Cycleactive[/url]

Are in the Lakes and are great for improving technique and general flow. Transformed my riding…

No way should you let that go… if you’d been riding primary you may not have been posting on STW…

Quite happy with this commute, thanks 🙂

I foresee demand for turbo trainers going up 🙂
Home-produced energy – we can get paid for riding our bikes and selling the power back to the grid on feed-in tariffs.
Will sort out the obesity crisis too…
Bring it on I say!

Some of the driving we have to put up with is just stupid (overtaking thr group straight into oncoming traffic or round a blind bend) some is downright psychotic – driving straight at us…
Hooks and ropes… 😯

quadruple post!

quadruple post!

quadruple post!

First spring ride here too – 55 miles round beautiful Kent lanes.
Until I took a damp corner too fast and tried to use my chin for braking… steri strips in my chin and a chipped forefinger, ripped bibs, bar tape and brake levers…
That’s me out for 4 weeks just as the weather gets better 😥

I did it a few years ago. Birmingham to Leighton Buzzard. Thinking a point to point journey would be a good experience. But tbh I would have rather done South Downs or another classic offroad ride.
It basically gets pretty boring – largely flat and no interesting singletrack. Trying to pass anyone fishing is a pain and bits of it are virtually impassable with the mud.
So a great concept but I was disappointed with the reality…

Jehovah!

She did! She did! He did! He! He. He. Him. Him. Him. Him. He did.

All I said to my wife was that piece of halibut was good enough for Jehovah.

Are there any women here?

Riding tomorrow, yay 🙂

I always think the risk has to be worth the gain.
Is having music playing to make the ride more pleasurable worth dying for?

I wear my iPod all the time when on the train and Tube. But running and cycling I quite like the free head space they give me and part of the benefit is the metronomic calm they bring. Music would spoil that for me.

it’s so obvious which photos will be rolled out for this thread (again)
Exhibit 1, above 🙂

I do question the wisdom of letting him out, and the risk of re-offending.
But re the general public being angry about it – some people just like the excuse to be angry…

Perspective on what’s important in life is a rare thing. Some people are so busy complaining about the little things that they forget they’re actually alive…

Years ago I worked in customer services at Bupa – dealing sometimes with some very seriously ill people/relatives of very seriously ill people (e.g. just been diagnosed with cancer)

As a rule, those who were in the most serious situations (like making sure their cancer treatment would be paid for) were the nicest. The whingiest were those who’s monthly direct debit had been taken out a day early…

I think t’internet just gives the whingy people the ability to broadcast it to the world instead of just taking it out on some poor customer service bod… so you hear more of their whining…

Cool. Thanks for all the advice. If it’s getting warmer up there this weekend then we’ll be particularly careful.
I’ve 30 winter munroes under my belt and have a naturally cautious approach. I know the basics of avalanche avoidance re slope angle and aspect/recent conditions and have walked away from a slabby descent on Beinn Eighe before but we’ll check the local conditions when we get up there and I have the Cicerone book on avalanche awareness which I’ll go through before we go this time…

These’ll be going cheap soon

And there won’t be too many people wearing them 🙂

Good God Almighty.
This is what this emoticon was created for: 😯
Buyer Beware, indeed

Having the privilege of throwing a ton or two of metal around a crowded street is a pretty big responsibility and this is lost on so many drivers that you see day-to-day.

This is too true.

I’ve been driving since mid 90’s and I don’t remember anyone ever (instructor, tester, police, speed awareness course trainer, government etc) ever pointing out that I have a responsibility to drive the thing so as not to cause harm to anyone…

The message just gets given as ‘you must stick to the rules’ to which a lot of people just react quiet childishly with a ‘sod rules, I’ll do what I like’

It needs to be drilled into us that a car driven badly maims and kills and, just like any other heavy machinery needs to be handled with care…

All you who say it’s not a problem are just a bunch of neigh-sayers

There’s one issue that’s really muddying the water when it comes to public opinion towards cyclists, and it’s those annoyingly idiotic roadie group rides who cycle two or three abreast at a leisurely pace chatting amongst themselves whilst pointedly ignoring the inevitable queue of cars built up behind them. Made worse by garish man-leotards, big padded bollocks and what appear to be tap shoes when they dismount for the inevitable fisty cuffs.

