What size bike are you after? I’ll soon have a 19″ Stumpjumper carbon comp for sale, 2012 model. With 1×10 and crests/DT/XTR wheels, it comes in at 22 lbs.

Topical but mean. Have you got some kind of beef with Contador?

Absolute power savings may be smaller at lower speeds, but you’ll be producing less power anyway, plus you’ll be out there for longer, so the gains still add up. At least, that’s what Cervelo say.
http://www.cervelo.com/en/engineering/thinking-and-processes/slow-vs-fast-riders.html

A quick word on durability – a well-built, lightweight set of ‘road’ wheels will be more than strong enough. E.g., I got a pair of DTSwiss RR1450s, (28h, 1450 g/pr), they did a couple of years on the road, couple of seasons of CX and the Three Peaks, twice, before I decided to replace the rear rim because it was a bit dinged and had worn brake tracks. Front is still fine 🙂
(I weigh 70 kg and I’m none too gentle with bikes and bits.)

2 weeks of food tasting of petrol

Fair point, but ycan get used to it. The first meal you have without that particular chemical ‘je ne sais quoi’, you’ll miss it.

What about an Esbit or similar, runs off hexy blocks? You can use firelighters in a pinch but they’re a bit smelly and leave a sticky mess behind.

Couple of friends of mine ride an xs Niner Air9 (5’2″) and medium Specialized Fate Expert (5’3″). They both love ’em but be aware that the Niner is very stiff, probably suited for a short stocky bloke to hammer into everything, whereas the Fate is designed for women from the ground up.

I don’t know it this qualifies as retro. It’s my 1993 Pinarello Treviso. I’ve had it from new but now it’s fitted with modern gears and brakes so it works properly. Still rides beautifully.

Not maintaining “the current rate of global population growth” is.

I think we’re in agreement here. The current rate of population growth is not likely to be maintained. It seems it’ll likely level out, without the need, hopefully, for more widespread draconian measures enacted by authoritarian regimes, or mass starvation or the like.
Going back to the other part of the point, I’m undecided about the role of GM crops. Used wisely, GM can play an important role in feeding a growing world population, alongside other agricultural improvements, better storage and distribution etc. We also need more equitable distribution of wealth and fairer exploitation of natural resources. I’m afraid that might be very hard to achieve, harder than technological fixes.

Ernie_lynch, the UN report predicts the population to continue to rise, tending to stabilise around 9 bn (as fertility falls to around 2) but not falling at any point. Falling birth rates do not automatically imply a falling population – they need to fall below 2 for that to happen.
China’s one child policy has led to sex-selective abortions, millions of ‘surplus’ single men and an increasing proportion of the elderly, never mind coming in for criticism on human rights grounds. Ok, it has contributed to reducing population growth to some extent, but at quite a cost. Can you imagine enacting such a policy in the West?

Point of info for earlier posters about global population growth: The UN predicts it’ll grow from the current 7.2 billion to 9 billion or so by 2050. This is largely as a result of people living longer, even though birth rates in some developing countries will fall to 2 per woman as living standards rise. (But the rate in many is still quite high.) The population will then stabilise. Probably.
If you want the population to fall, you need to kill a very large number of people through natural catastrophes, mass disease outbreaks and the like, or employ forced sterilisation or population restrictions (and we saw how well that worked in China, right?)

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=45165#.U5YbqSBwaP8

I used a 10 spd Ultegra short cage mech with a 12-36 cassette for the 3 Peaks and that was fine with 39/46 up front, but I don’t know if that would work on all bikes.
To answer the OP, I tried out a narrow-wide ring on my cross bike at the HONC. It was a Wolftooth 42t with 12-25 and the same Ultegra short cage mech. even though the route was really bumpy in places and the chain ended up bone dry, I had no drops at all – I was pretty impressed.

We need to fight the idea that the NHS is inefficient. We spend less on healthcare than comparable countries (2010 WHO figures are $8223 per person per annum for the USA, $5391 for Norway, $3997 for France and a paltry $3443 for the UK.) A paper in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine rated the UK 2nd out of 17 developed nations for efficiency and cost-effectiveness in saving lives. (http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/documents/2011/08/07/JRSMpaperPritWall.pdf)
The USA came last.

Spesh Fasttraks are ok. I’ve used them almost exclusively for Xc for a couple of years. They’re cheaper and last longer than Schwalbes, roll fast enough but they are a bit heavier. While they cope surprisingly well with mud, they do bung up a bit and have less grip than something more open like a Rocket Ron

Last season, my team-mate was running 34 or 36 with 12-27 cassettes. We got rid of the big ring, a 46, because she never used it off-road, shortened the chain, removed the gear cable and used the front mech as a chain keeper. Worked a treat.

