Can i make a suggestion? Can those who went on a skills course to solve this particular problem post up how to do it? It’ll save the OP a lot of money (cue lots of ‘best upgrade you can buy…blah blah blah..riding gods blah blah blah…’)

The point of a skills course, in fact, any kind of coaching whether for sport or other things, is that the mistakes people make and the reasons why they make them, are individual… and therefore a personalised solution is required. Being watched by an experienced coach is far more effective than a bunch of strangers on the internet telling you what worked for them.

IMO those of us raving about skills courses are doing it because a good one is really, really effective, and can transform your riding. For me, there’s no glory or fun in mincing down stuff I can do at speed and with style for the sake of a skills day and a bit of practice. Helped to stop me breaking bones too 🙂

+1 for a skills day
+1 for playing on a pump track
-1 for making rude comments about your desire to be a better rider 🙂

One more thing – get a really good lock – c 10% of the value of the bike, and leave it at work if you can – save carrying the extra weight.

You’ll be amazed how much better you feel when you get to work – especially on sunny days. I’m taking a rest day today, having ridden every day over the long weekend but I really wish I’d ridden in – it’s a beautiful day.

Plus in the middle of winter when everyone else has gone down with the winter cold and you’re still firing on all cylinders 🙂

I reckon MTB still represents good value, all things considered. Agree that top end kit costs a fortune these days, but I don’t think you actually need top end kit to get a really good bike e.g. you don’t need a carbon frame, carbon wheels and XTR for a top notch trail bike… so unless you’re some kind of high-end kit addict it’s not really that much more expensive than it used to be.
My first bike was £400 – Specialized Rockhopper in 1995 – steel frame, cantis, rigid and you can get a far better bike for £400 these days – 20 years on…
Personally the main reason I’ve spent more as the years have gone on is that I only bought cheap stuff in the early days cos it was all I could afford. As soon as I could afford XT, decent suspension etc I did.
I reckon you can save quite a bit by building a bike from the frame up with good quality bits throughout – as you build the bike you want in the first place with no shortcuts, you don’t get upgrade-itis 2 months later!
Either way, as it keeps me healthy and happy, it’s an investment, not a cost!

Lights: 2 on the bike at the front, one static, one flashing. One flashing on the helmet for staring at people about to pull out on you. Same at the back except the third light is on my rucksack. USB rechargeable is helpful as you can top up at home and at work.
Most important, get your bikeability training from your local authority and read cyclecraft by John Franklin and learn best practice for riding in traffic. You’ll learn loads and helps keep you safe

Mainstream acceptance of cycling
Development of self-driven cars
Mobile phones,Internet and cheaper technology empowering the masses and scaring big business and autocrats everywhere

A decent portion of pasta or rice for your dinner the night before will help. I find I can exercise pretty soon after a bowl of porridge for breakfast too.

For 80 miles you’ll need a decent amount of food in you before you start and also en route – IIRC you run out of glycogen stores after c 2.5 hours. For an 80 miler I’dve had a pasta/rice meal the night before and porridge + toast and poss a couple of eggs for breakfast, and then malt loaf/flapjacks en route

Cheers Euan – looks good! YGM

Ah another broess doom monger thread .

Still renting in the belief your going to save a packet ?

Still renting because I can’t afford a mortgage actually… or at least, I could but I won’t be able to afford to make payments into my pension as well… and be having to watch every penny cos I’ll be skint. I’m not badly paid either…

Why would you offer so little sympathy to people priced out of owning their own home anyway? Do you laugh at poor people too?

One reason it’s insane is that £1m even in this environment will buy you a really nice flat elsewhere in Central London.
Or a really nice house in suburbia – and I mean a NICE house
If I was going to spend £3k on renting a flat I wouldn’t want ex-council…

ie. the fundamental realities of the place don’t justify the price – people are delusional about the worth of London property, which is not a good sign…

When the London bubble blows, London itself will suffer, as will the rest of the precariously-balanced UK economy.

Last time we had stories like this (mid-noughties) we had a bust within 2 years. The time before that we had stories like this was late-eighties – and we had a bust within 2 years.

Thanks Euan – email in profile if you’re happy to help…

Thanks Dez… got to be worth a go and we’ll see how it works out!

