Aargh! Glad she’s okay. I’ve done the exact same thing to myself on more than one occasion.

I used to have a pen that had a wee clock on it, to tell me when I’d last injected. Absolutely awful injector, (looked a bit like a zippo lighter), but a genius idea.

Again, glad everyone is okay.

Gonna have a google search now and see if I can find the thing I had.

C.

On my recent first aid course, it was all about checking through the victim’s pockets for loose change and car keys before rolling them over into the recovery position. This was in Glasgow though.

Personally, I think there’s a huge lack of awareness amongst ‘people who ride bikes’, as to the dangers of riding up the inside of trucks and buses at junctions and elsewhere.

As a ‘cycling enthusiast’ I’m well aware of the dangers, and have nearly been caught out a few times. Some, through my own stupidity, and some from the drivers, and because of that, I now know to be very aware of the dangers.

However, on my daily commute, I regularly see people on bikes making what I would regard as life threatening manoeuvres, and I would guess that in the majority of cases those people just don’t realise that the vehicle they are undertaking can’t see them, or will left hook them as it turns at the junction.

I really think the bike riding public, and urban drivers need to be hammered with a lot more high profile information to educate them of the dangers.

:-/

Kids were my immediate thought when I saw the picture. Has someone maybe been trail building and left the materials for a ramp there? Kids come along, find the stuff and do what kids do…..something stupid without thinking of the consequences.

What can I say, other than thank-you singletrackworld folks?

I phoned my bike shop again about an hour ago and asked then to try and push things along a bit and suggested to them that they might even try giving Orange a shout, as per Mboy’s suggestion earlier.

Just had a phone call from the shop to tell me that Orange are sending a replacement shock up to them and that it should be fitted and ready for collection some time next week. Then, when the shop eventually receives the warranty replacement shock from SRAM, they’ll send it back down to Orange.

This is brilliant folks, really made my day!

Cheers!

C. :-)

Cheers guys,

The bike is with the shop I bought it from. I’m not sure what SRAM have done to the shock to make it rideable again, all I know is that it can’t be fully repaired and they (SRAM) say it needs replaced. They’ve sent it back to the bike shop to refit to my bike as I said I’d rather have it back in some sort of working order, rather than it sitting in the bike shop for an unspecified amount of time. I’m going to contact the bike shop again today and try to push things along. I like the idea that someone mentioned of getting the bike shop to see if SRAM will credit them for the cost of a replacement, or even getting in touch with Orange for a spare.

Fingers crossed!

I spotted those as I was heading home on the bus last night. At first I thought it was a whopper of a thundercloud forming, but then common sense reigned me in as they were obviously drifiting away from the Grangemouth cooling towers.

They were pretty funky though!

C.

Hope you have better luck than me!

The Monarch Debonair RC3 on my new bike failed a few weeks ago (packed down, but without any air loss) and my LBS has just been told by Rockshox that it can’t be repaired and they don’t have any replacements in stock. :-(

If it doesn’t fit, can I borrow it? I want my shiny new bike back! :-(

Beagy

I’m on here most days and haven’t noticed any problems at work or home. Currently, I’m in the top floor office of our lab, in Scotland to boot, so the internet has to flow all the way up here before I see it. Yet the site always seems to work fine for me.;-)

So, up until mid-summer, I’ve always ridden with a 3x something-or-other setup. Then I bought a new bike with all shiny new modern bits. Bigger wheels, huge bar, no stem to speak of, dropper post and a 1×10 drive setup with a clutch rear mech. I’m definitely getting killed by this setup on long draggy climbs, even with a 40t expander on the rear. However, I am rather…large boned…and struggle on most climbs anyway. Where I’m really enjoying the 1×10 setup though, is on the descents. No more thrown chains, or chains jammed between the rings and the front mech. This was a common enough occurrence on my old bike, generally after a rooty / rocky descent, immediately followed by a sudden sharp climb that required rapid gear changes, or more often than not, a comedy pedal spin whilst looking down at a loose chain in despair.

I’m also enjoying just not having to think about front mech shifts anymore. Will it change up or down on demand? Or has the mud and leaves clogged everything up too bad? I reckon I’m a 1×10 convert. It has it’s downsides for me, as I’m not fit enough to cope with what I feel is a reduced range of gears, (although that could all be in my head), but I just feel it works better, and there’s less to go wrong.

