Fair point, thank you for your replies – I know there are usually good/bad bits of most places, but it’s always worth asking I think :-)!

We probably won’t be able to check out what it’s like to ride to the hills from every house we might look at, so asking on the Stirling bike club site is a good idea 🙂

Thanks again for the suggestions for rides etc!!!

We didn’t manage as many rides with mini alpboy as we had hoped because the holiday coincided with his very first bad cold, but we did get to the stane at Mabie 🙂 He particularly liked the short singletrack sections on the green route, yay!

The old railway path from Peebles was a big hit with mini alpboy, too.

We also went to quite a few of the farmshops and garden centres near Dumfries as a family and of course went riding separately while the other parent looked after mini alpboy!

Excellent, thank you all – we’ll report back how many routes we managed to do ;-)!!

Cool, I think first of all I’ll phone Boots and argue that a tumble drier in that price range should last more than 3 years and see what they say; in parallel I’ll check how to get to the PCB in case that’s what’s wrong with it.

Ideally Boots will say they’ll pay for an engineer to check it and then we proceed as per ScotchEgg’s suggestion…

Cheers, Trekster and chriswilk, lots of great suggestions!!

I did mean the seat on the bike, sorry, should have said 🙂

Although looking at the video on the facebook link we shouldn’t leave it too late to get him his first balance bike – as he’s not walking yet, we could even go for “cycling before walking” 😀

🙂 thanks, point about guarding from behind is what made me wonder about riding the trail centre routes… Guess we could go really early before the speedy riders get up 😀

Mikey-simmo, thanks, link bookmarked for future reference!

As you all suggested, googled the problem and model name and came up with an identical case where it was the pcb. Seems like pcbs are not as easy to get as other spare parts? Is it still worth having a go ourselves?

Thanks, I did wonder how the “no fix no fee” thing was profitable for the manufacturer (or service agent)…

I’ll check the web for advice – and hopefully instructions how to take the tumbledrier apart and put it back together 🙂

Cheers also for the tip re costco, good to know!!

Unfortunately it only came with a one year warranty (bought it from Boots online) – but as it wasn’t one of the cheap ones (it cost £380), I never expected it to die after only three years!!

I guess that’s not something I can argue with the manufacturer though – reasonable life expectancy for tumble drier more than 3 years? It’s not even been used that much 🙁

Sure, will do, Lewis, got a couple more to upload from my camera. I’ll email them all tomorrow.

Thinking of George and all of you in Bavaria x

yes (re balloon)

Lewis, I have been following this thread from the beginning, but I can’t find any better words than people have posted already. I love the picture of George and Emily on the playmat, although it makes me cry every time I look at it. I’m sure he and your mum are your family’s special guardian angels now.
The tattoo is great as well by the way! Take care x

Customer Service lady on phone said got to take it there in person :-/

Haven’t tried phoning a branch directly, will check into that, thanks!!

great, thank you both for your quick answers!! back off to the garage to have a go…

Thank you, guys – I forgot to mention that Samsung offered to swap out the battery for me, but it would take 7 working days, and as I work for myself using that laptop, I struggle to find 7 working days when I can be without it 🙁

Therefore they sent me a replacement battery and said I could swap it myself… now I can picture them laughing their heads off!

I thought at first it would be as easy as the Apple Mac thingies where you can replace the built in battery yourself, but it’s a real pain to try and get the cover off this one 😕

As I’m not an expert, I doubt whether I would be able to reassemble any bits that I disconnect accidentally – might have to wait until I can spare the laptop for 7 days and just stay near a socket until then!

TooTall, it’s a SF310 and I have googled for ages, but the only thing I found was a YouTube 20sec video trying to sell me a maintenance manual 👿

Thanks for the tip with the credit card, hopefull the card would break before something important inside the laptop breaks…

Fish and Chips with morphine sounds yummie 😉

Will be thinking of you on the 16th. All the best and stay on that great road singletrack to recovery!

Stumpy01, thanks, that really helps – I have to admit I did assume that the camera would be able to take a photo of EXACTLY what I can see with my eyes…

I took the pictures around lunchtime (between 1 and 2), sounds like that might have been the worst time of day for getting the sky to be non-glary in the pics. And you are 100% right, I was hoping to get the lovely blue colour of the sky against the colourful leaves/dark trees!

I did a “self defence for women” course a few years ago, and the key message was centred around what some of the guys mentioned above:

– develop an awareness for your surroundings at all times
– learn a few ‘techniques’ how to just momentarily incapacitate your attacker long enough to get away and RUN

Interestingly our instructor recommended not to go for the kick-in-the-nuts approach first, but kick shins, punch the bit between the nose and the upper lip, gouge the eyes, bite their hand if grabbed – it’s actually surprisingly easy for guys to protect their crotch 😳

Or in Emins case, a schoolboy-standard. doodle. Why not go the whole hog and draw a spunking cock and balls?