Thanks Ian…
Maybe I’ll have to explore other bodges. The one I have works perfectly well but it takes a couple of minutes to get the light on the bars which is a hassle…

Thanks Dez, email in profile if he’s happy to help. Happy to grease his palm with silver in return.

The ones on Wiggle aren’t quite what I’m after + all the 3D printing suppliers just print, they need me to supply a file of the thing I want printed which I obviously don’t have…

Wrong Joystick – 2008 is much thicker than the current one – c 20mm, hence the bodge/3D printing idea

I was MTBing for 12 years before I took my first skills course. It transformed my riding – much smoother, fall off a lot less.
Can also recommend pads – partly it reduces the harm when you do come off, partly it relaxes you so you fall off less in the first place

I think if the public knew just how incompetent, how blind, how ill-informed and how ill-prepared most drivers were, there would be a national outcry.

It’s been known ever since cars were invented…

Best advice I was given about driving in public was to assume everyone else on the road is an idiot. Except that advice wasn’t given to me, it was given to my Mum by her Dad – in the 1950s…

Wind in the Willows – Toad of Toad Hall and all his manic driving – was first published in 1908.

In fact, she wouldn’t have even had to stop, just slow a bit to let me past, but she decided to accelerate into the gap that wasn’t there.

This is where a basic ability to assess risk, anticipate eventualities and an ability to do more than react to base emotions needs to be tested for in the driving test (and failed if not a high enough standard). It’s more than manners or intelligence, it’s more about ability to understand the bigger picture – some people simply lack it.

People make basic assessment errors all the time in life but the consequences of these errors when driving are that much bigger…

I walked towards her car but she sat there clearly not wanting to open the window so I decided against looking like I was being confrontational or trying to intimidate her so sat at the other side by my car.

Kind of feel sorry for people like that… not able to say ‘sorry, I’m being an idiot’.

OP did you go and have a chat with her? It may have broken the ice? I suspect some of this bad driving is from people who really have no idea what they’re doing and are in some kind of panic… and may benefit from a bit of face to face conversation…

I had an interesting guy try to drive into the side of me pushing himself onto the main road. He then tailgated me through a 20mph limit, overtook at speed, jammed his brakes on as he spotted the speed camera and then tailgated the next car ahead. 5 mins later after trundling along at 20mph I rolled up behind him in the queue of traffic I knew would be round the next corner – there always is a queue there at rush hour. The whole style of his driving was totally irrational/emotional…

The only outcome of all of this is that he’s now a few days closer to his inevitable heart attack before he’s 50…

That is quite stupid tbf… 😀

Having the energy and motivation to push down the front and mosh like my life depends on it

As a matter of interest, do any of the STW’ers ever get a taxi and berate the driver for tailgating or exceeding the speed limit? It is quite rare to get one who doesn’t IME.

I was in an Addison Lee cab once and explained quite politely that the reason the cyclist was shouting and swearing at him was because he’d just pulled a u-turn right in front of him and damn nearly sent him flying across the road.

The driver wasn’t stroppy or petulant in his response (none of this ‘bloody cyclists’ stuff) – he just didn’t understand why it was a problem. I got the impression that he was, to be frank, just too stupid to make the right judgement call in that situation…

I don’t believe that the average human being is too thick to drive carefully, you can easily train people to do more challenging things. We all know human beings are fallible and emotional so we need to adapt the training and testing regime accordingly. ie: much more rigorous and much more focus about safety. More lessons to begin with, more challenging scenarios, motorway driving, harder test, repeat tests – why not every 2 years at the motorist’s expense? Nice job creation scheme for driving instructors 🙂

The few months after an election are usually a good time to introduce unpopular but necessary policies…

There`s nothing better than giving a withering look to some BE who overtook you aggressively only to find you catch him/her up at the next set of lights.

Sadly the withering look IME makes no difference, they remain stupid…

This is where we find out a few bankers lurk on the forum and one of them pops up with ‘the global economy’, a few $trillion 🙂

Don’t forget to buy full waterproofs for the whole family before you go… for everyday wear 🙂

What it is that belongs to Olive that you’re asking about?

