It went:

Alivio
STX
STX RC
LX
XT
XTR

STX RC was a slightly shinier finish, from memory – not much more.

Smashing thread.

We are (hopefully) moving to a house with a garage later this year. So I’ll finally be able to move all the bikes out of the tiny 6’6″ x 5ft shed and get to my tools as well.

It’s a late 70s single car garage, and I’m hoping to get bike storage, workshop and a boatbuilding area into it. The boat stuff I’ve done in the past in my parents’ garage – basically a big polythene tent for sanding, spraying and epoxying. :)

I’ve been told that one good option is to find someone having a new kitchen fitted, and ask to take away the old carcasses and cupboards for storage.

Any pics of garage set-ups gratefully received.

First Direct. Ten years, and they’ve never put a foot wrong. Amazing staff, which is probably the reason why they have such a good rep.

Another vote for bar end shifters (also known as barcon shifters) here – simpler, cheaper and easier to maintain than STIs, and perfectly fine to ride with, but not as ergonomically easy to use as STIs. I’m currently running a JTEK with a Nexus hub on a cross bike, and it’s just fine. I’ve run Dura Ace barcons in the past.

Retroshifts look pretty good in my book – half tempted to give them a shot, as I have the right downtube shifters to hand….

A long spanner, yesterday. ;)

Well, all’s not yet lost, I’d say. If the thread is nailed, you can get threadless BBs that screw into themselves.

At a guess, Marin use the standard English (rather than Italian) thread. English or BSA threads are lefty loosey righty tighty on the drive side, and the opposite on the non drive side. Basically, the BB screws in on each side in the same direction as pedaling forwards. Italian threads are lefty loosey righty tighty on both sides – so there was a slight tendency for the Non Drive side to come loose from time to time if not properly maintained.

Maybe speak to a long term Marin dealer, or to ATB Sales, the distributor of Marin over here. Then get a nice long spanner and unscrew it.

One last thing – have you cleaned the outside of the cups thoroughly? Some BBs have the direction or side marked, either in the outside of the cup, or on the spindle.

What’s on the drive side? Steel cup? And what’s the frame made out of? Aluminium or steel?
Some super-cheap OEM BBs had drive side cups made of plastic. If it’s steel and really won’t budge, you could try heating the BB to soften the plastic, and then pushing it out. Haven’t done this myself, I should point out, but might be the safest way of preserving the threads.
Mebes find a good bike shop if you’re nervous about it (I’m assuming this is not the case)

36:18 will do you right. Same ratio as 32:16, but doesn’t wear as quickly.

Pigface – Member
Go eat at Wonkees, food isnt bad and the experience should be good.

:lol:

If you have a bit of folding and some workmates to drink with, go to De Hems[/url] for a beer or two – nice stuff.

Another note – went there a few weekends ago with a bunch of friends in a mixed-ability group and had a great time. There’s still a ton of good riding there – you just need to (gasp!) get the maps out and do a bit of planning around the diversions and closures to make up your own loop.

As said above, it’s worth going and spending a little more time making up your own route to support the locals, who are really feeling the impact this tree fungus is having on their income at the moment.

Capers, give Head for the Hills in Dorking a try, too. Mrs Udder has a smashing Trek from there, and she’s 5’4″. From memory the frame was 14″, and I know they go smaller. She was able to test ride the owner’s wife’s personal bike, and liked it so much she bought one pretty much exactly the same. From memory, it cost £650, and was in the middle of the range of bikes they had available. HTH!

From a former senior Googlist, the culture at Google is against rubbish meetings:

* If you come to a meeting and don’t think you can contribute, you can walk out

* If there is no agenda, you can walk out

* If there’s no objective to the meeting, you can walk out

* If you think the meeting’s pointless, you can walk ut

I’m liking it a great deal. Cuts down on the number of extraneous meetings. Side effect: alienates meeting jobsworths. This may be a good or bad thing.

Another vote for ESI. I have Racer’s Edge on one bike, and chunky on the other, and they are both very, very comfortable and do not move about.

I commute in and out of London for work. Last winter there was some monkey on the riverside path between Hammersmith and Putey who rode with a light set at other cyclists’ eye levels. Despite several riders asking him to angle it downwards, he never even acknowledges other riders. So, come the winter nights, I’ll be sticking by Nightlightning on my lid to see if he gets the message.

But anyway – try asking them next time. Never hurts. Unless they have poor impulse control or are psychotic.

