The bike itself. No engine FFS, you have to pedal it yourself!

Maybe Jamie can conjure up a picture of the OP’s teddy in a teddy 😯

Try further out and then come back in?
Egham, Chertsey, Staines etc?

Bearing in mind the clear flood risk, take care where you buy!

The OP is so very, very dead when his OH finds out about this thread 😀

I’m surprised there’s been no bad puns yet…

What did the Teddy bear say when he was offered a second helping?
“No thanks; I’m already stuffed!”

You know the way poor drivers just seem to blunder across roundabouts as if braking and changing gear is a hard thing to do, you get a lot of that.

I’m wondering if we’ve made driving too hard? Oversized cars in narrow lanes, signs, speed humps, pinch points, roundabouts absolutely everywhere – way too much to pay attention to, let alone all the in-car distractions. Coupled with the knowledge that hitting someone with such a big car will seriously hurt them (and cost you a fortune).

The increase in cyclists is just an added difficulty to have to think about – and the risk of hurting a human being added into the mix just ratchets up the sensory overload and leads to barely contained panic.

Some people can cope with this sensory overload but many can’t, or are already so close to the boil from the moment they got out of bed that they’re straight into aggression/anger when they see a cyclist…

Be interesting to see the results of the naked road experiments… although self-driving cars are the very obvious solution here

Best tip I heard for dealing with fear is to see it asa a signal there’s something you need to prepare for – it’s a warning rather than a barrier in itself.

This leads you to focus on solving the problem you have rather than focussing on the fear, which at the end of the day is just an emotion.

Which in MTB terms means learn good technique, start small and slow and practice, practice, practice.

If you fill your mind with ‘look where you want to go, shift your weight here, pull up there, push down here etc etc’ there’s a lot less space in your head for the fear…

You held the camera the wrong way up when you took the photos?

It’s a bit odd at the moment. A lot of drivers are getting better and better and holding back or passing well clear – friendly waves from both parties. It’s been really noticeable the last couple of months and shows that we can instigate change if we bring enough pressure to bear.

But the minority of aggressive drivers seem to be getting worse – almost like they realise they’ve lost the argument and so they’re having a tantrum cos everyone else is getting on famously without them.

Witness the guy who nearly rear ended me in Bromley when I stopped at a full amber light which he had no intention of stopping at, and then spent the next couple of minutes bellowing at me through the car window. I’m sure he knew full well he was at fault but what kind of psycho sits in their car on a beautiful sunny summer’s day shouting at a stranger?

Brian Lopes is your friend

Read it the night before. Go and practice what he suggests. Then re-read it when you get home and review how you did against his recommendations.
Repeat until you’re a cornering God

Sometimes stress comes from the situation you’re in. In which case either change the situation or your response to it.

Sometimes the stress comes from you – from negative thought patterns, usually stemming from childhood. In which case, therapy (CBT seems to be most effective.

In general: eat healthily, avoid alcohol, get lots of exercise, spend time outdoors, get good quality and quantity of sleep, avoid negative people/people who bring stress into your life. Lots of stuff really.

Yoga and meditation are good too. They’re ancient practices, which in itself is quite reassuring – stress is nothing new or unique to you.

Lots of self-help books out there too.

If this is not a one-off episode then I’d be thinking about self-help books or therapy to learn some techniques for dealing with it. If it’s one-off short term work pressure, just keep an eye on yourself and make sure it doesn’t get any worse.

Braking before, not at or during
Look through the corner – right to the exit
Lean the bike. If there’s anything you can use as a berm, use it
Stand on the outside pedal – really, really stand (flats help here IMO – there’s a bigger platform). Puts a lot of grip down
Move your hips to the outer foot
Practice, practice and practice

I dry my underarms in the morning with a hair dryer

You just said that out loud 😀

Metallica/Diamond Head/Judas Priest/Slayer/Anthrax etc – whole career based on one idea stolen from Diamond Head Black Sabbath.

