Born in Khartoum, Sudan, Welsh by nationality (Sudo-Welsh, as some would have it 🙂 )

Brought up in various parts of Africa. Been trending in a south-westerly direction since uni at St Andrews, via Manchester (blech), West Yorkshire (ace), Worcestershire (superb), Wiltshire (fun), have now been in Zummerzet for a couple of years and ab-so-lutely loving it here.

One that I have to do myself 😕

“More that” rather than “more than”. It seems to have crept in over the last decade. Is it an Americanism? Makes me grimace every time I see it 😕

Dominators still going great after 4 years of heavy abuse in all sorts of conditions. Still the most comfy shoes of any sort that I own!

I use the WTB Rocket V on pretty much all my bikes, road or off road. It suits me fine for both (and I’ve cycled for 22 hours on it on the road). I’d’ve thought that you’d be fine to stick with whatever suits you on the MTB on the road bike too.

But hey, bike contact points don’t get much more personal! 😉

Peppermint tea, ‘cos I’m feeling right bleeeurgh… 🙁

I am very partial to the Meantime though, excellent taste OP.

I’m 5’7″, just under a 31″ inside leg – had 2 of the 17″ XTC frames at various times, that used to be Giant’s ‘Small’ size.

In the immortal words of Homer Simpson – “Facts are meaningless – they can be used to prove anything!” 😉

LOL @rob2 – yeah, right 😉

yoshimi, thanks for replying on my question. Interestingly, TT’s reply is spot on from an economic cost-benefit analysis point of view!

Clearly I need to get out more… 😕

Not sure what you mean by ‘more cost to the price of a new house’, yoshimi?

Once private sewers are adopted, what used to be a direct cost to the owners of those properties affected by a blockage / collapse on private sewers (as in TT’s case) will be spread across the whole customer base as part of everyone’s bills.

Yeah, roots are often a cause, but as b_n_d says the single biggest cause is someone flushing something that was never intended to be flushed.

I will be returning that date from doing the Camino de Santiago, the return leg from Gard du Nord gets in to St Pancras and right into the thick of the hoolie 😕

Reckon I might be cycling across to Paddington to get home if the Tube is all fubar!

Ker-rist. Glad you had a lucky escape.

Like many others on here – thanks to the OP for the heads up. And to the EyeWear Outlet guys for super fast delivery – the order arrived this morning (which is novel in itself around here!) having been ordered yesterday.

That’s Mrs :Drain’s Valentine’s pressie sorted 😀

You do realise this pretty much guarantees a dull, overcast year ahead, don’t you? 8)

LOL @ GG

It’ll take a lot more than that to make me look cool though…

I liked my Model Bs but the rear rim has developed a weird bulge on one side (not a ding, it comes out not in) so I’m hoping that Planet X may replace it as it’s only done a few hundred miles.

So far, diddly response from them in reply to my query though. If I get no joy it’ll be a pair of Pro Braccianos for me, I reckon.

Booger. My wife is now officially fretting, and with good reason 😯

One of my nephews is a field geologist and their camp is near Mt Isa. Hopefully he’s still in Brisbane following the Australia Day citizenship celebrations!

Very likely to be worth your while. Most water companies have some form of cost calculator on their website to allow you to estimate in advance what your likely usage + bills would be. Or, if you don’t for some odd reason trust your water company, try CCWater’s rather clunkier but downloadable version here

http://www.ccwater.org.uk/server.php?show=nav.388

And if you don’t save money you can switch back within a year.

Yeah my in-laws are over there right now and their campervan is smack ban in the middle of the path of this thing!

And, bizarrely, my own folks were out in Brisbane last month when all the floods were happening… are we jinxed?! 😯

80 miles sounds about right. I’ve cycled Hungerford to Reading (about 4 hours dodging pedestrians, their pooches and anglers) and Bath to Bradford-on-Avon (and back), but not done the whole thing in one hit.

Mostly it’s good hardpack but can be a bit slippy in places with mud on polished cobble-type stones so I’d suggest that something with a bit more profile than semi slicks (say, Racing Ralph amount of knobbiness) would be smart unless it’s been dry for a while.

Agreed that the Bath end is very pretty. Some good pubs all the way along though 🙂

Worth checking on the BWB / Waterscape site http://www.waterscape.com/canals-and-rivers/kennet-and-avon-canal/cycling whether they have work / diversions in place e.g. a while ago the Caen Hill locks section had some major works, looks like they’re still there ’til March.

Oh, and it may be worth getting a (free) permit from here http://www.waterscape.com/things-to-do/cycling/permit – just print/laminate it and carry it, we did it for the Liverpool-Leeds Canal.

Lucky sod 😉 My folks are out there now for their usual month 🙁

Somewhere between the Yeti and duntstick is the truth, I reckon.

Oh, Rob. Resist, resist… oh go on then. 😉

Remember seeing it on the common room TV in first year at Uni – a real shock, one of those ‘I remember where I was’ moments.

