A note to all, if you are in Sweden and a Swedish girl/woman comes on to you make sure you wear two condoms – ‘cos if one splits its your fault, and rape…

Thanks for that br, I can’t believe how lucky I’ve been on all those previous occasions.

This mornings ride to work was hard going on the frozen grass. It’s like it’s reaching out and grabbing your tyres and you have to tear them from it’s clutches. And the frozen mud that has been churned up by the horses means your being rattled around all over the place which is also more tiring. Given all that though when the sun shines in the morning it’s my favourite conditions to ride to work. Socks and gloves on the radiator this morning before I left which also helped.

I usually end up in 13 C or D.

How hot do your radiators get

How hot does the wife get? You clearly weren’t attracted by her incredible mind. :-)

The snow has almost gone around Coventry

See even the snow is getting the hell out of there.

I did a job at one of the hotels in the city centre once which was attached to a multi-storey car park. The only difference between the 2 buildings was one had glass between the floors. To be fair to it at least the hotel staircases didn’t smell of piss.

And Qatar for 2022, so the oil money really has spoken.

I guess they must have made the highest bid.

I hope all you anti whalers have all given up eating fish, there’s a lot more than just the whales under threat.

So what we really need then is for someone to invent a brake that works on the rim!

KMC hub/single spped specific chain here and it seems very good. It’s used in the worst conditions daily and gets no more than a wipe over and GT85. It’s perhaps not as smooth on occasions as the previous cheap SRAM chain but after initial stretching I haven’t adjusted the ebb in months. It’s been running happily for a year nowand as PJM1974 says they don’t lose their finish, it still comes up shiny if i rub the dried up mud off it.

So yesterday began at 3am with a text from BA to say my flight from Gatwick to Venice was cancelled, please call this number or check the website. So sit down with a cup of tea and call number to be told they don’t answer calls before 8:30 am so go to website and manage my booking. That helpfully tells me my flight is cancelled with no option to rebook.
So now I call the travel agents 24 HR hotline and get myself booked on the next flight. Call cab company to put back pick up. Then I get a call from the cab company to say they are having problems getting cars back from Heathrow so suggest I call another more local company. So I do that and were all good and then BA’s website tells me the second flight is cancelled.
So back to travel agent and a long wait on the phone and then I’m on the 3rd and final flight of the day. Call cab firm and put them back.
Shortly after this Gatwick is closed for the day. So online and looking for flights from Heathrow and on to travel agent for another long wait on the phone. So now I have a KLM to Amsterdam and then another KLM to Venice. So back to cab firm 2 who now can’t do Heathrow. So back to Cab firm 1 who say we can do it now as we have cars getting back.
11:30 a call from cab firm 2 to say the driver who was going to collect me is held up and not going to make it in time. Right check trains, delays and cancellations to Victoria but some trains are running. So i get a lift to the station and get a ticket and manage to get on a delayed train which is running if a little slowly. So I get to Victoria, meanwhile travel agent is also booking me on a later KLM, no time to get the underground so I go to the cab rank. No queue but it takes a while to find one that will take a card. So off we go and luckily the traffic is quite light. I’m phoning in updates to the office so they can let the agent know if they need to confirm and pay for the later flight.
Well arrive at T4 in time for the earlier flight but go to check in and although I’m in the system no e ticket no. has been issued so I have to go and join another queue at the service desk get the no. allocated and get back in the check in queue. My suitcase goes on the belt 35 minutes before take off, 5 minutes before check in closes. I go through security and walk straifgt to the plane and get on.
2 hours at Amsterdam and then finally got to the hotel in Venice at 11pm.

And the show is going on, despite having presenters and delegates all over Europe. So lot’s of changes of order and making it up as we go along. Must go now as we’re about to have another unplanned change and I’m not sure we have any slides for him – well we found something for him to present – should be enough to give the hotel time to get lunch ready early.

And a cyclist too.

One Day by David Nicholls.

My wife bought this for me then read it herself first and loved it. She thought it it might not be for me but I’m half way through and it’s one of the best books I’ve read in a long time. Nothing like the Millennium trilogy which I also enjoyed but a very good read that I think appeals as much to men as women.

What the AV tech will be like in 12-15 years who knows.

I hope to be retired!

Going off at a tangent here but if Whyte and Marin can offer a lifetime warranty on their bearings why can’t anyone else?

I like my Earl Grey tea bags dunked in 3 times quickly and that’s fine for me. I always think of Ernie Wise hanging up the tea bags to dry to be used again. I reckon I could get 3 or 4 cups from one bag if I did that. No milk no matter what type of tea.

Sort your core temp out then you wont have to pull heat away from your extremities to warm your core…

-1

If your body is already warm then insulating that further will just lead to sweating which you want to avoid. I’m with Onzadog, keep the blood flowing to your extremities warm. I think a lot of cycling clothing is actually poorly designed from that point of view. Extra insulation on the arms and legs is going to help keep your hands and feet warm without making you sweat more.

