Welcome back to even more stuff! This week, Luke discusses Rampage and a few apps that he’s itching to try out. Meanwhile, I talk about a gravel bike and some personal updates that are potentially too short for an article of their own. I missed out on the normal, non-recurring article this week but I never promised a consistent schedule for those anyway. Maybe we’ll have two this week, that might be exciting!
Bianchi Releases a Gravel Race Bike
I normally prefer to link right to the manufacturer with something like this but it was proving difficult to find (I didn’t try very hard though). Immediately, this bike is a miss for me because it only clears 700×37 tires. There are plenty of gravel situations I’ve been in where more tire would have been faster, not less. My initial reaction is that it’s yesterday’s hottest tire clearance on the bike of today. But then again, who am I to judge? It just seems like a strange move when most others are trying to at least give the option for wider tires.
Rampage
Red bull Rampage riders and the new venue were announced. It still happens out in the Utah desert because it is the best location possible for an event like this. I think this means that the new-old Rampage site will be available for the public to ride now? I say new-old because the old Rampage was already available to the public. Either way it’ll be a bunch of rad dudes hitting insane lines, which is always great.
Luke Likes Apps
I haven’t used these apps, but they might be worth checking out. I’ll give them a try at some point and put out a quick review. They seem pretty fun though.
Personal Updates
We had a bunch of wildfire smoke in the area a few weeks back, and it made breathing outside a bit of a troublesome prospect. By that I mean, it was downright dangerous to breathe hard outside, according to some air quality monitors I was checking. The worst part was (well, for me. The worst part is the wildfire, clearly) that this got me out of the habit of riding regularly, and it’s proving difficult to get back on the saddle with any degree of consistency. It wasn’t helped by the fact that we had some rainy weekends, and my world really revolves around singletrack. Turns out, if I can’t get on the mountain bike about once a week, my interest wanes somewhat.
It’s good to know these things because it helps me plan around rough situations and think of ways to keep the motivation high. Luckily, the skies are clear now and we’re in for some great riding weather. In fact, this is going up really late on the usual Sunday because I was on some singletrack all day. Could be worse!
Gradually Faster 