Erm, with the big 6-0 being but 2 months away, I feel………what the hell? Can’t change it, can’t fight it, but can find ways of ‘just being’ – to the max.

Am more physically fit than I’ve been for about 20 years, thanks to riding more. Not technically particularly impressive rider, and yes, I do fall off sometimes, and yes, it can hurt, but whatever – it’s just great to be out there, 2 wheels, suspension and rider interacting with the terrain and loving the wildlife and views. Never had much of a competitive streak, and that’s largely absent now.

And then there’s everything else – my passions and enthusiasm seem as strong as ever, and I feel more confident in my thoughts than ever I did in my 20s and 30s. Love wild music of all genres (WOMAD regular for over 20 years), love strange movies, challenging ideas. Am at least as leftie/radical as I was in my teens and twenties, and now less worried about speaking out against something that seems to me unjust. What the hell – why not? You only have one life!

And then there’s love and sex…….still seem to be interested in all of that, and still love women (though seem more capable of managing to be faithful than I did – perhaps having flings was partly a symptom of feeling insecure when younger, and always believing the grass must be greener……)

Hey-ho – just live it Phil!

Equally to blame is friggin Norman Baker, Minister with responsibility for road safety, who has recently broken silence since he became a ConDem minister (he was previously a very vocal LibDem) by spouting his absurd views about the libertarian right of cyclists not to wear helmets………..the irony being particularly marked, because in the 6 Counties of Northern Ireland, where the dead Anglesey cyclist came from, they have just voted to make the wearing of bike helmets compulsory.

Agreed – unprincipled opportunist scum, but it was ever thus.

Also, I have to say Labour (whether new, old or merely mouldy) has been almost equally prone to this kind of jingoistic claptrap, and wrapping itself in the union jack.

The real question is how we go about developing an internationalist alternative which is more than just pious – ie why it is in the interest of British workers to see foreign workers as friends, and our own home-grown bosses and rulers as the real problem.

Now this should start the hare running………..

Miles and miles of Miles, please!

A lot of this stuff’s cool, some is self-indulgent noodling (you’re right), but normally a combination of the riff, the groove and less-is-more solos produce some of the best music (of any genre) from the last 100 years anywhere on earth.

A few on Extreme Sports Trader.

TJ – your views are well-known, and as the last of the libertarian nutters on this issue you come in a long line of great British eccentrics – literally cutting head off to spite face.

Helmets provide partial protection. Any accident involving combined force of over about 35mph renders helmets pretty useless. This is true also for motorbike helmets, and for cyclists is probably more relevent for roadies who are often hit by a speeding vehicle. With MTBs it’s more likely to be a messy off or being hit by a low hanging branch……….and as such, while it provides no 100% magic shield, wearing a helmet just seems like obvious sense. We all have anecdotal stories of the ‘without this, you would have been a gonner’ type.

No!

I recently saw somewhere, I think it was Rutland Cycles, doing a ridiculously cheap offer on an 09 or 10 female version of the Scott Genius, with something like 60% off! They’re cracking bikes (metaphorically not literally), nice and light and yet with bags of travel. Other than that, I’d agree with Cinnamon Girl – Santa Cruz Juliana. I’ve got an old Superlight and it’s still so much fun on all terrains. Mrs Deka… has a Cube AMS Womens, which looks ever so purdy but still weighs in at pretty much 29lb.

Go for the Sony!

Approx 700mm with a stem shorter than 90mm seems to suit my riding style on most bikes most of the time. Climb well enough, and can flick round twisty forest tracks more easily. Narrower bars/longer stems really do make any sort of twisty steering barge-like, and only seem to be good for going in a straight line (and how much fun is that?) I also agree with the lungs/breathing points – true for me also.

However, stems shorter than 60mm feel too twitchy – it’s all about making a measured turn and holding a line, rather than turning in on yourself too fast.

