How long do you extract the espresso for? I seem to remember being told that 16 seconds is the optimum time – any longer and you get a bitter taste. (Using the double shot holder in a Gaggia)

bit longer than that, 25 secs in my double basket for a 1oz shot. different beans/roasts behave differently, so you keep the quantity and tamp pressure the same, and vary the grind to get the 25 secs extraction.

ime the coffee in spain is not all that, and i live there. in the last two years, i can only think of one occasion the coffee was impressive.

These guys are on the new Find DVD, looks lovely:

is this out yet? been looking forward to it.

i don’t know basqueMTB personally, but i can certainly vote for the terrain (i’ve lived here for 2 yrs) and i know doug gets deeper into the heart of it than i do.

ps. cider>beer here…

QR skewers can sound like a BB creak. Undo & redo them, even if they’re already tight.

i tried a couple of different flavours of encryption but didn’t see any improvement. i could certainly try a router reset and set up the network again from scratch. i’d like to bin the router and use one of my spares, but unfortunately it’s cable…

cheers for replies. tried everything and i think deleting the network from the preferred list made a bit of a difference, but i still get dropouts for the first few minutes. i changed the channel with no luck but maybe i need to try them all.

not a massive problem, but weird how it will connect to other routers fine, but has an issue with this one. conversely the router works fine with my other stuff.

might stick a linux partition on it, see how it works then…

cheers, will give that a shot now.

oof. the second one (digicam edit) is incredible. took me a while to figure out what the tune was…

week 6 day 3 for me tomorrow. i’ve done it all in the easy column though, would like to have another bash from the beginning at a harder level. or i might do the 200 situps instead… (should really do the lower back exercises my physio gave me but….)

pleased it’s (almost) over. it’s taken 9 weeks as i had a week off to do the camino de santiago, so i repeated wks 4 & 5.

no flies on oakley’s product placement. the mineros are all coming out wearing radars (unless they’re standard issue in mining…!)

gaggia would be a good bet. thing is, you need a decent grinder too, otherwise the coffee machine is more or less worthless. on a budget, the dualit burr grinder seems ok (think you can pick them up for 65 quid or so).

more good things about lbs’

broke mech hanger on the camino de santiago last month. terminal, to all intents and purposes (well i supose you *could* ride 600km with the mech held on with cable ties and a clothes peg). walked into a bike shop on saturday afternoon, just as they were pulling the shutters down for the weekend. they didn’t have a hanger but hired me a bike to finish the camino on, and stayed well past closing time swapping all my racks and stuff onto it.

another broken hanger, potentially ride-ending. lbs didn’t have one, but again stayed past closing taking hangers from stock bikes trying to get me a similar one.

and is on-line any cheaper? pattern mech hangers for my bike are 15€ from the states, or 15€ genuine from the manufacturer, or 15€ from the lbs….

edit: in spain btw. couldn’t imagine the staff at condor doing the same but you never know…

cynic-al – Member

“our boss is lucky to have avoided a road rage
related charge .”

WTF for?

beaking heavily.

i bought a gaggia coffee deluxe from amazon about 8 years ago, a good bit cheaper as it was a refurbished warranty return. only problem i’ve had is having to strip and unblock the boiler as i got lazy with the descaling when i lived in a hardwater area. never misses a beat.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Gaggia-Coffee-Deluxe-Espresso-Cappuccino/dp/B00008BQZ8

i never got a good espresso from it until i bought a good burr grinder (rossi rr45; 60 quid from a cafe that was closing down) – not all burr grinders are created equal – and started buying fresh roasted coffee, ie not illy etc.
you have to learn how to tamp evenly too, comes with a bit of practice. they reckon about 30lbs of pressure.

i used to be a toolmaker, lego mould tools were supposedly the most accurate/ had the tightest tolerances in the business. that was years ago like, but cool if it was true…

'80 type 25 aircooled 2.0l. bikes ont' back, towball rack. peeps in a tent (i prefer not to wake up smelling of old car smell). breaks down a lot; haven't used it for ages as i haven't got round to registering it in spain.

Home

i borrowed an 8 cd spanish course prior to moving to spain. i only got through the first 4 cds but i learnt enough to give me a bit of confidence. i don't think any cd course is going to do any more than that, though, obviously not a substitute for getting some proper lessons.

that said, the michel thomas method seems pretty solid. his false teeth rattle a bit in the spanish one..

definitely up for that. i'm on the dole til october so can do more or less anytime, heading out on the camino de santiago in sept but probably end of the month.

lame excuse for a couple more pics… went bivvying a couple of weeks back down in deepest darkest gipuzkoa. 10hrs, 100km, 3,500m+ climbing and slept in a placcy bag on top of a mountain. glorious ;-)

this is the route: http://es.wikiloc.com/wikiloc/view.do?id=1014582

glad you enjoyed it, shame not to meet but I was in the uk anyway. next time!
I guess you went over Aritxulegi to Lesaka? lovely ride, bit spooky by the reservoir though. there's never anyone there…
sanse's beaches are mental this week, being semana grande. the sensible thing to do is work on the cycling tan, exactly what I'm going to do now ;-)

good luck.. i know exactly how you're feeling ('80 aircooled brick owner)

will be back in london on weds, first stop jai krshna in turnpike lane, veg gudjarati place, cheap and simple, BYO. it's been 2 years since my last decent ruby, i might just cry…

I would like a new pack that has pockets next to the waist strap

the nomad doesn't have pockets *in* the waist strap like some do (for coins, keys etc) but you can reach the two zipped side pockets without taking the pack off. these are easily big enuff for energybars, phone, small camera etc. hth!

