Just whatever you do, DO NOT ENGAGE IN CONVERSATION WITH THEM!

This means you accept the invoice

Buy secondhand is my main tip.

We had 3 double buggies before settling on a mclaren as they were all a nightmare and massive (not to mention only just fitting in an accord tourers boot.

Anyhow, in short they are a waste of good money when there are so many A1 condition second hand ones about

As for Cots, same goes. I have a Mamas and Paps one for sale you can have a deal on Here

XTR used to be the dogs bolox, otherwise shimano std stuff is as good as it gets

You cant beat a good franken-mech!

anyone want to buy my IPad?

£150 posted, paypal gift only please

Nothing in oldham either

I have no ads and am not a Premier user. In fact i have no ads on any website anymore. Its like driving on christmas day every day!

Im sworn to secrecy though after a stern talking to from the powers to be at STW towers for revealing how

The head fell off my snowman last night

That is all!

Old Z1’s from Italy

Oh wait, you have already decided against the ones that will last a lifetime over disposable fox’s

What exactly do you do if its a “management job to sign for parcels?”

Its not unusual for them to ask for two photos of you and the bike when making a claim also especially if its a special build

Are you sure you havent put your kitchen outside for that shot, what with the crazy paving and all!

£10 for 200 6×4″ with border in Asda.

We normally do about 1000 of the kids as its so cheap its hardly worth going through what you want developing and what you dont.

Can never have too many printed pictures.

Surely at prices as low as that a photo printer is the daftest purchase ever

there is the small matter of if you wash your car and tell the insurance they will put the price up when asked.

If you are daft enough to tell your insurance company go for it.

You will get the following response: “This makes no change to your Premium” great, “But there is a £35 admin fee applicable!”

I can believe no one has likened it to riding a bike in the winter on something like semi slicks, Larsens or Ardents etc

That’d be £630 for two weeks a year.

Absolute clap trap!

I always buy the best tyres i can get but get them from a great place in oldham who sell part worns from Germany. I picked up 4 Conti Winter Contacts in April last year for £120 (215×65 17″) and they even fitted them for me at the end of Nov for nothing when the summer ones were worn out.

OK buying part worn is a slight risk, but just make sure you are happy with what they have and agree a price on them. The place i use get first dibs on the lorry that comes straight from Germany once a week and if they have nothing i want i just wait a week, but the price difference is massive and you are getting bleeding good quality tyres as oppose to cheapo new things.

The hardest part is finding somewhere local that gets first pick off the lorry, as they do several drops before returning like flower lorries from the Netherlands do with florists.

And the result, amazing! I took a side road to work on the top of saddleworth hills and it drove up without batting an eyelid even though the snow was deeeper than the belly of the car.

WOuld i spend £600 on tyres, winter or summer NO, but for £30 a corner with over 3/4 of the tread left then yes everyday!

One of the guys in our club was looking for somewhere to rent in whitehaven recently. I could put you in touch and look at sharing a place maybe if thats any use.

So long as you like stella fueled cellar bike fettling nights and plenty of riding you should be fine!

Absolutely devastating news!

Its reasons for what you read that you avoid it, 4 times i looked at this and didnt want to open it, so young and so happy, what a terrible thing to happen.

Condolences to all friends and family, my thoughts are with you!

I bought one of these for my Accord and you cant fault it for the price. Just pop it out and hose it down or shake all of the dust off it.

Fits well too, maybe not a 100% perfect fit but near as dammed it!

have a look at XTR from Rose

Thought it was worth updating this post i have just read someone elses update on a stolen car hitting theirs.

So after i received the letter from my insurers to say a claim had been made against us i contacted my insurers to explain what had happened and passed on police references etc. They sent out someone to inspect the car and he clearly stated the car had not been involved in an accident and after a couple of weeks i hear from them to say the 3rd party had been investigated and he had made over 20 similar claims for whiplash in a 2-3 week period, but none for damage so they were investigating it and as far as they were concerned there was no accident! Ok, so great, just what i wanted to hear!

