heh. the bar-ends, who knows where it might end up! Ron Hills, reflector clips, oh blimey.

I’m not I knew what it was or where to stick it at 13.

He clearly knew “which forum to put it in”.

I think, if I am completely honest, I would have jumped at the chance to have sex with a fifth former (or year whatever) when I was 13. I just wish that I could have an ounce of confidence that the baby will have an decent chance in life.

Still, I’m sure i can hear the voice of Dawkins somewhere in the background telling me not to get all hung up on such old school claptrap as ‘morals’ and that: if evolution decreed that those genes be combined then all glory to the wonderful event!

the box wasn’t even squashed by Parcel Force

That’s bang out of order. It’s this sort of thing that undermines the reality principle.

Andrew, we got lucky having scoured the classifieds and ebay for months when a Dawes Double Edge

🙂 After panicking about laying out a grand for something that Emma might not take to immediately I started having a look through ebay and realised that for ‘starters’ a cheap Dawes might be the answer. She doesn’t ride a bike *at all* so just getting her on two wheels will be an achievement so if it means big wheels and cycle/canal paths then so be it. If a mtb one turns up at the right price at the right time then all the better 🙂

Maximillian. Now that’s a good name, a name fit for an Emperor!

By that token Caligula should be in the running. Or Barbarossa.

Justa, will I see you around Derby sporting a beard? I find this an alarming development.

They didn’t go on this programme to tell you their story, they went on it to help themselves and doing it in public was just part of the deal to getting help.

You’d have to be a bit mental to think that television was going to help you.

It brings to mind this (which is a shorter version of this) and also ‘The Dime Museum Freak Show Reconfigured as Talk Show’ – Dennett’s chapter in this.

Not Joe or Leo. For the rest of his life he’ll be asked, “Is it short for Joseph?” “Is it short for Leonardo?” Also, I would guess that once this cycle of recession is over the trend for laddish middle class pseudo-prole chic will be over and names like Tarquin, Cedric and Aloysius will be in vogue once more.

Personally, I’d go for Blofeld. Blofeld Schofield. Or, in the spirit of Johnny Cash/Shel Silverstein, Sue.

Hmm, better start saving. I thought a grand would be about the entry price. Cheers for the guidance.

Talk to the nice folks at JD Cycles in Ilkley.

Will do, cheers 🙂 She’s just said that it can be my valentine’s gift to her next year. I might suggest going halves would be inkeeping with the spirit of tandems!

Funnily enough, over dinner tonight my missus said that she’d consider riding a tandem with me even though i’v been unsuccessfully trying to get her to learn to ride a (‘normal’) bike.

I’ve got an awful feeling that the answer to my question is ‘blumming expensive’ but how much would a low-end mtb tandem work out at?

Any other sage words?

Ah, yes, the midges: that was why i was thinking about May or September in the hope I’d avoid the worst of the season. I have bad memories of breathing in mouthfuls of the little bastards whilst they clouded round me by the side of a loch on Lewis.

Cheers for the recommendations Glen – I was looking at a loop that turned off the road after Coulags and came back down the Coulin Pass

The Cramps were the best live band I have seen. My teen years were lived to an aural backdrop which was mostly of The Cramps and the twisted musical worlds I discovered through them. Bah. This is really sad news.

It’s not as rare as you think, I think the figure is something like 12 young people a week in the UK.

If you look over the number of pro cyclists that die in this way there does seem to be a disproportionately high number. It’s still a tragedy whatever the cause.

Much missed:

Not much missed:

Indfifference:

Must be missing something here, cos I don’t quite ‘get’ all the excitement.

It’s more interest than excitement (although I’d bet Brant is plenty excited about the future): I’d guess most people on here have either (a) owned an On One or Planet X bike (b) ridden one (c) know someone who has or (d) received a grumpy sounding email from Brant about stock levels and your order or (e) all of the above.

Most people that have ridden On Ones, especially Inbreds, have a fondness for them and found them excellent, British-designed for British-riding, bike frames and are curious what their designer, a regular poster here is going to do next.

Does that help you out at all?

The amputee thing is a whole other kettle of fish. My missus said that she though men were finding the amputee presenter attractive because the end of her stump looks like a vagina; I said it has a kind of hermaphrodite quality because of its phallic form – a kind of vagina at the end of a penis.

All very odd.

which I find a little odd

Yeah, totally. The desire to become the phallus-wielding father is something that *should* be mastered during the normal course of adolescence. The need to reiterate one’s status as bearer-of-the-phallus in later life would suggest an unresolved Oedipal conflict in which the ‘daughter’ is a displacement of the mother along the daughter-mother axis.

Oh my God! Brant’s on crack??!! I just heard. It explains a lot, mind.

Lily Allen? A sex object? Has the world gone mad? She is pug-ugly; it is an insult to every woman of below-average looks upward that the Allen beast would be considered before them.

And that comment about her dad? Having passed him IRL I am happy to confirm he’s an odd little man of about 5’3″.

I love Dunstanburgh – it’s just down the coast from my mam and dad. I think my favourite’s Duntulm on Skye. There’s not much of it left but it is etched in my memory from a rain-lashed ride round to the ferry at Uig. Hugely dramatic in the way it loomed out of the cloud.

the voiceover bloke needs to put his handbag down from time to time.

Nah, that’s all part of the magic!

handbag and valium.

4″. It’s a start.

Wouldn’t the carbon footprint be lower if they made stuff in Wales? Y’know, if they actually cared about that kind of thing.

I just read the following fom Hans “NoWay” Rey’s Twitter:

Just watched Tom Cruise’s Valkyrie movie. Good reminder of how gnarly the Third Reich was.

Desperate.

I should finish work at 12 tomorrow and will probably come ‘the long way home’as long as there’s a bit more snow.

Bits here in south east Derbyshire.

Some flakiness in the South of Derby.

My missus suggested Hertz Van Helsing?

I’d go for something from the Krautrock pantheon.

Ash Ra Tempel?

I got some Fox forks cheap from the states a few years ago. I sold them within three months because I was paranoid about the servicing requirements. I’ve mostly been on Marzocchis ever since – easy riding assured.

Still none here. Bah. Weak sunshine. Weak.

I’m feeling pretty lonely here. I can’t be the only one to think the Foo Fighters were generic **** from day one? (Mind you I was never that bothered by Nirvana – after being heavily into the Walkingseeds mammoth Skullfuck and even better Upwind of Disaster, Downwind of Atonement the Seattle bands sounded a bit flat. With the exception of the Melvins, who never quite fitted in to the whole grunge thing anyway having been around a bit before that i guess)

so do you mean wallpaper?

I’m fixed up for wallpaper but a decent screensaver would come in handy.

yey. especially when you find one, miles from home, all knackered (you and the bar) looking at the bottom of your pack, the packaging is faded but you know that it’ll taste much the same as they ever do and it’ll do the trick.

Dead Kennedys
Flux of Pink Indians
Iggy (without the Stooges he was atrocious).
Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci (downhill fast after Bwyd Time, still they’d laster at a peak for longer than most bands by then).

A different thread maybe but: Band(s) who never quite lived up to their potential/your perception of them.
Without a doubt: Magic Mushroom Band.

3 feet in Co Antrim!

Does that mean… a snow damage sale will be heading our way soon???! 😆

<shakes head> (but more at myself for actually laughing!)

Where’s that? NW? Scotland? UK? Narnia?

Oops. That was either my cat or my 15mth old daughter. Or both of them together.