thumbie – Member

bob-summers – please tell me more about the Pegoretti. Responsorium is calling me…

wonderful frame, builds up to about 7,5kg with chorus 11 and my 'climbing' wheels. the eurus' in the pic were just on for a race. it's a marcelo, built a couple of years ago.. took almost a year coz dario was ill at the time. columbus spirit tubes. bought it as i was moving from london to the mountains and needed something a bit more spritely on the climbs… and it coincided with a redundancy cheque!
i've done a lot of time on this bike, i was racing every week in may & june and won nowt but we were always the first non-carbon bike back ;-)
in balance, maybe if i was buying again i'd go for the duenda, as the marcelo is silly stiff at the back, i had to put that ugly layback post on just to damp some of the buzz. but then, i notice prices of pegorettis have not far off doubled since i bought it…not sure if i could lay out that kind of money.
but if you do go for one, dario's a lovely guy to deal with (and a stoner which you wouldn't think would go hand in hand with framebuilding!) and supposedly built pinarello branded frames for indurain, so comes with a bit of a pedigree ;-)

and good luck with the paint job… i love mine but haven't met anyone who doesn't hate it!

MidlandTrailquestsGraham – Member

Motorist kill or seriously injure around 3500 cyclists and pedestrians a year.
There are speed cameras that generate £1000000 a year income from fines at £60 a time.

And yet, here on STW, we have another thread about RLJing.

hmmm… i think i know you from another forum…. hello! :-)

i used to live near a busy crossroads in that london, there was a 'no left turn' light and it was scary how many drivers jumped it, scattering peds crossing on the green man. happens all over the place, but some people prefer to get their knickers in a twist about cyclists.

cyclists rarely stop at reds here (spain), but people don't tend to moan about it as it's trivial compared to the horrendous driving standards.

ingenious positioning of the sturmey shifter, i like it!

mine:

did a 100km nightride/bivvy last night. bizkaia, basque country:

re. bladders – my 12mth old nomad came with a dakine-branded hydrapak bladder which was poor. the release valve for the hose was impossible to release, and the bitevlave started leaking fairly early on. i replaced the bladder with a newer version, and everything works fine. there's no dakine branding, but it's the same bar a turn-to-close bitevalve.

the rest of the pack is fine. just squeezed a terranova jupiter bivvie and a sleeping bag in it, off out for a 100km overnighter :-)

surely (if it's not a technical climb, just steep) it's easier to ride than walk?

i was doing a 33% hill on the roadbike last week; getting off would've involved faffing around taking shoes off as there's no way you can walk up 33% in carbon soles and speedplay cleats :wink:

doug, the concrete road (we call it 'the wall' as we used to go up it!) is definitely dodgy, especially when wet. would love to find another way. sometimes take a slightly different track which drops you into lezo but it's pretty well-trodden. someone had been building some jumps up there last time i went that way.

opening in very close proximity to existing shops

that policy didn't work in grays inn road, next to condor!
evans' online shop seems to work pretty well, faster than crc in my neck of the woods at least.

ok sounds good.

likewise, if you hire an mtb let us know, we were chatting on here about having a pais vasco meetup. could be a good opportunity.

by way of inspiration mebbee:

some stuff on my youtube too (though i hate helmetcams….) http://www.youtube.com/user/bobsummers1974

if you need any more info, let me know. i live in SS, there are some of my local training runs on my garmin connect page http://tinyurl.com/2dzvl2b. also, have a look on wikiloc.

the clasica route is actually quite flat (relatively!), and the area around SS is better described as hilly rather than pyreneenne. that said, you can easily find climbs of up to an hour, and i rarely do less than 1000m climbing on a run.

anyways, let me know. if i'm in town i'll happily show you a route.

bob

ps. doug's not wrong about the singletrack!

great news, really glad she's back in action. didn't want to mention at the time, but the same day my cat (also not eating) went to the vets and didn't come out again. had her for 15 years, still upset about it.

didn't have to wait long for a bagaboo, less than a week IIRC. happy with mine, used daily and keeps a change of clothes dry in minging weather. if i was to buy another i'd have the foamy back protector option though (stops pointy things jabbing you while riding).

i use speedplay zeros, they have a metal, unrecessed cleat and it's a **** nightmare to walk on, even if it's just going down the stairs from the flat, or stopping off to fill a water bottle. i've gone down like a sack from doing both.

doing a road sportive tomorrow (zarautz-gernika, 160km). been overdoing it recently so i'm having a day off today although the yeti is begging me to get it dirty. i might have to oblige…

next weekend going up the tourmalet and col d'aspin :(

been in the basque country 2 years, haven't been back to the uk yet… could murder a decent pint mind you. that's about the only thing though.

can vouch for the basque girlfriends :wink:

I've never seen you on the trails either Bob! Maybe we ride different places?

looking at your website doug… we ride exactly the same places :wink:
well i don't get to iparralde so often (no car), but a lot of the photos look very familiar!
would be great to meet up.. i've spent a lot of time on the trails here but feel like i've barely scratched the surface.

@creg – spend a year teaching here… learning spanish, surfing and riding (ok so it's not exactly tropical but always a few degrees warmer than UK) before going off to south america. my school does free spanish lessons for employees which comes in handy.

ok, will chase you up for a ride/sidra in june.

road racing's going ok but not really getting enough training in.. the locals are animals ,proper mountain goats. i'm not doing a great job of representing the giris!