Until that is i renew my insurance. My new insurers contact me to say i have an accident that i havent disclosed. Why would i, as ive been told there wasnt an accident which there wasnt. So my new insurers want an additional £300 premium as i have an at fault claim outstanding. Im getting annoyed at this point so delve into it. It turns out the insurers have basically closed the claim on their system but the underwriters have given the 3rd partys solicitor till May 2013 to respond. Im told that in may if its closed by the underwriters i get my £300 back.

Still not happy i write a very long winded email to both past and present insurers threatening to contact reporters i know at the a couple of nationals about the way im being treat as guilty until proven innocent, about going to the onbudsmen, threatening to cancel my policy with them and finally asking how the situation would be approached if it was their MD’s car allegedly involved.

So i hear nothing back other than an auto response email from both parties so last week i contact my insurers to blow a fuse and find out that all the extra premium has been refunded, i dont have an at fault claim outstanding against me any more and my full NCB is intact!

WIN!

So its worth taking the upper hand with insurers as they will fleece you wherever possible!

Getting nothing up in Saddleworth. Infact we had more on Monday when there was clear blue skies yet it still came down.

Typical, the worst place in the country for crap weather escapes

An agency will never use a candidates CV if it has their contact details on.

And its a bit bone idle of the agency if they just use someones CV then demand 25% of the starting salary in fees. A good consultant should get all of the relevant info out of you and tailor your CV to suit the jobs they are hoping to get you interviews for. If they dont then dont use them, just do it yourself.

id second Merlin’s Revs for the price. I replaced a 2yr old set of 32’s with them and they are better IMO and i sold teh 32’s for £50 more than the new revs cost me, which incidentally was £20 more than i paid new for them of Brant et al.

It was only a matter of time before the legs wore as they weren’t well maintained.

Ti pin man the lock seems to have actually fallen apart leaving the 5 or 6 sliding pins locking in place. I wish it was just a simple spray of wd40.

I thought the handle had gone and even have an emergency supply of them in the loft as they are so crap but its not that.

Looks like it may be a call to a locksmith then!

There were a lot of bikes going missing at one point in the penrith one, and while my brother was there they had their Chalet broken into and had cash/wallets/phones etc stolen, but quite worryingly they also took the largest knife out of the knife block too.

So just dont think you are totally in the middle of nowhere and become lax on security as there are people willing to take advantage of folks lax attitude

Cheers guys, some good pointers there

My first tip would be to think strategically. I found that I was being tasked away from day-to-day stuff – as that’s the stuff that you employ others to sort out. Yes, ultimately you’ll be responsble for the people doing the job, but at Director level I’ve always found that the MD/CEO wants to know that the tasks are done, or the company is operating legally H&S wise, and that things are progressing.

The other tip is to think in financial terms; how much can we save by certain tasks, how much is this going to cost? etc etc. If you can think strateguically about how to save money or spend money more efficiently the company accountant and MD will value your contributions even more.

I expect this to happen as this is the main reason behind being promoted i believe following previous conversations.

you put the Companies interests ahead of your own

So i have to do work as oppose to wasting time here, god dammit!

Whichever way you look at it, seeing a knackered rider start going at 120% on a climb and blowing the rest of the field did make entertaining viewing.

Its a shame that it was all as a result of EPO and that as the sport becomes cleaner the excitement of stages as seen in the 90’s/00’s is unlikely to be repeated.

I hope he does get rinsed, there will be loads of similarly bent lawyers parasites waiting to take his money now and surely a lifetime of dealing with them on a daily basis is just payment for what he did.

O’Neal pads are the best i have ever had and i am not a pad fan. The knee pads just stay put all day and dont rub one bit. They come in a std hard insert which i have or the D30 which are a bit more and better by all accounts, but as i say amazingly comfortable to the point you forget they are there.

