Powered aircraft or gliders? I had the same dilemma a few years ago and went for gliding.

Like you I wanted a new challenge and was drawn towards getting a PPL but at around 8-10k from start to finish it wasn’t cheap (the gliding equivalent costs maybe £1,500, less if your’re a natural). I’ve also got a number of friends who passed their PPL and once they got over the novelty of flying from one small airfield to another small airfield quickly lost interest and let their currency lapse. With gliding you are always learning and there is always a new challenge.

If you want to progress to a CPL or get from A to B go for the Cessna. If you want to have fun I’d choose gliding.

I bought a pair of the Cosine wheels at the beginning of the year and I’m pretty pleased with them.

They look more expensive then they are and have stayed true despite subjecting them to the terrible roads around here.

I would recommend them with one reservation: the freewheel is very loud. Not quite Hope hub loud but everyone else in the group can easily hear when you slack off and stop pedalling!

I’ve recently faced a identical choice for my 8 year old daughter. The default choice seems to be the Islabike Beinn 24 but at £400 I couldn’t quite bring myself to push the ‘buy’ button (despite the good resale values).

In the end we went for the Ridgeback Dimension 24 for £249. It’s well thought out and at 9kg its genuinely lightweight. Most importantly my daughter likes the sparkly silver colour.

While I’d love to be part of a Singletrack test case, it does seem to be absurd that I can be readily done for parking on the road outside my house yet neither the police nor council seem remotely bothered about tackling those who fly down my road at dangerously high speeds.

Although going by one of the loose definitions of obstruction above, its a crime that anyone that parks on a public highway is potentially guilty of. It’s going to be a busy day in court!

The road in question is dead straight with no blind bends, no dropped curbs and no side roads for quite a distance.

The van would just be parked, legally, in a location that cars have not parked previously.

For what its worth about half a mile further on there are cars on both sides of the road simply because of the number of houses. They were just parking their cars – slowing down the passing traffic is a secondary benefit.

2015’s Omloop was my favourite race of the season – the way Stannard mugged the Quickstep boys was superb!

Does anyone know if there is a way of watching the Classics live online without resorting to a dodgy pirate feed or a Sky subscription? Would happily pay to view the price of a cinema ticket.

Push to the front of the grid and go red-line from the gun to ensure that you’re first to the singletrack.

Then concentrate on simitaneously holding back the pack behind you while not throwing up and/or passing out.

ETG, scourge of the Rockhopper South Fun Class, circa 1992.

Nope, there are no mounts for mud guards.

You could probably put p-clips on the seatstays but the fork would be more difficult – as there is no hole drilled in the crown for a normal road brake attaching anything but Raceblades would be difficult.

Here’s my one. It’s a 54cm. And it’s great!

Had one for a few weeks as a hire car. No redeeming features.

Designed to hit a market demographic but done so poorly that it should be at the bottom of anyone’s shopping list.

I’ll always have a soft spot for Metal Mickey….

He was Mr Saturday Night before Ant & Dec came along…

That’s a good question. I though that the ‘yaw’ was in the front mech geometry, not the shifter or cable pull.

I bought a set of Force 22 shifters a few weeks ago and as you would expect they work great with a Yaw Force front mech. There was no mention on the box of them being Yaw or Standard type.

SRAMs 2016 tech doch suggest that there are Yaw and Non-Yaw versions for 10 speed shifters, but no difference for 11 speed.

Have a look at This Thread

Because of the internal cable routing a Praxis or similar converter may not work.

I ended up avoiding the whole problem by buying a BB30 crankset.

Alternatively the Wheels Mfg reducer cups which sit inside normal BB30 bearings would certainly work.

I’ve fitted 25mm GP4000 tyres and there’s plenty of room.

I suspect 28mm tyres and something like Crud Roadracers would also fit.

Nope, they don’t check.

Remember that in most cases the only member of Easyjet staff to ever touch your case will be the check-in girl when she attaches the sticky label. Once you’ve taken your case to oversize baggage everyone from security to the aircraft loaders will either work for the airport or a third party. They won’t care what’s in your bike box as long as it doesn’t tick!

Yup. Fork, headset, seatpost clamp & front brake hose/cable guide.

I couldn’t resist and bought one of those CAAD 10 disc frames from Evans. I’ve built it up with SRAM Force, Juan Tech hydro-mech disc brakes and Cosine wheels and it is superb. Agile, fast and comfortable.