I had a similar dilemma back when the first udderlet was due. I didn’t have enough space to justify lots of bikes, and I knew that money was going to be tight for a while – and riding opportunities thin.

I had:

A Commencal Meta 4
DeKerf Generation
Genesis Io
Random road bike

Here’s what I did: I sold everything. Every last bike. I’d owned the DK for over a decade, and had updated it by buying the components for a proper DeKerf disk brake mount from Chris direct, and getting Argos to do a smashing job on it. I sold it to a friend I knew would ride it lots and cherish it.

I bought a Singular Hummingbird and a pair of matching Magura Menjas – hardtail with gears, singlespeed, rigid, front sus and 26er/69er all sorted in one bike.

I bought (second hand, from a friend) an Orange Five.

My suggestion:

Keep the road bike.

Sell all of the hardtails, and buy one capable of running gears if you really need it. The Hummingbird is smashing, but out of production – although Sam has a few large frames kicking around.

I should point out that I’ve yet to run gears on the Singular. If it’s a big day out in’t hills, I take the Orange.

Hope this all helps. I know it hurts to sell a bike with significant emotional attachment, but if you’r not using the Cotic or the Specialized, sell them to someone who will use and enjoy them. Then sell the On One, ‘cos it’s pink.

one other thought: I don’t know if the Excentriker BBs do the job, but that might be one way to singlespeed the Cotic. Or get a Simple.

Apple HQ in 1, Infinite Loop is four storeys, tops. He’ll never be able to hide for any length of time in the lift shafts.

I’ve one for sale at the moment, actually – a custom order from ages back that I don’t use any more. Blue, yellow and green, size M or L, from memory. PM me if interested.

In a similar boat – second nipper is coming up to 3 months old, and Mrs Udder has given up work for the mean time for a ton of really solid, sensible reasons that are pretty obvious. So we’re down to a bit more than half our usual income for the next few years at least.

One thing we did after Mrs Udder went back from her first maternity leave was to try and live on my income alone, with everything she earned going into savings or on things we were spending on because we both worked – childcare, her commuting costs, and a weekly visit from the cleaner.

We cut down from two cars (we both drove to work) to one (I changed jobs and commute by train and Brompton).

I try to spend the bare minimum on biking. So, for example, I sold a much-loved hardtail I’d had for over a decade, and a singlespeed bike, and got a singlespeed with a mech hanger, combining two bikes in one. The frame came with rigid forks, so, if I end up with busted suspension forks, I’ll just go rigid until I can afford new forks.

I service my own forks and shocks. I fund the costs of stuff I need to get for bikes by selling off old bike kit that’s just sitting around. I did this recently to build up a cross bike / commuter for peanuts. If I can, I buy second hand kit. Otherwise, I look out for bargains. I gave up one sport (sailing) for time reasons a few years ago, and get the occasional race in on friends’ boats, so my kit doesn’t wear out like it used to.

One thing I’ve found works really well is to have a separate mad money account for stuff like this. If I sell something, the money goes in there. If a kind relative gives me some money for a birthday or Chrimbo, the money goes in there. I also ask (cheekily) for birthday and Christmas presents to be stuff I need, or cash.

My company pays a bonus most years; I have clearance from Mrs Udder to spend this on bike stuff.

All of this then goes into discretionary spend on bike stuff or other things, like Mrs Udder’s big birthday, which is rapidly approaching.

I suppose this is a long way of saying: try changing your way of thinking. These next few years are going to be about supporting your partner and children, and your happiness comes second. But don’t forget it completely. Just change the way you spend on things.

Optilabs here – replacing Adidas Evil Eyes with inserts. I live (relatively) close to Optilab’s showroom in Croydon, so went in and got everything measured up. They’re not perfect (a litle heavy and I have a -6.5 prescription, so the lenses are fairly thick) but they’ve been going strong for over four years now. Will replace with another pair.

“Doddy wardrobe”

:lol:

aracer, you mean *another* standard?

:D

Yeah, what the hell, let’s go for it. Just for the irony.

I’m actually hoping to buy a bike at the end of the year if my company pays out its annual bonus, but all this jibberjabber about 650b and 29er (I’m 5’7″, so well into shortarse territory) is making me think I should stick with the little wheels for a while until all the standards are ironed out and we know what does well. 29er is looking great (especially Santa Cruz and Specialized’s hardtails), but all the hoopla about 650b is making me think it’s better to wait and see.