C. :-)

I got the Aldi light last week and it’s very, very bright, even brighter than what would have been my stock answer of the ‘MetroFlash Dangerzone’ which punts out an epic amount of light, and has a really cool name. The Aldi light also comes with a saddle rail mount which solves the problem of where to put it on my new bike with its dropper post. I’d grab one if you can get it! If you can’t then I’d thoroughly recommend the Metroflash as a good, bright and weatherproof tail light.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/MetroFlash-Danger-Zone-Tail-Light/dp/B00AOZHW3O/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1476182322&sr=8-1&keywords=danger+zone+tail+light

I’ve two best mates from high school, so a 34 year friendship now, and for the past 7 years we’ve been going on regular winter holidays together. I had a bad accident this year, breaking my back while we were in Bulgaria. The last I saw of both of them was as I was getting shoved into the back of a ramshackle ambulance.

It took them five months to get together and meet up with me afterwards. When I met them, I expected an apology, hugs, tears and a big make up. Naive, fool that I am :roll: What I got was a detailed description of how much money it might have cost them if they’d gone to the hospital to check on my welfare. When I tackled them about the fact that I hadn’t seen the pair of them together since, and that considering they both lived within a 10 minute drive of my house, it was a bit of a poor show, I got a shrug of the shoulders. It was eventually pointed out to me by the guy who was my ‘best man’ at my wedding, that maybe I was taking the level of our friendship a wee bit for granted.

From now on, I’m going to get other people to choose my friends for me. I either have the most appalling decision making paradigms where friendship is concerned…..or unbeknown to me, I’m a really horrible person. Whatever the case, I’m still utterly stunned at the outcome. :oops:

My congratulations to everyone here who has such great friendships that have lasted such a long time, I truly envy you. :-)

C.

Thank you for saving me from a beating Nipper. I’d actually been considering popping my 20 yr old Drizabone into the washing machine to clean off some of the grime before re-waxing it. Now I know better. I’ll just be giving it a good hose down and melty-wax now.

Phew!

C.

When I saw this thread I went to check the Jaspa website to see what they were offering, but they don’t seem to be trading anymore, which is a real shame as they were producing lovely bikes. :-(

This is my replica, 1920’s Path Racer, with a Sturmey Archer, 2 speed kickback hub and coaster brake (it can get a little complicated), plus a Sturmey Archer crankset. Brookes saddle and leather wound grips just finish off what is a hugely comfortable bike to ride.

Think it was £450 when I bought mine about 4 years ago. It was the 1st one they’d made and the 3rd they’d sold at the time. However, a quick check of ebay shows that there are lots of other replicas and real ones kicking about for around the same amount of money.

Really nice bikes to ride!

C.

Enid’s just a bog standard Raleigh, but we’ve loved her very much over the years and have had some great adventures. We went out for ice cream last weekend, (no ginger beer unfortunately), but it took me a fair wee while to do all the system checks!

I sold my old 2010 Five to a mate and replaced it with a Four in July. I was actually chuckling at myself the other night as I thought that just a few years ago I would have turned my nose up at the ‘skill compensation’ characteristics of the Four. However as I flew down through a greasy rock garden in the dark, with barely a bobble from the bike…..it made me laugh, I’ll take all the skill compensation I can get thanks! :P

Not so sure about the modern gearing though, this whole ‘1×10’ malarky. My new bike (Thelma), certainly seems harder to drag up steep stuff, as if the gearing, even with a 40t ring on the cassette, isn’t quite as easy on my old legs as my Five’s 3×9 setup.

I’m on my way back from a nasty tumble at the start of the year, so I’m still a bit shy on the bike. Even so, I’ve ridden technical, rooty and rocky sections of my local trails, harder and faster than I ever did on my old Orange Five. The way that it skips over roots and rocks, rather than ploughing through them, means that the speed it picks up on the descents is phenomenal! I get a very distinct feeling of being sat in the bike, rather than on it. Which gives me a level of confidence that I’ve not experienced since the good old days of my 2000/01 Patriot.

I’ve been mountain biking for nearly 27 years now, and I’d honestly say that Thelma is the best bike I’ve ridden in that time, it’s a brilliant piece of kit.

C.