I bought it as a poor-weather alternative to my Supersix Evo and while it may be slightly heavier and marginally slower, the frame has a real zing to it and is a lot of fun to ride.

For some reason though it was a bit of a pig to build up. The internal cable routing is a pain, it was a struggle to get rid of the play in the headset, and the bottom bracket….well it’s a BB30.

All in I must have paid £1200. The equivalent Ultegra CAAD 12 (but with full hydraulic brakes) comes in at £2k. Not a killer deal but I’m happy.

I used to be very into paragliding. Every weekend was spent sitting on a hillside in Wales or a holiday in a mountainous part of the world. I have some great memories of getting thrown around in Alpine thermals or tranquilly floating in summer evening breeze. It was great.

Why did I stop? In the UK it’s very time consuming as you can literally spend all day waiting for the wind to be a bit stronger or a bit lighter. An understanding boss also helps when you have to duck out of work just because the wind is a steady 12mph from the north west. I also looked around at my flying mates and realised that every one except me had been hospitalised by the sport. When a friend was killed and left behind a wife and young kids it was time to re-evaluate the risk/benefit ratio.

I now fly gliders. It’s not much more expensive and you can probably fly 300 days of the year even in the UK. Everybody is also a lot more safety concious than those jokers I met while paragliding.

It was good fun though……

Looks like taxi25 and I got away with our errors but this driver in Spain didn’t.

I hate to say it but it might just be a case of the Giant team being at the wrong place at the wrong time.

I’ll welcome driverless cars to eliminate this weak link.

I’ll start by saying that I know nothing about the incident described above and I won’t speculate on the cause. Neither am I attempting to place the blame with anyone other than the driver if what has been reported is accurate. But let me tell you a story……

…..I used to live and work in Switzerland. I drove the 10km to and from work almost every day for 2 years and never had any problems with adapting to driving on the right hand side of the road. I considered myself to be an normal, competent driver. One Friday evening, after a difficult week at work, I managed to drive almost all of the way home on the wrong side of the road. At one point I remember seeing a car in the distance heading towards me and I thought to myself “What is that fool doing?” A quick swerve to the right and I avoided a 100kph+
head on crash.

Hadn’t been drinking, wasn’t asleep at the wheel, I had other things on my mind but that’s hardly an excuse. I just made a potentially fatal mistake.

Now whenever I get into a car on the continent or in the States I repeat my new mantra: Drive on the right, drive on the right.

Coincidentally I’ve just got back the results from testing my corrugated lean-to roof for asbestos.

I used Pass UK.

Left undisturbed there doesn’t appear to be any risk of fibre release, but now the roof has started to leak I wanted to know if it was a DIY disposal job or if the experts needed to be called.

My roof looked suspect to me so I was surprised (and relieved) when the test came back negative.

I think I should be able to avoid the whole issue by just replacing the roof and not touching the wall. Apparently there is no equivalent party wall act for roofs as they aren’t considered structural.

I paid £750 on ebay for a 115K mile 1.6 zetec Mk1 facelift car three years ago (02 plate). Only now at 140K miles are there a few patches of rust starting to bubble through the rear wheel arches. As above it’s a fun car to drive with a decent amount of power and cheap to service, insure and run. I’d buy another.

To be honest for a car of this age and type (plentiful, easy to fix) I’d look in the private ads and ebay rather than pay a dealer’s markup.

It seems too good a price to be true, but I struggle to see their angle.

Even if the frame, fork and carbon parts have been pulled from the factory rejects bin, what about the 105 groupset? Here’s another from the same vendor with Ultegra.

Is there another factory knocking out fake Shimano kit or do they ship the bikes with a bargain basement groupset and hope people don’t notice?

Maybe I’m just too cynical!

I’m thinking about going for a pair of Cosine[/url] disc wheels at Wiggle.

£180 and 1600g. Too new for any reviews though

The frame in question is a 2015 CAAD 10 Black Inc. Disc which has all the cable routing through the BB shell:

It’s all a bit busy in there!

It looks like I may have to use the Wheels BB30/HT2 nylon adapters as there may not be the clearance for anything else.

Neila, that’s interesting info, thanks.

The cable guide you mention, is that for internal cable routing or a guide that bolts on to the underside of the BB shell?

If you fancy something a bit sportier, Evans have CAAD 10 Disc frames for a tasty £370.

CAAD 10 Disc

No rack mounts, but you’ll probably be able to squeeze race guards on them.

Decided to replace the gear and brake inners on my SRAM Rival equipped road bike. 15 minutes tops I thought.

