium, so I'm tempted to buy it and do some swaps. The Problem(s) So, I do love my Woodsmoke and Cutthroat, just as they are. However, I think they could be better. The Cutthroat's 42/28 gearing is fantastic, but it's so hard to find compatible stuff for it. If I can't get some chainrings that fucking work, then I'll definitely need to do a 1x, much to my chagrin.  If I do a 1x, then I'm seriously limited in my gearing. A 34t oval would be the smallest I can run due to the power meter sizing. And a 36t oval or 38t round is the tallest I can run, which is a bit smaller than I'd like. The Woodsmoke is a bit, well, small. I'm going to b...

I'm so frustrated. Here's the design constraints on my current bike project - a crankset upgrade w/ power meter. Mountain bike standard spacing 42/28 gearing (or wider/taller, if possible?) 165mm crank arms < 30mm BB spindle This is going on my 2016 Salsa Cutthroat, which has a 42/28 chainring setup stock on SRAM crankset. The cranks are a big chunker of weight, and they're too long for my legs, and  I want a power meter on the bike. Turns out, satisfying these requirements is a huge  pain in the ass. I settled on the power2max NGeco spider power meter. Coupling this with either a SRAM GXP or Shimano 24mm spindle works. SRAM and Race Face cranks can work here, but they're a bit more annoying to install than I like, so I settled on  the Shimano XT FC-8100 cranks in 165mm. They're pretty and the shorter crank arm length is perfect. power2max makes a 2x mountain-standard adapter for their spider, which has 104/64 BCD spacing. It's really easy to find rings for a...

Does what it says, but the compromise is real  So, the good: when folded, it's tiny! It takes up so little space, it's amazing. And then it unfolds into a full power rack. This is awesome. The custom color looks amazing - I love the blue. It's very easy to fold in and out, taking less than a minute total. It takes more time to move the barbells and plates than it does to fold the rack itself. The other reviewers talk a lot about how great the rack is, so I won't cover the positives as much here. Let's get into the downsides. You want a compact, convertible thing? You know there are going to be downsides. The installation is annoying. The measurements you need to make are very precise and painstaking - the rack must be perfectly level, and there's not much margin for error with the included bolts. If your floor is not perfectly level, then you need to use spacers to ensure that the rack feet all touch the ground. However, this means that you're going to be ap...

Bikes are so much fun, and you could easily want to just have a thousand bikes. But that's irresponsible, so you buy N bikes, with ever the desire to have N+1. However, the very nature of cycling and trade-offs means that a stable of N bikes is often unstable when adding another bike! Suppose you are determined to have a single bike. You might pick a cross country mountain bike or a gravel bike - both can do everything pretty well, but suffer at the extreme ends of the spectrum. An XC race bike will be faster than a downhill bike on pavement, but will be left in the dust compared to road bikes. A gravel bike will do better than a road bike on mountain bike trails, but still can't keep up with a real mountain bike. You like mountain biking more than road biking, so you get an XC race bike. Neat! It's perfect for XC riding, does good on gravel and trail, and OK on pavement. It's not as burly as you might like, but the compromise is worth it considering the gravel and p...

Alright y'all, I want a touring/commuter bike for mostly paved stuff. I want to run 40-50mm tires (with fenders), long chainstays for stability and getting panniers out of my way, and a big stack height for comfortable drop bar touring. I collected a bunch of frames, did a bunch of math, and came up with some neat stuff. I own two bikes, and I have their fit dialed in pretty well. The Fuji Jari 56cm is the first one, and I've done a lot of stuff with it - it's a bit of a noodle when weighted down, and the positioning is a bit aggressive for long days in the saddle. I'm probably more of a 54cm anyway. The Salsa Cutthroat Medium is the second, and it's a dream. I can be in that thing forever. The Cutthroat has a Frame Stack/Reach of 619/375, while the Fuji has a 592/379 geometry. I've spent a lot of time dialing in the fit on the Jari, and after doing calculations, I have a total stack/reach of 689/488. I have not dialed in the Cutthroat at all, and it has a S...