What I found interesting was this,

Some authors have posited that helmet use exacerbates
the occurrence of diffuse axonal injury (DAI), which has
prompted biomechanical research into helmet use and angular
acceleration……this review found a DAI diagnosis is rare among cyclists in a crash. There were no
DAI diagnoses reported by Dinh et al. (0/110), McIntosh
et al.25 (0/137) or Malczyk et al. (0/239), whereas
Javouhey et al. reported DAI in 2.3% of cyclists (28/
1238). Sethi and colleagues reported DAI in 2/225 unhelmeted
cyclists and 1/110 helmeted cyclists (OR ¼ 1.02,
P ¼ 0.99), and Bambach et al. identified only 0.1% (8/
6745) of cyclists in a motor vehicle collision that met one
criterion for DAI. There is some evidence in the motorcycle
helmet literature that travel speed interacts with helmet effectiveness,
i.e. there is a threshold where helmet use
switches from beneficial to detrimental. However, this
study estimated a switch at 124 km/h which is only possible
under extreme conditions on a bicycle.

I don’t have one of those fancy pants ‘MIPS’ helmets, but now I know to keep my speed below 124km/h if I ever do get one!

Hey Molgrips / Horatio. I’ve got access to the journal. Let me know if you want me to send you a pdf of the study. It’s very stats heavy though!

Beagy :-)

Yep,

She’s got five gears I think, I’ve only got two. She’s also got a basket on the front,and dynamo lights! Although mine does now have a nice brass bell. :-)

Yep, the last couple of evenings I’ve been out, I’ve been riding with my light clipped onto one of the zipper tags on my old Camelback Blowfish, hardly ideal at all. That’s why I was wondering about alternatives. I’m riding an Orange Four, and can’t see how I’d be able to either fit the light to a chainstay without clipping it constantly with my heels or fitting it to the seat tube where it wouldn’t be obscured by the rear wheel.

When I saw the Moon Comet / Nebula lights that fit to the saddle rails I thought ‘job’s a good un’, but quite a few of the amazon reviews I looked at seem to take issue with their poor water resistance, and where I ride, there’s a lot of water generally either falling from the sky or splooshing up from the ground!

C.

Think I recently paid £8 each for my tubeless valves from the bike shop in Glasgow that’s local to my lab. I just thought that was the going price. :-( .I’d jump at a tenner for a pair. :-/

Checked my Camelback Blowfish for little light straps….noop. As I ride from home and don’t have a nice car to retreat to if things turn poop, I carry everything in my backpack, so have never used a seat bag. Can’t see one surviving the winter slop anyway!

However, problem sorted thanks! I remembered that I had an old Karrimor Hydro 15 (yep, really old), backpack up the loft. It has the wee tab on the bottom for clipping the rear light on. That’ll do me until I can find a reasonable replacement that’ll clip to the saddle rails.

Anyone had any experience of the ‘Moon Comet’ tail light? It seems to have a pretty sturdy looking saddle rail mount.

:-)

Mine would help himself to snacks from my jersey back pockets and be happily chattering up the steepest hills, you certainly don’t get much work out of them!

I remember pedaling along one time on our tandem with Mrs Beagleboy. I could feel something weird on my back, but couldn’t quite figure it out until we went past a shop window and I saw what was going on. She was engrossed in a magazine she’d spread open on my back. :roll:

C. :-)

Our’s is a Raleigh Adventurer as well I think. Cost us around £600, ten years or so ago.

I upgraded her (she’s called Enid because of all the spiffing adventures we’ve had), with hydraulic brakes, a Revelation fork, Dennis the Menace Spokey Dokey’s, front handlebar mounted windmill and Thunderbird II squeaky hooter, rear handlebar mounted mohican punk rocker bell and bar end streamers.

Absolutely brilliant for skooting along towpaths etc. as Mrs Beagleboy can look at the scenery and hold a conversation without us having to constantly weave around folk.

The ABC robot was never part of the Dredd universe
Well aware of that, maybe he had been retrieved and copied afer a dimension jump?

And seriously, THAT is what you pick on? At least they managed to get SOMETHING correct, even if it was from a different universe.

I’m really sorry, I’m not a geek honestly, but Judge Dredd came up against nasty war robots at least a couple of times. In the Cursed Earth saga, I seem to remember some of them were robot vampire nurses draining people’s blood to keep the last president of the USA alive. But I’m pretty sure there were other military robots. Also, ever hear of, or seen a movie called ‘Hardware’? It’s ripped off from a John Mills ‘Tharg’s Future Shocks’ story that was set in Mega City One and sees a war robot almost identical to the the one in the Stallone movie being bought as scrap for an artist and then accidentally being reactivated. Great wee movie….even has Lemmy in it!