They came out easily enough but it took three hours of swearing and Mole grip action to force the gear cable around the ratchet mechanism of the shifter. I finally got it there only to find the inner just wouldn’t fit into the outer.

Took the whole lot to the bike shop to complain about the rubbish inners they’d sold me. They laughed: I’d forced a 1.6mm brake inner where only 1.1mm gear inner should go.

Moab Slickrock trail. It took nine hours to drive there from California and after about the first 10 minutes I was bored. It’s like one of those tarmac skate parks and the novelty soon wears off.

Porcupine Rim the next day was outstanding though.

That looks like a good deal (even with the £50 postage!). Given the choice between 2013 10 speed SRAM Red and 2014 11 speed Ultegra I’d go for the Shimano.

Assuming that you fit a 54cm and can live with the baby-blue colour!

I got exactly that bike from Paul’s in about September last year and so far it’s been faultless. Coming from a Planet X Nanolight I was surprised how much the frame seems to absorb imperfections in the road surface and for a race bike it has nicely composed handling and isn’t twitchy at all.

Be aware that some have reported short lives from the press fit BB and with the short head tube it may not be the bike for you if you don’t like getting low on the bike. Sizing may also be an issue. At 5’10” I usually fit a 56cm. My 54cm is perfect.

The 2013 bike also has 10 speed SRAM Red. Upgrading to 11 speed in the future could be expensive but at least the Mavic hubs are ready for a 11 speed cassette.

If you don’t have dodgy knees like me, go for one of the Shimano pedals – reliable, fairly lightweight and good value for money.

Personally I like Time Xpressos for their positive clip in action and lots of float.

I’d be interested in trying Speedplays but I’m wary of getting mud and dirt into the moving parts that attach to the shoe.

Do any Speedplay users have a problem or am I worrying too much?

I spent 15 years on contract with Vodafone before I got tired of their poor customer service and expensive calls. I transferred to Tesco PAYG simply as they were the cheapest but my expectations weren’t high.

While transferring my old mobile number Vodafone screwed up – Tesco were on the case and sorted it all out within an hour. I’ve not been able to fault their service and would recommend over any of the more established operators.

Aerospace: £228 for full membership of the Royal Aeronautical Society and a further £36 for the Engineering Council (CEng) annual fee.

I thought I was getting ripped off, but on reading some of the other posts it seems I’m getting a bargain!

I remember back in the early 90’s when the UK was a force in XC – David Baker, Barrie Clarke, Caroline Alexander, etc – and everybody was moaning about the lack of credible DH riders. At this time this was put down to our lack of mountains!

Jason McRoy proved that it could be done by a kid from Sunderland and his success directly led to our current DH dynasty.

I think the problem with XC is money, or lack of potential reward. Any teenager showing XC potential can’t help but see what they could earn on the track or the road. British Cycling is complicit with this as funding is biased towards those disciplines where there is a decent Olympic medal prospect. Sadly for XC, success breeds success and right now there is none. DH is not really on British Cycling’s radar and is more healthy for it.

The thing about bikes used in the tour is it is relatively easy to hit the UCI 6.8kg minimum weight limit. If you can’t get any lighter then that then you may as well add aero.

It will be interesting to see what will happen in the peloton if and when the UCI remove this artificial limit. Will pro riders then demand hyper-light bikes for all stages except pure TTs?

Large groups? – You get the occasional cluster of 10 riders but I suppose groups of three or four is more common. It is certainly a very social ride so it’s rare to see people riding on their own for very long even if they started riding solo.

Average Speed? – How fast do you want to go? There are no timing chips, rider listings or gold medal times so people just go at there own comfortable rate. An important consideration is the cafe doesn’t open until 5 (or is it 6?) so if you put in a record-breaking time and arrive at 3 you’re just going to be spending a few hours getting cold waiting for the cafe to open. My plan is to leave at 10, have an easy ride, and arrive in time for a Full English at 6.

Lights? – once you’re out of the city you’re riding on unlit country roads. A set of £400 off road lights is overkill but you want something with more poke than a flashing commuter light. Having said that unless you deliberately ride on your own you can often share the pool of light provided by your fellow riders.

One of my favourite events. A really relaxed atmosphere more akin to 200 mates riding to the seaside (through the night) than a sportive.

I’m waiting to be convinced that moving the start to Green Park station is an improvement over Channing’s in Bristol, but I’ll be there.

Bath locals, what’s the best place for a pre-ride pint?

EDIT: just seen the post above. What’s the name of your place thepublican?