Interesting thread … I have an old, small value pension that I could potentially throw a reasonable amount of £s  at for the next 5-7 years which would probably make it a worthwhile thing.  Off to see my IFA next week to see if he has any words of wisdom, but cyncial self doesn’t really trust/ like him and am wondering whether to just transfer it somewhere like II and then I only have myself to blame … decisions. …

If they only get cleaned once or twice a year (assuming they get used in the uk), they’ll be more Matte dark grey in colour. Which might be part of the problem.

Nope, they just look black with a bit of dirt on them … :-)!

2 black vans, they get cleaned maybe once or twice a year .. not sure what all the fuss is about? The worst thing about black is people seem to think you are invisible  and pull out in front of you a lot ….. but then silver is probably the worst colour for that, and those vehicles always seem to be ones driving with no lights on when it’s poor visiblity  ….

Love these every year, inspirational mountain biking at its best – thank you! And hope you feel better soon 😀

So if you had a family history of both breast cancer and osteoporosis what would you do, ART?

I have no issues with women choosing HRT and there are often good medical reasons why they would as other women have said. Perimenopause/ menopause is in many ways a ‘barometer of health’ that can reveal and amplify underlying health issues so there’s every reason to come at this stuff holistically if you can.

I do have family history, but I focus on the things I can control. That means eating the right food, paying attention to gut health, taking the best supplements, lifting heavy, not drinking alcohol, maintaining a healthy circadian rhythm and avoiding [unnecessary] stress  as best I can – you know, like getting sucked into threads like this on STW – ;-)

I don’t normally disagree with TJ but …. menopause doesn’t need ‘treating’ it’s not a disease, it’s a perfectly natural transition in a woman’s life.  Osteoporosis isn’t a given if you keep on top of diet & the right sort of (weight bearing) exercise. The 2002 WHI study that originally suggested a link between HRT & increased breast cancer risk was hugely flawed but the coverage at the time meant that the use of HRT fell massively out of fear when many women could have benefitted.

As I mentioned over on the women’s forum there’s a mass of useful info out there now to help navigate perimenopause … which is actually what is being talked about above … and then menopause which is the point where a woman has been without her period for a year.

Useful books include Perimenpause Power by Maisie Hill & Lara Briden’s Hormone Repair Manual. If you understand what’s actually going on it’s waaay easier to cope 😀

This thread is great .. for the things I’ve actually done, house/ car keys in front door overnight, gas hob on whilst out all day … to name but a few. And I’m much happier knowing that my ‘shit I forgot to do’ paranoia when leaving the house to go on holiday is happening everywhere else as well … although I’m not sure I’m at the ‘videoing every room’ stage yet …!!!! Lols

I am also not a doctor … well not a medical one anyhow 😉 Hannah, have a read of Lara Briden’s Hormone Repair Manual….you’ll find a lot of relevant stuff in there. And ditch the Berocca and the like and aim to get your vitamins from food if possible or buy really good quality/ clean supplements that aren’t bulked out with junk. There is  no one answer to this stuff, as we are all individual  but it’s universally true that to fix things you have ensure that you have sleep, nutrition and exercise right (for you) … generally in that order.

Profile edit with the pronoun thing doesn’t save for me so I can’t view it ….

Back at you mama 👋 😀 good to hear!

Hey mama .. where you been :-)?

I’ve been here a very long time, and I remember the last time this was muted … circa 2009 ish I think.    We used to be quite a niche little bunch of MTBers hanging out here but unsurprisingly that has evolved as our funny little pastime has become more popular.  With my rose tinted specs on, I think the forum of old probably felt a bit more friendly, the banter more measured.  But, if you ignore all the ‘big hitter’ willy waving there’s still a host of kind, helpful people here willing to offer support and advice.  I’ve said it before, but STW has an exceptional knowledge base and there really isn’t any life question that doesn’t go unanswered, which is in itself quite remarkable.

Back whenever it was, I wrote quite a long, reasonably eloquent (at least that’s how remember it!) email to Mark about why STW shouldn’t start carving up the forum for us women.  I should have kept that email .. but suffice to say I feel the same now as I did then.  I come to STW for bikes and silly off topic stuff, if I want to chat menopause .. as I really am getting old now … there’s plenty of other places for that stuff.  It’s my personal preference though, and others will of course feel differently about it, as the comments so far reflect.