I’m confused by everyone’s negative attitude to the ‘Dark Materials’ thing though? Is there a movie other than the Golden Compass that I haven’t seen? All I can see are plans for a BBC series to be shown next year. How can that be ruined already?

I actually don’t mind most of the franchise…super hero, comedy or action stuff.As long as it’s a bit silly, I’m happy. Like someone has already mentioned, I slap a DVD in the slot to switch my mind off for a couple of hours, so the more ludicrously distracting the nonsense in front of me is, the better.

Half way up Mt Dunblane in New Zealand. Sorry for the fat scottish bloke ruining the scenery.

A mate just cresting a wee climb into Glen Ample, in the Trossachs. Not even slightly remote, but some lovely countryside.

Riding through a wadi as we skirted around the edges of the Sahara desert certainly felt remote to me!

Again this isn’t really remote, it’s just down from Rothiemurchus lodge, but I like to show the photo off now and again because I really like it!

Could be anywhere!….but it’s actually just King’s park in Stirling :-)

Sorry, it’s the fat Scotsman again, but this time in a famous climbing location in Nevada…Red Rock Canyon? All I remember is that there were Chipmunks everywhere. 8O

Start of a mahoosive descent back down towards Pitlochry at the end of an awesome day in high moorlands.

A very good friend patiently waiting with good humour as I beat my bike back into shape with a rock. It wasn’t very remote at the summit of the Glen Finglas loop, but it suddenly felt like it when my bike got all stroppy!

Thanks for this thread! I’ve been more off than on my bike the last couple of because of bad injuries. This little sift through photo bucket has brought back a whole bunch of really good memories. Must have a look through the stuff stored on my camera and my computer at home now! :-)

Flew to Sofia on EasyJet from Manchester back in February and there was a huge bunch of rowdy yoofs already quite drunk as they tried to board the plane. They were held back by the gate staff till everyone else had boarded. Once on they were told in no uncertain terms that they would not be served alcohol during the flight.

I was quite impressed by that actually. So much in fact that I ordered a beer even though it was only 7am on a Saturday morning. Tasted really good as I watched the idiots sitting in their seats like naughty schoolboys.

So unlike me, Easyjet do have some standards!

C. ;-)

What’s LTB? What’s a DH? What’s a DP? What’s 4DC?

It’s like my first day in the lab all over again. I’m drowning in acronyms!!!

:o

I work in academia, as a research tech in a molecular biology lab. I feel like I haven’t done a proper day’s work since I quit my job as a welder and went to college, then on to Uni in the early 90’s.

I’m excited to come into the lab in the mornings to see if my experiments have worked! The pay is awful mind you, but I don’t care as I’m perfectly happy where I am.

:-)

Hey folks,

I wonder if I can ask a wee question regarding travel insurance?

My last snowboarding holiday in February 2016 ended rather abruptly with me being hospitalised for five days in Bulgaria, before getting flown home in a private air ambulance, and spending another five days in hospital here. I’m assuming that until the wonderful NHS staff got me, I racked up a fair bill through my travel insurance. Although I’ve never heard a peep from them since.

Everything’s tickety-boo…ish now, to the point where a bunch of my friends have kindly invited me to join them on a ski holiday in Austria. Apparently, I have to learn to ski though, I’m not allowed to take my snowboard… :oops:

I’m rather excited about this as I honestly thought my winter holidays were done and dusted after my little mishap, but as we organise flights, transfers and villas etc. I keep wondering about the insurance.

I’ve just had a quick look at travel insurance with snowsport cover online, and after answering all the online medical screening questions ( I have to go through medical screening anyway as I’m a type 1 Diabetic), there didn’t seem to be a problem or a penalty. Do you reckon that’s right? Has anyone else come a cropper one year and gone out the next year without having to jump through hoops to get insurance? It seems too good to be true….thus I’m very, very suspicious. It’s not that I’m trying to avoid paying more than I have to, kind of the opposite actually. I was prepared to take a mahoosive hike in the cost of insuring me as the price I had to pay to be lucky enough to get away again so quickly….but I do want to make sure I’m actually covered in case lightning really does strike twice! 8O

I was going to suggest what Cougar ^^^ said about stacking images from the CCTV video. I’ve used image capture and stacking software in conjunction with a webcam fitted to my telescope’s eyepiece to resolve an initially blurred and indistinct blob into a creditable image of Jupiter.

If you google astronomy imaging from a webcam, you’ll see the software that folks use, but again as others have already said, if the information’s not already there in the image, you can’t create it like they do in the movies, sorry.

