u/Ecstatic_Wishbone609

I cannot for the life of me get the last ring in place. I am not even sure a LBS could. Maybe I should go to a watchmaker?

I was walking back to my f-type convertible yesterday and thought I should vomit my opinion here.

I have said this elsewhere online before, months back. And I am now more convinced. I have watched every recent camo video and used some tools to try to analyze the curves and what not.

The new Type 01 will be very similar to an F-type coupe, especially gen 2. Just way longer, wider, and 4 doors. Edit: this is about physical looks only.

At the end of the day all that controversy will be for naught. I think I am still going to get one. I am also convinced the company is destined to close shop.

Cheers.

Anyone out there who has any insights on these? They aren't actually available yet.

Anyone out there who has any insights on these? They aren't actually available yet.

So I finally got them. Quite the journey in getting my hands on 2 pairs. Installed one set, no rocket science involved in either the pedals or the cleats going from Shimano SPD-SL Ultegra R8000s. So after several years on Shimano SPD-SL, here's my quick take after a few rides and miles...

General notes:

1. Look pedal body is less wider than Shimano Ultra R8000s. You don't quite notice it while riding, though I'm sure some will claim they can.
2. The cleat length is 4.25mm shorter, which translates to an actual install variation. However, if you do the age old practice of using a silver/gold marker when changing your Shimano, you can neatly plop the Look cleat about two mm back from the top or 2mm ahead from the bottom of the mark, the curves sort of fit right in and your foot appears to feel about the same position on the ball. Individual opinions will vary on this of course.
3. Look cleats hang differently when not clipped in. I also noticed that due to the weight of the Vision lights (however tiny), the hang is different from regular Look Keos. I personally found it easier and faster to clip in to the Look. I push the top of the pedal with the sole right under my toes, slide forward and it clicks in with a louder crisper sound than my Shimano did. This seems like a huge area of disagreement between die-hard Shimano fans vs Look fans.
4. Unclipping took a bit more effort. I have the most basic +/- 4.5% float cleats (unlike Shimano's baseline +/-6%). I don't know if I'm unfairly comparing to a Shimano cleat set that's just been through RAGBRAI abuse + another 200 miles, but my Shimano's just seemed easier to twist to unclip. I did not have any failures to unclip on the Look, but it just seemed like I needed other make a bit more effort.
5. Walking on Shimano & Look is both uncomfortable as we expect, but the the pads on the Shimano cleats are a little less slippery than the Look. That said, I've always used the cleat covers on the Shimano (most days) and I'd ordered my Look Visions with covers too.
6. Look cleat walking covers are decidedly easier to put on and take off compared to Shimano's covers
7. The total system weight (2cleats + 2pedals) is about 50~60 odd grams more than the Shimano Ultregra R8000s. But this is not entirely a fair comparison. My Shimano were full carbon pedals where as the Look Keo 2 Max are not, and they also have two lights to add to the weight

Notes regarding the Vision part (the LED integrated lights)

1. The lights have 4 basic modes
2. As many reviewers have noted elsewhere, the lights are mostly dumb with no ANT+/Bluetooth integration available for tying them to the head unit (or each other). Would have been really nice to tie it to the computer like I do with my Varia radar. So basically each light needs to be turned on individually with their own button including choosing the light mode. I'm hoping that some years down, they introduce lights with ANT+/BLE so doing anything on one light will do the same on the other pedal light &/or be controllable through the head unit.
3. However, the lights do consistently go off into standby mode after 30 seconds on inactivity, and shut down after 30 minutes of inactivity.
4. When they have turned off due to 30 seconds of inactivity, even minor shake or movement of the bike wakes them up without fail. I touched the bike a couple of times in my office and the lights woke up and lit up my office room (my office is about 10ftx10ft)
5. When the lights have turned off due to 30 minutes of inactivity, you have to turn them on with the buttons on the lights
6. There is a section of the road I ride where the bike lane and the car lanes are both pretty tight and I usually always worry about distracted drivers coming super close to me. I don't know if I'm imagining this, but I felt like drivers were definitely moving away/slowing down around me with the Visions on
7. The visions are visible, no question. I'd a friend riding a hundred or so yards further back and he said they were very noticeable and between my Varia radar light and the two Visions light pedals, the outlines of my system were very well marked out
8. While most of the Vision pedal advertisements on social media/YouTube have shown the lights doing their song and dance in the dark, I think the biggest value of these are during dawn/dusk light situation when (a) drivers appear to be most distracted OR (b) drivers are unable to discern the spacial needs of others on the road due to the light conditions. At least two of my rides have been during these semi light dawn/dusk situations and so far I'm happy
9. With the lights installed, the pedal bodies are longer than the Shimano. I've this particular style of stopping at lights, etc. I keep one leg clipped in and stand with a wide stance on my other leg and I noticed that the Look Keo Vision pedals due to the way in which they hang as well as the length of the pedal itself, the back of the pedal (where the lights are) either came very close to the ground on the unclipped side, or was dangerously close to the ground. I'm guessing I'm going to bust a light at some point and will need to get replacement. Or I've to consciously retrain my body to change how wide my leg goes when I stand with one foot unclipped.
10. I think I'm done typing

Cheers.