Four:

Brompton for commuting
CX bike for commuting / child towing
Singlespeed (can go geared, haven’t yet)
FS bike

Every now and then I have a bit of a clearout, and then buy more bikes. Last time was just before Udderlet #1 – sold a singlespeed, a hardtail (A lovely DeKerf that went to a good friend) and a FS bike. Bought the Hummingbird for geared and singlespeed and an Orange 5 frame and forks from a friend.

It’s worth having a long hard think every now and then about the riding you do and the riding you’re likely to be doing, and make changes based on that.

We went to NCT classes and made a bunch of good friends who were all going through the same thing. We still see all of them.

The teacher we had was great – very pragmatic, no nonsense and completely grounded. She gave us a *lot* of information we would otherwise have had to work out for ourselves, and certainly far more than could be crammed into a one day course. I found it really helpful as a dad-to-be.

However, we had friends in the same area who were assigned another course leader who was an absolute nightmare, apparently.
The NCT is great – but the NCT tutor you get very much affects the experience you get.

Very similar experience to Theotherjonv, as it happens – breastfeeding nightmare with our first. The NCT tutor, breastfeeding adviser and community midwife were all excellent – very supportive but also completely practical. It wasn’t working, and at no point did they get all fundamentalist about breastfeeding – they all (separately) said to go to bottle if it wasn’t working.

You’re hearing a lot of conflicting messages on this thread – NCT good, NCT bad, etc etc, and that’s because it’s a pretty variable experience – an organisation run by volunteers who are variously enthusiastic, jaded, skilled and experienced and completely new to the whole thing. My recommendation would be to sign up for it. You will waste money on far more silly, expensive things than NCT classes, and if worst comes to worst you will have met a ready-made baby group.

I do hope you’ve pointed out that, although she did well, if you were driving you’d probably have avoided ALL of the debris AND managed to change the channel of the radio at the same time!!!

We now have two healthy sons, and therefore my reproductive equipment is surplus to requirements. However, for some reason – sentimentality, perhaps – I prefer to retain the use of my testes.

Aye – it makes a hell of a bang, doesn’t it? We were behind a car that had a blowout once – it almost upended when it hit the median barrier. Both times, it’s almost like it’s happening in slow motion. The only time I’ve had a similar experience has been yacht racing when something expensive and/or dangerous has happened.

b r – yes, my initial thought, but we will need a new headlight unit, bumper, windscreen and number plate for a new shape ’09 Octy, so I’m guessing it’ll be more than a few hundred. We’ve only had it a couple of weeks, too.

Countzero – thank you. Luckily Mrs Udder stayed as cool as a cucumber. The Udderlets are 27 months and 9 weeks old – talking about it afterwards, we both didn’t have time to think about it at the time, but your blood runs cold, doesn’t it?

Glad the lad at the wheel in the other car got away with a sore leg. Sounded like a moment’s inattention that cost him dear. There but for the grace of god – type stuff.

/edit
Thanks Hora. I’ve just checked, and it’s looking more like £40 a year extra. Nuts. Mind you, we are only paying £240 fully comp.

Mrs Udder was driving, and yes, she did twitch, but not too much, and she kept her cool all the way through, despite the M40 looking like something out of a Michael Bay film.

I didn’t realise you could claim for your premium going up too – that’s really helpful, thank you all!

I got the collision report number from a really helpful copper who called the same night. The narrative he gave sounded like the driver didn’t see the police can when he pulled out, panicked, tried to pull back in again (the police car braked in the mean time and came nowhere near him) and clipped another car, then span out into the barrier.

I’m going to look up how much more it’ll cost on our policy with a no blame claim. Could be a bit petrifying!

Is this a metaphorical discussion?
Have you had the snip? That would affect consistency.

Even if it is fake it doesn’t change anything. Morgan is still a **** and Wiggins is still a legend

This.

So why isn’t Europe full of mountain bikers who crashed because their most powerful hand was pulling the ‘wrong’ brake?

Not necessarily about power. A bit like learning to left foot brake in a car, I suppose. But you’re right. Of course, they also don’t crash because they have mad Euro Skillz, but that’s a different matter. :D

Am I going to get kicked out of the UK for suggesting to just switch to the Euro way? Shouldnt take too long to adjust.

Please hand your passport in on the way out. ;)

If you’re naturally right-handed, there’s a good argument in favour of having the most powerful brake in your right hand.

