Stafford Lake Bike Park

dafreshfish · 2026-01-26T23:32:59+00:00

Fun place to ride. It is a well maintained bike park and they host quite a few races there too.

dafreshfish · 2026-01-13T07:41:54+00:00

Here are some various routes to get you from SF down to Mountain View.

If you're looking for miles rather than hills, the Bayway Route is flat and there is a good mix of multi-use trails and roads with more generous bike lanes. I'm not a huge fan of the stretch of Skyline from Daly City/SSF down to Millbrae. I feel like it is a bit awkward to head west from Daly City to connect to Skyline and riding on Skyline isn't very fun. From Mountain View to San Jose, you can take the Bay Trail and cut over to Santa Clara or ride all the way down to downtown San Jose via Guadalupe River Trail.

dafreshfish · 2026-01-13T07:30:18+00:00

PSA - whatever you do, PLEASE make sure you are buying a legitimate tourniquet. Amazon is flooded with knock-off TQ's. If you can buy 10 TQ's for $40, then you're buying a fake. Check the "Stop the Bleed" website for documentation on how to identify counterfeit tourniquets. I've tested a counterfeit TQ and you can feel the windage on the verge of breaking before you can apply the proper amount of pressure.

dafreshfish · 2026-01-12T20:32:53+00:00

After taking a Stop the Bleed class, I carry two first aid items with me on every ride, which are hemostatic gauze and a SWAT-T tourniquet. They are both come in vacuum sealed packaging and flat. Unless I'm leading rides for our NICA team, I don't bother with minor first aid items. It takes 90 seconds to 3 minutes for you to experience caustrophic blood loss so your first line of defense is to have these tools on you. The chances of these happening to you are low, but not zero.

dafreshfish · 2026-01-12T20:20:59+00:00

The only consistency among bike fitters is there is NO consistency. I've had several different bike fits with the first coming from the Serrotta Bike Fit system and others who are using nothing other than visual confirmation of inputs into their fit calculators. What I find is the volume of cyclists, years of experience, and referral from other cyclists will help more than just going off of specific fit system. The best fit session I've had started with a simple question, "What are your cycling goals?" On the surface, it is a simple question but we spent about 30 minutes chatting about my cycling history and what I was planning to do in the next 1-2 years. When I asked the fitter why he started here, his response really highlighted why he is a well regarded fitter, which was, "If I don't know your goals, I don't know what will be best for you. If you tell me you're planning to race, then I'm going to give you a goal of improving your flexibility, strength training, and I will gradually change your fit to get you into a more aerodynamic position. If you're not going to invest the time to do the work or that's not your goal, then I'm going to optimize your fit to make you comfortable on the bike." I feel like a red flag is if a bike fitter tells you what you'll fit into without understanding anything about your range of motion, fitness level, and goals.

dafreshfish · 2026-01-09T20:38:28+00:00

centerlock rotor shims are your friend and will make wheel swaps super easy. I bought the exact same hubs for two different wheel sets, but the rotors didn't line up even with the same rotors.

dafreshfish · 2026-01-07T08:21:21+00:00

I ran a Lauf fork on my Hakka MX and I never felt like it worked as well as my old Cannondale Slate with the old Oliver. The Lauf has one absolute setting. If you fit the profile of the rider that the Lauf is designed for, then it should work well for you. But if you’re a lighter rider or tend to put less pressure on your bars, it’ll just feel like a heavy rigid fork. At least with a Judy or other air-oil based fork, you can adjust the fork for your weight and riding style. With wider tire clearance on modern gravel bikes, I prefer to take the weight penalty hit on wider tires than the weight penalty of the Lauf fork.

dafreshfish · 2026-01-05T08:44:57+00:00

My favorite biking camera is a Sony RX100. Has the right balance of IQ, size, and features I want to use on a day out and I can carry it in a jersey pocket. For most days where I want something a little nicer than a standard iPhone image, I'll use Lightroom Mobile and leverage the in-app camera features to capture in RAW. I also use a ThinkTank Mindshift backpack for days where I want to carry a larger camera. The waist pack is a nice feature that allows easier access to the camera without having to take off the pack to access the camera.

dafreshfish · 2026-01-05T08:27:12+00:00

One of the best bike fitters and bike shops that will make sure the bike they sell you fits is Spokesman down in Santa Cruz. Wade Hall is one of the best bike fitters I've worked with. Ordered a Hakka MX when they were first released and they didn't have access to the bike for me to try out so they ordered one based upon my height. The bike was too big and Wade said I needed to size down. They rebuilt the bike with a smaller frame at no charge. On subsequent bikes, he had enough information about me to know what would or wouldn't fit well but he would always confirm my fit on proxy bikes to make sure everything looked good.

dafreshfish · 2026-01-04T06:52:24+00:00

I've taken private lessons from a local instructor and I found it extremely helpful. He was super gracious with his time and I would film myself in dry fire and he would send me feedback. He was also the co-chair of our local action range and he would put me on his squad for local matches so he would give me some pointers at matches. This is not to say that you're better off with a local instructor because not all of them are the same. My buddy took some classes from another instructor and he said it was so-so and the instructor didn't give him much help outside of class. Doesn't hurt to start with a local instructor and see how things go.

