I have this one – ordered from USA:

Bike seat

I use it with my 4 year old. I’m a bit bandy legged, so not good for long distances, but fine enough for a pootle along the bike path.

I’ve got some Bonts. Managed to mould the toe box nicely for my oddly long big toe on my right foot. I wore two pairs of socks with a piece of tissue paper folded up over my toe to squeeze them out. Worked a treat after three attempts.

I think it’s easier to mould them outwards rather than inwards. I’ve got quite high arches, and these never budged noticeably in the moulding process even when I squeezed them in by hand. Maybe I was doing something wrong.

Great shoes BTW!

Edit: I should also add that my identical brother got some and had a ‘mare getting them to fit. Oddly, he has smaller feet than me with shorter big toes. He still wears them though, so he must have got them to fit in the end.

I’m not convinced all the redundancies and double rate cuts are justifiable though. Every year (until this year) the industry moans about a shortage of engineers, and then the first whiff of a downturn and they ‘slash and burn’.

WGPSN and Talisman are heavy laden with contractors, I can see where they might have justifiable reason to panic. But BP, Shell, Chevron, Schlum, etc. should have ridden out the storm for a few months more before wielding the axe.

If you’re going to a trail centre then bring the full sus. Then once in Aberdeenshire there’s plenty of non-trail centre rides that still benefit from a full sus.

Personally, I’d be inclined to bring the road bikes. If you’re not familiar with an area and have nobody to show you around then you’ll probably get lost looking for the best MTB trails. At least with a road bike you can look up the road maps and pick a route.

chipsngravy – Member
you need a budget is excellent.

Syncs across Mac and IOS devices.
Thanks for the tip. Just trying it out now. Does it learn the categories you put your transactions against? I’m doing it one at a time right, and I’m sure I’d give up on that soon enough.

Can’t be bothered with a spreadsheet. If it isn’t automated then I’ll soon lose interest.

ive rode on sheet ice many times with no spikes or problems, one question tho, how long is your stem? if its long it could be the weight bias towards the front that’s causing you to fall???
could be wrong mind.

My stem is insanely long – as was the fashion back in 1996 when I bought the bike. But on this occasion I can confirm it was not the stem’s fault. It was hard to stand up on the ice, let alone cycle on it.

I think I’m going to get some of those Schwable Winters. I don’t think I need the extra studs that come on the sides of the Marathon Winters as my commute is a straight line along the side of the river Dee.

It’s a fair commute though (10 miles each way), so I’m going to hold back just to see if I can get a few more weeks out of my normal slick tyres. Hopefully this cold snap will be over by next week….

It’s Tarmac. I think I just need to regain a bit of confidence. I managed all last winter without falling off. My default reaction is to throw some money at the problem.

But this is Aberdeen. It was mild last year, but won’t be that lucky again I suspect.

Will keep going until Christmas and see how I get on. Thanks for your advice.

Edit: just seen Zippy’s vote for spikes on ice. Now I’m less certain what to do.

Redundancies and rate cuts are happening all around me at the moment. It’s not a relaxing feeling. But I’m personally the busiest I’ve been for 12 months. I work a lot at FEED and detailed design of subsea projects, but that has pretty much dried up for me in Aberdeen. No big projects will happen in the North Sea in the next two years. Thankfully I’m being kept busy with Perth and Houston projects, plus helping a new business venture being funded by Goldman Sachs.

The 4 shirts are in a shirt bag, hanging from a single hook. Currently I cannot even see them beneath the pile of coats, and I’m sitting 5 metres away.

This has got way out of hand. Discussions of my attitude and job prospects are uncalled for.

Moderator: please delete the thread.

Wow! I didn’t expect the response to go this way from a cycling community.

A bit of perspective please.

a) I made the request for a new coat stand before anyone had made a complaint.
b) The new coat stand was going to be placed out of sight.
c) I am not proposing to turn the office into a laundry room – it’s 4 freshly washed and ironed shirts, usually covered over by various coats. The rest of my cycling gear lives in a box under my (small) desk.

Can you not just fold them and put them in a drawer?

Maybe get a suit bag so they can all go in there? If you hang each shirt from the cross bar of the hanger above they take up a lot less space.

I’m not sure having a week’s supply of work wear in full view is something I’d want to have in an office.

They won’t fit in my drawer – it’s tiny.

A wardrobe would be the ideal solution, but I was aiming low. I said I was going to put the coat stand in the far corner, out of sight.

Cycling with my clothes on my back is a pain. It’s 10 miles each way, and I find it much easier without a bag. Plus the convenience of having shirts washed and ironed by someone else (£2 each) is the necessary incentive to keep me doing this through the winter months. Not sure why I have to compromise for the sake of a new coat stand that will be kept out of everyone’s way. I’d pay for it myself if it was about the cost, but the response seems clear that they just don’t want to encourage this sort of thing.