OP don’t apologise as it appears to be Hi Fi Thursday today.

24 years 3 bikes and 1 frame, some of us have a modicum of self control.

I’m still intrigued by “I don’t meet many veggies on the trail”. How do you think that you can tell?

I think what he means is that he never catches up with anyone to ask.

I’ve got the Altura attack 3/4’s which have been pretty good. I wear them almost every day in the winter as my commute is permanently wet and muddy at this time of year. The seat area shows some signs of delaminating and if it’s raining very heavily then it seems to seep through in that area. They keep out all wheel spray though which is what you need most of the time. I think the ideal shorts would have a heavily reinforced seat which sacrificed breath ability for long term water proofness.

this used to happen in the fun old days of sub 2″ travel elastomer forks..

mk1 manitou 1.5″ in the summer – 3/4″ in the winter… christ they were rubbish

I was talking to someone many years ago who had a Proflex and he used to microwave the rear elastomer once aweek.

They are also very useful if you travel a lot as with a few adapters you can get the pay tv in your hotel for free allegedly. Doesn’t work on the newer on demand systems however.

What tyres for one of the wettest place on earth?

I’ve got a friend who went from nothing to Part p in around 3 months, but then he only has to glance at something once and he knows and understands it completely. He did it just to give him something to fall back on when he started his own business but apart from a few jobs when he’d first qualified he hasn’t needed it as his business is doing very well.

So technically possible if like him you are a human sponge and also very practical.

I can’t comment on the Alfine but I’ve run a Rohloff for over 4 years now and it’s on it’s 3rd winter of off road commuting. Hub gears are fantastic for such a use and the advantages far out weigh any disadvantages if you ride that regularly in wet and muddy conditions. All I do is wipe the chain over if it’s got very wet and muddy and squirt some GT85 on. I never wash the bike and the only other thing I clean are the stanchions. The last chain lasted 3 years and I only changed it as a precaution. I think the 11 speed Alfine with the oil bath and easier servicing will be a big improvement.
I’m not of the evangelical branch of the the hub gear movement who will never consider a derailleur again but it would always be in addition to a hub geared bike for me.

For what reason would anyone want to hide their IP address?

I could tell you or you could read the posts above. Let me know which you choose.

kind of grows on you

Like a wart

if you need space why not hire a room at a safestore place – magic for hiding stuff

The irony of storing a storage device in a storage facility.

Both of which have been used in the last few years in Brighton for storing bodies. One guy kept his roof box in the garden with his wife in it.

Move stuff from c to e ?

Mine automatically renewed this year, they wrote to me to tell me it would and after checking on line I decided it was still a good deal and let it go ahead. I still phoned them to confirm though.
I’d rather be paying over the odds for my insurance than have none. The MOT situation is worse as you get no reminder and if that expires then you can also find yourself uninsured. I feel sorry for your friend as he obviously had no intention of driving uninsured but at the same time I’m glad the police are actually actively monitoring this as there as a lot of uninsured cars out there which we all end up paying for when they are involved in accidents.

The answer as to when it’s time is before someone else tells you it is.

Didn’t STW review them a while back and say the head angle was waaay too steep (which looking a the pic above, I can believe). 140mm fork with the head angle of a superlight 80mm forked racer? No thanks!

Yes, and then I believe VN redesigned them in response. It could be the cheap ones around are the older models that had already been produced before the modifications. I would check the exact specs before buying.
Or I may have simply dreamed all that.

I was working with a German rep on an exhibition stand earlier this year who told me about Canyon once he saw me looking at bikes online. He had one and rated it very highly. They certainly seem to be fantastic value for money and get great reviews in the German cycling press. The only thing tat put me off was the sizing as the small size seems to be bigger than many other manufacturers small size and there is nowhere to try one in the UK that I know of.

Me; I thrive on conflict, but then I am quite angry. It’s like a game of chess, a challenge. There’s a need to ‘win’, even if it’s quite a trivial thing.

Must be hard then to keep coming on here and getting beaten. :-)

In 24 years I wouldn’t claim to have improved at all really but the thing that has made me enjoy riding more this year has been getting air sprung forks. Before that it had been coil sprung and even with the lightest spring avaliable I couldn’t get decent travel out of them for xc riding.

Anyone tried the Sealskins?

I have them and find them ok most of the time but on the coldest days I don’t find them warm enough. Also they have no insulation above your thumb nail as it’s supposed to make operating thumb shifters easier, I would’t know as I have a twist shifter. Other people have problems with the liners in them but I haven’t ever had an issue with them.

I’ll be looking for something warmer for the coldest days.

paper should hang towards the wall.

Yes, if you live in a trailer park and sleep with your sister.

So Kate what first attracted you to heir to the throne William?

Sorry but doesn’t that ironkey scream torture me I’ve got loads of secret stuff on a my drive!

And as for fingerprint recognition has no one ever seen demolition man, ok so having your finger cut off with bolt croppers may not be as bad as having your eyeball on a stick but it’s a pretty close second.