TBF she could retire. She’s got nothing left to prove. She won everything in her discipline, the rest of the women were racing for second place!

IOM TT

s the 1950’s we’re talking about as very few Irish still work on the buildings now?

Not the fifties. Still a few stragglers knocking about into the nineties! There was only ever a couple/few on a site the odd site agent/reformed alcoholic!

The systematic dismantling of collective bargaining, the rise of management contractors/corporatisation saw a mass exodus of experienced workers to greener pastures. The cost of training had already been transferred onto the individual, with employers bearing none of the costs. The labour shortages were reported by the UK press as lazy, apathetic youth who didn’t want do the hard work and would rather collect benefits. How times have changed!

In Building Site Deathmatch the real ones to avoid were the hod-carriers

Did a stint of it many years ago when hundredweight bags of cement were still a thing. Keeping a muscular physique without ever entering a gym was easy and I could eat and drink whatever I liked without gaining weight! A bit of friendly competition with over-stacked hods was a thing. Having the sand delivered right next to the end of the scaffold run meant you could jump off the end of the lift to get down faster! A full plasterers hod was quite an unwieldly beast for the uninitiated.

I can confirm a night on the lash with scaffold contractors is indeed a heavy night.

Having said that the hardest graft I can remember was humping double thickness solid (yeah not the hollow lightweight ones) concrete blocks by hand, **** ball busters! Followed by handballing oak railway sleepers on my shoulder all day, the wets ones were slippy as **** and weighed more! Barrowing concrete for big flooring jobs where there was no concrete pump was hard graft as it has to be fluted in sharpish.

Was always amazed by the little Irish guys who seemed to be on every site. Could drink like fish, a few at lunch, straight on it after work, nearly every night, back in work bang at it never late or off. Some of them even had wives, god knows how when they were in the pub six nights out of seven!

Rubble bucket for all your wet kit. Again you can stand in the thing if need be!

Down to earth no bullshit I like it.

Miniature bearings B2B in my Cube Stereo similar to skateboard wheels! Cheap tool off ebay, nice and tightened up properly, boshed the little blighters out with a hammer and chisel no bother. I had repacked them after 3 years use and got another year out of them, so all in all not the end of the world. The drive side main pivot bearing was the first to chuck it’s hand in after about a year and half!

You would think bushings would be a better solution but a fair few of the bikes that have had them in past have had serious problems in reality.

Brown Chow

The gig economy doesn’t work for workers – it works for the shitty tech companies that squeeze them and it works for us as lazy consumers that want a chip butty without getting out of bed.

Yup the  middlemen who couldn’t give a flying **** about anyone but themselves and their fortune. In fact the vast majority of Tory voting business men I’ve ever met. Their only lament is how the work force aren’t desperate enough and how wonderful/malleable workers from poor countries are!

What it certainly is is a ringing endorsement of the employment practices of companies like deliveroo. In an ideal Tory world, that’s the future of work for all of us

The acceptable face of exploitative employment of immigrant labour. The almost exclusively male Asian drivers love an old shape Toyota Yaris around here, strewn all over the roads next to Maccy d’s. They have even got their own service points/rooms, so as not to upset the scabby individual customers as they get served first and faster because their doing bulk!

Anyone remember Sir Robert Deveraux? DWP top boy who oversaw the increase in state pension retirement age to 67. He’d had enough of his cushy office job at 61 (all that talking, supported by an admin team and those heavy meeting room doors) and retired with what I can only describe as a gold plated pension. What’s good for goose and all that!

IMO we have been given a vison of the future according to business people.

It goes something like this. We make lots and lots of money, pay little to no tax, while you silly bastards (should of tried harder at school and made more of your life) earn minimum wage and should be bloody grateful for that small mercy you disgusting little rental plebs.

Shown their hand and what!

The only way forward ;) is to resist the American culture and everything about it.

Small load volume. If you are unfortunate to get bad one expensive to repair.

If you get a good one and didn’t pay over the odds,  you’re on a winner until it needs repairs!

Environmental terrorists and obsolete technology.

Artificial sweeteners give themselves away with the nasty dry/bitter/chalky aftertaste. I don’t like it.

Even when mixed it’s detectable.

Mine is simple, I am always riding the worst lines. If there’s a perfect line, a fast line, a smooth line, I’m 3 feet away riding over a pile of rocks or doing 3 90 degree turns to go round a simple corner, like sonic the hedgehog collecting rings from the most inconvenient places.

