I have those Paul Chim Chim’s on my Timberjack and I use them a lot on long climbs. Don’t love the look, but they fit my hands well.
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Gnarly conditions on the Divide this year;
“Tour Divide is all about stories. On Friday I turned back because I had severe pain in my rotator cuff (a pre-existing issue) on the singletrack by Spray Lake, got to the physio, she did great. Restarted from Canmore on Saturday up to Round Priaire a good 100 miles and I was strong. Yesterday got over Koko Pass okay, I was going great feeling positive, then about 20 miles out from Fernie the bear spray on my handlebars went off. I could see in the gravel where I slammed on blinded then swerved into the a rock. Thankfully(!) hitting that rock stopping me going into the river. Evacuated by helicopter, in hospital with 7 broken ribs. Tip is dont put your bear spray on your handle bars! Hospital staff confirm they do just go off from time to time. I’m not the first. What a trip. Just as I was feeling positive… after Friday. Best wishes to you all.”
yeah it’s a total shitshow out there this year, except for the lead riders who gracefully got the fuck out of Montana before things got really hairy with the current atmospheric river
a bunch of riders had to get rescued because they were counting on Butts Cabin being open but it had a padlock on it so they had to bivy down outside, woefully underprepared for the snow and sleet- one guy made an illegal border crossing off route in order to avoid having to go back or forward (and thus over one of two different mountain passes) then fell off the map for a while, luckily he was found by US SAR and is ok
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Fall asleep at the wheel?
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dang tour divide is suddenly something i want to pay attention to
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I was kinda wondering how it was going. We’ve had a shitton of rain and mountain lakes that I’d typically like to canoe camp on this time of year are currently covered in snow and can’t even get to the launch as the access road is snowed in too. Had frost on my roof yesterday morning.
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I’ll remember this next year when I whine about the 1" in may that melts before lunch
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Is that the rider that had their bear spray deploy from their handlebars? Heli out with several broken ribs…
Not sure if that was the same dude or not. That piccie is quite old. I havent been following it very closely this year. The best place for blow by blow is usually here. Tour Divide 2022 - Race Discussion
Today in Divide news:
Edit: please again tell me that individually focused media provides a mental advantage that allows you to push even when you maybe shouldn’t or don’t want to, lol
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Bikepacking is the new golf. There will be casualties.
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wait so you can’t have a media crew but you can get medflighted and then return to the race??
Easy solution: put your camera crew on a rescue helicopter
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SARs is equal opportunity, it’s not like he called his private helicopter.
There’s only one Steve in the top 40 and he beat the weather so it wasn’t him. None of the others outside of this person were on track to finish in <20 days before the weather so I assume the comment was a touring rider, both tourers and racers leave at the grand depart.
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Yea these folks at this point are so far behind the leaders they’re not even part of the “race” per se, but many folks ride as racers for the personal challenge. They’re definitely disqualified from the “race” at this point tho since they have no way of rejoining the route proper from where they got choppered out.
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Maybe they allow this because if they said “you get DQ if you use rescue services” more people would be putting themselves in more danger because they’d wait to call for help until they’re basically dead.
Atmo these races are fucked as soon as people actually start caring about winning. The key is keeping them so unimportant that no one will care enough to cheat or die.
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There was never potential DQ for using rescue services as long as the rider came back to where they left the course, they also don’t get DQ for hitchhiking to get albuterol inhalers refilled or a z-pack or something.
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ok well that all seems quite reasonable i suppose
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Good breakdown of who’s using what at TD:
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