To be fair, Metallica and Slayer (in particular) play a little bit faster than Sabbath 😀

brooess – have a word with yourself sweetie.

Maybe I should have included a ;-)?

😀

Doctor Doctor I think I’m a pair of curtains
“pull yourself together, man!”

Doctor Doctor I keep thinking I’m Tom Jones. Have you seen this condition before?
“it’s not unusual”

Beatles
Stones
Led Zeppelin
Bowie
Iggy Pop
Beach Boys
Velvet Underground
Elvis
Queen
Hendrix

All deeply overrated and could do better IMO

I had a heart attack just looking at the pictures

Would you like some sweets Willy?

Only one decent album IMO. But of their time

That’s what these were invented for 😀

What do you call a fish with no eyes?
Fsh

Calm down buoys

Haven’t you lot got anything batter to do than carp on?

More seriously

Normal running shorts usually have an ‘inner pant’ which keeps you decent.

Due to chafing thighs, I have a pair of something like this against my skin and then normal running shorts on top

Compression shorts

Prince Albert?

Do you get in a fuss when you walk down the street and no-one says hello to you too? 😯

Understand the anger but (having been screwed over several times at work to the point of losing my job twice) I really really recommend taking your energy and giving it to an employer who doesn’t play games with you. You’ll be much better off for it…

I think there’s sense in both attitudes.

1) report dangerous and careless driving – there MUST be consequences if we’re to stop people being killed
2) Always assume all other road users are blind, stupid, psychopaths and ride accordingly. But when they turn out not to be, don’t forget to be polite 😀

When you actually live and ride in London rather than view it through internet/newspaper/YouTube anecdotes (which are NOT data), you’ll find in many ways it’s paradise.

Traffic is generally slower than cycling, the sights are world-famous (Buckingham Palace on your daily commute anyone?), drivers are very used to cyclists, and cyclists are everywhere.

I get far more grief on club rides out to Kent at the weekend, or at the beginning and end of my commute in suburban Bromley than I do the Central London part of my commute…

I’ve got all the kit I need so rarely go into outdoor shops these days. Question is, if Cotswold do get taken over and the proposition is taken downmarket/mass market then who’s left when you need decent outdoor kit – just the independents?

In London Village there’ll be only Ellis Brigham left. Peglers in Arundel was ace but they shut down last year.

Sounds like I’ll have to take a trip to the Lakes when I need new kit!

I suspect it’s very hard to not be overweight when so much of the food on offer is stuffed full of sugar and fat, and so many jobs require us to sit down all day. There’s very little in the framework of day to day life these days which makes it easy to be healthy. It’s a massive effort to stay healthy IMO.

That said, if you look at the choices a lot of people are making about what they eat, how much physical movement they build into their daily routine, and how little exercise they do, you do have to wonder if we’ve somehow lost some intelligence at some point in the 20th century!

However, it’s not helpful to make massive generalisations about how people become fat. I suspect a lot of times it’s just lack of time/education to make the decisions needed to live healthily. Sometimes it’s probably lack of self-respect, sometimes it’s probably laziness but overall I suspect it’s really far more complex than laziness.

In this instance it strikes me the doctor was too young to realise that being judgemental isn’t very helpful in solving people’s problems… maybe the fault is mainly in his training which didn’t teach him not to judge… or maybe he was just an insensitive twit!

They wouldn’t do this stuff if it didn’t work. But who on earth is dim enough to either believe it or even think they can come out on top 😯

I saw him on the same road a few months afterwards, recognised me and got out of his lorry to tell me he ought to smash my face in for reporting him to his company.

Which tells you he’s a bully and therefore probably knew full well what he was doing..

Back to OP. IANAL but you could try the trick you do when dealing with a bully at work. You email them noting down the conversation you’ve just had, ending with ‘please reply to confirm this is correct. I’ll assume no reply means you’re happy that this is a true account of our conversation” This really puts them under pressure as they have to admit what they said or accuse you of lying, which if you haven’t, they can’t do.