Old DJ name of mine, but now I’m an old ex-DJ.

Can genuinely report stags – 3 extremely large guys with mega antlers, even stopped long enough for us to take photos – while riding on Dunwich Heath in Suffolk a couple of years ago. Often encounter smaller deer (raced a munti for quarter of a mile in the middle of the snow and ice in winter 09/10), and at the moment, hares – wonderful beasts, entirely different to bunnies who just zip accross the trail infront of your wheels.

And then there’s the dog walkers…………..

TJ’s spot on (never thought I’d find myself saying this after the spats I’ve had with him)………….all those private sector loving STW folk who believe that just because they’ve got crap pensions, and this must be caused by halfway decent public sector pensions rather than the greediness of their own bosses (who, by the way, never forget to feather their own nests in a way that defies gravity), should now resume banging their own heads like metronomes minute by minute until they extinguish that last brain cell. C’mon guys, this is an exercise in extreme masochism – good old ‘if I suffer then I’m going to make bloody sure you suffer too.’ What ever happened to rounding up rather than screwing down?

And for the record, having worked in the public sector for a big chunk of my life, and now having 3 part-time jobs (one vol sector, two private sector) I have to say that I never met these alleged lazy incompetent publicly employed drones you guys seem to meet everywhere. I did however meet many stressed people trying to do their job and make a difference and yes, actually help people, in adverse circumstances. Nothing I have seen more recently in private employment has matched that………..and then there’s the voluntary sector, but that’s a whole new thread.

Sure, there’s a lot of brand snobbery going on here. Just because something is ‘exclusive’ doesn’t make it better. However, restricting variety and dumbing down to hit a price point ain’t so clever. Moral of the story – Voodoo are great bikes and we wish we could get access to all the ones that are not imported here. Halfords, on the other hand, are a bunch of grasping swine who are so penny-pinching that they refuse to train their staff to build and maintain the sometimes excellent bikes they get their hands on. Why they have not realised that the adage about peanuts and monkeys holds true for them beggars belief – truly the Gerald Ratners of the cycling world.

I’ve had and upgraded an 09 Voodoo Canzo for the last year, and once I’d rebuilt it and replaced substandard wheels and brakes, it has been one of the best bikes I’ve ever owned – balanced, poised and capable of doing anything I’ve asked of it. Looking forward to trying the Zobop, but as usual assume the need to rebuild from scratch to avoid the usual Halfords quality control issues.

Most from my door at night after work, using local tracks and bridalways ; at weekends localish but need to drive there (Thetford and Rendlesham Forests, Alton Water) ; hols or weekends away (South Downs, Wales various, Stretton Hills/Long Mynd, Sierra Nevada hopefully this May.) What’s great about travelling round the UK by car, for work or pleasure, is to have the bike in the back, and park up and explore a likely looking trail you just happen to see – opportunist riding! So most of my riding is ‘natural’ trails and paths/woods – though I suppose parts of Thetford could be said to be a trail centre.

Saab 9-5 estate – loadsa room, comfy, good to drive IMO and cheap as chips. Avoid the 2 litre and 2.3 light pressure petrol turbos – bit slothful, not v economic, and prone to engine breather problems. Go for either the petrol Aero (sh*t off a shovel) or the 2.2 TiD (noisy but pokey enough and v reliable engine – I have a 9-3 TiD @ 155K and the only cost has been a replacement turbo @145K.) 2.2 TiD better than later 1.9 TiD, which is less reliable.

Go for the Bel-Air – or even better, a Fizik Arione or Gobi or Selle Italia Gel-Flo.

I think the only reason for the general trajectory of getting more right wing (or to put it another way, becoming less prepared to challenge established thinking and established order) as we get older is that we get more bought off and compromised by the system (mortgages, loans, trying to start businesses and become mini-me capitalists). We therefore seek to intellectually rationalise and justify the inevitable. But you know what? It’s all crap, an illusory pack of cards which collapses whenever the economy catches a cold.

