Bicycling

jooka_sl said:

Anybody have some suggestions on cycling rain gear. Mostly thinking jacket , gloves, and maybe shoe covers.

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I use neoprene gloves and booties since no matter what you do, you won't keep the water out so better to stay warm and wet. Learn to love wool socks.

For jackets I have a showers pass one that isn't terrible, you doing bike commuting or recreational riding?

Fenders!

Yeah, fenders are a must for any rain but still in the PNW, you need rain gear along with it.

For commuting I'm pretty biased towards jackets with hoods since you'll also be waiting for the bus/going to the bar. Maybe look at the Columbia, north face, NAU, Patagonia jackets?

My advice is to keep it a light jacket for when spring comes around and it gets warmer and rainy and just layer up in the winter.

I use these Izumi shells in the winter for fat biking and snowshoeing over a few layers. They're great - dry legs in all sorts of sloppy conditions last year.

Amazon.com : Pearl Izumi - Ride Men Outdoors

Arc'Teryx is awesome, but I think it might be a bit overkill for bike wear. He'd probably be better off buying some el-cheapo rain shell pants and jacket for $100 or less that he replaces every year or two, than spending $500+ on some high end Arc'Teryx stuff, taking a tumble the day after he buys it and blowing a hole in it.

I saw some of that Arc'teryx stuff this weekend and I don't understand why it's almost 600 bucks for a rain shell. I understand paying 250 to 300 for a nice she'll but it didn't seem any better that level of quality but twice the price.


Edit: forgot to add, for winter rain gear, I like to use snowboard park style gloves. You have all the finger dexterity and feel of a winter bike glove but for like half the cost.

I don't think anyone would disagree that you can get pretty good stuff comparable (but not equivalent) to Arc'teryx for significantly less. But at the same time, the design and quality (not to mention customer support) of their products is pretty tough to beat. People whose lives depend on their gear, like mountaineers, guides and the like swear by it. I didn't really see what the fuss was about until I picked up some of their gear and was blown away by how good it was. My bud, who is a pretty serious backcountry hiker/camper, looked at my Arc'teryx backpack for about a minute and then immediately ordered the same one, replacing his previous one. It had a shit ton of features that directly addressed problems he'd had with his own bag.

Then a squirrel or marmot or some shit ate half of it at night on his first trip out. They ended up selling him one direct for half of the retail price, maybe even less, even though they certainly didn't have to.

get a good rain jacket, fenders (I use one we actually make ourselves that's been great, but the rapha soft shell is great if you got money). rapha's gloves and shoe covers have worked for me. they're regularly on sale during summer. the legs are the tricky one

Ao-_sl said:

stragglers are amazing

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don't get me wrong, they're cool, we sell a few at the shop from time to time but they're incredibly heavy and actually pretty expensive for chromoly bikes (msrp that is).

I sold my ritchey p-29er recently and am going to grab a Cielo MTB unless something at interbike coming up amazes me.

I got a helmet cam, bros. I picked up the $119 Garmin VIRB basic off of Amazon, it's listed as Discontinued and on sale right now. Pretty slick little unit, it actually integrated with my Edge 810 so I can use the GPS to start/stop recording and take stills. Focus is just ok, but it's a lot better than I expected it would be when switching from sunlight to shade. I think it's worth $119 all day long, may even end up upgrading it to the Elite (which is $199).

Still trying to figure out the best angle for it on my mug, it's pointed a bit too low this time around but here's a vid anyway. Not as exciting as watching people rip it up at whistler but this is one of the cooler trails near me. No heroics, just dicking off on the fatty trying to figure the camera out.

I like the look of that garmin. I initially wanted the elite but im thinking 2 of the standard ones will do me. I only want them for commuting, one front, one rear and I can get 2 of those for less than the cheap gopro. Nice that if I get the 810 ive been eyeing up it can be used to control the cameras, I think.

I'm not sure if you can control two VIRBs at the same time, but it's definitely nice even just for one. I ended up returning the basic and getting the Elite for like $80 more ($199 for the white elite vs. $119 for the basic). I ran two GPSs so that it would make things easier to sync - I just started a new .fit file every time I started a new video, so if I had 5 vids I'd have 5 files. VIRB Edit is pretty sweet but getting the tracks to sync perfectly is a pain in the ass and the stats are kind of useless if they're off by a handful of seconds.

Here's how it looks on the 810. It's definitely a lot of fun (even though nobody will give a single fuck about my boring ass videos when there are all sorts of pro-shot DH/big air videos out there, lol). Should be a good time in the winter for fat biking stuff, and I'm going to pick up a dog harness for it so that I can strap it to my dog when she goes trail running w/me.

Did some RTFM and I'm pretty sure you can slave one VIRB off of the other so they both record at the same time. I took the elite for a quick spin tonight, nothing spectacular here but the GPS stats being native is a huge plus and a shitload easier to work with.

(Spoilered so I don't shit up the thread with a bunch of video loads.)

I like that layout on the side that shows mph, grade and all that other stuff. I really have no need for a camera/Garmin though, ever since I lost my go pro I've been over gadgetry.