I just had a look at some of the responses to the video on Youtube. No matter who’s right or wrong, there’s some nasty, aggressively racist nonsense getting thrown around.

Left me feeling a bit sad for people to be honest. :(

I purposefully swap the knives and spoons around in the cutlery drawer, then step back and watch the madness take over Mrs Beagleboy. Such an innocent little thing, but it completely sends her over the edge. :twisted:

The way that any lab technician can rustle up a full DNA profile of the killer or victims within five minutes armed only with a pipette and desktop centrifuge. Wish I could do that. :roll:

Hmmmm…let me think about that one Iain

Cheers for the info Hammy. To be honest, what you’ve told me is probably more reassuring and informative than my GP! Good to know that I’m actually on a low dose of Tramadol, that way I can reassure friends and family a bit more. Not having any stomach bother with the Ibuprofen but I’ll look into the Naproxen, cheers.

Not keen on the idea of the back pain being chronic, hopefully that won’t be the case. Just hoping that my present activities aren’t causing any more damage! 8O I’m currently getting back into mountain biking, and the lower back pain can be bad (particularly on long climbs sat in the same position, but background manageable for most of the rides. Same as it is for most of the day at work (pain builds up if I’m at the desk too long, or working in the same position at the lab bench till I have to stop what I’m doing). Don’t really want to jump in ahead of the queue at the hospital as, day to day, I’m coping reasonably well, but I’ll bear that wee trick in mind if things get really bad. Cheers againfor the reassuring advice.

Fizzy lager pretending to be beer. Chill it in the fridge to keep the bubbles under control.

Hi Iain,

I’m pretty sure you’re from around my way, I was in Plean Country Park, Stirlingshire. :wink:

I was out again on my new Four last night around a mostly dry, but very rooty and rocky, 12 mile XC loop. The bike is noticeably faster rolling over the roots and rocks here than my old 2009/10 Orange Five ever was. That was very obvious on this loop, and the addition of the 40t Hope T-Rex on the cassette allowed me to get most way up the sharp climbs that normally have had me perched on the nose of the saddle in the lowest, 3×9, granny ring gear possible! I didn’t clear the steepest climb, but I reckon that’s down to my post injury fitness, rather than the gearing of the bike.

The steering is also way faster, as I’ve suddenly gone from a 630mm bar and 90mm stem combo to a Renthal 780mm bar and 31mm stem…woof! Please excuse me if I have a sudden tendency to steer into trees and ditches for the next few weeks!

Descending back down towards home the bike picks up speed noticeably quicker than my old Five as well. I’m sure this, and it’s root / rock garden eating ability must be down to the larger wheels, even though when lined up against my mate’s bike, the difference in size is barely perceptible to me!

It feels really planted, and really secure. Turning fast, rolling over everything it meets, climbing brilliantly (as much as I can manage at the moment), and descending really, really fast. As I said before, I haven’t felt this confident on a bike since the days of my old Patriot which used to just bulldoze its way through everything, but this bike feels the same and it’s half the weight!

I opted for the Orange Four Pro…but then got a wee bit carried away with the plethora of upgrade choices. Really, really carried away actually. :oops:

I’m not sure, but I suspect that the Orange frame designer have probably had their feelings hurt by the haters on here so many times that they put a considerable amount of effort into the aesthetics of this frame. They seem to have taken on board the fact that for lots of people, what the bike looks like is way more important than how it rides. ;-) Hopefully you can see from my slightly fuzzy and shaky picture that pretty much every tube has been manipulated to produce what I think is a very pleasing looking frame, that still rides as well, if not better than any other Orange I’ve owned. The amount of work that’s gone into the frame also makes the sheet metal worker in me (I was a TIG welder for five years in a sheet metal factory 25yrs ago), step back in admiration. I know for a fact that had we been asked to do this amount of manipulation back then, we’d all have been sucking air in between our teeth whilst slowly shaking our heads and internally clocking up the £££ signs. I’m sure technology has come on a long way from then, but I still admire the amount of work and sculpting that’s gone into this frame.

I’ve been riding Orange bikes now since the late 90’s, and this is the best one I’ve ridden yet. I’m very pleased with it.

C. xx

Hi Chesty,

Hopefully going out for a spin again tonight if my back survives the commute home, if so, I’ll try and get a couple more pics for you.

I might be a bit oversensitive as I’m tired and sore all the time. Let’s be friends again :-)

C.