Lee McCormack  has a great big idea for a starting point on mountain bike fit - RAD. You take your height, multiply it by a constant number, and that gives a Rider Area Distance number. You'll then measure a line from the bottom bracket, and it should end where your grips are. Easy! Can we apply this to drop bars? Yes! Now, the linked fit guideline is obviously a huge simplification - your exact bike fit will be determined by much finer measurements than mere height. You need to know your inseam, leg length, arm lenth, forearm length, shoulder width, etc to calculate exactly what's up. And even then, it's just a starting point - you may find that you want a more upright setup, or you might want to be a bit more aggressive. You may try to measure a straight line from the bottom bracket to where your grips actually exist in 3D space. I did this and was dismayed that I must need an XS bike! Instead, you want to measure a line along the bike frame. When the line stops, that...

Alright! So right now I am rolling with some Thule panniers which are shit. They're heavy and annoying in a lot of ways, probably why they stopped making them. Oh well. Two three basic wants: carry a laptop for commuting, grocery shopping, and paved touring. So let's compare. My laptop is 0.98" x 14.21" x 10.16", so I'll need that much space to work it out. Fitting the laptop isn't necessary, but I'd prefer to just get one set of panniers. Basically going to rule out Ortlieb here because I don't like their attachment systems. Which pretty much leaves Arkel. But I guess for completeness sake, I'll include them here. Let's get started with the Thule's, so I know what I'm up against. They're no longer made, so  REI  and  Outdoor Gear Lab  will have to source the specs. They cost $120/ea ($240 set), carry 27L/ea (54L set), and weigh 3lb 3oz ea (6lb 6oz set). The  commuter pannier  carries 18L and weighs 3lb 5oz. Ortlieb Bac...

Xert is an interesting app that uses data to predict your fitness and capability. However, it needs data. Lots of data. And you can't just trust it from a blank slate. You have to ignore the system's recommendations for a while. Push yourself, do hard workouts, crank up the intensity, avoid SMART workouts, etc.  It says "You'll never need to do an FTP test again," but it's not really true that you won't be doing fitness tests. Instead of a ramp test, you'll be hard intervals to achieve "breakthroughs", where you beat the system's prediction on your power capability. These are more sophisticated and fun than a typical ramp test, but you absolutely need to do them, or the system won't give you adequate training recommendations. For the first month of training, I just blindly followed recommendations from the stock configuration. I didn't get any stronger. The workouts were all really easy. I stopped following recommendations and sta...

 The G1 Salsa Cutthroat is an amazing bike, but it's got some old standards that make upgrades a bit tricky. In particular, it has a non-Boost mountain bike spacing for the crankset, and a max chainring clearance size of 42/28. This gearing ratio is very  old school. SRAM adopted it for a while before dropping 2x systems for 1x entirely, and Shimano's gearing has put 10 teeth between the two front rings for a while now. The BB92 standard has a reputation for shitty bottom brackets with 30mm spindle diameter, so we'll want to stick with the 24mm spindle or SRAM GXP. You may choose to go with a higher maintenance option, but since I want to ride this thing on the Tour Divide, I'm going for reliability. To further complicate matters, you may want a power meter! So, here's the cranksets I've considered, the set I went with, and what I eliminated from consideration. Winner - Shimano XT 8100 Shimano FC-M8100 crank arms, 165mm Wheels Mfg Thread-Together BB power2max NG...

Animal product replacements can contribute to a more sustainable and ethical life. Unfortunately, they often carry negative health impacts, and it's important to weigh these trade-offs in making an informed decision.  "Just Egg" is an egg replacement. While I haven't cooked with it yet to ascertain taste and cooking behavior, I have checked out the nutritional information. Let's see how it stacks up against a real egg. Here's the manufacturer's official website for the product . For a single 3tbsp serving, we have 70 calories. 45 calories are from fat, with 0g of saturated fat, 1.5g of polyunsaturated fat, and 3g of monounsaturated fat. There's 1g of carbohydrates, and 5g of protein. The exact nutritional content of eggs depends on exactly how the chickens were raised - chickens fed corn and soybeans will have a much worse fatty acid profile than pasture-raised chickens. As natural products, there's variation, so all figures would be averages.  Inc...