🙂

The biggest problem with rising house prices is they’re a complete illusion when it comes to making people richer. A house which goes up £100k in a year is not money which can be spent, it’s just a number on a computer screen, which deludes people into thinking they’re wealthier when in fact they have no more actual cash in their pocket than they had a year ago.

Sure, they can borrow off the back of it but that’s more debt, not wealth…

It’ll come crashing to a halt at some point. You can’t spend money you don’t actually have, forever. The banks found this out in 2008 and UK house prices are only being kept up by government subsidy…

It’ll be interesting to see who all the BTLers blame when they lose their shirts…

Seems to me you did the right thing and had the courage of your convictions.
You’ve also found out the true nature of this guy and now you know not to trust him.
If you do see him socially and he has a go, just tell him why you did what you did – I doubt he’ll have much comeback, he surely knows he’s in the wrong…

Mobiles and internet aren’t a luxury when you’re trying to find a job – they’re pretty much essential…

Thing is, we’re only 7 years into a lost generation, we’re nowhere near out of the woods yet and next five years likely to be worse rather than better.

Tories cut back on the cuts in the last parliament, failed to eliminate the deficit as promised, pumped £billions into the economy as QE, have kept interest rates at emergency low rates and pumped house prices to maintain the illusion of wealth… OBR forecast personal debt to soar over next few years.

Tories are supposed to be strong on the economy too…

China’s slowing up fast, Euro area still a mess (Greece on the way out?), US and UK economies still not showing strong growth.

It’ll do us good in the long run, getting off this addiction to debt and shiny things but I don’t think the next decade’s going to be a huge amount of fun whilst we adjust… I would expect more food banks not fewer…

There seems to be a degree of madness what people will pay at the moment. Sellers and agents are taking advantage of it by posting exaggerated asking prices…

It’s language designed to get you to pay as much as possible by suggesting the place is worth a certain amount…
Get a look at Land Registry and see what similar properties in the area have been sold for recently and benchmark your offer against that rather than what the estate agent is trying to con you into paying

It’s not unknown for online newspapers to produce total nonsense as clickbait…

Then again most people have their priorities all over the place when it comes to bikes vs cars. Won’t spend £1k on a good bike which will save them money on train fares, petrol etc but will spend £15k+ (+interest) on a car which spends 22 out of every 24 hours parked up…

Cash. Can see their point given the fees charged by credit/debit card companies

If they don’t want to accept the payment mechanism their customers want to pay with, good luck to them growing their business!
They may also not be factoring in the cost of handling cash – slower, the time taken to take it to the bank, security risk etc
Most businesses accept payment costs as a cost of doing business and factor it into their pricing like all the other costs they pay to be in business

On my speed awareness course the instructor advocated pulling over when you’re being tailgated and just let the idiot be on their way. takes away the conflict and a lot less stressful for you.
I’ve done it a few times and can recommend it… it makes life a lot easier. Why prolong the stress?

Good luck catching him. Driving really does seem to bring out the very worst in people sometimes…

Given the progress they’ve made since they first started jumping wingsuits in the early noughties I suspect they’ll get there eventually.

Tim, the guy in this vid was doing some of the first wingsuit jumps in the UK and it shows how much control you can get on a small parachute, even back then (this vid was early noughties) – so refinement of the kit and techniques and I suspect it’ll be done in time. Gary Connery’s effort is the closest so far

Landing in a moving car

The only consumers who are really losing out in all of this are people with a lot of money sunk into “lifetime” components.

takes a lot of resources to get aluminium out of bauxite so that’s not ideal from a sustainability pov

tbh this constant attempt to force repurchase and upgrade looks a lot like an industry in crisis. Much like the repeating throwing of more money at UK housing market – if there was a healthy demand of current products at current prices then there’d be no need for these kind of shenanigans. Don’t forget we’re in a debt crisis – even the supermarkets are struggling as people try and make ends meet – discretionary spend like bikes is nothing like as great as it was 10 years ago, and a lot of that was based on unsustainable amounts of debt.
I work in marketing, I can see both sides of the coin here and I’m with the cynics I’m afraid

OP, you’ve made two fundamental errors
1. Doing this in the first place
2. Posting it on STW

as you were. I wish you luck 🙂

Or is this thread your cover story? 😉