double post

I reckon Mike Hall wins with his 18000 mile round the world trip in 92 days (plus the ridiculous amount of 200+ training rides he did!)

Id keep the Mavic rim over some tat Sunn rim anyday.

It will give you a flatter tyre profile also

Have a look at O’Neals helmets with the fid lock system.

For the price they are bar far the best on the market and the fid lock is quite simply the best thing to happen to full face fastening systems ever!!!

They come from the same factory as a lot of the more expensive options out there and the weight of them is way below the competition.

Have a look at the Fury for a cheap comfy lid or the Air Tech which is one of the lightest, bast looking lids around with teh fid lock and a smidge over £100

If you are Manchester based and can get away from work mid week then take a look at the Simon Charles Auctioneers[/url] site as they get some great furniture in time from time. I picked up over £1000 worth of american oak dresser for under £100 and have seen loads of amazing furniture i have no room for go for bargain prices. It does depend on which manufacturer is clearing out display/overstock/damaged furniture also though. Furniture goes for a lot less than electrical goods here as its bulky so hard to shift store sell on ebay.

I can also tell you where all the John Lewis returned/Display/Damaged stock gets auctioned if you like. Again some amazing bargains, some less so but it all depends but i got a £700 side board for £30 there. Email me if you are interested, suctions are on a Tuesday there.

The tights and shorts aren’t comfortable at all, i made that mistake last year!

If you want something cheap and good quality that is comfortable have a look on ebay.com for the copy stuff that comes from China, the quality is much better and great for wearing under baggies

4.7 miles and 300m of climbing for a 7am start.

Not the nicest wake up but do feel better for it (when its not piddling it down which seems rare at the moment)

I found AXA best last summer, think it was £26 for 8 to 13 days

AXA Euro Breakdown

Wife has just gone to ikea, im rebuilding the bike but if by what you say its closed that plan has gone out of the window

It sent me to sleep after about 20 min

Any asian one will be i imagine

The chinese go mad for it. A couple of years back we were in Manchester and literally 90% of the people in John Lewis were Chinese. The queue for handbags was literally 200 strong and out of the door.

I dont understand people, all they reduce is the tat that had a 1000% mark up on anywhere. Anything decent has a price that remains as there is a standard 30-40% mark up on it.

I prefer the auction local to me which sells all the returned/damaged/shop soiled items from every department in Lewis’s. Now there is some real bargains to be had there, like a £800 side board i picked up for £20, all being wrong was a 1cm nick on one leg

Fantastic job! But such a shame to cover such lovely cobbled stones, they dont even need weeding!

I hate you all, i got a load of utter shite off the wife. In fact i knew i would so i decided before christmas that id treat myself to a reverb!

Chrismas is for the kids in out house now as its pointless going out of my way to get the wife anything as it wont be repaid

Can anyone remember a fully tricked out polished frame one kicking about in the mid to late 90’s NAMBS and northern nationals?

I have one particular memory of one chap racing it without a pillion passenger in the actual DH race and getting the rear end miles out on dusty corners………………………………………..AMAZING!!!

A friends bodge on the CX bike

I once spoke to the guy who does the rides on the pull out cards with his Mrs and couldnt help but ask him why he does them all backwards? He gave some crap answer

These – No question!

DT 240’s are great hubs until they crack and you are left with something worthless – Let me know if you want to buy a freehub for one!

What gets me is that something like 3/4 of those who are shot in the US are actually shot with their OWN guns, much like this latest little shit probably took his mothers gun and shot her with it.

Take out the gangsters providing a social cleansing service and i bet as many deaths are caused by accidental circumstances as those which are actual intentional murders

Jesus kids, yorkshire puddings are a synch.

The best recipe is equal measures of egg, milk and flour, tip the eggs into a glass, mark where they go to and fill milk and flour to that line.

Whisk getting loads of air in and let stand for a good while till at room temp.

Adding a tea spoon of boiling water prior to pouring in the tray can help too.

Lard in tray, oven on full, leave till smoking hot, keep oven door closed and tip batter in tray fast and get them back in. Dont open door till one of the edges starts to burn, take them out early and they will go soggy and flop, dont be bloody inpatient!

And hey presto, you will have ace puds! Nothing beats real puds and real roasties!

I have some hope Saw Rotors and they are slightly thicker which doesnt do well with Shimanos.

MY HT is going SS in the hope it will motivate me to go and ride some local trails when i cant be bothered cleaning the FS afterwards. That and i cant afford a full new groupset for it.

Just got to find the motivation to convert it now! Anyone know anywhere i can find some motivation? Two toddlers seem to have sucked all mine out of me!

Chester is always nice at Christmas

Or is anywhere doing the thomas the tank christmas train journeys?

If its current stock then i dont see the problem of selling it at a reduced rate as you can just replenish stock and get another in to replace it, you up your sales with the distributor therefore push yourself towards a better price point on your purchases. Profit is profit at the end of the day! I think gone are the days where people who know bikes will walk in and pay full RRP for a bike.

Accessories are a difficult one. You have shoppers who need it there and then who will pay, sometimes reluctantly for items, then others who will buy in advance.

I needed a chain tool to replace a broken one in a rush before an alps trip and all teh local bike shop had (decent shop) was park at full RRP. £18 for a chain tool to do one fix when skint before going away after just buying a new frame forks and wheels was too much to stomach so the old raleigh shop in tows was visited where a cyclo one was £5.

