Cheers Drac, should always remember first rule of STW club – search STW, not Google!

I’d put good money on the bank robbing scenario being ignored – no-one was ‘hurt’, and presumably the ‘bankers’ got robbed so win-win!

I did it on Swalbe Marathons last time – think they are basically the Mondials now. For the relatively short ‘offroad’ sections I don’t think it’s worth going too crazy with the mtb like tyres. Theres an awful lot of slog on the rest of the route to be dragging a big tread around.

Behringer UFO202 is your friend, especially if you can find one on eBay for a couple of quid…

What, you have to strip them off the bike? I’ve got a spare pair hanging on The Shed wall for moments exactly like this.

Indeed, thats a great idea having a spare pair of Bombers – I’ve got a pair up for sale in the classifieds, though I’m not sure if I’m selling them for too much – any ideas? Yours for £500 via Paypal gift 😀

Just buy a new stem and think of the many hours you’ve saved yourself so you can go out riding….

I often wonder how people would react if their childs teachers took time off work during term time to go skiing with their families.

Think they call those days, cough, “teacher training days” 😛

I doubt UKIP has much support in the younger age group. Who are generally more liberal and tolerant.

Can’t decide if that is a tongue in cheek comment or not. I think you’re confusing the STW group with the younger age group – like those nice tolerant Chelsea fans?

I always assumed it was down to your hip flexibility rather than leg length that was the deciding factor?

Seems to be a split between “leg length * some random percentage = ideal crank length” type of thought and the hip flexor idea.

Might give ’em a try, doesn’t sound like I’ll implode in a crazy fireball for running shorter cranks on the road bike anywya.

They did that to an empty house in our street a few years back, looked like a standard renovation job, only they just stripped it over several days and then buggered off!

I did find it impressive when a pals got done over and they managed to take all the floorboards too!

Wortha quick pop over to Vegas and/or the Grand Canyon? Internal flights are stupidly cheap.

I asked someone for a recent (blanking out the more private bits) payslip/utility bill/bank statement

Could easily knock up a random name/ address that looked legit. And I’d probably blank out anything that would be useful to prove you are who you are, don’t really see it as anywhere near a foolproof method.

can you actually feel the difference in wheels or is it a placebo effect?

You should be able to tell going from those 2.5kg ones to a decentish set.

I’ve got some Campag Khamsin CXs on a winter bike and they are pretty bombproof for me. Certainly buy Campy wheels again (though I am a Campag fanboi so slightly biased). Wiggle have them for £105ish at moment and they’d knock 700g off your bike weight.

I can ride any UK downhill I’ve done pretty much just as fast on a trailbike as on a DH bike

I think I could do a downhill course quicker on a trailbike than a DH one – less weight to carry as I gently clamber down it!

I can’t understand why Garmins are so expensive when a £50 android phone will do everything a Garmin can and way more.

What, like be waterproof, a tiny addition on the stem, battery that’ll last all ride, workable with gloves on etc. etc.?

Bill, if you’re talking about somwething like the Wiggle offer of £45 for the Stealth then go for it. My Garmin 200 had been flawless (£73 from bike-discount.de maybe?) but would be tempted by that kinda price for the Catyeye.

We hired the local church hall, booked a fantastic puppet guy and made a proper slap up scrummy tea for them all.

Mentally hard work, pretty much never spoke to anyone but everyone had a great time. You can put the effort in and it does pay off but it does take a bit of organising. Not sure if it was any cheaper mind.

And if you’re in the North East, I would recommend the entertainer – kept 40 kids (it was a big hall so we invited mates kids round too!) in awe for 90 minutes then played some decent games with them. One grandmother/ex-teacher of one of the girls said it was like proper old-fashioned parties, which I took as a compliment.

Next year we did the local aquarium, so sort of slightly high-brow middle class version of the soft play, but instead of playing the the ball pool I ended up high fiving a seal – something to tick off the bucket list!

I certainly couldn’t afford to walk into a dealer and handover £20,000 and if I did I certainly wouldn’t want to invest it in a depreciating asset.