So the moral of the tale? Stay alert, bullshit detector (thanks, Joe Strummer) in hand. Those with money power and status want us to stay docile and subscribe to their injustices, here in the UK and worldwide (hello Egypt – show us the way!) Don’t – fight the power (thanks, Public Enemy) and stay critical leftists. I’m 59 and it works for me – infact I don’t think I have any alternative.

Mine went on my 51 plate Saab 9-3 TiD (145K miles) 4 months ago – such spectacular smoke that I brought the whole A14 to a halt, and then 3 police cars and an ambulance arrived, thinking the car had caught fire!
I feared the worst in terms of cost, but £700 fitted did the job. Now, 4 months later, the car’s going better than ever and has covered another 9K miles.

One tip – after the turbo change, don’t do the full milage cycle before changing the oil again. Incase bits have started to go into the engine and fuel system from the old turbo, change the oil again after about 6K miles.

Good luck!

No – rights of way are protected (insofar as anything is in ConDemworld) but rights of way cover only footpaths for walkers and established bridleways. Much of what we ride falls into the catagory of ‘permissive route’ (saucy huh?) and as such there is no legal protection – it is up to the landowner to give permission (or not.) The concern is that many of the new private landlords will EITHER find a multitude of reasons for stopping us riding OR seek to charge us arms and legs if we are to carry on doing so.

Either way, this ConDem plan needs to be fought as publicly as possible as it puts ideology and a hatred of all things publicy owned ahead of the rights of all of us to roam in what we believed was everyone’s heritage – the open forest.

26″ and 29″ wheels to the log barricades!

God there are some reactionary numpties on this site…………when the system craps on us all, blame those challenging the system, not the system itself. Yeah, right. Back to your caves boys.

Is that bored rigid, rigid as in rigor mortis, or rigid as in Cove Stiffee?

Me – I’m late middle aged I guess at 59. According to mamadirt I’ll suddenly get old in 5 months time. Buss pass territory. Really?

Ah yes – ‘human nature’. Now there’s a thing…………is it really that human nature is this fixed unevolvable set of ‘me-me-me’s (and screw the rest of you)’, or is it that human nature is a set of variables which changes as the social and economic context changes – but we’ve been so stuck for so long in the capitalist context that we accept what the system’s ideological enforcers tell us when they say ‘you can’t change human nature’?

There’s been a lot of interesting research recently about altruism in both animal and human behaviour (which I am too much of a techno-dunce to get links to on this site)……….makes you think though, cos if we are so immutably selfish and hard-wired for personal (not collective) gain, why is there continuing evidence of unselfish acts?

C’mon Zulu, Stoner et al – you didn’t disappoint me last time. Allow yourselves to be goaded again!

Having come to this thread v late (probably good thing in terms of avoiding ego massaging and bottom smelling) I think the point about capitalism is this – it’s crap, it leads to disproportion and increasing inequality (and equality, as we now know, is an index of how happiness is perceived), not to mention periodic catastrophic crisis, starvation and war. It’s not that ‘there’s no alternative’, but that the political and ideological apparatus of capitalism worldwide does everything in its power to strangle and pervert all possible alternatives at birth………..its ideological power is immense and it is this which keeps our brains enslaved and unable of being able to conceive of a world without the profit motive.

OK all you neo-cons and right wing goons – come and get me!

Talking Heads/D Byrne solo each and every time, Manu Chao at the Brixton Accademy in 06/07, Aswad at Carnival in 83 or 84, Lianne Caroll most times (ditto Sarah-Jane Morris and Gilad Atzmon) and Eddie Reader in a little pub backroom in Cambridge in about 96………..and we won’t be talking about Joy Division, New Order, the Clash, Pigbag or the Jazz Warriors, nor the Grateful Dead, Little Feat, Little Axe,Bob Marley and the Wailers, Baaba Maal or Airto Moreira & Flora Purim.