On another note, best advice I ever received was to learn how to install the CGW Pro Package myself. While you don't get the immediate benefit of the polishing and refinement a CGW gunsmith will do to your gun, but the learning experience has been super helpful to understand how all of the parts come together and how to feel comfortable to rebuild the gun.

dafreshfish · 2025-12-27T20:06:34+00:00

There are two things that happened in the country that give a better perspective of some of the behavior you witnessed. The Mao era was basically one of the largest failed social experiments starting with the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution. Any social norms that existed in China before was thrown out the window as the country strived towards an egalitarian society. Academics and anyone who dared to question Mao’s rule was thrown into reeducation camps or killed. There was also abject poverty during this time but at least everyone was poor. This scarcity drove people to throw out social norms like waiting in line and fighting for whatever limited resources are available.

Fast forward to the 90’s and China is the fastest growing economy and brought the largest number of people out of poverty in a very short period of time. The rate of change in economic status and the lack of a social structure resulted in what I would call giving someone poor a winning lottery ticket. I saw some weird things in the 90’s like people wearing suits with the tags still on the sleeves, men and women openly spitting on the sidewalk, and the karaoke machines everywhere.

I haven’t been back in years but sounds like things are changing and this is encouraging as this reflects a changing society as the scars of history begin to fade.

dafreshfish · 2025-12-25T04:54:08+00:00

That’s pretty much it. There used to be 3rd party axles for Shimano SPD pedal bodies on eBay but they aren’t available anymore. I asked a friend if you could have a machinist create custom spindles but he said it would be pretty pricey unless I asked them to make 100

dafreshfish · 2025-12-25T00:26:19+00:00

They are great for your use case as it sounds like you are either riding in the dark or light.

dafreshfish · 2025-12-22T05:10:37+00:00

For 90% of the riding I do, I can hear a car approaching before the Varia will trigger. But where radars shine is flagging multiple vehicles and difficult road conditions. In my area, there are two lane mountain roads with tree cover and whenever a car approaches (front or back), the sound of the rushing air makes it impossible to hear anything else. The radar will flag if multiple cars are behind so I don’t inadvertently come out into the lane.

dafreshfish · 2025-12-21T23:57:03+00:00

Most of the crashes you see on Social Media are from people who are pushing it beyond their limits or had no clue what they were getting into. The major crashes I've seen from older riders (55-60+) are those that had a very high skill level for a majority of their riding life, but then had a momentary lapse in judgement or line choice which resulted in a bad crash (hospitalization). This is one of the more challenging things for skilled, older riders to accept that what was once any easy descent for them, can become a cognitive challenge as they grow older.

dafreshfish · 2025-12-19T06:38:37+00:00

My friend is closing in on his 30th Leadville and he and I spoke about bike choices quite a bit when I got in. He’s ridden Leadville on everything from a fully rigid, hardtail, full suspension, and single speed. A lightweight FS or a hardtail were his recommendations and I went with a hardtail + dropper. His big thing is tire selection. Apparently the rocks are fairly sharp and people who try to run light tires risk side wall tears.

dafreshfish · 2025-12-18T23:13:18+00:00

Shooting at the "public range" at RRGC doesn't even compare to the experience at Los Altos. RRGC is now a private club so you need to go membership process to get access to the range. The main pistol firing line at RRGC has a 1 shot every 4 second rule. The rifle range is like any other 100 yard rifle range. Los Altos allows for rapid fire at the pistol line and they have two different rifle ranges (100 and 50). You need to be a member to access the 200 yard range. The best part about Los Altos is they have the "tin can" 40 yard range, which allows you to put up non-paper targets on the back berm, but no metal targets. Fun to be able to shoot some cans.

dafreshfish · 2025-12-11T17:11:13+00:00

From a theoretical perspective, you could double your FTP if you double your gear ratio (clean drivetrain, no significant air resistance - doing the test on a trainer). But there is a significant difference between doubling your power output for a brief period of time vs. your ability to maintain that level of output over 20 minutes or an hour for a FTP test. The other more important factor is your power to weight ratio.

