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Our ongoing Know Your Coast program has taken us to a VRBO on the high bluff above The Strands Beach in Dana Point. Unlike the preceding Oceanside segment, left the ebikes home, as the bikeways here are generally short and poorly connected. But I do have something off-topic to share: A...

With 3 of 8 stages now complete, the 2025 Criterium du Dauphine through eastern France is turning into an interesting race. I'm streaming it on Peacock. All the big Tour de France (TdF) contenders are there — Pogi, Vingegaard, van der Poel, etc. But riders I know nothing about have been...

Say what you want about GCN, but when it's good, it's really good. The gravel and mountain bikes under comparison here weren't electric, but the content still applies. Of course, the playing field was heavily tilted toward the gravel bike in this 100-mile, mostly luxury gravel route. But the...

Anyone have experience with the following Specialized tire accessories? 1. Considering the $30, 60 psi, 55 cc/stroke hand pump below for the tubeless 38 mm Pathfinder Pros on my Vado SL 1. Comes with a holder I'd mount on my currently unused top-tube bottle bosses...

Decisive crashes, cruel cobbles, 32-35 mm tires. https://velo.outsideonline.com/road/road-racing/35mm-tires-62t-chainrings-and-more-tech-of-paris-roubaix-2025-part-one/?scope=anon

Picked up the wife's new Velotric Breeze 1 yesterday. She has about 25 miles on it now. I have about 5. Great color, nice lines. As a 50 lb, 750W, 65 Nm, 8-speed, hub-drive step-thru with cruiser geometry, the Breeze has little in common with my high-step 38 lb, 240W, 35 Nm, 12-speed...

What if you put a Creo 2 motor in a Vado SL 1 (SL for short) with no other change? How would battery consumption and rider power requirements compare with those of the stock SL or a Creo 2? Haven't heard of anyone actually trying it, but these things can be modeled. So I made a spreadsheet...

Just learned about the new Schwalbe-backed bike tire valve standard called "Clik" from this video, starting at 11:05: Anybody tried Cliks yet? Can they really just replace your presta cores? If you want to see why a new valve standard like Clik might be a good idea, watch from the beginning...

Considering the new Velotric Breeze 1 hub-drive for my wife — in part, because it allows you to choose between torque- and cadence-sensing assist while riding. Anyone have experience with this dual-assist scheme on any ebike? I'd never choose cadence-sensing assist for myself, but it might...

Have been having some fun lately with custom titles under my EBR avatar on the assumption that nobody really cares what I put there as long as it's not too offensive. Which now has me eyeing the avatar itself. Same old headshot since I joined 3+ years ago. I suppose folks who rely on it to skip...

This fun BBC detective series now streaming on Netflix is set in gorgeous Mallorca, and the beautifully shot scenery is one of the stars of the show. The victim in E1S2 is a kidnapped Tour de France favorite from Mallorca accused of doping by a vengeful ex-coach. Plot twists ensue. The writers...

For a day or so last week, all EBR forum links returned a "down for maintenance" page (paraphrasing here). Then it came back up with fluctuating response times ranging from instant to several minutes. Posting, image uploading, and post editing have also been glitchy, and now I see that the...

To the WSW, we have a very bright Venus, a less bright yellowish Saturn, and a very faint Uranus, all in a row. To the ESE, bright Jupiter is just to the right of a gibbous moon, and a very dim Uranus is up and to the right from Jupiter. All 4 Gallilean moons of Jupiter are visible with good...

Earth passed through perihelion this morning — January 4, 2025 — at 0528 Pacific Standard Time. It's closest to the sun at this point in its slightly elliptical orbit — about 2% closer than average. This annual solar system event always falls about 14 days after the December solstice. I'm sure...

Worthwhile YouTube documentary on the history of the bicycle: Well-researched and nicely illustrated with no glaring errors till the ebike is reached at 45:50. Some relatively minor misconceptions about how ebikes really work follow but nothing egregious. Their version of the early history...

My beautiful Vado SL 5.0 has generally worked quite well with the current (black icon) Specialized app (v. 1.34.0) since purchase 3 months ago. But 5 times now — and for no apparent reason — the app has failed to record rider power (Pr). Toggling the bike off and back on doesn't help...

Sometime in 2023, California passed some much-needed bike laws nicely publicized in the latter part of this video, where I just heard about them for the first time: Will have to research the details, but in short... 1. Cars are now required to change lanes to pass cyclists whenever safe to...

It's happened to all of us: A bike mod or repair that should've taken 5 minutes but still has you tearing your hair out 30 minutes later. Share your most exasperating examples here. I'll start with yesterday's attempt to shorten my wife's kickstand. Never worked with one quite like it, but...

Our water heater sprang a slow leak this morning and will be replaced with a new high-efficiency tankless model tomorrow to the tune of $9K. Wife happened to notice the small stream of leak water on the garage floor — probably right after it started. So we got a partial break from the water...

For our more math-minded Specialized mid-drive riders, here's an interactive graphical model of your bike's tunable power-sensing pedal assist system -- hereafter, just "PAS". The model doesn't cover complex PAS responses to transient events like starting out or approaching PAS cut-off speed...