I wish i could afford bike shop prices but when i can fix a bike better than they can i dont see what benefit it offers other than price.

Maybe look at what you stock and who your customers are. If £4k bikes arent selling anymore then focus on commuters, kids, electric, £500-£1000 bikes where the buyer will be a typical shopper who knows little about maintenance and will buy there and then or on the ride to work scheme.

Also stock accesories to match. If you are selling mostly in the £500- £1000 bracket a £100+ jacket isnt likely to sell in droves when Aldi will do one for £15 which will perfectly well suffice. Sell a range at £25-£50 that are a bit better but affordable impulse purchases.

I had a 2.4 Advantage on for a while, ok at XC pressures but rolled it off a couple of times in the alps.

Narrow rims give you a better tyre profile, but 717’s are silly skinny in reality

when i was a kid we went to a caravan site on the east coast somewhere that had one made out of asbestos, and rather worryingly the brake was a metal bar that gouged into the surface

I was told by some local German a couple of weeks back while there that the north gets a lot of rain and the south is better for decent weather.

He made similar comments about freemotion but did say there was a DH track not more than 10 mins from Bahia Feliz and loads of singletrack.

The scenery is great but i think the riding companies are limited as there are no direct flights from the UK so no real market to justify doing anything special.

I get the impression that free motion takes advantage of people fancying a day out on a bike while on holiday with family market.

In short, unless you know a local there i wouldnt bother making a special trip out even though on paper it has all the offerings of great riding

See what parcel 2 go quotes.

Just dont use them, but it will give you an idea

They are 0% VAT so i suggest contacting them and asking them for 20% back

It may go 50/50 in which case dont forget that it will affect your insurance for 5 years, not one as commonly forgotten so whatever your insurance goes up by in year 1 you need to double or triple the amount to get a real world cost of using the insurers.

SOmething people forget when being offered a speed awareness course and taking teh points as it was the same rise in premium in yr 1 as it was to do the course. What about the extra you pay in yrs 2 – 5

Its a diffucult one

He’s at fault so your premiums wont go up.

They will

You either have to trust the person and get it done without involving the insurers or informing them or just go through them.

My advice would also be (if going through your insurance) to insist that the repairs are carried out at a main dealer as there are loads of shoddy repairers out there now who are on the list of insurers. One big one (Sapphire) in Manchester botched my repair massively, insisted on Mazda after my wife had an accident and tehy did a fantastic job, even doing extra paintwork repairs for a negligible amount while at it!

For further evidence just look at a group of riders bikes who ride lots for example in the peaks but arent riddled with funds, 9 out 0r 10 will run Shimano drive and brakes, Maxxis tyres, Hope hubs, Mavic rims, etc.

Its not coincidence, it tried and tested and surprisingly doesnt come fitted a=on build kits as its a premium product that wont need replacing so does shops no good and costs more to build into a new bike

The old Avis story

Im convinced that all Avid/SRAM stuff is made to keep the market afloat. You can tell by how cheap they sell build kits to manufacturers, hence why all the good deals (on paper) are kitted out with SRAM build kits. Anyone who buys it to retro fit is paying massively over the odds for what its actually worth compared to Shimano who hold their price accross the board.

Basically sometimes you hit lucky with Avid brakes, mosly you dont so use them till they die, bleed them and let some mug buy them on ebay and replace with Shimano.

Once the love has been let out thats it, just get shot!

It looks like its had a head on with a tree at 40mph, i.e. pug ugly geometry, that would drive me mad, that and the fact its the product of a marketing department. Not for me ta

for the price they are great, if i had £3K to blow on a bike id get one. Rather have shimano than Sram stuff but for 3K you have to take whats affordable on build kits and manufacturers get way better deals on SRAM than Shimano.

Yeah rode with Steveo this summer, smashing guy!

Agh train is interesting, i might have unwittingly presumed it served geneva airport! Thats typically French if it doesnt!

You passed it yet?

This was a friends FB update that made me chuckle yesterday

Yesterday via Mobile
Just delivered a limo to a funeral home, turned with the radio blasting “spirit in the sky”…..the grieving lady in the car park did not look impressed, oops

got me this morning. And what is better is that one was £2.89 when i asked how much one was (thinking it was a scam as there was no price on them)but 3 scanned at £2.75!

And while im being a grumpy gus this morning

Why is it folks insist on crowding the check in desk to be first on the plane ? On an easy jet i can understand but your seats allocated , itll still be there when you get on the plane. – im sat against the window in t5 gate c53 and they are queing way back past the elevators past the boots for the plane , most leaving perfectly good seats to stand.

The mind boggles. Ill get up im 15 minutes once the queue goes

Can you tell i got about 2 hours sleep last night and have not yet managed to get a decent cuppa.

I always do this as anything saves sitting on a plane longer than necessary. If there is no room in teh OH lockers then i just move other peoples bags till it fits.

It did catch me out though last month in Istanbul airport when i waited at the wrong gate in the middle of the night and when i went to board i was told it was the wrong airline. If i was at the front of teh que i would have been able to hot foot it to the right gate, as it was i missed my flight, had to buy two more and my luggage got lost! Wont make that mistake again!

Its not that hot in the oven they go through