Just a heads up about the Specialized sale.

There are both new and old Purgatory tread designs on offer. Newer is reported to be way better in every way – old chevron tread design has been radically changed to more widely spaced knobs and more aggressive side knobs with a squared off profile. It’s not a subtle redesign.

old version was fine as a rear on unchallenging trail centres, but was useless on anything vaguely steep, techy or loose. New one looks much more useful as a faster rolling rear for harder use, or could make a fast rolling less aggressive front. Just make sure which one you’re buying.

Just here to say I hate it too. With a passion.

Bought a nice Park Tool BB spanner years ago, but the plastic inserts/adapters often barely last long enough to fit one bb. Pain in the hole.

My order from Monday just shipped today. Wiggle quoted a March 18th delivery so seems like they’re just giving realistic delivery estimates.

fair play to the team there, they’re doing a fine job in awful circumstances. 💪

Ordered a Hope rear wheel (and five 12spd quick links for the princely sum of £1.35 each) yesterday at 5pm – got a shipped notification just moments ago.

Don’t abandon hope yet.

Definite yes from me.

Had a couple of really enlightening group sessions with Adam from Skillsloop – works across Burlish Bike Park , Cannock Chase and other areas. https://www.skillsloop.com/

I’ve done a manual/wheelie group and a jumps group – £45 for each public group session. I still can’t manual around like a pro, but i’m getting a lot closer (and I know what i’m doing wrong; practice makes perfect etc), and the fear of jumps is (mostly) gone.

My biggest takeaway is that we, as humans, are very bad at knowing what our body is actually doing. We know where we ‘think’ our hands and feet and head are in relation to other bits, but we often don’t. Whether it’s body position, legs, arms, head, whatever – it takes someone watching you (and showing you vids of what you’re doing) to have those lightbulb moments where you realise how you’re subconsciously sabotaging yourself, whether due to fear or bad habits.

Once someone forces you to do things the right way, you begin to build a new muscle memory where the actions and the body positions begin to suddenly feel natural and repeatable.

I’d also say that it’s super helpful doing with a group. Whether it’s watching people fail or succeed, learning the ‘why’ is hugely instructive.

In an ideal world, there’d also be a double loop-the-loop somewhere on the course

Bird Forge here with 150mm Domains.

Had a terrible time at first on rougher tracks with recommended fork sag/pressure, as the fork kept on smashing into the ramp up at the end of the stroke; also wasn’t a fan of the fork getting caught on rocks/roots on steeper stuff, diving deep into its travel and lurching my weight over the front.

Now at around ~18% sag with a short Trutune and it’s perfect. Handles big hits/chatter nicely and front end stays up nice and high in the midstroke on steeper bits. Anecdotally, it feels like the firmer fork marries better with the very firm back end.

Devil’s advocate: The Spectral doesn’t sound especially slack on paper by today’s standards – and LLS does take a fair bit of getting used to if you’re coming from 26.

The difference in body positioning is huge — shoving your weight over the front of a 29 LLS feels very alien if you’ve been used to an old-school 26in bike, but you have to get used to it or it’s front wheel washout party time.

Bikeradar review of the Spectral is fairly insightful, talks about how sensitive the Spectral is to rear sag – 25% compromises on the rough stuff but feels peppy and lively, 30% works better on the lumpy stuff but makes the steering feel lazy. Might be something to take from that – or possibly you’ve faffed endlessly and reached the same conclusion…

Could it be worth checking that you’ve got everything dialled in? Front/rear sag, bar width/roll, stem length etc?

The guy everyone’s tagging is just some young racer. Think it’s a bit of banter with the lads.

I’ve finally given wax a whirl – although not actually done any mileage yet – and I’d buy GLF Wax again purely for the aroma. My bike shed smelled bloody lovely for ages.

Freerider Pro in UK 14. Narrow and overly snug at first, but they do ease up a bit. Initially (first few months) had to use some super thin insoles to add a bit of wiggle room, now back to original squishier insoles.

I think it’s a vaguely recent Adidas change: maybe a change of factory or similar. I had some Terrex GTX shoes which were perfect in 14.5, but tried the new model a year or so back and they were unbearably tight.