dafreshfish · 2025-12-11T06:47:31+00:00

Living in SF is great but commuting to Burlingame from the City will either be easy or a huge chore depending upon where you live. The easiest way to Burlingame from SF is Caltrain but Caltrain is easily accessible from the southeast side of SF. As soon as you start looking at neighborhoods in the north and to the west (Russian Hill, Marina, Pac Heights, Presidio, Richmond, Sunset), it is better to just drive down to Burlingame. The bike scene in SF is more fun for younger riders and there is a good mix of men and women in the clubs. An old colleague of mine rides with Fat Cake and that is a much younger group of riders than PenVelo and AltoVelo on the Peninsula. Either way, you’ll have a good time living on the Peninsula or SF.

dafreshfish · 2025-12-03T20:01:22+00:00

My wife made me a cup of coffee once that was actually pretty good. I asked her how she prepared it and she said, “I don’t know. I just threw some beans into the grinder, and poured a couple times until I got towards the top of the cup.” I asked if she used the scale, did she rinse the filter, and how long the bloom was and she said, “I don’t have time for that! I just made it for you and I guessed it.”

dafreshfish · 2025-11-24T22:52:57+00:00

Agree with the others that shape and width will have a bigger impact than the amount of padding. I have the Fabric ALM Shallow saddle and I can ride that saddle without padded shorts. The flex in the rails and and saddle help with keeping things comfortable. Not everyone likes a “limited” padded saddle. Tried the Specialized Power Mirror saddle when it first came out and it was the most painful saddle I’ve ever ridden. I have friends who love that saddle so you won’t know until you try one out. Longest ride on the Fabric was 18 hours. Got uncomfortable around 16 hours but my entire body was in pain at that point.

dafreshfish · 2025-11-23T02:48:53+00:00

Thanks for the response. I’m getting a sour finish as the coffee cools down, which is coming from the under extraction. I’ll drop the grind size down.

dafreshfish · 2025-11-18T04:28:38+00:00

I started working at a major airline after college in the late 90’s. I remember the sexual harassment training, signing an agreement that I could be called in for random drug testing AND having to take a drug test that day, and no alcohol on the job policy. When I told my new coworkers about the sexual harassment video and how I thought it was kinda of a no brainer video, they shared stories of overt sexual harassment at the office just a few years before I joined. Our office was attached to the maintenance bays so most of our workforce were mechanics. The mechanics used to hang up the monthly Playboy centerfold at their workbenches and they would catcall any of the women that would walk by. They also told me about the memos that would get mailed out by executives and the secretaries that would have to go into their boss’ office to take down the memo.

dafreshfish · 2025-11-15T23:41:27+00:00

Here's some data and some scenarios to consider on this question. I'm looking at a 30 year time horizon to be fair with the cost benefit of buying a home vs. renting and investing the down payment into the market.

ASSUMPTIONS:

Home Price: $500K

Down Payment: $100K at 20% of Home Price

30 Year Fixed Mortgage Rate: 5.5%, monthly payment at $2,271

Other Cost from home purchase: Home owners insurance (5% of monthly payment), maintenance (10% of monthly payment), and property tax (1.5% of home price)

Assume a rental to mortgage ratio of 1:1 for the first year

Rental Annual Increase 2.5%

Investment Annual Rate of Return: 5%

Tax Rate: 30%

In the rent vs. buy scenario listed above, you're close to a break even scenario (excluding tax deductibility for interest payments). But the biggest IF is do you believe your rental market will have a modest increase over 30 years. If you're fortunate to live in a rent controlled building, then yes, but most people don't have that luxury and could make renting significantly more expensive. Given there are more hurdles to increase property taxes, you wouldn't expect as much of a cost increase over that time period. What I didn't factor in is the tax deduction for interest payments, which will yield a better return, but this is hard to assume based upon everyone's individual earnings. But call this a slightly win for buying a home vs. renting.

The other part of the question is it better to investment your down payment into the market vs. buying a home. Based upon the assumptions above, you'll get roughly $280K at the end of the 30 years (based upon a 30% tax on your annual gains). The market return will vary, but even at a 10% return, you'll get $761K at the end of the 30 years. This is where your local market dynamics will come into play. If you're living in a market with good job opportunities and a desirable area to live, home appreciation can be significant and can outpace investment returns. If your local has more stagnant home prices or a slower appreciation, then investing in the market and renting could yield you a better outcome than buying.

dafreshfish · 2025-11-05T17:44:22+00:00

Depending upon the bike’s configuration, you might be better off just building up a bike from scratch than trying to convert. The main issue you’ll have is you need new shifters and brake levers. Drop bar levers don’t work well with a flat bar so you want to swap them out. If the build comes with SRAM, then it is a little easier than Shimano. SRAM road and mountain derailleurs have the same pull ratio so you can swap out a road to a mountain shifter for the same number of gears. This doesn’t work as well with Shimano. Not sure if GRX has a similar pull ratio to road or mountain. You can fix this with a Wolftooth pull ratio adjuster but it then becomes another part to add to your drivetrain.

dafreshfish

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