Wait a few days and then forward the email to the Police. As mentioned above – the owner acknowledging there was a close pass could give the Police something more than ‘just your word against his’ to go on… it’s an admission of sorts.

I’m continually shocked at how nasty some drivers are towards cyclists – to the point of injury and killing. It wasn’t like this when I was a kid in the 80s or even 10 years ago when I started road riding seriously…

Goodbye to your knees?
I’m a regular club runner and working hard to push my 5k and 10k PBs and my observation is that most keen runners have constant injuries. I do a lot of stretching, yoga and cycling to try and avoid this – limiting myself to 2-3 runs/week.
Personally I can’t see how you can train for an ultra without the risk of long term injury.
Best advice seems to be run off-road as much as you possibly can, make sure your shoes are spot on, and consider insoles like Superfeet

So, summary of ^^:

The economy is utterly screwed
The ‘recovery’ is a myth
The causes of the crisis have not been dealt with
The ordinary man will be picking up the pieces for the rest of their lives and government are just looking after themselves

I suspect, at least, this is the conclusion the populace at large have come to…

Personally I do worry that Gideon pulled the housing market trick. It suggests a significant lack of confidence in the strength of the underlying economy. If the recovery is really there, why did he need to use the illusion of higher house prices to boost consumer confidence?

Interesting all this talk about the work ethic, how much we should work etc. There’s a superb book about just this subject written by a guy called Peter Kropotkin (one of the world’s forgotten heroes). Can’t remember the details but from what I remember the gist of it was that if we were to cut out all the capitalist ‘non-work’ from society and organise ourselves in a more collaborative and collectivist manor then we could all work about half the time without massively impacting our material way of life.

I heard this expressed once as:

“We work long hours to get the money together to buy things which we think will make us happy to make up for the fact that working long hours is making us unhappy”

Which I can see. But on the other hand, every society which experiences subsistence farming (where all your work goes directly into providing the basics of survival) seems to want to escape that existence as soon as they can e.g. Western World in previous centuries, China over the last 20 years…

200 years ago, Britain ruled and owned the world – that’s where most of the wealth/infrastructure we enjoy today comes from
Now the Chinese own the world. No-one stays on top forever…

They’ve been creeping up slowly on the wealthy West to this position since the 1980’s – quite deliberately as a long term plan – the man on the street is only just realising this – hence the levels of emotion.

Governments, however, have known this for a couple of decades, hence they’ve been dishing out credit so we could maintain our high standards of living. The credit crunch was just the inevitable and obvious result of this clearly unsustainable policy…

Life goes on. Just because all we know is being one of the wealthiest countries in the world and in our lifetimes all we’ve experienced is ongoing economic growth does not mean that the future will be the same.

There’s a serious study herewhich suggests our current situation looks very similar to our future ie: the relative wealth and growth our grandparents, parents and we have enjoyed for the last 200 years has come to an end. Credit was only going to replace genuine growth for so long, and now the reality of our situation has made itself clear.

TBH if I were UK government, I’d also be doing deals with the emerging economic superpower – if they have the money to spend, then take as much of it from them as we can. Either that or just try and manage a slow decline in living standards and I can’t see many Brits being happy with that…

Not trying to take the piss but really that is all you have said.

Correct – it’s with reference to what the Gen Y interviewees said on the programme last night about needing to take responsibility for themselves, and in that respect I think they’ve got their heads screwed on, especially in light of the job opportunities which are not coming their way.

There’s already a trend in a number of industries which has been building for the last 10 years towards contractors instead of perm staff – e.g. I started on a 4 month contract 3 years ago and I’m still in the same organisation after taking a series of different roles. Their employment experience is likely to be more like this than the perm role for 30 years in the same company that my Dad enjoyed.