That said, most frames are designed for right hand rear brake routing.

It’s all bikes, anyway.

… at the Mewstone. Paddle out of the entrance to the River Dart, turn left and you can’t miss it

… I tend to try and avoid it. :D

Incidentally, is the dolphin still around in the Dart? My dad used to see it pretty regularly when he was lifting his lobster pots in the morning.

Summer Lightning was named after the beer, yes. Waggle Dance named after the beer and after the change to the route we had to make to avoid a ground nesting bee’s nest. Crooked Furrow after the beer brewed by the pub at the end of it. Regurgitator because the first chap to ride it, a certain mountain unicyclist who frequents this forum by the name of Joe, was the first to clear it, and said it almost made him throw up.

It’s a hoax, unfortunately. Moron has said so on his twitter feed. Of course, the reason why it’s spread so very far so very quickly is because it’s exactly in keeping with the sort of tripe Piers Morgan spouts…

I’m quite liking the colours of the prototypes they showed at Icebike earlier this year: clicky.

Back then, they had an 853 version.

That said, they’ve smashed the frame-only price for a 29er – £330 is awesome. I bought a frame-only Io singlespeed in 520 years ago, and it was a bargain. If they’re got the numbers right for the 16″ frame, I am having one of these.

Yes – Dartmoor is awesome. Someone more local than I can help. Alternatively, ask the guy that runs Alf Resco’s in Dartmouth town – he’s a keen rider.

Nokia C2 here. We were issued with Lumia 800s for work, my missus was leaving her work and the iPhone she was given as a staff incentive was taken back, so she got my iPhone 4s and I bought the cheapest Nokia I could get on 3.

The C2 survives my son ‘driving’ it around on a hardwood floor, albeit with a bunch of scratches. Battery life is about two weeks. I leave the smartphone at home at the weekend. Best of both worlds.

The phone scale works like this:

Smartphone: anything with oodles of processing power and relatively free choice of applications

Featurephone: a handset with a specific feature or app (ie, cameraphone, 3’s Facebook phone, any of the Vodafone own-brand handsets)

Phone or dumbphone: What I is running at the moment.

When my 3 contract ends in February, I’m going to ditch the smartphone tariff completely. The only thing I really miss is a good camera.

I know why it’s called Becky’s Bush. :D

I just got rid of a Focus diesel ’54 plate 1.8 TDCI – one of the better diesel’s I’ve driven. ;) Sold it to a guy who had put 150k on his ’02 Focus estate diesel. one of the injectors was on the way out, and he was balking at the £600 price tag to fix it. So let’s hope it’s not an injector, eh?
Sounds like there are wiser heads than mine giving advice, so best of luck.

The old naming convention for trails in the Surrey Hills was songs – Simon and Jackie at Nirvana pretty much started this (hence the number of Captain Beefheart tracks) way back in the early 90s.

BKB / Golden Birdies has been around for at least ten years, and yes, it was a skinny bit of singletrack back then. As said above, any trail that becomes widely known and isn’t tinkered with quickly becomes a much wider trail, and BKB is and was no exception. There are differing opinions on roots, by the way – mine was always to armour the approach and exit and leave the roots in, but there are other opinions, and they’re not automatically wrong. For the record I ride a hardtail (and singlespeed at that) as much, if not more than, my 5. Roots are fun on a hardtail.

Parklife was a real challenge when we went to fix it a few years ago – the original entrance was over the ancient hill fort, a scheduled monument – so there was no option for Hurtwood but to move the entrance. The other option was for English Heritage to make a compulsory purchase order on the top of the hill and shut the trail down permanently. Hopefully the new entrance was worthwhile, and people like it. What took even more time was fixing up the rest of the trail, and the people who did that in their spare time, usually after work of an evening, know who they are and deserve our gratitude. However, Parklife is always a tricky beast to maintain.

If you care enough – especially 10pmix – then please volunteer for the dig days or become a Friend of the Hurtwood and help out financially. Carping on from the sidelines is just weak.

Horatio, I’ve not idea. I bought this one off Autotrader – the chap selling it had had very little interest. I think people are just trading cars in these days. I also get the impression that there’s also a smaller number of people buying privately, which is a bit odd. When I bought this one, all it took was an AA inspection and a check-over with my local garage (a really lovely one-man-band ouotfit) to get a quote for some work, and we were sorted.

Mrs Poddy, Pepper and Northwid – many thanks for the advice!