It’s no beaut though is it.

First light is superb. I thought the most moving bit about it was his realisation that at eighteen the defining moment of his entire life was behind him. That is something that must be very hard to come to terms with. The rest of us can always tell ourselves that “our finest hour” is yet to come, he has lived for nearly 70 years knowing that moment is behind him.

For all those fans of Birdsong I would recommend Pat Barkers WW1 trilogy

How did I forget Richard’s Bicycle Book. Probably had more effect on me than anything else.

TJ I don’t think you have to be Japanese to adopt that business model.

MrMW your a freelance av tech are you not. How can you be both short of time and money. All the freelancers I know may be short of one or the other but not both. Perhaps your accountant is more honest than theirs! You must let me know your day rate. :-) unfortunately I had to be in the office today but I managed to stretch the ride home to a couple of hours going via Stamner park and Ditchling beacon. Well enjoy the rest of the weekends riding, i don’t think I’ll get out again until the ride to work on Monday, wife and kids to consider.

I’ve just bought some, a little cheaper than that but not much. I reckon though that by weight they are great value, it wouldn’t surprise me if some people on here had frames that weigh less. So if someone does want to start making them can we have a Ti option.

I may have to give up being vegan.

Agree with you totally Idle John, I just think she represents the symptom not the cause. Attacking her and your shooting the messenger. There is nothing particularly offensive in this thread but it won’t be too much of a surprise if someone changes that. Attack the culture by all means that’s a fair target. I once did a conference with Peter Bazalgette, I really wanted to ask if he appreciated the irony in the fact that his grandfather had made his name from pumping the shit out of our houses while he was making his from pumping it all back in again. Thought our client wouldn’t really appreciate that though so I refrained.

I don’t know, it feels like someone has just asked me which of my children is my favourite.

No time for her but one day her kids will be old enough to use google and have to see all this archived vitriol. Lets just ignore anything about her.

mastiles_fanylion I read The grapes of Wrath over 20 years ago. I still remember getting to the last page while travelling in to poly on the number 73 and having an almost overwhelming urge to read it out to the rest of the bus. Luckily I managed to restrain myself and thus still have my liberty and don’t have to spend my days looking out of the windows of some institution. Should have done it anyway, if I ever read anything like it again I will.

It’s true that it is expensive, mainly caused by the amount of people who have moved from London in the last 20 years. That has also led to it being less diverse than it used to be. I blame the improvements in the trains which have made commuting less painful than it used to be. Still a good place to live though, less than an hour from London and for me it’s good to be near enough to the 2 largest airports. If you want good beer try some Harveys which is brewed nearby in Lewes. Property prices are a bit more reasonable on the outskirts, I live about 6 miles from the centre of town and you could probably add 30 – 40% to the value of it if it were central.

Sea in front of me, Downs behind me and a city that’s got something for everyone. And I’ve got a six mile commute to work more than five miles of which is off road. I travel a lot for work all over the world and I’m always happy to come back here. I don’t think you’ll find that many people who don’t like living here.

Most important thing is to stay calm when they fall off. Stay calm and walk over slowly, never rush unless of course it is serious. My experience is that most kids seem to decide on whether something hurt or not depending on the expression on their parents face.

I’ve not read Touching the Void but was lucky enough to be working on a conference where Joe Simpson was the guest speaker. He’d been booked by one of the managers who was into climbing. The audience were sales reps whose only interest in life seemed to be what car they qualified for, I don’t think many of them spent much time outside let alone went anywhere near a hill let alone a mountain. Anyway despite this they and I sat riveted to our seats for an hour and a half hearing the story at first hand. I’ve never read it because I can’t imagine it matching up to hearing it from the man himself, but I should.

The Time Travellers Wife is the book mentioned here that surprised me most about just how good it was.

If anyone does insist on running a single brake may I suggest that they follow boriselbrus and take an angle grinder to there cranks thus reducing the weight they have to bring to a halt.

Mountaincarrot it may not be the GT85 it may have been the Toyota gear box oil I was using for the first two years! Worked but did pick up a lot of gunk. It may also help that I weigh 60kg so could probably lash up an emergency chain with string. Of course the main benefit is that you don’t have to worry about the chain stretching and you can start with a much stronger chain in the first place, although my current one is just an ordinary 8 speed SRAM. And it doesn’t keep getting pulled from side to side and the chainline is always perfect. The front ring is full height un-ramped teeth and made of steel so again lasts forever. I can’t wait to try a belt drive next and see how long I can get out of that

Sheldon says

But I don’t think at any point does he suggest leaving the rear brake at home. There are conditions in which you need two and I’d rather have a back up even in perfect conditions. I’ve been trying front wheel braking alone recently on my commute which is off road and while it works well there have been a couple of occasions where the front wheel has started to slide. In fact I’ve had to pick myself off the floor once when I foolishly tried to brake and steer on a thin layer of wet mud and gravel.
You may never need it your rear brake, I’ve never even scratched a helmet in 25 years of cycling or had a seat belt lock in 25 years of driving, I could have left both at home but I’m not about to start now.

