Rusty, SONOS wouldn’t do it, as you have no way to play physical CDs throughout the system. you could buy a connect to turn the hifi into a sonos streaming player, but playing CDs on that hifi wouldn’t stream to other SONOS units…

SONOS seem to imply the Play 5 would beam out a signal based on it’s AUX input, though I might have misread that somewhat.

Check compatibility though – 10 speed Shimano road shifters aren’t compatible with 10 speed MTB rear mechs etc. (though I’m sure someone will be along to say how they bodged it to work).

I’ll tell you tomorrow – hopefully picking up my winter frame thats been at Bettablast this week. They quoted my £38 for the job. Thats a standard frame mind. You’d have to ask Bill at BB how much the frame and swingarm would be.

I preordered mine from Fatbirds a long time ago, they still arrived a good few weeks after the target date so I can’t imagine there are many sets knocking around. Certainly not for much cheapness (supply and demand and all that…)

So who’s actually got/used Spyres? Initial reports seemed to suggest that they were OK but that the power wasn’t great – not up to BB7s at least.

I’m a little underwhelmed at the moment with mine though I need to have a bit of a fettle. Used Jagwire Ripcord compressionless cables and there doesn’t seem to be that much ‘bite’ to them, though I am comparing them to a good set of mini vees with Swissstop pads on the old CX bike and my SLX hydros on the hardtail.

Definitely considering a new set of softer pads (maybe Ceramic Pros) as there was some horrendous squealing in the rain on Sundays ride out.

Nicely made, and I do like the dual piston moving. Setup was okay though the cable routing does seem to point the end of the inner cable into the disk rotor.

They are majorly low profile – to such an extent I didn’t actually have to bend the mudguard stays out of the way to get round them.

Yep, I’d be tempted to chuck on some SKS Chromoplastics. I’m thinking possible the black ones.

Check out Dolan bikes. They’ve got a pretty carbon/Campag bike under £1000. They’ve even got a carbon winter(ish) bike with mudguards I’m mightily tempted with as my next all season trainer.

I wanted to put a low reserve on to see if that would keep the BIN price available for a while. Couldn’t find it.

IIRC the BIN stays until the reserve ends.

Being asked is an annoyance. If I wanted you to BIN I’d have put a sodding BIN price on the listing wouldn’t I?

But the problem with eBay is that I often put a BIN price along with a 99p starting price. So if you see it and want it then you can still buy it. Once bidding starts then the BIN price disappears which is daft in my opinion. Fair enough, in the last 24hr its’ gone or something.

So it depends how I’m feeling. If I think something will go I often refuse the BIN enquiry politely. Be patronising/internet warrior-like with someone whos asked a relatively valid question means one less potential bidder in my opinion.

I once had someone buy something for a mad amount of money then give me grief that she could have bought it off my at a cheaper BIN price. That was an interesting email I sent her back. She did pay up though…

I do see TNT or DHL bidding for RM PLC in a few years.

I’d like to think not. DHL et al want the big processing/sorting machines they can make money on. The manual labour bit of walking around popping things through letterboxes won’t interest them. Splitting them could be the beginning of the end.

We were chatting about oversized steel frames and old school alloy ones, and just took my old Kona Jake as the alloy version and a Cotic as a ‘modern’ steel tube – the debate was more around was older alloy close to diameter of new steel.

But yes, a new pub after that was discussed!!!

My point of view is that a broken wrist is a reason to curtail an organised mountain bike holiday.

And their reply might be that this is a specialist type of holiday so should have had specialist insurance. Suppose the analogy is the same as a skiing holiday, break your leg the first day kinda thing.

Israel will launch a strike on Syria. Alas, something went wrong with (all of the) guidance systems on the missiles and they unfortunately fell on Iranian territory. And by a strange coincidence all exploded on Irans ‘civilian’ nuclear power labs…

Slightly off-topic, but I brought my kids up to be (mostly) polite, well behaved and respect authority.

They miss out on a lot of stuff because they don’t argue the point/push to the front etc. Sometimes I wonder if I did the right thing

Ditto. Saw my little ‘un waiting patiently bless her, at a party when they were giving out balloons only to find in the ensuing scrum she didn’t get one. Life lesson but she got a better treat from me and the missus when we went to town later for being so polite.

I think it’s just me, but if just feels like trying to bolt on this mahoosive rear cassette seems like a right dodgy hack when the real solution is to just admit you’re not ‘down with the kids’ / bleeding edge and just having a double (or, gasp, triple) chainset at the front.

Hands up those who have actually ridden road bikes with disc brakes and would willingly give them up?

Just mucking around with a new Kinesis Pro6 disk frame and TRP Spyre disk brakes.

Put it this way, I was looking at new mini vees for the old bike last night. I’m not hugely convinced unless I’m doing something fundamentally wrong (possible, but worrying if I am as been fettling bikes for many moons).

Oh, and they can’t make bikes ‘disk ready’ as disk wheels are likely to be 135mm wide, and current road wheels are 130mm….

At a school year reunion last year

“So how old are you then?”

“Erm, the same age as you as you were, like, in my class and stuff…..”

Tim Berners-Lee – the internet is now the focal point, not a particular person. Hopefully it is more powerful too as many many more people can participate or indeed just learn of the struggles of others.

Information itself will ultimately be the next ‘leader’.

Then there’s the leap frog overtakers who overtake you then pull in and slow down, so you overtake them, pull in and they almost immediately speed up and overtake you then pull in and slow down….

Now they are the annoying drivers.

Saying that, on the last sportive I did two cyclists were doing that to me for quite a while as I tried to keep a steady pace. One nearly got a fist in the face.