Orbea Laufey H30 has been pretty good for our 5 year old. Stock tyres are meh, so put dhf/dhr combo on and he’s had fun in all weathers as a result.

Had a quick pootle up there – a bunch of yellow course markers have appeared. Assume they are to do with this event, but stand to be corrected.

Didn’t have time to follow them over to the campsite side of the road, but the entire course on the other side is fire road. It’s wet, bumpy, gravelly, rutted fire road in places, but it’s quick going.

Would have been much more fun on a light XC bike with speedy tires than my loam-friendly lump.

Definitely (definitely) need mud tyres – everything at Cannock is as slick/greasy as it gets.

The top layer of mud/grass/dirt was just sliding off due to the combination of hard sub-ground and all the snow melt/rain at the weekend. Front wheel skids for days.

With rain forecast for most of the week, I’d probably sling the wetsuit in the car, too.

I’ve got a 150mm Domain RC on a Bird Forge and am pretty happy with it. I am moderately hefty at 120kg-ish though, so my experience may not be typical as I have to run pretty high pressures (~110psi+) and fork weight isn’t a noticeable issue. I have the stock number of tokens in for now, but toying with the idea of removing one or two as I’m not getting full travel even with cased landings/dropoffs.

I say fairly happy purely because the Domain is not as plush as my old (now cracked and dead) 2007 Fox 36 Float RC2s (on a now retired 26er Reign X). The Fox’s had a glued on feeling on local trails I know well, where the Domain just don’t seem as planted. Vastly stiffer, though, and the ability to pick a line through big rocks and nasty lines is hugely confidence inspiring as the front wheel just goes where you point it — there’s zero twang from the front end.

I’ve tried between around 15 and 20% sag and have settled somewhere around the 18% area as a sweetspot, along with 2/3 clicks of compression and fully slow rebound. More sag means no midstroke support and the fork quickly starts to feel uber harsh on bigger lumps. Compression also seems to ramp up hard above 4 clicks and kills small bump sensitivity — feels like 2/3 clicks is about right. Zero clicks is fine for tamer trails and chilled riding if you just want the plushest feel though.

The problem I’m finding is that the front end still does feel quite harsh now over high speed chatter. I think the combination of 35mm bars/stem and a stiff 38mm fork means that some vibration goes straight into the wrists: vibration which potentially used to be absorbed by some flex in the fork and bars. I’ve moved to Spank vibrocore bars which has helped a tad, but there’s a point where once you really start smashing the rockier downs that it becomes hard to hold on. Is it chassis stiffness? Damper out of its depth? I tried every possible permutation while setting the fork up (on Richard’s Down up in Aviemore fwiw), and the settings I ended up with were the ones which gave the best feel/times/least sore wrists.

TL;DR My (very unscientific) gut is that the damper is holding back the chassis. If you can opt for a lighter Zeb with a better damper, I think that would be more sensible. Finding a reasonably priced Zeb/Domain 2.1 Charger damper seems pretty tricky atm (I’m seeing Bikeinn @ £240 with a 2 month lead time), so it may cost you more to upgrade a set of Domains than just buying some cut price Zeb Ultimates with the Charger preinstalled. And you’ll never be able to shed the 500g from the Domain’s heavier chassis, so you’ll always wonder if you should have gone with a Zeb (or 35/36mm chassis fork) instead.

It only takes one bad nurse/doctor/surgeon to destroy someone’s faith in the NHS. Unfortunately, it seems there are countless arseholes on the loose.

My experiences (admittedly over only about 5 days at Woolwich hospital) were that most of the older nurses were amazing. One love;u lady even called her, equally lovely, colleague on her day off to check I was ok. As I said, amazing. She really pushed the younger nurses to work their arses off, and seemed like she’d taken on the matron role for the ward. It was a heartening experience.

However, once she was gone, things went rapidly downhill. Only two of the younger ones actually seemed to have any interest in the job whatsoever, and there were at least 5+ who were clearly watching the clock, and any patient requests were putting them out and resulted in much huffing and puffing.

