MtnBikeRiders.com

Now available for purchase, our custom Koozies just came in and you can buy them now! Only $5.00 each (+$2 shipping to anywhere in the US). Limited in quantity, so once these run out, they’re gone!

It has 2 logos on the Koozie, one is MtnBikeRiders.com and the other is BikeCommuters.com (our sister site).

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Not too long ago the folks at Cholula Hot Sauce sent us a 4 pack of sauces to review.

The flavors included Original, Chile Lime, Chile Garlic and Chipotle. All the sauces have been tested on foods like tacos, burritos, pizza, ramen and on anything that needed an extrac kick of flavor.

We thought ( THE RACE TEAM) that all sauces were great. 2 of the guys on our test panel still preferred the Original Flavor. Personally I liked the Garlic and Chile Lime the most. However, the Chipotle was perfect on street tacos, carne asada burritos and other Mexican foods. Based on the results of the bottles, you can see which one we liked more. Chipotle was the clear winner with Chile Lime not that far behind. Garlic and Original were about the same.

Let me break down the flavors so you can see why we liked them:
Original-It has a spicy, mild heat, tangy taste. Goes great with eggs, burritos and tacos. Heck, its even great with pizza and Top Ramen.
Chile Lime-Mmm this was my favorite to put on tacos. It has the same peppery-tang as the original, but with lime flavoring! So when you’re eating Mexican food where you’d normally drizzle some lime, forget it, all you have to do is pour on the Cholula Chile Lime and you’re set. It’s like that saying, killing two birds with one stone.
Chile Garlic-Same base flavor as Original, but with a roasted garlic taste. Oh man this was perfect for pizza!
Chipotle-We think that everyone should have a bottle at home, in the office and in their car. Same base flavor as the Original, but has that smokey Chipotle chile flavor. Absolutely amazing!

So you’re probably wondering why we’re testing hot sauces? Well, let’s put it this way. After each ride we do, we’ll often stop off and get some food. It’s become a tradition within our riding-inner circle. With that in mind, I saw it was fitting to test out hot sauce since it is closely related to our sport in terms that we all eat after a good ride.

Overall, you can’t go wrong with Cholula Hot Sauces. It enhances flavor to everyday foods and with 4 different flavors available, you can’t go wrong! I would boldly suggest that if you’re like us (eat after rides), then you should probably keep a bottle of Cholula in your hydration pack. It’s that good!

FTC Disclaimer

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Pressure.  No, not this pressure… air pressure! Air pressure can make a HUGE difference in how a bike rides, how a tire feels, and – recently for me – in how a bike test rides.

I used to run my tires more toward the max rating on the tires – around 60 PSI. Yeah, kinda crazy… especially on a full rigid bike!… but I didn’t know any better. Gradually I wised up and realized that a less-inflated tire grips better and provides a little more cushion on a hardtail or rigid bike. Now I tend to ride with my tires somewhere around 30-32 PSI – low enough to give me those advantages in spades but not so low I run a huge risk of pinch flatting or rolling the bead off the rim.

So now the story: I went out to a shop about 30 miles from me to test ride a Salsa El Mariachi 2 a couple weekends ago. Once I got out there it turned out they didn’t have the 2… but they did have the titanium-framed version! I said yes to a test ride (but “no” to buying it, the price jump was a little much for my wallet!).

On the ride, I felt the tires were over-inflated – so I let some air out. Then I let some more air out. I still felt like the bike wasn’t absorbing much of anything, so said something about it when I got back to the shop. They put a gauge on it – and it was still at 45 PSI! The guy who’d inflated the tires had apparently filled them up to 50 PSI or more.

Once we let air out down to around 32 PSI, I took it out again and got a ride a lot more like what I’d expected. But if I hadn’t realized that, I would’ve come away thinking the frame was very stiff and dead-feeling.

Lessons learned: experiment with air pressure, and make sure the pressure is the same on any test bikes you ride as it usually is on your personal bike. Oh… and don’t test ride bikes out of your price range, it just makes you sad…

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A big thanks to all those who entered the contest. As promised, we did pick a winner!!!

To find out if you’ve won.CLICK HERE

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You read it right, you can win my personal race bike, the Airborne Taka. It saddens me to announce this contest because I simply love the Taka. However, due to health insurance issues, I am having to give up racing downhill. Rather than having this beautiful bike sit in my garage collecting dust, I’d much rather see it go to a good home.

There’s nothing wrong with my Taka, in fact, I even have the Cane Creek Angleset installed with a 1.0 degree off-set.

In order for you to win this, all you have to do is leave a comment below. All comments will be held in purgatory in order for us to filter through the spam. If you’re a legit comment, we’ll approve it. We’ll randomly choose one lucky winner from the comments.

We’ll be announcing the winner this “Sunday”. Good Luck!

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