Yes I do this but only on trails I know well or when I’ve got new suspension parts to try out, then I’m like your **** avin it, as I stuff the forks into horrible wheel gobblers!

Not been an issue for me but I’ve haven’t owned any really weedy stems. Most of mine are built similar to the Atlas above. Chromag Ranger (narrowest clamp I’ve had) Funn Strippa and Kore Cubix (narrow but forged box section the lightest/weediest I’ve owned). Even the Crank Brothers one I had was pretty solid with a wide clamp, the included bolts were toffee though so I’d steer well clear of them! The heaviest one (Truvative DH) was like a stock brick and just overbuilt for the sake of it.

Your bars can be pretty flexy though depends what you have got and how much flex feels right to you. I can imagine a weedy stem in combination with a flexy bars would be pretty weird/bad feeling and you’d know about it pretty sharpish on any decent trail!

Well this is good news. I’ll hold off going until they have completed it. The bits I’ve seen in videos look quite short but loopable via the fire road. Will have to work out which are worth doing and the ones not to bother with!

I actually find most blue cars to be a bit dull, especially darker blues.  It’s in many ways more conservative than black.

What’s known in the trade as doom/caretaker blue. Yup you get less trade in for it.

Aaaaand NO recommendations for Shimano yet.

It’s a real shame. When working well I prefer the feel of Shimano to anything else I’ve tried….but they are unreliable and can’t be rebuilt.

SLX and above sort of can but using a combination of Shimano parts supplied by breakers and an aftermarket lever piston seal (the bit that causes most of the problems apart from the callipers) part from ebay.

The bastards have even hobbled M615 Deore levers so you can’t easily take them apart. The metal cam part has no hole in to release the lever axle pin, which is also peened over at both ends. SLX M675 and above have a different part with a hole in it and the axel pin isn’t peened at both ends and can be removed. Dirty **** bastards!

Nardo Grey, yeah shiny primer. Gunmetal for those that rock up everywhere, taking the bins out whatever.

VAG group have some nice shades like Blackberry. There’s a metallic orange, thinks it’s a PSA colour that actually looks decent on the right vehicle. Looked good on the old bubble shaped Seat Leon and some of the small Peugeots matched to all red rear light clusters. There’s a vivid metallic green I’ve seen on them quirky pretend 4wd tiny box things that’s a nice change.

Anyone remember the fashion for bright yellow sparked by the alternative Ferrari colour? Looked good on some cars Fiat coupes, Lotus and a few others until I saw it on the ugliest version of some small Renault, my god that ruined it forever for me.

Every now and again I lower my standards and don’t filter out the content I watch just to see what I’ve been missing. Well it has ranged from dog shit to barely watchable, so back to being a bit more fussy I think.

Dungeons and Dragons – **** my life what a pile.

Everybody Everywhere all at Once – Enjoyable silliness but labours the point in the third act!

Triangle of Sadness – Not bad little satire.

The Green Knight – Has some good moments but didn’t work as a whole to me.

The Last Duel – Watchable loosely based on a true story.

Inheritance (2020) – Simon Pegg pretty good some alright bits but silly and unbelievable.

EO – Polish film about a donkey! Yeah it’s on the list to watch.

The Innocents – Again on the list to watch!

Some of them were so bad I can’t remember the titles. Thankfully I didn’t pay for the privilege!

Still on 27.5 but open to anything that rides better come the time to get a new bike. Tried a 29 wheeled bike and didn’t like it, but that doesn’t mean I won’t like the next one I try, if it’s a substantial improvement over what I’ve got. Pretty happy with what I’ve got, tried it back-to-back with much more expensive bikes and it compares well if not quite as good in certain aspects, but I can live with it! My **** about/pump track bike rolls on 26” wheels in 27.5” frame and fork and I love it! Could put 27.5 wheels in there but no need as it works perfectly.

First time I noticed a speed difference between wheel sizes (26 and 29) was a road section between trails. The two lads on 29’s were coasting and chatting, while us lads on 26 had to pedal more often to keep up. Although it was hardly scientific given they were different trail bikes with different MTB tyres.

It would be interesting to compare bikes with the same geometry, tyres and suspension spec, with different wheel combinations, back-to-back on the same trails with a consistent rider. But it’s pretty much impossible to do! I suspect the difference would not be as much as people think, except on longer high speed trails where the advantage could be maximised.