I saw several of them, who were far happier chatting and eating the sandwiches meant for patients, tell a pair of chaps who’d had very recent double knee/hip replacement to go and get their own tea. I ended up having to get tea for the three of us, and I was off my tits on painkillers and had just had recent surgery for a completely shattered collarbone. This carried on for two days until one of the nice nurses asked why I wasn’t in bed. The only thing the other nurses visibly enjoyed was forcing people who’d had barely any sleep to wake up.

Every time the shift changed, you were at the complete mercy of the incoming staff, and the variations in care quality were utterly shocking.

Don’t get me started on Stafford. The receptionists there were the worst I’ve ever encountered, and the a&e doctor misread an x-ray so badly he couldn’t even tell that my collarbone was shattered into hundreds of tiny pieces, and in no way was going to heal in a few weeks. As a result, I had to have emergency surgery in London.

Synology. Any one will do. The web interface is light years ahead of the competition, and makes it easy to access settings and files from a phone/tablet/laptop.

Definitely NOT ReadyNAS. They’ve gone downhill badly in the last few years, and the current ReadyNAS Duo is absolute junk in comparison to the Synology rivals. The high-end Intel Atom ReadyNAS models are ok, but even then I’d steer most people towards Synology or, at a pinch, Qnap.

I used to get that on every ride. At its worst, it was almost cramp-like pains in between the shoulder blades.

Things that sorted it:

-Raising handlebars
-Raising saddle (the seatpost was a cm too short even at full extension, so I was pulling on the handlebars to compensate on steeper uphill sections)
-Regular stretching exercises pre/post ride
-Getting a better pillow (seriously! went from standard one to a basic down pillow with a removable memory foam layer and noticed far less neck tension/pain in daily life/biking/running)

Getting a bike fit is a great idea, though. I messed with stem lengths on my road bike, from 70mm to 130mm and everywhere inbetween, and had no joy. Post-fit I ended up on a 80mm with lots of rise, moved to compact bars, adjusted brake hoods and all the neck pain disappeared.

I didn’t realise Bothy had moved so thanks for the heads up, druidh!

Ah, smashing. I always pop into Bothy Bikes anyway (it was they who pointed me to the Trail to nowhere) so I’ll give them an ask when I’m there.

Thanks for the help/info, chaps.

I’m 6’4″ and hover around 15 stone, depending on the current pie/mileage ratio.

I suggest someone lends* me a 20lb bike, we find a suitable 10 stone man with 26lb bike, then pop up to Cannock one weekend and put these theories to the test. FOR SCIENCE.

*I’ll try not to break it. Promise.

200 to 300 quid?!

Top trolling there. Back on topic, Paramo Fuera jackets go for around 30 on Paramo’s ebay store. Some bargains to be had:

http://stores.ebay.co.uk/ParamoSeconds/

Get a demo of izotope ozone. Great tool.

A 2nd hand Technics 1210 is a great option. Around 200 to 250 depending on condition, and a huge amount of potential upgrades. Many vinyl addicts have dumped megabucks beltdrive TTs for a souped-up Technics.

Best of all, they’re built to last and sound great even without fancy cartridges, arm upgrades or external psu upgrades.

Thanks for all the info, chaps. I’ve had responses from JRA and Harry. JRA suggest Miche Primato hubs/Ambrosio Excellence or DT 465 rims for around 240-270 quid, but Harry suggests Shimano 105/Ultegra hubs with Rigida DP18s for 200/257 depending on hubs.

Thinking I’ll probably go the 105/DP18 route, simply because they look like the most bombproof option, although am v tempted to ask JRA to do Ultegras with Excellences for something lighter. As I’m going to be using these for commuting and general riding, I’m wary of getting anything too heavy.

Decisions, decisions.

18st 8lb. Although as cycling naked through London is frowned upon, I’m probably a good few pounds heavier with clothes and rucksack.

I’m in East London. Happy to order from anywhere really, though.

Get well soon Mr A.

My god, that Canfield Jedi looks tastyburgers. How much?

I got scared at the frame price of $2700 excluding VAT/import duty, so gave up on owning one….

My 07 Chameleon is a large, but it's not quite large enough for me at 6'4". Admittedly that's with a 65mm stem and a thomson layback with the seat pushed as far back as it'll go. 'Tis pretty uncomfortable for longer rides, but awesome for larking about on….