There’s no drawer space here for storage. Just a miniscule pedestal with each desk, just about big enough to keep a toothpick.

My solution seemed like the most obvious one.

The reality of life is that if you have to work with someone useless then you get fed up with it – contractors or not.

I work for a company full of useless employees and am continually picking up the slack. It gets to the point I can’t do my own work as my main job is babysitting the idiots. After a year I’m fed up and am ending the contract to work somewhere with less idiots. I tried pointing out the deficiencies to management (did it today actually), but the world seems to be full of idiots, so this is all they can get.

(I’m a contractor)

I suspect I’ll end up working in the Middle East at some point in my career – there’s not enough life left in the North Sea to see me out. Already tried Houston. So Dubai and Oman would be at the better end of the spectrum. Not sure work in Aberdeen is bad enough yet to convince me to go with Qatar though. But if I was single, wanted to pay off a mortgage and buy nice cars then maybe I’d think about it for 1 or 2 years – anything seems bearable if you break it down to 2 year chunks.

It’s not exactly relevant, but I just got a job offer in Oman rescinded after 6 months of dicking around. Oman is supposed to be the western friendly face of the middle east. I actually went to primary school there. I went back for 5 days as part of the job offer and things have changed a lot since 25 years ago – a lot less western friendly, e.g. live music is now banned.

Anyway, the people in Oman were saying how shit Qatar is. Only do it for the money.

Airplay can queue music. I just did it.

Never tried Sonos, but Airplay works well for me and was a fraction of the price. I’ve got an Apple TV (£70) hooked up to the surround sound system in the lounge and a Airport Express (£80) hooked up to an old amp (free) and some cheap speakers (£80) in the sun room.

The only issue is you can’t stream different songs to different rooms. Although that has never bothered me.

Need to know your height and type of riding. I have a highball for cruising through the Scottish highlands and find it ideal. I wouldn’t recommend it for trail centre riding though.

Julians – thanks for the link. I agree it does look a bit fishy. I’d rather not attract the attention of HMRC in my first year in business.

B r – I’m a little confused as to how a loan is cheaper. Can you elaborate? If I get a loan then I still need money to pay it off and the only extra money I have is ‘stuck’ in the company bank account.

We went into Edinburgh Bike Co-Op but came out with nothing. The hybrid bike was too racey and the cheap mountain bike was really heavy.

The Carerra Subway ‘looks’ heavy, which worries me. Is it?

Missnotax – which Kona’s did you have in mind? I had a look, but couldn’t see anything.

Thank you bigblackshed for the link. I might be a bit cynical most of the time when it comes to safety moments or talks, but that one really hit home. Well worth 10 minutes of your life watching.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=venO7Jd-978

What is your BEng in?

I’d suggest a masters will be very useful if you want to get into pipeline engineering. You’ll inevitably have to do one at some point in your career if you want to become a chartered engineer. Once you’ve started the course (part time presumably) then I’m sure you won’t have too much trouble finding someone to take you on at graduate(ish) level. I can’t advise on the merits of either course, but suspect you’ll find that a pipeline engineer is a more technical vocation (design calculations etc) and a subsea engineer is something a bit more woolly. Subsea engineering will probably steer you toward Project Engineering.

Whilst your current experience will be valuable I’m not sure you’ll find many direct transferable technical skills. Two very different fields. If you enjoy NDT then it might be a lot easier to continue down that route and qualify as a Level III technician, moving into AUT, then earning more than most pipeline/subsea engineers.

Chris (Materials and welding engineer)

Thanks for that link asterix! It does look a lot simpler than I had imagined. I had basically given up on the cycle to work schemes because of the limit of £1000. This seems like a legitimate way to get a new commuting bike worth £2000.

I’m no accountant, but I’m pretty sure you can only do salary sacrafice against salary, not dividends. I assume your company pays you and your wife about £650 a month each – so just salary sacrafice against that.

I don’t do cycle to work through my ltd company, but I do childcare vouchers, so it mght be similar. In that case you have two options:
1 – get your ltd company to buy the bikes direct (in my case childcare bouchers) and you pay the company the salary sacrafice
2 – go through a scheme

Option 1 saves you the cost of the scheme fees.

“25mph IME but it really depends – 4th cat can vary massively from packs of bunch engines to people who aren’t as fast as the higher cats but still understand tactics (and not chasing down every break).”

Wow – that seems fast. Where do all these people find time to get so fit? I thought I was fitter than your average guy, but I couldn’t manage that.

Then again, I might just be comparing my average speed to that of a pack. How much faster can you go in a pack? I think in my hypothetical scenario I’d be ok at 30 kmh on my own, but what would that get me if I was with a pack?

Just wondering whether I’d embarras myself if I entered a race.