Red light jumpers yes. ^^ no. We ride in groups for a number of reasons:
1. Efficiency
2. Safety

It’s how club rides were ridden in the decades before cars became mass usage. Why should it change now?

Ignoring the legals of it and based on your description I’d say it was a bloody stupid thing to do.

You know car drivers don’t look and indicate properly as a matter of
routine and there’s no pressure on them currently to do otherwise.

So to filter at speed past a line of traffic by a junction is opening yourself up to getting hit.

Whether the driver was wrong to not look and indicate properly is neither here nor there IMO – you’re too vulnerable as a cyclist to make moves like that.

Glad you’re unhurt and willing to learn the lesson however. IMO the stupid people are the ones who jump up and down in righteous anger and fail to see how they contributed to the accident…

I go for first edition kids books from specialist dealer – Noddy/Swallow’s and Amazons etc.
They’re something different, they can read them now/or in a few years and will hopefully appreciate in value as they grow older or become a family heirloom

Commute? A great way to get the miles in and keep the legs moving?

You’ll not get to the sink if you leave your bike there

Otherwise, very nice…

My experience:
Plated within days of the break – nearly a compound fracture
Had regular check-ups but refused to reunite so after 12 months they gave me the bone graft (as said above – it’s not bone marrow, it’s bone graft where they shaved some bone from my hip and stuck it in the gap in the clavicle).
That fixed it nicely and I had the plate taken out a year after that and within weeks was ok to ride again.
I stayed off the turbo trainer for 6 weeks as said above but kept my fitness in the intervening months with walking, physio and turbo trainer.
I strongly recommend doing everything your physio tells you if you want a full recovery. Can take some discipline but it’s well worth it in the long term.

Hope you heal quickly. I think my experience was quite extreme tbh but everything’s 100% ok now – you can barely see the scar and have full movement and strength.

I found out last year that Findus were putting horsemeat in their lasagne. I reported it but no-one believed me. Said I was just being a neigh-sayer

Not as bad as “when’s it due?”

I was not pregnant – and not impressed!

If it was your barber who said that then something’s gone very wrong somewhere down the line 🙂

As I’ve only ridden once this year I made myself go out on the club ride this morning. Really didn’t want to. Brassic and sleeting/rain (South London/Kent) but sitting in the cafe afterwards felt good 🙂

Roll on spring!

Higgs Bosson Blues

Whole album streaming here

Even if the opening post is misleading, Maccy D’s is hardly healthy food of the kind we need to eat, is it?

I suspect if people saw the full manufacturing cycle for MaccyD’s products, they wouldn’t go near them ever again…

We need to re-learn rearing and killing our own food, for our own survival. There’s surely no nutrition in a substance like that? <can’t really call it food>

Looks like strawberry milkshake which means it’s probably burger…

This is an education problem primarily. Do people not understand that for meat to be cheap, massive corners have to be cut?

I don’t buy the ‘affordability’ rationale either – fresh veg, fruit, rice, beans etc etc are not relatively expensive but I think a lot of people lack the knowledge and confidence to cook basic foodstuffs and so they buy ‘cheap’ processed crap… And I’m including educated, middle classes in this.

Simple rule. The closer the food is to it’s natural state (ie. the less-processed it is), the less damage it will do and the healthier it is. You can’t rip the nutrients out of a whole raw carrot…

People are not forced to eat processed food, it’s 100% choice. The UK is currently making very poor choices (69% men overweight/obese, 59% women overweight/obese). If we choose price and convenience over our health then that’s our choice and manufacturers will provide for it…

I had a findus lasagne yesterday. Gave me the trots.

Glad I have Hope. That’s unacceptable. They’re top-end MTB hubs, not cheap ones. If their legal people feel they need that wording in the T&C’s then they shouldn’t be on sale as MTB kit. Full stop.

Who knows?
Deal with it when it happens.

Just glad I own a bike and understand a life which is not car dependent.
A lot of people will struggle with adapting to a non-car dependent lifestyle…