On my Air 4.0, i whack propedal on full, 150psi in boost, run rebound a click or two from full slow and set sag to taste. Before I started leaving propedal on full , which the chap at Mojo recommendedd, I could never get it quite right. Now it's much, much better….

Films I became utterly baffled at within about half an hour:

The Spirit – Scarlett Johansson and Samuel L Jackson should be ashamed.

Outlander – utter, utter drivel. I was recommended it by someone who claimed it was so bad it was good. No. Wrong. It is dreadful.

That's a shame really.

I understand wanting to forget the event, but by doing so you're permitting those yobs to do exactly the same thing to someone else. And next time, they might just have enjoyed enough liquid refreshment to skip right past the threats, and get straight on with the headbutting.

So it goes.

Don't underestimate the placebo effect. Just because there is no scientifically measurable improvement, doesn't preclude the owner of said "uber" cables from perceiving an improvement.

HD TV and the placebo effect

My nearest one is Harry Perry Cycles in Woolwich. Owner is a lovely, helpful chap. No fancy kit or bikes, though. Just an old school bike shop. He builds road frames too, if i remember rightly.

Moose Cycles in Colliers Wood is my ex-local and they're ok. Some guys in there are nice enough, and the mechanic(s) do a great job, but it's a bit of a trek. The owner can be a bit up himself, though. Last time I took my bike in for a service, he commented "well, you've obviously not ridden it much". I assume because it was clean and had box-fresh tires on. ****.

Raleigh Dynatech SX. The one with the steel and titanium tubes glued in. **** rubbish in every way, but it was my first bike and I loved it. Still in my shed with ancient azonic "dh" handlebars and marzocchi xc600 56mm travel air forks. Phat.

Some of the nonsense spouted by Stafford A&E was jaw-dropping, so that doesn't surprise me.

My doctor had to burst into the X-ray room just to check that the clavicle was part of the shoulder. The radiographer looked utterly bemused, slowly responded "Yes, the clavicle will, of course, be visible in an X-ray of the shoulder", and then had to tell him off for using the patient door as he was putting himself needlessly at risk from radiation.

Jesus wept.

I completely battered my collarbone back in the end of March. Impact pretty much exploded the bone, and there was only about 20mm left attached to the shoulder side. Unfortunately, the first hopsital i went to – Stafford – didn't have a clue, and the "Doctor" there said it was all fine and a perfectly uncomplicated break. Sent me home with a couple of co-codamol and a crap sling that didn't fit.

Two days later, I went to my local A&E who immediately threw away the Stafford X-ray and took two more. The doctor there said it was one of the most severe breaks he'd ever seen, said the two bones were nowhere near each other and desperately unlikely to heal on their own. So, of course, he sent me home with a sling and told me to come back in a week.

The next week I returned, and the X-rays showed the bone (sternum side) was now trying to pierce my skin. They operated about three days later, and reassured me by saying that "they hoped it wouldn't pierce the skin in the meantime. If it does, pop in to A&E".

The really short bit left on the shoulder side meant they couldn't pin it, so they had to tie it together with some special string. It's now healed, after a fashion, but my shoulder is in a different position, so I've had alot of neck pain and muscular issues as all the muscles are now doing different jobs. I spent my first few rides struggling with right hand corners, as my new shoulder meant my weight distribution was completely different.

From what I;ve heard/read, though, pinning isn't always the best option. Sometimes the pins/metal cause other problems – with nerves/muscles as others have mentioned – and don't feel that nice. Going by your X_ray, though, those two bones need to be alot nearer together. They look about as far apart as mine were….

Ahh, yes, of course. It is Ride2Work, not Cyclescheme. My bad.

I'll keep a close eye on the sale bikes at Evans, then. Hopefully a nice DH commuter bike will show up soon enough. 🙂

Thanks chaps!

Nonsense. Windows 7 is just as good as Snow Kitty – all comes down to what software you'd like to run!

Macbook Pro 13 with dual-boot Windows 7 and OS X gives the best of both worlds, though. It's a lovely laptop.