Out of interest, what sort of average speeds would you expect in cat 4, 3, 2 or 1? Hypothetical scenario: 1 hr duration, not much wind, no steep hills.

The bigger crankset option isn’t a bad idea actually meaning I could get it by end of month. I could pick up a replacement for about 140 quid and sell the new one most probably. Is there a difference between 10 and 11 speed crank sets?

Presumably your current bike has a compact crank on it. Why not just swap them over?

Canyon seems like the better suited bike to you. If you specify a double chain set instead of a compact then most sizes are available this month.

I’m on my second one. And my friend has one also. Highly recommended, but like any car there are a few common faults. In my experience, the aux heater usually only lasts 60k before it needs replacing or disconnecting – this happened to my first one and now the second one is showing symptoms. Same happened to my mates.

The second one started to rust a bit prematurely, but the bodywork has a 7 year anti rust guarantee. Annoyingly VW tried to wiggle out of it, but I held my ground and got 80% goodwill payment out of them.

Other than that, I think they are great cars, hence why I’m on my second.

Are you buying new or second hand?

Take advantage of Wiggle’s return policy (free return postage). I tried more than a dozen pairs and ended up with a pair of Capagnolo and DHB tights, both XL. 6’3″, 34″ leg, 78kg and no backside. Both a bit on the short side still, but the foot loops stretch them down.

I’ve got one. It’s a good PVR but I very rarely use the YouView functionality. It just doesn’t occur to me to scroll back in time on the guide. The user interface is good – certainly better than my dad’s PVR which is also a Humax. I still miss my old Thomson PVR though.

Airport express (£70) plugged into the back of an amp. Hardwire the speakers from the amp. Works perfectly well for me. Much cheaper than any other alternative that will be suggested. If you care about music quality then You can get a fancy amp and fancy speakers. Or if you’re like me then a second hand amp and £60 speakers from Richer Sounds will do.

You might need to change the tyres on this, but for £389 I reckon it’s a bargain:

http://www.edinburghbicycle.com/products/revolution-courier-race-disc-13?bct=browse%2fbicycles%2fcommuter-hybrid-bikes

Thanks TR. Can you keep up a fair pace on a road bike, or is it a bit too busy for that?

thanks fanatic

The Neato does look good.

Just be sure you have a decent warranty. Whichever one you get don’t expect it to last longer than 2 years. These things are full of electronics that can go wrong. I was sad when mine went, but since I had 18 months out of it effectively for free then I can’t complain.

If you want to know more about Neato then let me know. I got a bit carried away with looking into these things. There’s a forum dedicated to these things: geek alert!

I had a Neato from America. It was an amazing cleaner. Plenty powerful and never failed me……. until the screen broke last month. The big plus was that unlike Roomba it is laser guided, so it trundles into a room, does a 360 degree scan to map out the floor, then sets to work. It first does a perimeter clean and then it does stripes up and down. Then it moves on to the next room. It was wonderful returning to a properly hoovered house with bowling green stripes up and down the carpet. Amazing technology.

Sadly the screen broke. It still functioned properly – the screen isn’t that important. But since it was 18 months old I wondered if that was just the start of its demise. So as I bought it in Costco in USA I took it back to my Costco in UK for a full refund. I’m on my way back to USA next year so will probably pick up a new one then.

Link for the Neato

P.S. Can be had for £269 from Amazon

I left my handbrake off and the car rolled into the garage. It needed quite a bit of work to the boot lid. Claimed it through my insurer (Aviva), but when collecting the car I found that the repair bill cost only £7 more than my excess. I phone Aviva and cancelled the claim and paid the body shop myself. They said the claim would be wiped from my records and not effect future premiums. I have recently renewed with Aviva and they were still the cheapest I could find and there was no increase in premium from last year.

Just recently had an old man crash into the same car in a car park. He drove off but a kind witness left a note on my windscreen. Went to the police station the next day and the officer phoned him up. He didn’t deny doing it and passed on his insurance details. Police gave me his contact details also. I used my insurer to chase his insurer. The whole process was stress free and seamless. Not had an insurance renewal since, so can’t comment on whether my premium will go up.

I got my fluxient, from a uk seller on ebay, under £40 , but there are battery choices. If you can’t find them, then I’m probably gonna put mine in classifieds as I bought it as helmet light but it’s too heavy, so ordered something else.

Drop me an email. I reckon we can sort something out.

Thanks. But I was looking for something with a touch more oomph and an easier shape to hold.

Will that £1300 get you complete coverage, or will you be back on the NHS for anything really serious?

It’s comprehensive cover with no yearly limit. It seems to cover everything you can think of. Obviously excluding child birth and A&E.

Maybe that’s the government’s new big idea: make the NHS just shit enough to get those of us who can afford it to pay for private healthcare.