My hybrid bike has a chromalloy fork and it’s fairly comfortable. I think the front fork comfort is on par with my road bike’s carbon fork, but it’s not a fair comparison as the tires on my hybrid bike are like 3x as wide.
As far as the bikes you listed, you won’t go wrong with the Surly or the Kona. The Kona is out of Bellingham so I’d lean that way to support local!
Yeah. Always get your own saddle.
I will whenever or if I get my bike from the bike shop. I had to take it in because I’m working overtime at work for the next few weeks and don’t have the time to Google and work on it. The bike guy was like “woh never seen a helicomatic hub before”.
Yea no one has in like 20 years.
Well see if he can get it up and going.
Went on a good ride on Saturday. Wasn’t super long but lots of rolling hills.
This particular hill kicked my ass, and I had another 10 miles to go after it:
Doesn’t look like much but it really wiped me out. The lack of a big 34 tooth gear really showed going up this one.
Also spiced up the bike a bit and added some color: purple bar tape, purple valve stems (also went tubeless). Going to replace the bottle cages with some purples ones shortly.
Finally got enough time to put a good ride down.
Just ordered a 70mm 17 degree and 70mm 7 degree rise stems to see if they alleviate some neck/shoulder discomfort on rides 30+ miles.
Thoughts while riding a bike
Cars are death machines whose absent minded drivers can kill me at any moment.
Still only been able to get in 30 minutes of riding at a time and can only get my average speed up to around 10 mph. Too many intersections turns and sidewalk riding to really get a nice long ride in. I still haven’t worked up the courage to go on the country roads as there is no shoulder everyone drives big ass trucks and with the new housing developments the roads are busy
No bike trails where you’re at?
I thankfully live in a pretty bike friendly town. I take up a whole lane when there isn’t a bike lane and feel reasonably safe. I ride with a headlight and tail light if I’m riding on the roads.
There’s also some really established bike routes on the roads without bike lanes so I assume drivers are used to seeing bikes there.
No bike trails unfortunately, or really infrastructure in general. I’m in a recently created suburb that’s still semi rural so not even shoulders or even sidewalks most places. Overall Dallas ranks near the bottom for bike lanes. They’re supposed to completing bike trails that circle around Dallas and Fort Worth that are probably 20 miles away or so so I might take a Saturday to haul the bike out to those trails and try and take a longer trip that won’t be as stressful as going down the country roads.
See if there’s a bike group or club near you? They’ll usually do group rides (you’ll want a no-drop ride where they’ll regroup occasionally to let slower folks catch up). They’ll also know routes that are safer for riding.
A local bike shop or a facebook search should get you in touch with the right groups.
We have a local facebook bike club that does different level of rides on different days. Tuesdays are the fast group (18-20 MPH), Wednesdays are the slow/new group @ 13 MPH, and Thursdays are the intermediate group at 15-17 MPH (it’s the one I ride).
I’m going to check. There’s no local bike shop so I’m going to check on Next door and Facebook
So about a month I already have a flat. I found the source. Somehow a thin thin wire punctured the inner tube. While I was taking the tire off I inspected the spokes and rim tape and saw this
This for sure will cause a flat eventually right?
I’m not sure, but probably.
I run tubeless tires.
Took it to the LBS to get an opinion and they filed them down for me. Back and ready to start riding again
16 year old tried to roll coal on some cyclists, loses control and runs over 6 of them. Is somehow not arrested at the scene
I’ll be surprised if he get anything more than a small fine. Assuming he gets charged at all, I mean, it is Texas.
Just moved to Beacon Hill. Made it 3/4 up and had to tap out. Think I can get it next time, bunch of cars made me stop a few times and I started out at too high of a gear which burnt me out early. The 17% pinches at the end WOOF
https://www.strava.com/segments/7824379
amazes me pro riders can do this for so long and so fast.
There’s two philosophies on this. You can be a pedal masher and use a high gear, or spin to win using a low gear. I’m fat so climbing up hills is a real pain in the ass ass for me. I started with using a low gear and spinning to climb, but with time have moved to using higher gears and putting more leg strength into it.
It won’t take you long to condition yourself to get up that hill in a minute. My body adapted to riding pretty quick, and I can do one of my local hilly routes pretty well and mostly keep up with the group I ride with.
Rain has come to the PNW so looks like I’ll be riding indoors until spring 
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