One more vote for tubs for racing, tubes fro riding around and training.
For the road, you can use tub tape and the higher pressures hold the tyre on, so you can change a tub out on a ride. For cross, the thing should be glued on so well it’s a swine to get off. Takes me about 15-20 mins to unstick a cross tub. Fixing flats with tubs is a pain. If it’s a pinhole, then 1/2 a teaspoon of latex will fix it. More than that and you need to send it off for repair (unless you fancy unpicking the stitching yourself).

Crank Bros. The Hexus is let down by a couple of things. It has loose bits for 8mm hex and T25, so they’ll get lost the first time you use them in long grass, plus you need to prise a bit off the side to use as a lever on the chain tool. On the CB, you need a bit more oomph to use the chain breaker, but it does work well and there are no small loose parts.

Jonba – chapeau! That’s the way to race, win or bust. To continue the kamikaze Frenchman theme, more amateurs could take a leaf out of M. Jacky Durand’s book. I love this quote of his:
“I’d rather finish shattered and last having attacked a hundred times than finish 25th without having tried.”
It might not work most of the time but it’s bloody amazing when it does.

About the hand pain, see if you can find a comfortable way of holding the hoods, then make sure that they’re angled so that when you’re on the bike and your hand is in the preferred position, your wrist is straight. You may have to move things around a bit to get there. Don’t just rotate the bars, you can move the levers up and down a little bit too. Undoing a few turns of bar tape isn’t such a faff.
Butcher is right too, in that you shouldn’t have much weight on your hands. If your fore/aft position on the saddle is good and you have decent core strength, you should be able to hold your torso up hands-free, even in quite a low position.

Gordon’s might be getting a slating here but a few years ago, along with a couple of mates who declared themselves to be gin connoisseurs and particular fans of Tanqueray, I did a tasting experiment in the pub. It was a proper double-blind trial of Gordon’s vs Tanqueray with Schweppes tonic and guess what? All three of us preferred Gordon’s.

How well do tubeless tyres hold up at low pressures? Do they tend to roll or burp at, say, 20 psi or so?

Oldgit has it right about a 29er being ok for road miles, especially the point about bar ends. Get some fast-rolling, hard-wearing knobbly tyres and you’ll be fine everywhere. (I can’t imagine you’d be faster than on a 26er with similar tyres though.)
I’ve commuted on a 29er with knobblies at 30 psi, a CX bike with knobblies at 45 psi and a road bike with 25 mm tyres at 90 psi. For the same effort (a steady cruising pace), the road bike is about 1 mph faster than the ‘crosser, which is about 1 mph faster than the MTB, so you won’t die or be late for everything riding a 29er everywhere.

Crux? A friend of mine gets on really well with her 49 cm (she’s 5’1″). You can get it as frame, forks and seatpost but the whole bike’s better value.

Let me get this straight. There’s a bloody great dent in the frame and the shop says it’s not structural? FFS! What makes them qualified to say that? Do they have a consulting engineer on hand?
That is no small defect and it’s on the inside of a bent tube, in the middle of a highly loaded region. Just asking for the tube to buckle there. Walk away.

^ That’s quite tidy. I did a similar job on a 20 yr old Pinarello. Respray, new steel aheadset forks as the old ones had shagged chrome, 105 groupset, new 3T bars and stem – kept the old Shimano 600 chainset though as I think it’s a very elegant shape. It’s like having it new all over again 🙂

That’s lovely. You sure you want to change the forks? You may find it a bit tricky to find carbon forks for a 1″ steerer. That was the only problem I had when I refurbished an old steel road bike. Tifosi make some but that was all I could find. You’ve also got a pretty high crown on those forks so you might fiddle with the handling if you can’t match it. You’ll be able to add any modern groupset – I’m using 10 sp 105 – with cable stop/adjusters on the downtube shifter mounts. You probably won’t be able to put a 10sp cassette straight on – if you’ve got a freehub you may only need to replace that. I’d be surprised if you could find a compact square taper chainset so you’ll need a new BB too.