I was reading through the history and RAGBRAI has passed through Marshalltown many times over the years.

BUT

Was I misreading that it almost felt like the locals did not want us in town? The roads were just unnavigable to camps/downtown on a bike (cars coming very close, massively dangerous road pavement conditions), etc., people gunning loud pickup or motorcycle engines near camps in the middle of the night for no real purpose, and so on...

There were a couple of really good musical riders with speakers large enough to not sound bad and good music in taste.

But the majority of others had really tin-pot ugly speakers that probably sounded only good on their own bikes. What made them think that they remotely were doing any social good? This is my observation on multiple RAGBRAI's. Bluetooth speakers sound awful, and science and physics clearly work against a moving 2" speaker's abilities. Your skills, your musical taste, and your choice of a poor musical instrument made you sound like a tin-can and nothing more. Bless your heart.

Underbaked pie is a tradition at RAGBRAI, but this year I'd one good and one half-decent pie over 25 pies in 7 days. It also seemed like a lot of the pies were coming straight from a distributor rather than made in town. This included pies at church lunches/dinners.

Anyone else felt lacking?

I'm here to wonder and find others with scientific mindset/background and their thinking/analysis.

I just finished RAGBRAI with brand new cyclowax waxed chains (plural as one was for my bike and one for my daughter.)

My wonder/question: The first two days of RAGBRAI were intensely hot, continuous sun exposure, temperatures in the mid to upper 90Fs, humidity hovering around 80-100% riding through those corn fields. The chain was physically scalding hot to the touch several times through the day. I wish I'd an infra-thermometer, because I'd have loved to see how hot the chains got. The chains got quite noisier by day 3 (first two days added to approximately 120 miles and were the hilliest part of the route - this I mention because in a discussion with ZFC's Adam elsewhere, he mentioned chain rewaxing should be predicated on your style and derailleur changes rather than just some arbitrary mileage). I am seriously wondering if the temperature and continuous sun exposure of 10+ hours every day must have reduced life of the wax and/or even caused wax to melt away. I did a quick chain measure after the ride (approx. 410 miles including the century day) and there does not seem to be any actual physical deterioration yet.

Thoughts - especially around temperature related damage?

Mech: I run a full SRAM Force D1 setup and daughter runs a full SRAM Force E1 setup. We both had brand new freshly prepped Force D1 chains.

Prep: Both were brand new Force D1 chains. Both were mineral spirit cleaned in an ultra-sonic set at 70C, 4 cycles, run 30 minutes each, 3rd cycle was almost clear, 4th cycle was ultraclear like the spirit came straight out of its can. Both went through 3 cycles of alcohol cleanse, also in ultrasonic. Hung dry overnight. 16 minutes of cyclowax immersion at 95C. (For additional reference, I used to do my own 40/60 paraffin/micro-crystalline with WS02 mix, then went briefly to Silca and then switched to Cyclowax performance wax 6 months back and am quite happy with Cyclowax in terms of price to performance).

https://ridewithgps.com/events/400784-ragbrai-liii

Updates coming with elevation gain/loss per segment. I'll round them up/down to nearest 10 and please take that with a pinch of salt, RideWithGPS and any other mapping service for that matter is not 100% accurate with elevations. Satellites normalize to 30ft resolution and for elevation, unlike distances, it can add up or down to a decent deviation from reality.