But are you quite happy to pay £24000 on a car loan including interest for the same depreciating asset?

Pal at work had a really nice car, loved driving around on a Friday night. Later in life I found out the reason he wasn’t in the pub having a few beers was that he could just about afford spare cash to put some petrol in his fancy car, but nothing else.

It’s just what you are comfortable paying for, I don’t think you can apply a hard and fast 10% max income level for a car – if you’re tooled up with a mortage, kids at private school and that middle management post doesn’t mean you’ve got anymore ‘spare cash’ than the guy flipping burger at MacDonalds for a car.

Go early, come back in the afternoon for a chill/refresh/slep and then go back for the fireworks on the night.

Driving is easy. Though really do remember where you parked the car. The carparks are massive and 20,000 identical rental cars takes a long time to wander round finding yours – they have vans driving idiots round who forgot where they put their cars!

Day out at Kennedy is a must, and St Petes is nice for a chill if you’ve got a few days spare.

I have lived in the North East all my life. Makes no difference what anyone votes up here the political landscape is so heavily entrenched with the pits and ship building that Labour could skin new born babies alive and people would still vote Labour because their parents and grandparents have always voted Labour. I suppose my values would be traditional Lib Dem in principle but unfortunately that’s not their core value any more. They have tried to take up the middle ground between Labour and Tory Policy.

In my mind North East is going to be interesting in the election, as will many of the industrial heartlands that are Labour strongholds that they’ve ignored for so long as they were a shoe-in for a seat.

Do we only vote Labour because we hate the Tories so much, or do they really believe in the Labour ‘principles’. I kinda half think its the former (and I’ve been a union rep and worked on elections, and there are some fairly right wing thinking Labour ‘voters’, I can tell you).

If UKIP roll in saying they’ll kick all the Johnny Foreigners out of the country so jobs for the locals blah blah blah, depressingly they could easily get a bit of momentum going and be a viable alternative for those Labour voters. I can see a couple of seats going their way, alas.

In reality that might be the same story in Cons strongholds in mirror image – do they just hate Labour rather than wanting Cons?

18 weeks is right at the end limit they are set for a non emergency waiting list time is it not?

Yes, it’s their ‘target’ date to be treated by, though it resets if you then get shunted to a different department. As I am aware of now currently on my third department/specialist…

I’m tempted to do something similar to NZCol – theres an Ican carbon cx frame/forks (with mudguards eyelets) they’re claiming is 1080g for frame and 450g for forks that would build into a mighty fine playbike. As long as the missus doesn’t notice the blue bike has changed colour to an, ahem, black one. 😉

Haven’t checked all the posts so this might have been mentioned before.

I suffered really badly from similar problems in teens/twenties. The doctor procsribed the usual hydrocortisone creams and chucked me out. NEXT!

Then one day there was a locum in the surgery instead of the usual doddery old fool. He actually seemed interested/knowledgeable and gave me the best tip that basically has sorted it for me.

He told me to put the cream on as usual (actually I was so worried about skin thinning I’d actually not being putting enough on, and the thinning wasn’t as much of an issue according to him).

Then the magic bit – put some plastic gloves on (like the ones you get at the diesel pumps at the petrol station, not the nitrile mechanics type ones) – I actually taped them shut around wrist as well. Keeps the moisture and cream in.

Usually did this overnight, but occasionally did at work a couple of times too (despite strange looks). It kept all the moisture in and actually sorted the issue very quickly – basically the skin managed to heal and I stopped having those weeping cuts that just kept getting infected. Hands were a bit clammy and wrinkly as you’d expect being in a plastic bag, in effect, but I’d live with that incovenience for a while.

Worth a try for a couple of weeks maybe? For the sake of a couple of pence in plastic gloves (or raid the local Shell garage…).

Always start things at 99p, sometimes I put a B-I-N on as well (which of course annoyingly disappears when people start bidding). The B-I-N is usually top end of what I would expect to get for stuff.