I have broken a few chains over the years. With one exception, it’s been due to pedalling while shifting. Sometimes it not 100% the rider’s fault, a friend of mine broke one the other day – she’s 9 stone wet through and rides with plenty of finesse, but her gears were playing up at the time. The one exception was a SRAM chain. It was at the start of a cx race. I was definitely in gear, stamped on the pedals and it just broke there and then, leaving me on the start line. When I looked at it, I saw lots of radial cracks on the side plates, starting from the rivet heads. A good close inspection would have spotted them.

Sefton, I didn’t have a particular problem with mud on the chainstay bridge, no more that carbon frames with that odd little shelf behind the BB. I’d’ve preferred not to have one, surely the chainstays could be beefed up a bit instead? Anyway, it worked fine. I have to confess that for racing, I was lucky enough to have a pair of them and a first class pit crew, thereby swerving the issue, but 4 hour midwinter rides in the sludge of Epping Forest didn’t seem to bother it either.

It’s an aluminium Crux, 2011 model. As seen in the pic, it was 7.75 kg. I raced it last season and loved it – made me wonder what all the fuss with carbon frames was about.

Stumpjumper Comp Carbon. I’ve got one – it’s just starting its third race season and I’m very happy with it.

How do people fit commuting miles into their training plans?

I’m sure that commuting has helped my fitness. I just keep it steady, 45 mins of Z2 each way, most days, that way I’m not tired and can usually manage another ride that day if I get the chance. Mondays after a race are always Z1 or recovery or nothing, depending on what my legs say. I might go harder on the turbo or local chaingang in the evening.

Yes. Mavic used to make an adapter, looks like this:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/mavic-mountain-bike-brake-adapter-/151081465743
Or you might get lucky and find an odd v-brake with enough adjustment to move the pads up high.

Forgot to say, the Niner has front suspension (100mm Sids)

A friend of mine got herself on a 29er XC bike recently and wrote about it here:

http://www.bikesoup.com/magazine/review-29-er-xc-mtb-bike-options-geometrically-gifted-shorter-rider/

She has a Niner Air 9 Carbon. Her old bike was a blingy carbon 26″ HT rocket (sub 20 lbs all in) and the 29er is heavier, adding almost 2 lbs to the bike’s weight, but she loves it and swears she goes faster. Next time we ride together, I am expecting to get a really hard time on the descents.

Cut the seatpost off a short distance above the frame, maybe 50 mm, so you’ve got something to grab. Poke a hacksaw blade down the seatpost and cut a slot in it from the inside. Cut more slots if necessary. Worked for me once.

This is obviously quite a big deal. I too have safety concerns when someone grabs a draft. I’m always doing lifesaver looks so I don’t get sneaked up on, but if the drafter isn’t right behind me, they block my view. That, and they might run into the back of me if I have to brake hard. I can just about grasp how this can make people angry, but what I utterly fail to understand is how you can even entertain the idea of doing something as p*ss-dangerous as braketesting the guy behind or deliberately bunny-hopping a pothole instead of moving around it. Whoever suggested such a thing, never mind actually did it, ought to be ashamed of themselves.

One bike for racing (XC, done a couple of ‘crosses and a stage race on it too), pootling, woods, trail centres, bridleway cruising, the lot. 29er HT with 80 mm forks. Just swap the wheels depending on whether I’m racing or doing anything else.

If the offer’s still open, can I take you up on it? I’m in Swindon so it’s not out of your way.

Cris

Use a sharp pick carefully to prise out the seals. Flush with something solventy like disc brake cleaner, then pack with grease. Don’t use lithium grease, it sucks in water. Calcium-based grease is good (often called marine grease), especially the stuff for outboard motors. Some bicycle greases are good too, e.g. Finish Line Teflon , Shimano Dura-Ace and some Blue Morgan stuff. Replace the seals, smear on more grease, replace the dust shields and away you go, for another couple of months at least.
PF30 is a shitty idea, or at least it’s been shittily implemented. BBs run slowly with heavy off-axis loads and the near-certainty of dirt getting in. You’d be best off with a full complement of larger balls, like an old cup and cone BB or one of the older cartridge bearing BBs. Instead, what you get is nowhere near a full complement of balls, which are tiny anyway, because that’s all you can fit around the huge bloody axle.

The law on bridleways is quite clear. The 1968 Countryside Act, section 30 introduced the right to cycle on bridleways, provided cyclists give way to walkers and horseriders. You don’t have to like it but you’ve got to lump it. Those posters expressing views that the order of priority ought to be different are no different to motorists who think speed limits ought to be higher or cyclists ought to pay road tax. Campaign to change the law, by all means, but know what it is now and expect trouble if you don’t follow it. Just sayin’, like.