ahem
thread police here
jackass thread is…somewhere else. this is the cat6 thread.
You can only Cat6 on MUP?
I don’t know where else to put this…
I’m on vacation right now, and I’m alternating days of long hikes with bike rides.
On my last bike ride day, I decided to go up to Minnewaska State Park and try to hit every carriage trail in the park, which is about 50 miles in total; I ended up missing a bit so I rode 40 miles.
I loaded up my road bike, drove to the park, and parked my car. As I’m sitting in my car for a minute, a Mercedes station wagon and an the biggest Audi SUV pull up right behind me, and disgorge a bunch of really attractive, albeit quite scruffy, middle-aged people. The cars are loaded up with very fancy dual-suspension mountain bikes. One guy who is maybe 50 years old gets out and he looks like he stepped straight out of a department store catalog, long white hair, craggy face. I’m like that guy looks really familiar for some reason. They’re all dressed in Rapha gear.
So I get out and pull my road bike out with skinny tires and road gearing, and they start unloading their dual-suspension mountain bikes and a crapload of video and camera gear. Now I’m really curious. Then Mr. Handsome pulls out a pink Rapha club water bottle and I’m like okay, now I think I know what is going on, and I’m smirking because…
There is no place in that entire park where a dual-suspension mountain bike is remotely necessary. There are two types of paths: One is perfect carriage road–it’s gravel, but it’s better maintained than pavement roads around here. Not even a pothole to be seen. These are the only places bikes are permitted. The other type are the foot paths, which are not bikeable by any means and in some places are barely walkable. They are filled with baby head sized rocks, require frequent scrambles and climbs up narrow notches and head-height rock faces, and are in some places bisected by 1-2 foot wide 80 foot deep cracks of doom.
This is a picture of a foot path from a winter hike I did.
This is a picture of a carriage road.
So I’m wondering why all the camera gear? Are they going to film themselves getting rad on dual-suspension mountain bikes on perfect carriage roads? Or are they going to hike their bikes on foot paths to 50-foot long bikeable sections so they can film themselves? I can’t answer that because I was long gone by the time they finished putting together their video equipment. I wanted to talk to them but didn’t think I could without laughing.
Stay tuned because whatever they were doing it’s going to be CAT6 ridiculous.
Whatever they did I’m sure it will be curated in radavist next week.
Been getting CAT6’d by people on e-bike conversions the last few days. I guess I’m happy to have more people on bikes using the bikey lanes and bikey infrastructure but I’m always pissed that I’ve been working for years to ride as fast (slow) as I do and these folks just cruise right past me without breaking a sweat.
One that was funny yesterday is that I got passed by some rear hub e-bike will going up a hill (as you do) but it was going into a 1.5 mile stretch of traffic and lights that I actually managed to “keep up” through because the woman on the e-bike kept getting stopped. Of course when the route finally opened up she just vroomed away.
This morning I saw this dude cutting across the sidewalk on a bike, obvious novice commuter because he got dead-stopped behind a bus that he really probably could have got around if he’d kept his head and pedals moving. I pass him and the bus and then immediately start working my way up this hill, and lo and behold this guy has another e-bike conversion and he passes me at pro-speed pedaling out of the saddle up this hill. Why he was pedaling out of the saddle I have no clue but I guess it looked better on the CAT6 highlight reel?
The thing I have to wonder now is whether the e-bikers get a smug sense of satisfaction from passing me that is equal and opposite to the irritation I feel when they do it
I’ve been commuting on my basket bike pretty much exclusively for weeks. Rode my endpoint in on a whim yesterday and I felt like the fucking cat 6 king.
2 Likes
Friend of a friend used to ride one and yes, he said he felt exactly that. I said it was weird to feel satisfaction for a thing like that and that I make a hobby out of passing dudes like him on principle.
Next time I saw him he’d sold it…
I’m surprised how fast either the hunter/gatherer or the 2.2" bee-lines or the combination of both is, but I was able to drop a cat6 roadie with ease the other day, and we were pushing 27 for a while there.
Humblebrag
I mean just because it’s cat6 doesn’t mean it isn’t a race…
I’m the jerk ass running late to work every other day on my HG overtaking roadies, commuters, mtbs, rando bag fully loaded, frame bag packed with tent poles, full fenders, 2.1’s. Sometimes I just give up because my legs feel like bricks.
I’m the guy on an LHT who is convincing himself that all the touring parts don’t make me slower while getting passed by basically everybody
1 Like
i got friendly-cat 6d yesterday. i extended my commute to go way out through the farm fields east of rochester. out there, roadie dude comes up next to me and starts chatting. he was super nice. i had to be home by 5:45 so i needed to turn right. i think I Cat 6 DNFd, but it was legit!
Perfectly executed cat6 commuting home last night on the dad mobile
Got passed by a roadie, tucked in until he got on the path while I stayed in the bike lane on the road, busted a gut to draw level just as I reached my turn off, then blew up after the turn 
if you haven’t started crying immediately after your cat6 race you don’t cat6 hard enough.
2 Likes
Can I get a judgement here?
Me: riding home from work, on raleigh.
Him: cat6 superstar, full kit, BMC team machine, both earbuds in.
I’m casually-spirited riding, not looking for any action.I hear his 9000 point engagement hub behind me, and then he passes me with some degree of bravado. It’s fine, whatever.
I then notice that he’s not actually going a ton faster than me, so I catch up rather easily. He kind of looks back and accelerates a bit, but we keep having to slow down because of traffic on the path.
We get to about 1 mile from my turn-off, and I pass him knowing full well that I have to stop in a mile, he tries to catch me and I start going faster. Then I arrive at my turn, I get stuck at the light, and he catches up about 15 seconds later.
Win, Lose, Forfeiture, or just 2 dudes being assholes?
You won in a sprint finish. Your prize is being the bigger asshole.
3 Likes
You lost because you passed him knowing you’d have to turn off too soon.
Sorta what I figured.
edit, re: straws.
Damn, been Cat6ing wrong all these years.
gonna go take a long hard look st myself