Since GoFar & dial up internet .. founding mag subscriber .. without us there wouldn’t be one ;-) … not here much these days, but always nice to know that some of us are still around.

May be swimming against the tide but really not sure what is going on with the design/ layout in this issue. Seems like a right old mish mash of fonts & styles & size of text – it’s all a bit all over the place. White text on black pages, no, just no … have just speed flicked it without reading.

Barista Oatly/ Moma Oat or the Califia ones (I buy whichever one is on offer) other so called barista versions don’t cut it & my trusty Gaggia Brera, perfect every time!

@leegee That’s crap, we also had a LAST frame despatched in Nov and I managed to extract it from Parcelforce in the first week of Jan. I emailed LAST about the issues and suggested that they use DHL ‘end to end’ as although it looks like a DHL shipment from them, it’s actually Deustche Post .. which is of course PF in the UK. Would suggest you drop them a line and ask.

But Parcelforce are a mess, I had the same thing as you’ve experienced happen with something else (also a bike part) coming from Germany. When it was resent by the supplier and I had the PF tracking number, I preemptively sent the customs team an email with all the invoice/ products details etc attached and low and behold it transited through customs and arrived. Three weeks later/ after the product had arrived I received the written customs request for the details I’d emailed….*duh*

Mmmm have been reading this with interest. I post infrequently this days, but wanted to pop up to say I agree with so much of what people are saying here. What comes across throughout is a genuine love and desire to see STW survive and thrive in some form. But things really do have to change.

I’ve been here since GoFar. I was one of the original 200 or so people that subscribed to make STW a thing and I have been a full member since that day. I wonder how many of us from the original genesis are still here?

I’ve always loved print (I don’t read any longform articles online), but have long since lost the excitement of the magazine arriving and rarely read much of the content. E.g the only thing I’ve read in the last copy was Chipps’ article, just to see what he was up to. It’s felt stale for a long, long time, and I’ve only stayed subscribed out of loyalty and probably inertia. The loss of Jenn was heartbreaking and no one since has written with her insight, intelligence and the integrity of a talented rider sharing their experience. With Privateer gone, Cranked is arguably better at this niche of the market, and the amount of us print readers happy to pay the cover price has to be pretty small now.

The website is **** awful. I’m subscribed because with ads it is totally unusable. The only place I come to is the forum, I don’t read any of the articles anywhere else on the site for all the reasons discussed. Occasionally I look at FGF which is generally a horrible stream of consciousness/ spelling mistakes/ inaccuracies, with all the random music clips (why?)… Barney was genuinely funny and entertaining in his tenure .. since then, it’s just milding irritating.

I go to PinkBike for news/ current stuff and Wideopen/ NSMB/ EnduroMTB for other articles/ reviews etc.

The forum has it ups and downs, but it’s been a constant in my life for over 20+ years and I don’t think there has ever been a subject or topic on literally anything that someone can’t help with if you need advice. That is genuinely remarkable, it’s a unique community full of opinions, petty squabbles, disagreements, but also much laughter and love. There really is nothing else like it.

I’ve not been back to the Classifieds since it changed, whenever that was. I sell and buy exclusively on PinkBike, it’s easy and efficient.

I too am an early 50s, middle-class ish, lefty leaning person … and whilst we are the constant and have been the staple of STW for all this time, as a business you have to look beyond us. Just over 10 years ago I serendipitously left my ‘corporate’ life and ended up in the bike industry, where I still work now employing about the same amount of people as STW. There is no scenario in our business that would see me going cap in hand to our customers. Suffice to say that you’ve had some really excellent advice earlier in the thread that is no doubt now feeding into your thinking.

Interested in a good solution for this too! Usually fly from Bristol but have a Heathrow flight in the summer with bike bags. So many of the meet & greet outfits look like total cowboys & the on-site parking reviews are horrific!

Have been chuckling along to this thread but @funkmasterp – the debobbler – now we are talking. I was looking for exactly this thing the other day & now I know what to get!

The problem was, my invoice had several items with 0 value, things like custom colours, no seatpost etc. Pf wouldn’t accept this.

yup exactly that … utter f****wittery on their part. Chatted to LAST – they really need to use DHL ‘end to end’. Unfortunately they are actually using Deutsche post … so that’s PFarce once it lands over here.