Have solo-ed both (only 12hrs at 24/12 though), but much prefer the course and atmosphere at 24/12. Very fun. But I hear good things about CLIC 24 too.

I always though we should embrace the use of the word ‘gruntled’ in its sense of being the opposite of ‘disgruntled’ – as in, I’m feeling particularly gruntled [happy] today.
🙂

Writing a well-balanced essay that considers all the evidence and comes to a reasoned conclusion is a sure fire route to a 2i mark at Oxbridge (or equivalent Uni) in an arts subject. On the otherhand, a radically controvertial essay drawing on little used sources which is strongly argued is likely to get a 1st class mark (and the author a job as a science blogger for a broadsheet).
I still don’t know how he managed to get all the way through without saying ‘postmodernism’.

😆

But then again I was quite happy with my humble 2i in Marine and Environmental Biology 😉

Nice distinction between sceptics and denialists here if anyone’s interested:-

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627606.000-living-in-denial-when-a-sceptic-isnt-a-sceptic.html

And real world examples (HIV/AIDS; vaccines/autism) expressing some of the thread so far in a very balanced way:-

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627606.400-living-in-denial-questioning-science-isnt-blasphemy.html

A lot of it, as that second link implies, comes down to scientists being, as a group, pretty poor at communicating.

For the avoidance of doubt, my view (as a scientist) is that the climate is changing – like rob2, I have to help plan to keep water coming to you and shit being taken away from you, in assets that need to be maintained and built with customers’ money, and the uncertainties are large.

Uncertainty makes most people uncomfortable (civil engineers and accountants in the water industry are not immune 😉 ) which is why the media have to sell copy by presenting things as ‘crisp’ facts not a balance of probabilities. A good proportion of the population doesn’t seem to understand the concept even of ‘average’, let alone confidence intervals, given the number of drivers who slow down at average speed cameras only to speed up between them… 🙄

What we expect is climate, what we see out of the window is weather. Humans have evolved (uh-oh, now I’ve done it) to deal with the here and now, and really struggle with cause/effect beyond very short timescales. It’s up to scientists to clearly communicate these inter-generational issues to non-specialist sceptics (cf. denialists) and we’d better learn how to do that, fast.

Obdurate – Bloody-minded.

Ingenuous – the opposite of disingenuous 😉

Oh joy, another 2012 – what a hoot!

The article does make the distinction between ‘stops suddenly’ and ‘stops gradually’ – the latter being where hoodoo’s (very cool) ESRI link comes in.

@ RealMan – no, you’d get to see the Coriolis Effect big time then.

Oddly enough, this (and 5 other Alternate Earth scenarios) are outlined in this week’s New Scientist

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20927960.400-what-if-the-earth-stopped-spinning.html

Not sure if you need to be a subscriber to see the full article though.

Everything on the surface would continue moving at up to 1667 kilometres per hour, the rotation speed at the equator. People outdoors would be flung outwards to an altitude of about 11 kilometres, then fall and hit the ground at more than 1000 kilometres per hour. Buildings would be ripped from their foundations, while the oceans would engulf the land. Such a catastrophe could extinguish all life on Earth. 😯

Wacky stuff, love it.

“Horseshoes & Hand Grenades” by Green Day – I challenge anyone to ride slowly to it! Maybe not what you want for a tour but great while on off-road blasts 🙂

Some Crowded House and Nerina Pallot for a more mellow pace.

Been mooching over a Blur LT, but the VT is still going strong and flatters my climbing as well as taking care of me when mincing downhill.

So something like a Pugsley just to have something very different from anything I’ve got.

Hang in there Ton. Springtime soon.

44mph on a road downhill at about 03:30am, en route to Dover doing London-Paris in 24hrs. Only realised at a stop that the ‘max’ reading had that. Good job it was dark or I’d have cacked myself if I’d known I was going that fast! 37mph off-road on a long straight track on the Marlborough Downs – nice dust plume 😀

@bob_summers – the Camino, tell me more! Doing it in second half of April with a mate, so any advice on tyres, kit, food/drink etc gratefully received (email in profile). Ta muchly.

10,000 feet up, at the junction of Upper Loop/Tony’s Trail, above Crested Butte, Colorado. Want to go back!

Yay, the problette word! We will get it into the English language 😀

I’ve recently got the Tigra case and it worked great on the SPAM Winter Challenge last Sunday, but I’m not sure I’d be taking it on anything really technical. It got spattered with gloop and was fine, but I wouldn’t be too happy if it was raining hard.

I’ve mainly got it for road stuff and the nice easy local trails because the biking apps these days are a no brainer to buy at a fraction of the cost of a basic bike computer – no distance calibration faffing, does elevation, calories etc.

Plus the geeky fun of uploading to Google Earth etc and sharing routes. 🙂

db100 – similar scenario to me, alarm didn’t go off, overslept, woke up to a text from a mate who I’d forewarned to enter this event early – karma!

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