In understanding that they need to generate work for themselves I think Gen Y have a better chance of the standard of living they’re hoping for and for the UK to enjoy economic growth off the back of their efforts. If they’d said they expected to be given a stable job for life then I’d be seriously worried for their futures

A couple of random thoughts to throw into the mix:

1. At 41 and 20+ years out of university I can look at people I went to school/uni with and see a very clear line between the different attitudes different people have taken to their lives. Those that expected a high standard of living to just happen to them, are ok but not particularly thriving (in some cases quite the reverse. Those that set about their careers with energy, focus, bloody hard work and took responsibility for their personal development and career opportunities have been very successful. I would observe from these case studies that taking responsibility for yourself and your life tends to lead to better outcomes. And for those of my friends who’ve done, this, their high incomes mean they’re paying way more tax, so they’re directly giving back to society as a result of their hard work

2. Taking responsibility for your own wealth creation does not mean you’re a mean git who cares for no-one else. You can still do charity work or otherwise contribute to your community. In my experience those who do take responsibility for themselves are often more capable of giving back to their community, simply because they can use their initiative, and have more experience to draw on from their professional lives.

3. Welfare State. Baby Boomers understand the value of the welfare state as in their early years (late 1940’s, early 1950’s) the country was a wreck (close to bankrupt) and many many men came back from the war physically or mentally scarred, and it seemed right for the state to contribute to their recovery as they’d only gone to war because the state asked them to.
However, Gen Y don’t have this experience so they don’t quite expect the same moral contract to be in place. When one of the biggest problems we have as a society (obesity) is clearly a self-inflicted one (in comparison to getting your leg blown off by a German bomb, whilst fighting for your country), then you can understand the view which says “people shouldn’t expect the state to dig them out of their own self-inflicted mess”

I’m not sure I entirely agree with that sentiment, it’s a bit harsh, but if you compare the early experiences of the Baby Boomers with Gen Y, you can see how that opinion might be formed

Who’s responsibility is it then? Who was holding them at gun point or knife point, forcing the substances down their throats or into their veins until they became addicted?

My experience of people with drug and drink problems has been that they tend to be the result of crappy childhoods – abusive or neglectful parents – and the resulting inability of the adult to deal with the ins and outs of life.

No-one I’ve ever know with a drink or drug problem has wanted to be that way…

Modern people are so far removed from the alternative to a mutually inter-dependant society that we’re becoming conditioned to thinking that self-reliance is all we need to survive and prosper, which is pretty deluded.

I was hoping the internet and social media would foster a greater spirit of collaboration (e.g. some of the support we see on STW for people with relationship or depression problems) but according to the program last night, social media is being used now as one-to-one, not many to many.

But then I guess, every adult generation thinks the youth are spoilt, selfish and lazy… so in time when they’ve experienced a bit more of life, the more negative aspects of Gen Y will morph into a more mature outlook – just like us 😀

Listened to this last night. As someone who would define themselves in the same way – economically right of centre but socially liberal, there are some positive aspects and some negative

Positive
1. No expectations of a welfare state – given the ageing and increasingly obese population, the welfare state as it currently stands will lead to a massive tax burden which the electorate are unlikely to be willing to pay for
2. Look after yourself work-wise = likely to lead to entrepreneurialism which could be a driver of economic growth as globalisation eats our lunch
3. Make your money for yourself – maybe the younger generation recognise how stupid it is to get yourself in a much debt as we have

negative
1. Distinct lack of community spirit. Contributing to your community helps resolve a lot of social problems and just makes life a lot nicer
2. very little evidence of an understanding of the benefits of collaboration, which is a great problem-solver
3. Deeply unsympathetic to people with personal issues like alcoholism and drug use. I’m hoping that was immaturity speaking rather than a genuine belief that alcoholics are entirely to blame for their situation
4. They seemed to have swallowed the myth that there’s lots of people living the life of riley on benefits. I suspect they’re believing too much of what they read in the papers

I’d be interested to know if this is UK-only or pan-Western/pan-European