Hub?

My chain, chainring and sprocket are approaching 3 years old. I commute all year round usually off road. Only maintenance is to wipe the chain occasionally and a spray a bit of GT85 on. When it wears out I’ll reverse the sprocket and chainring and put on another cheap 3 speed chain. I reckon on 5 years with only the purchase of a chain.

I know a man who did. Stayed up for about half an hour and came down full of brand new crockery.

Another vote for The Grapes of Wrath.

And I cried with laughter all the way through Spike Milligans Adolf Hitler my Part in His Downfall. There were moments when I lost the ability to breath.

Van Nicholas Zion has rack mounts.

I think the very good point that fauxbyfour is making is that if you want to put a rabid intolerant raving lunatic in charge then it should be him. :-)

sfb I don’t think many people realise just what a difference a tripod can make. Can’t beat a Gitzo and a cable release. Oh and a mirror lock.

Make your own.

Mrmw
The point is that it doesn’t matter a damn what people think if the law says differently. I am not for one second defending the law, just reinforcing the point that our laws usually lag a long way behind our morality. I’m very much in agreement with the sentiments of your first post.

That would be Rayments where I bought my Rockhopper in 1986. Back then it was a family run business selling mainly road and touring bikes. They only had two mountain bikes, the Rockhopper in red or blue and a Ridgeback with a 531 frame in green. If I close my eyes I can still see them in the window. It was one of those shops where the walls were covered in postcards from customers who had cycled all over the world. It really was a proper bike shop and run by real friendly enthusiasts. In the end they sold up because selling the thing they loved gave them no time to do the thing they loved. They did open a bike shop in Lewes a few years later which was also good. Once they had retired and sold it though it went downhill and is now a funeral directors.
Anyway I’m glad to here it’s still a good bikeshop, I’ll give it a try next time I need something.

only in the eye of the law? I think you are naively confusing legality and morality. I think in reality they differ widely. :-)

I think a may have spotted someone actually riding a bike in one of those shots.

Cartier Bresson seemed to manage pretty well on a 50mm prime but I guess he wasn’t as good as us. don’t have a DSLR but I do have a nice 28-70 f2.8 sigma for the FM2 though I haven’t used it in years. Prime lens I’d go for a 35mm on a 35mm camera or a full sensor DSLR.

So which was the one in Brighton that was ok. Although I live here I can’t remember the last time I went in to any of them, so I’d be intrested to know where to go if I need to.

To add to the pedantry I think you’ll find that before 1991 it actually wasn’t possible to rape your wife. You didn’t have the right to rape them, you had the right to sex and therefore couldn’t rape them.

No not really. Most of it was pretty overgrown with nasty sharp things ripping away at your skin. There is quite a lot of nice road riding in the area though. It would be nice to see at least some of it opened up for bikes though. It would attract plenty of families as well as seasoned riders.

I spent a whole day riding on the Ashdown Forest a few years ago wondering where all the mountain bikers were. We only realised it was off limits when we got home. No one said anything to us all day, I guess they didn’t know themselves.

Correct me if I am wrong but I don’t believe that any successful attempts on Everest or either of the Poles have involved the use of a car for overnight shelter. Given that you don’t have to put up with trying to erect a car in the teeth of a howling gale there must be some very good reason why these people use tents instead of cars. The only logical conclusion that I can come to is that tents are warmer than cars.

However I once spent a weekend on Dartmoor in early February with snow on the ground spending one night in the tent and one in the car. There were four of us with a Mini Metro and a two man tent so we rotated the sleeping. The car was warmer. So I learnt from that experience that one should always check that the doors zips of your tent actually work before heading for anywhere remotely cold.

Nicolai Argon

Onza octopus tyres.

Happy birthday shteve.

diabetes

If boiling water alone doesn’t work try using a pipe freezing kit from a plumbers merchant first and then pour on boiling water after a couple of minutes. I’ve freed up seized tap mechanisms before using that method when I didn’t want to risk using too much force and damaging pipework. You get a big shift in temperature in a very short time.