Sometimes people in a hurry pick stuff up with it, tend to find people buy quite quickly with a buy-it-now.

I do get lots of people sniffing round once bidding is starting asking for B-I-N – they tend to go quiet when I say there was one and it was £xxx – I think most of them are jjst sniffing for bargains.

Did laugh at one woman. She bought something on auction at a mentally high price, way over the original buy-it-now price, then demanded I sell it to her at the lower price! She got a terse reply, and paid up the full amount.

Don’t think I’d like to run a business selling on eBay, but for my ad hoc sales even including the fees most stuff goes way higher than any other sales avenue. Even had a few where the red bidding frenzy mist has settled on people whi’ve bought it for more than I paid for it new!

Dibbs, getting any squealing with the RS685s? Its the next ‘upgrade for my cross/road/commute bike hopefully

I’m reading it from other sources he’s just paid them £15m or so. he was only sueing them for something like $4m so unless he’s got naked pic of the boss of the firm I can’t see how they’ve agreed to give him $20m.

Pocket money for him, I suppose.

Ah yes, the Feinwerkbau 65, fond memories…

Let me guess, the headline figure was bandied about by the Cancer charity ‘sponsoring’ the research? More donations anyone?

I have to congratulate our local pub. It’s got a pretty decent sized carpark and they arranged with the nearby school to allow the parents to park there on the dropoff/pickup times rather than trying to shoehorn everyone into the madness of the school gates.

Now on ISM Adamo’s on all bikes, more due medical issues,and find them a revelation in comfort.

iainc – have you got a road bike (rather than the usual Adamo taget of a time trial bike). I suspect I’m in a similar situation as you in terms of medical issues and eyeing them up for my road/sportive bike,or maybe a Cobb.

First one at school to get to Elite status, and finally finding that strange bunch of aliens you had to wipe out in the mission.

with Windows 10 which will be free

Win 10 is free as an upgrade from 7 or 8, not sure if it’s going to a free purchase from scratch.

The whole thing needs to be looked at to get a little more efficient.

I was referred to one department for some fairly worrying issue. I had a number of visits with the consultant and various doctors to tell me what was up. Then another visit to be told it wasn’t their problem and I needed to be ‘transferred’ (i.e. dumped) to another department.

I then went to see the SAME consultant with his department ‘B’ hat on and did the same routine of wasting a day off work to be told the same things.

Then to add insult to injury the consultant (bear in mind he’d seen me in two different departments) said it wasn’t department Bs problem either so off to department C for me.

And repeat.

I hope I’m not representative but if this practice is typical then they must be p****g moeny up the wall like no mans business.

Ah, interesting! Cheers.

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke, fantastic book

See, I started this book and gave up which is very unlike me – 500 pages and I’m not sure what had happened apart from one guy moving to London.

Have you read through the Sandman series by Gaimen?

Ironically I’ve realised it’s probably the one set of books I’ve not read by Gaiman, something I must rectify at some point.

Going to have a dabble with “Locke Lamora” if the lcoal book shop has it in when I’m in town tomorrow. Trying to convince myself a little eReader would be appropriate as a treat too…

Think Hora nails it – felling all smug and protected in their 20 airbag ABS blah blah blah car.

I got my brother a baby monitor with the breathing pad.

^^^ this.

Don’t bother with the IP camera, no point. Just the pad that beeps when no movement within a certain time is all you require (if you even require that..).

Cheers, I have a look-see at those suggestions.

But surely when you walk into the bank to ask for a mortgage the first thing they are going to ask you is why you have a mortgage for a different house? And how so you plan to cover both mortgages – then you’re going to have to declare you’re renting it out.

Or, if you still can, set up a few current accounts offering 4/5% and bounce the money around them. Think that’s trickier these days as they got wise to it and made you set up direct debits etc. to qualify.

I’m just shocked stuff like that is routinely posted. I’d expect a stern man to hand it to someone in black leathers and a motorcycle helmet who’d whoosh it off securely on menacing black motorbike.