Surly Cross Check

Thing is, it doesn’t matter what you believe in, you are still exercising blind faith. If you believe in science and nothing else, that is still blind faith; science still has more questions than answers, but you believe that eventually science will prove everything – that is FAITH.

At one point we believed that the Earth was flat. How ridiculous does that seem now? At the time it made sense, but were those people deluded? I don’t think so. Was there belief based in blind faith? Yes. We can see that now. Science is full of “everything we thought we knew is wrong moments”, and there will be more to come. Point is our current collective train of scientific thought could well be deluded.

I believe in science, but who pressed the start button in the first place? For me that was God. Also, I believe that science and curiosity have given us knowledge and abilities that we as a race have no idea how to handle. We need morals and guidance, because we have half a brain cell, and we are dangerous. For me, that comes from Christinaity.

I hate to hear people talking about any belief system as wrong, or delusional. We are ALL working with a belief system that works for us, and we are ALL making leaps of faith, because NONE of it has been proved beyond all reasonable doubt. Not only that, but ee all think we have the truth; we are all, by definition orthadox, we have to be, otherwise what’s the point in holding a belief system?

OP, your friend is troubled and looking for peace. Continue to challenge her, and try to get her to accept your challenges. By doing this, and as long as she really, honestly meets your challenges, you will help her to find peace. Don’t make it your mission to talk her out of it, but to help her figure out what she trully believes in.

It has NO access to the local machine except through embedded ActiveX or Java objects

Terminology: Sandbox. Javascript runs in the browser (the sandbox) and has limited access to the host machine.

Like bowmore, but I find the younger island malts a bit harsh, prefer the older ones, 15 years+, Just as powerfull but less harsh. Lagavullin 16 my fav, and I tried the Laphroig 15 recently, lovely.

Trivia, Laphroig was the only whiskey to get into the States during prohibition, it was declared as TCP!

Bruneep, my thoughts exactly.

“England, can you get a train or fly there and hire a car?”

yeah well I can’t be doing with any sash my father wore, 16th century bollocks. whatever its called on the map is what I’m going to be calling it.

But on the other hand, a bit of awareness and attention to sensitivities of the locals will stand you in good stead; and that would apply wherever in the world you travelled.

Yep, your right, that would defeat the object, whole point was to get some bomber touring wheels to cope with African roads from a local wheel bulding guru.

IMHO If the bike will spend most of it’s life coming downhill, fine, that’ll make up for the slackened angles. If the bike will be aksed to do lots of steep technical climbing, steering will be vague and difficult to keep front wheel down, so just stick with the 130 or less.

I TOTALLY disagree that pedal strikes are the pay off for a well handling bike. Give the Orange 5 in question to Peaty (who used to ride a single pivot Orange downhiller) or some other top rider on the same terrain, and see how many times they strike the pedal…..

jwt, don’t mean to suggest you’re a bad rider, just that if you look to your own riding style, and see if you can learn some new skills or change some deeply ingrained habits, then you might actually become a BETTER rider than you already are….

One of the best things I ever bought was a set of Gore cables. £40, but I fitted them in the autumn, and they’re still as smooth as the day I fitted them, and the bike has had many mud batchs and hose downs in that time.

Don’t mean to flame, or troll, be patronising or anything but….

It gets me sometimes the way the first thing people think of is it’s that it’s the bikes fault, and the solution is to spend money and change equipment. I mean, do you you seriously think that you’re bashing your pedals because your your cranks were too long by 5mm? Have a look at 5mm on a ruler and see how ridiculous that is :D

I had a 5 for a while, and I suffered from this at first. After a while I developed an instinct for when a padal strike was likely to happen, and just learned to alter my style to smooth things out. Pedal strikes didn’t totally disappear, but they became a lot less frequent. And I din’t get slower, I got way faster while I owned my 5.

How about having a look at your riding style. Instead of buying kit, Invest in some skills training from a good coach, and tell him/her what your problem is. I bet there is some fundamental riding technique that you could improve on.

It’s not always the equipments’ fault, "bad workmen…" and all that.

Anyway, hope that was constructive….

Sorry, I meant CUSTOM frame builders