It’s the relentlessly high winds that are such a downer. One weekend you can handle, but we’ve had three consecutively and next weekend is forecast for more of the same. There’s no end in sight.

I’ve been doing a lot of running through the woods and along the riverbank where it’s sheltered, but it’s not enough. I need a solid 6/7hrs on the bike. I just know that the first doable weekend that comes along, I’m going to bite off more than I can chew just out of sheer desperation.

Sincere sympathies to those for whom the consequences are more than just the pursuit of leisure. Flooded homes awful.

Yes I mount the Vortex upside down.

The Moon Combo Mount product pic actually shows it with a Garmin on top and an upside down Vortex below.

I bought the Vortex because a) it got good reviews as a road light, b) it was cheap, and c) the only one product which is exactly what I wanted (the inverted STVZO Lezyne I linked to) is out of stock and anyway thrice the price.

∆ Yes but I think it’s broadly agreed on the thread so far that the cowl and the cut-out don’t really do anything (hence no point trying to modify them) as the beam characteristics are all determined the internal reflectors.

https://www.wiggle.co.uk/lezyne-lite-drive-stvzo-pro-115l-front-light/

Don’t know if this is so new it isn’t in the shops yet, or if it’s so old it’s been and gone.

The Ravemen and the Fenix look good, but neither of them can be run inverted under an out-front mount.

If you are in any way road curious then I can’t recommend enough a) the Tre Cima de Lavaredo climb and b) the Maratona route.

I stayed in Cortina which is pretty classy, though as our polish waitress said, “it has everything and it has nothing”.

Reading material: The Lonely Skier.

Also as a kid when we refused to comply we got the punishment with rattan beating, yes, we did.

I’m generally a limp-wristed, lilly-livered liberal but I think corporal punishment is absolutely the correct remedy in this case.

Thought this was going to be a thread about which Strava segments we are targeting 😉

Very, very cool set-ups Whitestone!

Unfortunately Revelate and Wildcat can’t be bought in the UK currently. Out of stock across the board/not yet back in production.

The timing of my first trip next month may force my hand before availability improves. I’ll see how long I can leave it.

I am in the market for a seat pack. In the first instance it will be for overnight b&b road touring, but I’d like it to be versatile enough for future mtb bike packing.

I’m considering the Apidura Expedition 14L (due to good reviews and strong recommendation from pal), or the Alpkit exo-rail Koala 13L. The 1L, 100g and £30 difference is not significant to me. What is v. important to me is minimum compromise of ride quality. At the moment I’m veering towards the Alpkit due to its anti-sway rail system.

Any words of wisdom or anything else I should be considering?

Cheers all.

Would £533 for 29er 140mm Pike RCT3 not be considered pretty decent?

Next q: what offset would be considered best suited to a SolarisMax XL?

I suppose the ideal STVZO front light would have mounting interfaces on the bottom and the top for maximum flexibility, so that it could be mounted either on the bars or upside down under a Garmin.

Does STVZO apply to rear lights, or just front?

Why are so few front lights STVZO compliant? Is there a dynamo element to the German regs? I’ve read a not terribly well translated article which suggests that this may be the case.

I also don’t really understand the flashing objection. For me personally I think flashing is good for daytime “be seen” blinkys which are visible but not distracting, but at night when I want to see where I’m going I use proper lights and I always have them on constant.

Finally, upside down STVZO lights which can be mounted under a Garmin out front mount; I’d have thought this was a pretty big market. I can only find one example; an out of stock and possibly discontinued Lezyne Lite Drive STVZO Pro 115 Loaded Reverse. Even that seems to have a pretty feeble output/battery specs.

What’s the chat?

That’s interesting. I’ve only had it on my French weekend last year…

I had been hoping that because the Explore can be synched through a phone once you get abroad, then at that point it will know where the satellites are and Junction Lag would be eliminated. With the Touring you needed to plug it into a pc to synch it, which is difficult if you’re abroad.