Day	Date	Town Name	Distance from day's start town	Distance from previous town	Notes
Day 1	July 19	Onawa	0.0	0.0	Start Town
Day 1	July 19	Turin	7.6	7.6
Day 1	July 19	Soldier	18.3	10.7
Day 1	July 19	Dunlap	32.1	13.8	Meeting Town
Day 1	July 19	Earling	45.2	13.1
Day 1	July 19	Westphalia	50.8	5.6
Day 1	July 19	Harlan	59.3	8.5	End/Overnight Town
Day 2	July 20	Harlan	0.0	0.0	Start Town
Day 2	July 20	Elk Horn	21.2	21.2	20+mile haul
Day 2	July 20	Exira	30.8	9.6	Meeting Town
Day 2	July 20	Guthrie Center	56.3	25.5	End/Overnight Town, 25+mile haul
Day 3	July 21	Guthrie Center	0.0	0.0	Start Town
Day 3	July 21	Panora	8.1	8.1
Day 3	July 21	Yale	14.9	6.8
Day 3	July 21	Perry	32.2	17.3	Meeting Town, 15+ mile haul
Day 3	July 21	Ogden	50.6	18.4	2nd 15+m haul of the day
Day 3	July 21	Boone	60.6	10.0	End/Overnight Town
Day 4	July 22	Boone	0.0	0.0	Start Town
Day 4	July 22	Gilbert	17.8	17.8	15+ mile haul
Day 4	July 22	Nevada	36.0	18.2	Meeting Town, 2nd 15+m haul of the day
Day 4	July 22	Colo	43.3	7.3
Day 4	July 22	State Center	51.9	8.6
Day 4	July 22	Marshalltown	67.9	16.0	End/Overnight Town, long 15+m haul to end the day
Day 5	July 23	Marshalltown	0.0	0.0	Start Town
Day 5	July 23	Green Mountain	9.3	9.3
Day 5	July 23	Beaman	17.6	8.3
Day 5	July 23	Grundy Center	30.3	12.7
Day 5	July 23	Morrison	35.6	5.3
Day 5	July 23	Reinbeck	39.8	4.2	Meeting Town
Day 5	July 23	Washburn	62.8	23.0	Longest haul on longest day, mostly flat to downhill
Day 5	July 23	Gilbertville	65.5	2.7
Day 5	July 23	Jesup	77.6	12.1
Day 5	July 23	Independence	86.2	8.6	End/Overnight Town
Day 6	July 24	Independence	0.0	0.0	Start Town
Day 6	July 24	Winthrop	8.8	8.8
Day 6	July 24	Manchester	24.9	16.1	Meeting Town, 15+m haul
Day 6	July 24	Earlville	34.6	9.7
Day 6	July 24	Dyersville	42.5	7.9	End/Overnight Town
Day 7	July 25	Dyersville	0.0	0.0	Start Town
Day 7	July 25	Field of Dreams	5.3	5.3	Breakfast Stop
Day 7	July 25	Farley	11.5	6.2
Day 7	July 25	Epworth	15.5	4.0
Day 7	July 25	Centralia	21.0	5.5
Day 7	July 25	Dubuque	34.1	13.1	End of RAGBRAI

So Mapdec Paul is the only one who has done a lukewarm (by his standard) review of the Fluidity and nobody else seems to even care? I love TIME as a company, they scratch my engineering and material science itch, but I'm starting to think the company is just slowly dissolving into a has-been. I really prefer they do something real and tangible or just completely shut down.

Disclaimer: I've recent TIME ADHX bicycles I've built for myself and family, besides my daily Orbea Orca.

My 2026 RAGBRAI LIII Checklist

Bicycling Basics

• Bicycle 
• Water-bottle(s) x ____ (recommend 2)
• Toolkit (Do not bring CO2 on the plane, not mandatory due to SAG, but highly recommended)
  • Bag that mounts on bike to carry this (example: saddle bag)
  • Small tool set made specifically for a bike
  • Patching Kit
  • Tube x ____
  • CO2 inflator (IF, then buy CO2 at Expo) OR Hand Pump or Electric Pump
  • Wet type Chain Lube OR Wax drip lube (for daily top off) OR an extra waxed chain (if running wax chain, you might switch chains day 4 due to mileage) (Or make sure your friends have you covered)
  • Garmin/Wahoo/Karoo etc. bike computer (Optional)
• Bike Lights
  • Front White Light (not optional IMO)
  • Rear Red Light (not optional IMO)
  • Radar (Optional)
• Helmet
• Battery (If you have electronic gears)

Riding Clothing

(I do 4 riding clothes sets – My charter Brancel does laundry on day 4, so I can get 3 washed and reuse last 3 days)

• Riding Tops 
  • Jerseys x ____ 
  • SPF Shirts/Tees x ____

   

• Riding Bottom 
  • Riding Shorts x ____
  • Bibs x ____
• Cycling or just a light rain jacket
• Sweat head band x ____ (Optional, but highly recommended)
• Cycling Gloves (Optional, but strongly recommended)
• Cycling cap for under your Helmet (Highly recommended as UV protection)
• Cycling Shoes or Sneakers or Sandals (for actual pedaling)
• Socks x ____
• Cycling Glasses/Sunglasses