2 Labradors so that’s the norm for us anyway

Ha ha, true.

Another older dad here. I thin kit’s great though obviously having a little ‘un is a bit tying, the ability to just pop out to the cinema, or a meal or a bike ride becomes a much greater issue.

You’ll get a little envious of dads who had kids early, so they’re doing stuff again you can’t do, but looking back at what I’ve done, holidays I’ve done pre-child I wouldn’t swap.

Quite happy commuting on a 32t front ring (albeit 29er wheels so gearing slightly different), the odd downhill downwind section I can spin out but I’m commuting/zone 1 so doesn’t bother me.

You’ve got the more important slicks. Wouldn’t worry about gearing just yet.

Any room for mudguaurds/rack on the frame/forks?

Do you think there is a STW equivalent of being ‘overbiked’ for groupsets? I can see it now:

“He was way over-gruppo’d for that <insert favourite boring ride here> trail”

Fry could have made his point much better if he hadn’t reverted to the playground equivalent of “and your mum smells” (albeit in a much cleverer way) at the end of the riposte.

It is really simple Boycott the games Russians ask “why are our games rubbish?” Putin looks like a fool

Really? Russia win 75% of the medals. Putin thinks Russia is god-like in sports events and crows continually to all who’ll listen (including his own country).

Surely if you did do a wedding list it would be stuff you actually wanted? Do people really create a list of stuff they don’t actually want?

You’d be surprised! Especially if it’s a John Lewis type present list – very easy to end up putting tat down (or the matching salt and pepper set to the plates you do actually want) just to give options. JL would make a killing if they worked out how to allow people to put contributions to, say, a washing machine or fridge freezer.

I’m kinda on the side of if you have to ask for money then your wedding is costing too much brigade. Maybe a halfway house is asking for gift receipts for the presents you get 😛

As I said above I managed on income support and actually lived very healthily because I couldnt afford to buy ready made crap

Which is great, but if your 4 years old you don’t get income support directly to your piggy bank and if mum and step-dad are spending it all on the lash every night, or have a drug habit/ desperately need that 650b bike then you see sad cases like this.

Based on that above Spacemonkey, got for plan A.

Schools really don’t change that much in decent areas. You can take a punt at hoping a chav school will improve

Does your kids really want to be upped and moved to new school without friends? Rather have the friends in the nice location first time around.

How you get a move on with the vendor, thats the problem.

We ended up waiting on two houses as the first was her parents family home when they died and she was reluctant to move, the other was just seeing if people would buy and then changed her mind. It’d be best to just find out either way. Get est agent to find out – it’s in their interestes as they won’t get paid if seller pulls out.

Look at most passport photos, let along the mugshots taken at the local cop shop. Combined that with the brain knowing they are crims and almost anyone would look dodgy.

What was the proper dad doing in all of this? Was he around?

As boblo says, there were some mental deals on Scott CR1s just recently.

Paying £2k for a bike just to strip down the parts to sell is a route to madness. You’ll end up with a very expensive frame for what it really is.

Cateye Rapid 3? I’ve got a couple that have gone through thick and thin this year in terms of the weather without fail. Maybe I’m lucky but never had an issue with Cateye lights.

I’m assuming the car isn’t off road possibly judging by family situation – surely it could be done for having no MOT without the requirement to catch the lad driving it? Kinda win-win then.

More importantly, what are handlebar manufacturers going to do?

– Risers for 26″

– Flats for 29ers

Are we going to get a new ‘standard’ for handlebars for 650b?

Have a peek at Cycling Plus this month – it’s got a group test of wheels up to £1000. IIRC some Fulcrums won.

I’m sure where theres a blame there’ll be a claim. Is there not a sign at the entrance to the carpark?

There is a charity ride from Seahouses to Newcastle every year starting beside a car park with a height restricted (and clearly signed) entrance.

There must be thousands of pounds worth of damage done every year as the Audis roll up with their fancy bikes strapped to the top…

When was the last time Campag was used on a TdF winning bike? If it was that much better then it would be first every time.

In truth, as everyone above says, they are much of a muchness.

I like Campy and have had it on many bikes over the years. My 9 speed Veloce winter bike never misses a beat, but I’m sure a Shimano 105 would do the same (my all-year mtb commuter on Shimano Deore/SLX does!).

Comes down to personal preference, and maybe a little bit of brand snobbery (on STW? Never?).

But yes, Ultegra chainsets are gupping.

Superman has to be better as the only disguise he needs is a pair of glasses that transforms him into mild mannered Clark Kent.

If you just want chainrings then maybe these

Inner

outer

If you’re looking for a complete replacement then in theory you might need to change your bottom bracket as different cranks theoretically need different widths.

This would be the axle length (around 110mm ish) rather than the shell width – sounds like you should have a 68mm shell bb in your bike but someone has put a 73mm width shell version in instead. If you haven’t died in a ball of flames yet then I wouldn’t worry too much about it.

Anything cheaper than £24 for inner and outer and I’d be guessing you’re either looking at picking up a sale item off CRC or something on eBay.

For years when anybody ever says ‘wild’ in a conversation I’ve always mentally said “wild, I was absolutely livid”…

Sad news, but left a lot of people happy over the years.

Rims brakes always feel nice – very little cable outer to get in the way.

I’d suspect maybe a routing or ratty cable issue with yours rather than the levers or calipers.

Genuinely, just pay someone. It was about the same price for the guys to sand and oil our living room and dining room and they did it in all two days. And it was an excuse to go out and have some quality time. And remarkably little dust too.