Friends had Enduras and 661 in the alps and complained loads while constantly adjusting them. They subsequently bought the O’Neils and were very happy with them

Id say that the % off the 2012 models represents the mark up which is decent on a bike. Maybe why they are overpriced to begin with?

It all depends on how well you plan and how much research you do.

We camped and found some ace trails but prob missed some other great ones too. This was a mix of researching the best stuff and then making an effort to find where it was in advance, meeting folk in a camp site and handing them the highlighter pen and the map, asking folk out riding, including guides of other groups. One in particular was more than happy to show us ace trails as he looked bored owing that his group were rubbish so he trailed us down a decent descent he showed us.

We also used Stevo at the White rooms for a route from the top of the Col D’Iseran back to Bourg which i had read about and wanted to do.

La Thuile is worth a look too, K2 trail is ace. Its like a trail centre but all DH tracks for freeride bikes as oppose to DH bikes (one word of warning here is to not bother trying to find the trails that involve climbing – top right as you look at the map) as they are best accessed from the pass du petit St Bernard and not by doing a massive fire road climb only to descend a fire road, or off piste as we chose)

Check lifts are open when you go to la rosiere as they were not all open when we went and it was a pain/very limited.

The VaD’isere DH track is nuts if you can find it. The Freeride stuff here is pants.

Tignes is free for a reason! No more to say.

You will have fun, just start doing your research and be prepared to put some time in looking for tracks that you want to ride.

For example some of the hidden stuff on the other side of the hydro pipe is unrideable unless you have massive balls and a DH bike, and some of the stuff to get to it is nearly vertical so not everything may suit you in any case

Have a look at KTM’s offerings. I hate 29ers but their carbon frames are a thing of beauty

Ah you dont need that kind of shite from them.

They have tried to get you over a barrel and you have stuck two fingers right up in their face so get to the doctors, lay it on and take the time off on the sick as they wont want you there they have made that clear.

Spend the time finding the right place to work (if you can sell stuff then sell yourself instead) and be happy in the fact that they are spewing and you are out on your bike!

Use it as an opportunity Mog. I know its hard but i was sacked and then made redundant some time later and both were the best things to happen to me (however it was hard to comprehend it at the time).

Keep your head up, enjoy yourself and just thnk what you really want to do and how you are going to acheive it.

Making money isnt that hard when you dont have to go to work everyday if you have your head screwed on

Id love to hear from any bike shop owners as to why they bother stocking anything hotlines or decade distribute.

And they wonder why they struggle!

The Superstar 10mm QR one maybe?

You should get 30kg minimum for those flights id imagine so you may cut it

I cant stand tesco so dont shop there, its like asda but with just 20% less scruffy special people getting in the way.

Sainsburys is a nicer shopping exerience IMO but not worth the extra and the overall winner is Aldi for ease and quality. I still stand by the fact that a supermarket that feeds over 30% of the population cannot hold the highest standards, it CANT, FACT!
Aldi on the otherhand uses the same manufacturers as other supermarkets but choses one good item that is the best they can produce for a competitive price and sells that, who needs an aisle of baked beans when they supply one type what works!

The one benefit with Tesco/Sains et al is that the self scan checkouts still dont recognise weights from items from the deli counter, so 1kg of fillet steak can easily be mistaken as one slice of corned beef!

Such a shame the meat in supermarkets is crap compared to the local butchers!

You do realise that 29ers are purely the product of a marketing department in distress after years of flat lining sales.

Thats it, purely a product designed to increase full bike sales, hence why big bike companies havent adopted 650B as you can run the wheels in a lot of frames, 29ers mean a full new bike sale.

26″ will be back in Vogue once 29er sales flatline.

If it was any better to run a bigger wheel then surely MX bikes would have done it first as the spend on development is far bigger over there (and they havent).

All a load of marketing BS and you have been taken in by it im afraid