Some of the last of the 26 bikes are still decent bikes to ride, without the latest hub spacing, 35mm handlebar, 30mm rims. I’m thinking bikes like the Transition Suppressor and a few others that weren’t a million miles away from the latest bikes. There’s no doubt in my mind that a 29” wheeled FS bike, that is as long and slack as you can reasonably go, with suspension set really soft, would absolutely obliterate the famous Peak bridleways and would be the only way to keep KOM’s on them.

Watch Pinkbike fails for the 29nr kiss of death in action. Although it can happen with all wheel sizes, can be mitigated by the adaptation we all do and better technique.

I’m there in a few weeks can’t wait. The poor bike is quivering in the corner it knows what’s coming!

Kev’s bikes

Lucky it isn’t a Truck they get silly expensive if you loose them.

Yup mate of mine crushed one in the first week of a new job, was about 500 quid. Seems as though car manufactures are trying to match it!

You used to be able to buy key blanks, the relevant transponder and then get it programmed for much less money. But I think this has been gradually made more difficult because it’s a nice little earner for the dealer networks.

Support your LBS.

I know but when it’s full RRP which in the MTB market is a fanciful mockery for show to potential investors, look we sell this bit of generic Chinese/Taiwan made tat to idiots for this much!

I mean 20 quid brake hoses and who the **** buys 80 quid tyres!

Facebook/Meta/Insta stepped in and removed him, which helped reduce his reach. Twitter

Yup none of that shit.

These look decent. Look through this guys videos, spoilt for it in S Wales there’s so much!

Never heard of the guy until this thread. What a sheltered life I lead eh. Just not wedded to the worst parts of social media where the silliest dickheads lurk, apart from here of course!

TBF that’s always been an issue, as most of it’s down to perception as they’ve no real way of knowing what is fast

It’s definitely an issue with time trial sports in general.

Then you’ve got the thing where some riders look fast but don’t post as good times as less exciting to watch riders.

It’s why I like watching Jesse Melamed race. He always looks fast and most of the time delivers. In the women’s Enduro Isabeau is dull as ditch water to watch but is always at the top or thereabouts, since Cecile retired! Marine Cabirou is good to watch in the women’s DH, less so Rachel and Camille! Daprela is great to watch but often crashes or doesn’t quite cut the mustard. Amaury always looks fast and backs it up. Riders like Loic and Gregg are pretty boring to watch IMO but often produce the goods, Gregg less so now-a-days.

I bought two powerlinks – fifteen **** quid???

You can buy links from other UK based suppliers, which are not the same brand as the chain, work the same and aren’t as much of a rip off for teeny tiny bits of metal!

U asked for it. It was this or Sabrina!

One on one to the death. It’s the way!

Meh. What’s Phillip Schofield up to now-a-daze?

Transition Suppressor is 26 and 27.5 compatible.

Looked for one a while ago. They don’t seem to come up for sale often.

A few days ago. Some lush North Wales secret squirrel, well it’s not that secret! Took one of the alternative trail ends to the service track. ****-me was near vertical, with a small gap to the bottom of the run out, which meant a near 90 degree front wheel to ground contact. Didn’t sound nice but the 160mm X-Fusion Sweep swallowed it up and I thanked my lucky stars as I thought it was a definite OTB faceplant.

Scooped landings, or worst of the worst, uphill landings can give nasty g-outs. There’s a drop at Moelfre DH I’ve seen stop pro riders dead. Not massive (not small either) but if you didn’t clear the bowl your front wheel landed uphill. So a not quite flat drop feels twice as brutal! On a smaller scale if you land in the bowls of Insufficient Funds drops at BPW, it feels like a rough ride, but if you make all the landings it’s smooth sailing!

I you’re only slapping the bottom out on bad landings then it’s probably about right. If hitting big stuff often then more HSC or air pressure will help, usually at the expense of some small bump sensitivity. Hydraulic bottom outs (Manitou Pro and other forks) are smoother but obviously don’t completely iron things out!

Gulf + one of the best looking cars ever

KW suspension have put their name on some unusual but serious machines over the years. Like this Starlet, yes a Starlet!

Considering there are only 12 notes per octave in conventional western music and every chord progression has already been played. It’s ridiculous that desperate grasping **** try it on, when the artists themselves are long since past.

I spit on them and their legal turd slurpers. Reminds me of those corporate **** who attempted to restrict commercial use of specific colours!

These:

Somewhat polished turd

Brian power

Obscure shopping trolley

For the lads

Haha not House again