It’s a Coal.. have had LAST frames before, the quality is worth the wait though, makes our more expensive homegrown stuff look pretty shonky in comparison. Hope yours arrives soon.

leegee – have just navigated this whole customs stuff getting a Last frame in. Assuming you got the customs notification from Parcelfarce… if yes then fill in the form & send recorded + email it ASAP with the tracking ref + cage ID no if you have it. Once they have that it should get processed [takes about a week] & then sent to local depot. Then another week to get the actual custom charge with letter ref to pay the charge, after which its next day delivery.

Edit … what Bruneep said … stay on it as PF are useless ******s

16% in 1988 when I went, not a man though so clearly not target demographic 😆

Love this yearly treat!

Back on bike stuff… TF Tuned have current model year Lyriks @£699 & some sizes of Cane Creek Kitsuma & Inline shocks very cheap … https://www.tftuned.com

Why though … why … no likey at all….

51 year old, childfree by choice, woman here. OP I haven’t read the whole thread but interestingly enough I did read TJ’s first post and could have written that myself. I have always felt that having children is one of the most important/ significant things that you will ever do in life and as such you are right to be giving it all of the thought. I certainly wouldn’t suggest you are overthinking it.

What you have done is come here and ask a question that lots of people are too afraid to ask and you are getting a full range of really honest, real world experiences, which is after all, STW at its best. Be kind to yourselves and as people have said, there’s no right or wrong to this, whatever you decide to do.

Really sorry about that. We won’t give up. Can you fill in the bug report form with as much detail as you can and we’ll make it a priority job.

Bless you, and sorry, tired last night at the end of a long week. Read your instructions, fixed it :-) Thank you!

Yup me too logged in – ads everywhere …. giving up now 😡

I have a Spur, it is ridiculously, laugh out loud, good. Lawnman has pretty much described it. It’s probably all you need for most of your uk riding. For big mountain, chopsy stuff I’d take the Patrol – that’s for my benefit … the Spur would be fine 😉

TJ – I don’t post much these days but it’s been well over 20 years and counting on this forum & one way or another you have always been there, arguing, advising, and perhaps arguing a wee bit more…just because, well, you can.

I think you can see from this thread, and I’m sure you don’t need anyone to tell you, that in this funny old virtual world we share you have found your people, & right now we are all circling around to embrace you as best we can. All the love to you.

Also had my second AZ jab on Wed & felt a slight ‘performance boost’ the following day …. honestly who knows 🤔

Had the AZ yest morning, nothing apart from ‘punched arm’ feeling this am. Same for partner, we both took paracetamol before & after as some people are recommending.

Yup – sunrace has much better spacing, XT + sram chain, all runs perfectly!

Tony is derived from my middle name – Anthony. I am never refered to by my first name. In fact very few people even know it…..

Apparently my parents wanted to put Anthony first but my initials would have been ARS, so they decided to put Anthony in the middle “to make life easier for me”.

Different names but this exact scenario … glad it’s not just me then …..!! My name can’t be shortened but people I don’t even know think it’s fine to put a ‘y’ on the end … ahem.

Had a asthma attack in my early 20s & was put ‘on the programme’ Fast forward 30ish years & I’ve been effectively off any meds for most of that time but have a ventolin inhaler just in case. Fit/ active – no issues but have never been able to get over 450ish on those stupid peak flow things – so as reluctantjumper said, it’s not necessarily the best measure, just what’s ‘relative’ for you.

Yes have had the email too offering voucher for a flight i have booked – it’s not clear if it covers both outbound/return 11th/18th July & apparently i have until midnight 23rd June to accept. Vouchers comes with – must use within 12 months & condition that if you use on cheaper flights they won’t refund the difference T&Cs. If you accept the voucher & they subsequently cancel the flight you can’t then opt for a refund.

Still deciding whether to accept it or hold my nerve & hope they cancel which obviously isn’t going to happen by 23rd June.

edit – yes voucher is for named passenger only & can’t be transferred

Ordered, gave them a week, followed up, got a reply/ sorry & was despatched the next day. ‘Tis busy times!

Read the threads that said DeLonghi & bought a Gaggia Brera instead. Liking it a lot!

lols – totally with you on this one OP – have to turn off if she’s on.

Just put up for sale a large 2018 SBG Scout – same as the 2019 (you’d be fine on a large, most people size up on these and the Patrols) – over here if you are interested https://www.pinkbike.com/buysell/2720856/

Cheers