Your Most Recent Purchase (Pic required)

Dos_Ruedas said:

We have bears. The population has been on the rise for the past 7 or 8 years.
I live in the country, yet i rarely see them. Like a fox or bobcat, they’re private animals.
I do worry that one of these days I’ll come around a corner and Momma & cubs will be crossing the road.

While I’ve carried on rides in the past, i currently do not. Mostly because i haven’t found a suitable way.

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It is true that bears almost never bother humans and tend to be more afraid of us than we are of them. I have seen several bears in the wild in CO, NM, and WY without once feeling imminently threatened. That said, I rarely go into the woods without a can of bear spray. On my bike, it rides in my Blackburn Outpost Carryall bag on the handlebars, or on my hip if I'm wearing MTB shorts which allow for a belt.

The Outpost bag is large enough to take the spray and still allow bags of nuts and other goodies to be packed in around it. I'm not sure its esthetics are compatible with a pretty roadie, but it is a way to keep both snacks and spray close at hand.

I last carried a gun on a bike some decades ago, when I had a concealed carry permit and my cycling career was sputtering out beneath the weight of cigarettes and neglect. I had a butt pack then with a concealed holster. It was a fashion nightmare but otherwise worked well.

Adjusted just so, I found I could ride short distances on my MTB while wearing it. I was only riding short distances then, so it might have been one of those arrangements that work for 15mi before becoming horribly uncomfortable. The look was...unfortunate .

I stopped carrying well before returning to cycling and haven't felt the need to change that. I have thought about what it would look like in the context of carrying safely and discretely on a bike, but it's remained theoretical. It is an interesting challenge, if nothing else.

Should you care to share that journey, I'm interested.

Less exciting perhaps than Dos' last purchase, but here they are: our Wolf Tooth B-Rad 4 and 2 rails have finally arrived.
620mL water bottle included for scale.

I recently ordered a B-Rad 3 rail and Double Bottle Mount through the company's website. They came quickly and are installed on my fat bike.

Ordering these pieces through Amazon resulted in the Double Bottle mount arriving quickly while the rails took more than a week. Odd. I think I'll go direct through the company next time. They offer free shipping on all purchases of $50, or did when last I visited their site.
New bits all together. The B-Rad 2 and Double Bottle Mount will find their way onto Mrs. Newleaf's fat bike. I will likely audition it on my folding MTB first. I'd love to be able to carry a 2nd bottle on that bike, but I want to be sure there's clearance for the bike to fold with the bottles installed.

The B-Rad 4 will replace the B-Rad 3 on my fat bike. That will let me shift the water bottles' mounting location further down on the frame for better weight distribution and clearance between bottles and frame bag.

The B-Rad 3 will likely end up on my BikeE recumbent, where I hope it will enable me to use the 2nd water bottle mount without fouling the cable line.

Pics to come in the appropriate thread. I am really digging on these Wolf Tooth adapters. They seem well conceived, designed, and manufactured. There is a definite risk of being nickle and dimed to death by all the different bits, but I find their functionality compelling.

These things will end up on at least a couple more of my bikes. We will see how they hold up over time.

I recently ordered these though an LBS, brought them home, set them down, and forgot about them completely. Today's mix of rain and snow may have had something to do with reminding me 😊.
That's a Muckynutz front fender and Portland Design Works' Mud Shovel 6.5" for the back. The Mud Shovel is almost comically oversized looking as packaged. Alas, a 26x4.8" tire kicks up quite a lot of whatever happens to be on the trail, be it mud, dust, or leaves.

After i12's endorsement of bone conduction headsets in another thread, I decided to try one out. I wasn't willing to commit to the $180 cost of a better brand right out of the gate, but Blue Santa offers a range of alternatives. I found this "Wireless Sport Headset" by a company called "BE OPEN" for $40.

The headset offers a claimed battery life of 8hrs and sound quality which, while nothing like traditional headphones, is more than good enough for music and podcasts on the road. With the volume right, I can carry on a conversation with Mrs. Newleaf while my music plays in the background. I hope that will translate to hearing automotive sounds over my music on the road.
As a modern day dinosaur, I appreciate things which have physical buttons.

Sound quality is actually better than I expected, but subject to changes in quality based on movement of the head. Slight shifts of the conduction pads' position on the skin result in changes to the tone or sound. Somewhat annoying, but worth it to be able to hear ambient sound.

Similarly, heavy bass at moderate volume results in perceptible vibration of the conduction pads against the skin. This appears to be a 'feature' of lower cost headsets which is progressively banished as quality rises, but I'm not sure. Either way, it's not a factor at the volume levels I plan on using.

Comfort wise I like it better than my padded over-ear headphones, though the latter naturally offer higher sound quality.

I bought this for cycling and look forward to road testing it, but already see potential for it in a lot of other activities.

OK, got the build bug and scored some gullwing sidewinder 2 trucks with some lime green sector 9 wheels and cleaned them up. put in some fresh abec7 bearings on hand, also swapped in a riptide 90 and 95 durometer cone bushing on each truck as well as some fresh barrel bushings and one new pivot cup on each truck...these are double reverse kingpin so 4 bushings and 2 pivot cups on each one. Now what to put them on.....40" bamboo kicktail of course, lol.......and some really cool griptape. Got some light blue risers like in the grip tape.

This is the wood....same on bottom, art will be on top of this one


This is the running gear.....


and some pretty sandpaper up top...


probably flip it where light blue is on tail of board,,,,

First, I bought the PDW Mud Shovel 6.5 and a similar front mud guard from another manufacturer through an LBS. Still needed the down-tube fender. When I asked the LBS about options, all they could order was a camouflaged version. While I've got no problem with camo in principle, it's utterly wrong for my teal and purple fat bike .

Enter PDW's Origami Front Fender, which attaches to the downtube. Seems I must already replace the other two despite having just purchased them: this bike is all about color. I hadn't seen the paint spatter design until after I bought the other pieces in bland, boring black .

Nothing much......human powered gravity sampling........footstool

I received my Hardheaded Ram brake pads today. Impressive turnaround: I ordered last Friday morning. Within hours I had confirmation of shipment. Today, the pads arrived. That's awesome.
These are their DH pads, intended for my touring bike. I look forward to getting them installed.