Riding Food/Miscellaneous

• Drink Electrolytes (Optional, but strongly recommended)
• Riding snacks (Optional, not recommended, enough food everywhere)
• Energy Gels (Optional, not recommended, enough food everywhere)
• Energy Chews or Sour Patch Kids (Optional, enough food everywhere, I do carry these)

Riding Miscellaneous

• Chamois Cream (strongly recommended, I carry multiple small tubes instead of a large tub so I can carry some with me on the ride)
• Sunscreen (must IMO)
• SPF Chapstick (must IMO)
• Power Bank (Optional, but strongly recommended)
• Spare Rear derailleur hanger for your bike (strongly recommended IMO, especially if bike is not a Trek/Specialized, they are known to occasionally break in transit)
• Bicycle Transport Bag/Box/Case

Camping

• Charging system
  • Power Brick x ____
  • Phone charging cable
  • Light charging cables x ____
  • Other charging cables x ____ (such as bicycle electronic gear battery)
• Tent (1 person or 2 person) with tent bag
• Tent Light or head lamp (Optional, but recommended, you wake up when dark, head lamp tends to be most useful than a generic light)
• Camp Cot (Optional, my preference)
• Sleeping Pad (Optional)
• Camping Sheets or Sleeping Bag
• Inflatable Pillow (strongly recommended)
• Camp Chair (Not recommended for Charters that provide)

Group: Personal Hygiene 

• Towel/PVA Towel (PVA strongly recommended if you don't have access to towel service)
• Toothbrush (personal choice)
• Toothpaste (personal choice)
• Floss (personal choice)
• Soap (personal choice, shower truck had generic soap pump)
• Shampoo & Conditioner (personal choice)
• Razor or Electric shaver (optional)
• Deodorant (personal choice)
• Bathroom/Toilet Wet wipes (optional, personal choice, I carry)

General Clothing

• Evening wear
  • Tees x ______ (recommend 2-3 only)
  • Shorts or similar x ______ (recommend 2-3 only)
  • Sleepwear x ______
• Walking shoes (optional if using sneakers or sandals as cycling shoes)
• Travel Shoes (Could double as walking shoes, optional if using sneakers or sandals as cycling shoes)
• Flip Flops (optional, but useful around camp)
• Cap (optional, but highly recommended)
• Underwear x ____
• Swimwear/trunks (optional, but highly recommended)

Meds & Drugs

• Prescription Glasses
• Ibuprofen/Tylenol/other legal pain killer of choice (highly recommend)
• Personal Meds
  • ____________________________
  • ____________________________
  • ____________________________
• Bandaids
• Hand sanitizer (personal choice, carry multiple travel sized ones)
• Feminine products (personal need)

Miscellaneous

• Duffel Bag (70-120L) or hiking backpack (60+L) as main luggage
• RAGBRAI LIII official stuff they’ll mail you in June/July
  • RAGBRAI LIII official baggage ID (If you charter, they will give their own, but they may ask to see this)
  • RAGBRAI LIII official green wrist band (green was 2025 color, may change)
  • RAGBRAI LIII official blue wrist band (blue was 2025 color, may change)
  • RAGBRAI LIII official Number Sticker
  • RAGBRAI LIII official Name Sticker
  • RAGBRAI LIII official Team Sticker (if you are in a team)
  • RAGBRAI LIII official Patch
• Legal ID
• Insurance card
• 1 or 2 credit cards
• Gallon Ziplocks x ____
• Large Ziplocks x ____
• Quart Ziplocks x ____
• Extra small Ziplocks x ____
• Labels (Optional)
• Sharpie (Optional)
• Contractor trash bags (2, come in handy if it pours)
• Cell phone (Just know cell signal is spotty along the way)
• Camera, Action-Camera, Drone, etc. (Optional)
• Cash (spend is $70-$100/day approximately; $1, $5, $20 bills, if you eat at Churches, Libraries, etc. they take cash, donation food places take cash, all mainstream vendor in towns & food trucks take cards)
• Name Stickers (Optional, highly recommended)
• Zip ties or Reusable Zip ties (Optional, highly recommended)
• Packing Straps (Optional)
• If you have an Osprey backpack, an Osprey Air Cover (trust me, you'll thank me later)

Just looking for people to connect before the ride.

We have our own group/club registered, but contacts come useful, so thought I'll kick off this thread.

Google has not been a good friend. Any tips/links will be appreciated. Thanks.