That made me laugh – it would go with the logo then… I still can’t see “2012”, only the “Lisa Simpson blowjob” 8)

Apparently Valentino has a special helmet with a tribute to Marco as well. And did you see this?

As I said on page 1, I think there’s nothing wrong with the STW forum(s). And for the record, I’m not male with a girly username, I really am a girl with a girly username for easy identification 😉 ) Some people on here have such a great sense of humour, there are plenty of threads that have me in absolute stitches. If I’m reading a thread that descends into more of an “argument” (if that’s the right word), I just skip the argumentative posts and read the ones that stay on topic – simple! I have also never been offended by reading rude comments about famous women/women in general/men/news stories, and I don’t feel intimidated by any of the “regulars”. Whenever I’ve had a question, I got perfectly friendly and helpful answers. (hehe, guess next time I ask something I’ll get a reply involving my doors 😛 )

Having worked both in a mainly male and then mainly female environment, I can honestly say I preferred the male dominated teams. In my experience women (especially in groups) can be incredibly nasty and backstabbing, I much prefer a rude man telling me things straight, having an argument and sorting out whatever the issue is, than a two-faced woman being all sweet to my face and bitching about me as soon as I’m out of earshot and the actual problem never gets sorted.

End of sermon 😀

PS sharki, whereabouts in Wales do you want to ride 😉 ?

3

I think my ipad is backed up every time I connect it to itunes on the PC, but I’ll make sure I get a totally up to date backup before the upgrade attempt!

I assume if something did go wrong, itunes would then be clever enough to take the ipad back to iOS4? I assume you can’t download installation files for old OS?

xiphon – Member

I would recommend doing a backup of your iPad state, then doing a clean factory reset (of iOS4).

Then upgrade to iOS5.

Then load your apps, etc back on.

Will a factory reset take all the apps off then?

wow, thank you all very much 😀 You’ve definitely counterbalanced all the negative stuff I read!!

GrahamS, I guess you’re right, all the people who are happy with it are not likely to post about it everywhere…

I’ve already downloaded the latest itunes and the upgrade files (at least I think that’s what the 700MB worth of stuff is?), so I’ll connect the ipad and give it a good few hours to rebuild itself.

ehm, it only mentions that they are compatible with the Look Keo cleats – so will I have to wear my road shoes on the mountain bike :?? Or is it likely that they will do a Shimano version?

Cheers, neninja – I think we’ll have a look whether it would actually make more sense to base ourselves in Reeth for the week (a non-mtb-friend recommended Aysgarth)! Can I email you re the gpx files later?

Great, thanks – I know I should probably have started to google for routes first, but it’s really useful when someone can give “first hand” feedback 🙂

Sounds like the non-grey route is the way to go on route 2 (at least for me, I get grumpy if I have to walk the final bit of a ride 😀 ).

oh, I’m glad I’m not the only one a bit torn between the two brands… I’ve only had Dells before, but the Samsung spec looks pretty good. interesting comment about the Samsung feeling plasticy, I think I’ll see if I can find one in the shops and actually look at it in “real life” 😳

ehm, this might be a stupid question, but does getting more memory just involve replacing the “memory module” or whatever these “memory strips” are called :oops:?

Flash Family: So sorry to hear that Wellie died last week!!

Scoobie:

I’m also quite keen to get a set of winter tyres this year – just wondering where you guys get the steel wheels from?

notlocal,
wow, what car is that? It looks so mangled, I can’t tell from your picture!! Were you both unhurt?

Thank you very much, Cougar, that’s the right level of simplifcation for me I think – apologies to the more techie minded web experts ;-)!

I had this message pop up on two sites, one was on Arriva Trains, just at the start of looking up train timetable details; the other one on a gardening equipment shop site – there I had gone through most of the “checkout process” and the XSS warning came up during the “Verified by Visa” bit, which did worry me as it then caused the transaction to fail… I guess I’ll keep an extra close eye on my credit card transactions, just in case :-/

Plan is to ride both "man made" and natural – thanks for the tip with the bike shop!! I'll get a map and the book, too.

How far is it to Laggan?

Thank you, Mounty, that is indeed the book I remember from the other thread! Are the routes you ride out of that book then or just ones you made up yourself when you're up there?

esselgruntfuttock, thanks for the route suggestion – I'll check it out on a map!

hmmm, my guess from what you've found out so far would be "Patronenkasten" for the second word – so it's an "airtight cartridge box". not sure how airtight it still is after all this time 😉

be careful, I just tried to fit some tubeless Schwalbe Fat Alberts to my Crossmaxs and had to give up… tubeless tyres really seem to be tighter than "normal" ones!!

I agree with bikemonkey, there must be an element of wanting at least one episode with material that makes for "interesting TV" in the series – just found this article and comment which suggests something along those lines, too…

I also think that the programme ultimately helped Angela the bossy baker, she just has to implement some changes to her "product portfolio" cause lots of people will now want to check out her bakery/coffee shop, and if she offers some of the artisan breads, she'll have lots of new customers 🙄