– Also (I think in the current firmware) on long routes the navigation can seem to get out of sync with where you are: when you get the “approaching a junction” view it’ll be showing you the wrong one, so your arrow never appears on the screen and you wonder what the hell it’s showing you because it doesn’t bear any relation to the junction you’re actually approaching.

I’ve had this symptom with the Touring Plus abroad before (and it was massively infuriating given that I was in a group, so sometimes leading them all the wrong way), but curiously not in the UK even on long rides. I had put it down to the unit not knowing where the satellites were, but that’s just a wild guess.

“Junction Lag” would be a deal breaker for me.

Thread resurrection.

My Touring Plus was very badly behaved yesterday. It was giving me the full treatment, namely: a) randomly turn itself off, b) taking c. 10 mins to reload the course, and c) giving me “route calculation error” messages. I’ve persisted with it for years but I’ve now had enough. I’m thinking of the Explore.

Has all of the above been cured on the Explore?

I only want it as a satnav by the way. No powermeter type stuff required.

Thanks all!

if it isn’t solidifying then there’s no phase change and thus latent heat of fusion doesn’t really apply

ok I got that wrong then. I thought that in the undernoted graph the horizontal bits meant that the beer stayed in its original state until sufficient energy had been added/subtracted that it got to the end of the temperature plateau (in whichever direction it was going) and at that point it would change state.

http://www.alevelphysicsnotes.com/thermal_physics/latent_heat.phphttp://www.alevelphysicsnotes.com/thermal_physics/latent_heat.phphttp://www.alevelphysicsnotes.com/thermal_physics/latent_heat.php

Did you drink it?

Of course I drink it, it’s a lager slush puppy. It’s not very nice though.

Thanks all, that naked scientist site has explains it all very patiently!

Just watched season 1 of the Expanse. Really reminiscent of old 2000AD strip Bad City Blue. Basically slums on asteroids.

The makers of the Expanse could quite easily do a one episode Bad City Blue spin-off starring Amos as Blue the Button Man.

The Bicycle Works in Marchmont. 0131 228 8820

They’d be my first port of call. Very flexible and accommodating.

A man who seemingly thought the meek should inherit the earth and that money lenders were a vile lot would probably be disheartened to see the Pope, for example, dripping in bling and living it up surrounded by priceless antiques.

Not just your opinion. There’s a book called “The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ” by Philip Pullman which explores this very notion, in a very readable and engaging way. A bestseller a few years ago. I’d recommend it.

The frame-only blue/silver fade paint job is stunning. With red hubbed wheels it would look fantastic.

However frameset weight at 3.5kg is scary. In fact with full carbon fork and fancy 725 tubes I suspect it’s maybe a typo in the spec?

Poor clearance at 700 is very disappointing.

What’s violet?

Bad ass?

Rey made it. And it’s a completely new colour

They are saving orange and indigo for future installments.

I’d echo the praise for Richard E Grant, a commanding screen presence despite the bit part.

Some of the derivative stuff satisfyingly well done (Ren/Vader redemption), but some of it/much of it painfully clumsy (e.g boardroom force choke, evil pointy toothed Rey).

For all that it will get criticised for being largely safe and formulaic, I did really like the innovation of the “force connection” element of the storyline between Ren and Rey, and also the way they expanded the dream sequence type stuff both in TLJ and this one. There’s a certain degree of creative bravery there which has to be acknowledged.

Where did the yellow light saber come from at the end?

The way that major character Hux got dispatched in such an offhand manner was symptomatic of how ill thought through the three films hang together as a trilogy.

I heard that Lando and AWOL stormtrooper mammoth lady were going to be in a spin-off together? Hence the awkward scene between them and her strange facial expressions.

Disc brakes are worse than rim brakes for UK winter road riding.

Yeah mine was a frameset only.

The Mk2 is currently reduced to £1.5k on the Stif website.