Re size, Santas are notoriously ‘small’ for their size. I had a a size L Superlight 2 years ago and it was too small. I now have an XL and it’s just right – and I am also 6′ (with 33″ inside leg.) Admittedly mine is an 06 frame, but I don’t think their sizing has altered.

Re shops, why not try the Santa UK website for stockists? I’d be very surprised if neither London nor Cambridge (or both) didn’t have more than one SC stockist. Cambs is actually stuffed with bike shops as it’s a bike city – but with distinct roadie/student bias, as that’s where the business is, and the local terrain is a little less than challenging!

Prefer the Cannondale bikes myself……

Like the Flux – best rear skull protection I’ve come across (hello TJ! Just talking the usual nonsense you helmet deniers scoff at!)

Like the Flux – best rear skull protection I’ve come across (hello TJ! Just talking the usual nonsense you helmet deniers scoff at!)

Si, your bikes may be progressive but your mental processes certainly are not……..Now I’m no fan of the Labour Party, because unlike you I believe that us ordinary folk deserve more than jingoistic pro-capitalist politics dressed in Mondeoman (or Worcesterwoman) clothing. The reason Labour has always failed to go anywhere is because it is as bound to the system as the Tories and Lib Dems are – ultimately they all believe in relation to the market that ‘there is no alternative’ (remember Thatcher’s famous words.) Hence when the market worldwide screws up, we all have to pay the price. For you to say this is down to ‘Labour’s ideological policies’ gives Labour far more credit than they’re due – Her Majesties loyal opposition just wants to manage capitalism not overturn it. They may be inept and they may be cowards and turncoats, but actually they did realise that public spending had to rise to offset the worst effects of a world capitalist crash and indeed in Autumn 08 to keep money coming out of holes in the wall for us all to live. Now that part of the crisis is over, the ‘masters of the universe’ have gotten bold again and are trying to have us believe that actually their system can save us and the public sector caused the recession, the opposite of the truth. Faced with this, Labour can do nothing – it is impotent because it has been too complicit in its support for bankers, industrialists and the (filthy) rich. Infact it lacks the ideological tools for the job of defending us (even you, dear Si and Stoner and Zulu) from the onslaught of job cutting, wage cutting and scapegoating that Cameron, Osborne and their rich friends around the world intend to visit upon us………..and when they force us to sell our bikes, will we be prepared to fight them then, or will it all be too late???!!!

Great hardtails still, but bit of a full-sus crisis.

What an ugly bunch of f*****s these are!

Currently 3.5, may well rise to 4.5 tomorrow until I sell one!
Upgraded Voodoo Canzo
Superlight
Setavento Ti
Marin Eldridge Grade frame
+ my wife’s Cube AMS, of course

Yeah – good deal for a VW with a fair amount of kit – as BB says, especially from a dealer. Guess this reflects that economic confidence is not great, therefore dealers keen to shift higher milage cars. The 1.9 TDI engine, though less refined than the 2 litre, is a real toughie, so as long as well maintained (oil changes, cam belt, etc) should last for another 100K and then some.

Good luck! HNY!

Santa Superlight still worth a look after all these years……

Good film.

Knees oh dear………..I came off twice on the same sheet of black ice on the same (R) knee in early Dec, which is the same knee I injured in rugby many years ago. A little inflamed and painful for a few days, and perhaps not quite back to normal now, but I have continued stretching and trying to do at least a couple of miles of riding every night (and being more careful about braking on ice!) and it’s as good as it’ll ever be for a 59 year old. So – while rest and anti-inflamatories might be good at the acute stage, stretching exercises and a regular pattern of riding are best in the longer term………..or perhaps I stand to be corrected by a physio!

Should be fine in that location, but small chips can often be ‘repaired’ on your insurance free of charge without screen removal – have had 2 on my screen done this way.

Saab 900 T16S