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Your Mom

Certifiably Surly
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Everything posted by Your Mom

  1. Whatever you’re shopping for, there is certainly an online forum for that make and model. Go to that forum and the enthusiasts of that particular car will know which dealers in your area charge bullshit dealer add-on fees and which don’t. For example, in Austin, it’s pretty well known among the Toyota fanboys that Cedar Park Toyota doesn’t charge those fees while Autonation down south usually does. Even on a hot vehicle like a Tacoma or 4Runner. They might add some window tint and paint protection, or a port add-on package of options, but you’re getting something for that money. They won’t be marking up way above MSRP just because they can like you see at other dealers.
  2. Things like generators are the perfect reason to be a member of Consumer Reports. The level of short term and long term testing they do is impressive. https://www.consumerreports.org/home-garden/generators/best-and-worst-inverter-generators-a9189700579/
  3. Podcast is the way, not the app. They release a separate podcast for each 1 hour portion of the show. It even gives you a description of what they talked about that hour so you can skip the basketball talk episodes. And hardly any commercials. And you can skip ahead 30 seconds at a time to skip the commercial entirely for the few that do come on. You just follow the show and the latest one is right there on your podcast app of choice when you open it. If you drive a modern vehicle you don’t even have to take your phone out of your pocket and it’ll just pick up playing where it left off. I’m not getting their silly app either, but over-the-air radio is dead. I have no more use for it than I do a newspaper.
  4. Every butt is different but my favorite saddle is a Selle SMP VT20.
  5. I’ve known a couple guys who owned car washes as a side business. Both made a good money with it and both were dealing with car wash bullshit all day, every day. Broken equipment, polluted water drainage requirements and inspections, a constant rotating door of minimum wage employees not showing up, more broken equipment. From what I could tell they both worked a lot harder than I ever care too.
  6. Don’t we have a poster that moved to Maui a couple years ago?
  7. What a fucking stupid argument. Do you teach a 3 year old about respecting the cars in the street by having them drive one?
  8. Not much. 99% of the riding was not technical. We had different paces but regrouped often. 3 of us generally went faster than the other two but we’d get some guidance on what to look for ahead and where to stop. The other two were never more than a few minutes back. The bike parks were optional and one woman opted out. My son and I skipped a couple of mostly road sections because he had some knee pain by the end of the week. They offer trips for different levels but this one was marketed specifically for people who have been riding a long time and can cover the mileage. They ask a lot of questions to make sure you know what you’re getting into. It was a good group. A couple in their 50’s from New Zealand, a pudgy Spanish guy who could actually ride his ass off way more than appearances would lead you to believe, and my son and I. One guide was about my age and is a full time guide for bike trips, backpacking, backcountry skiing, etc… The other was a young downhill racer/bike mechanic.
  9. Yep. Multiple people told me I’d regret putting the pool next to two oaks. No ragerts at all. I tie my float to one of them to stay shaded every time I’m in it. I don’t think I’d be in the pool too often if it had no shade. It’s not really that much more work. Empty the buckets a couple extra times a day for a couple weeks, blow the leaves off the deck every few days. That’s about it. It’s worth the shade.
  10. No, Top Notch originated on Burnet Rd.
  11. Here’s a recap of the trip to Scotland with my son. It was a group tour with Wilderness Scotland. Coast to coast from Aberdeen to Acharacle. We were a group of 5, plus 2 guides. The guides alternated riding with us and driving the van. We stayed in bed and breakfasts each night and ate good meals at local restaurants. All meals were covered in the price. Each day we’d meet for breakfast at 8 and then start riding around 9. The van would drive ahead and set up a coffee/tea and cake stop about an hour into the ride. Then a couple more hours of riding until a picnic style lunch stop at the van. A couple more hours of riding after lunch and we’d get to the next hotel and relax a bit before dinner together in town. Weather was generally in the 50s and 60s. We got rained on a little bit maybe half of the days. And spent hours in a cold rain one particular day. The riding was a mix of gravel roads, footpaths, single track, and a little pavement. More gravel than anything else. We hit two bike parks along the way. One of them was Nevis Range, site of the UCI Dowhill World Championships this week (starting today I believe). One of our guides lives there and we had a blast running all his local trails, unfortunately it was at the end of a day and the GoPro had died by the time we hit that. We covered about 200 miles and 13,000’ of climbing in 6 days. Longest day was 47 miles and 4000’. Not much tech, just a little on the 2 bike park days and a bit of “adventure riding” in a couple spots where there was hardly a trail at all and you had to just make your own trail. As usual, I had a hard time trimming the video to something as short as I wanted. If you want to skip to the better riding it’s starts at 4:50
  12. You can probably look at all the new 2024 Tacoma info and have a pretty good idea of what the next 4Runner will look like and be spec’d like.
  13. The easiest way to listen is via podcast. They usually upload each hour of the show as a separate podcast about an hour or so after it aired. So the Hour 1 show gets posted around 8, so on and so forth. It’s on the Apple podcast app, Spotify, or whatever other app you already use. Just subscribe listen to the most recent one at your leisure. If they do an interesting interview or something they’ll usually upload that on its own too. Very few commercials too, and easy to fast forward though them anyway. And it’s nice to just bail on an entire episode and move to the next when they’re talking about something you aren’t interested in.
  14. I can’t really put my finger on it but I find myself telling him to shut the fuck up every few minutes when his voice finds its way into my car. He always sounds like the guy who tries too hard to be the funny guy.
  15. I take it as a genuine compliment. Sark has mentioned before that he and Lane are buddies and he has fond memories of them both getting their asses chewed out together by Saban.
  16. Whatever they do I’ll be picking one show to listen to. Don’t care if it’s morning or afternoon as I generally only hear it via podcast at my convenience. Two shows worth of content each day is way more than I need. Most likely I’ll listen to Erin. But if he pairs with Ward I’m out. Can’t stand Ward.
  17. IMG_1399.MOV IMG_1398.MOV Scotland is cold and wet. Beautiful riding. We finished day 3 of 6 today. Long days in the saddle. The last 2 days were 43 and 47 miles, 3300 and 4000 feet of climbing. Long slogs up. These aren’t really mtb trails, just paths and gravel roads. Tomorrow we will hit two designated mountain bike trail centers instead of focusing on point A to point B. I’ll compile all my other clips into a way too long YouTube when we get home.
  18. This is a no-shit answer. Fong’s Chinese Pizza in downtown Des Moines. Order the Crab Rangoon pizza and thank me later. Google it, it’s a thing and it’s legit. I spend a significant part of my professional life searching out good food in shitty places and Fong’s is one of my favorites.
  19. Me too, based on how all your internet friends talk.
  20. Bodhi, you ever ridden the West Magnolia trails or any of the other stuff near Nederland? I have this pipe dream of moving somewhere within 2 hours of Denver and being able to mountain bike straight from the house and have skiing within 30 minutes, and not paying Breckinridge prices. Nederland is on the short list.
  21. She also searched how amber alerts work.
  22. If there’s one thing I hate more than theme parks it’s Oklahoma.
  23. Wingwalking used to be a popular form of entertainment. They’d have them at every air show back when airshows were a big deal. The tire change was part of a performance. Pretty cool though. (And at least they didn’t let her drive the thing.)
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