I use a Mk2 Stigmata for road and gravel duties, with a wheelset for each. The attractions of the Santa Cruz were a) their good customer service reputation, b) they have a broad range of sizes, their XL is a good bit bigger in stack and reach than many other brands, and c) it’s just a bit special, it has the X factor, I don’t have that nagging wish I’d got something different.

In hindsight I’d also say that that the mk 2 geometry is perfect for mixed use. Mk 3 geo from memory has steeper SA, slacker HA and bigger clearances which I’m sure make it more capable on technical offroad, but perhaps at the cost of a dull ride on road?

The other bike I’ve seen which I think would serve great double duties and certainly looks the part is the 2020 Ridley Kanzo Speed (Belgian blue).

Johan Lamont and Gordon Strachan both singing from the same hymn sheet. Who knew the Scotch genome was so limiting.

I voted Yes in 2014 for a couple of reasons, one was articles like this from the FT which showed that Scotland was perfectly capable of being a prosperous independent nation:

https://www.ft.com/content/5b5ec2ca-8a67-11e3-ba54-00144feab7de

The other reason was a genuine concern that Scotland would get dragged out of Europe by eurosceptic England. I worked in England for many years so had an inkling, but I don’t claim to be particularly insightful. It was just a lucky/unlucky guess.

I appreciate that things have moved on since 2014. I honestly thought it was a pretty straightforward decision back in 2014 but now it’s much more complicated. As with everything touched by Brexit, it’s lose/lose either way.

I did the official route of Ticknock (aka 3 Rock) in the summer. Great fun but very short at about 50 mins. Didn’t have time to get the Trailforks out.

I hate crashing by the way, doesn’t constitute fun in my book!

May I suggest that it’s a good idea to have a pre-thought-out strategy for buying watches.

When I was interested in this sort of thing a few years ago it was on the basis that <£100, was fine for fun, impulse buys, and >£1k was fine for timeless classics/keepers/heirlooms (but limit to one or two). What was not fine was the £100-£1k in-between, no man’s land which is a total waste of money.

I happen to think the mid-range is the poorest value, but the important thing is to think about your own values and hence strategy rather than taking a scattergun approach to what can be a very expensive interest (though maybe not so as expensive as MTBs).

The government of France recently bought a landmark building on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile which they currently operate as an Institute Français. It’s far too big and prominent for a Consulate (in any event they already have one of those in Edinburgh), but about the right size for an Embassy.

If you’re reading the tea leaves that’ll tell you something about EU attitude to Scotland.

I think that after 2014 the SNP did say that another ref should only be called when there was consistent 60% support in the polls. This was out of self interest, if another ref is whiffed then as per Quebec the notion really is dead and buried.

Also, consistent polls at 60% would make it impossible for Westminster to deny/ easy for them to approve.

Therefore, its only when 60% is reached that both sides will be happy with it. This is a matter of pragmatic realpolitik according to polls, not a technical supermajority voting system on the final result.

I wonder how enthusiastic the moderate wing of the leadership of the SNP really are about getting a ref right now when it’s so nip and tuck.

Scotland is a write-off for Labour. They are the fourth party. So many SNP/Con marginals that Labour supporters will be obliged to tactically vote SNP.

Labour would be best just to rely on SNP support issue by issue. The “coalition of chaos” message is good for galvanising Scots Torys but no one in the rest of the UK seems to g.a.s? Union polled as not as important as Brexit etc?

According to to her Twitter, Lammy is Sturgeons “favourite Labour politician”, pic of them cuddling etc. You’d imagine that they could work together well. UK Labour not in a position to turn its nose up at 48 potentially sympathetic MPs.

Leinster’s big ginger 3rd string stand-off looked very good too. He’s worth keeping an eye on.

It’s not for want of entertainment value, Leinster are like the Harlem Globetrotters today.

Tristram Hunt FTW

It wasn’t a Brexit Election in Scotland according to the Conservative leaflets. The B word was not mentioned once.

No, according to the Tories this was fair and square an Indyref 2 election.

So how does that work out now?