“Early is on time, on time is late, late is no good to me…”

My parting words to an ex-employee. I got sick of him rolling in at 2-minutes past nine and going to make himself a brew!

“You can shear a sheep a dozen times, but you can only skin it once.”

A very successful business man told me this when I set up business in the small town in which he’d made his fortune. I think about it every time I raise an invoice or quote.

Us testers call it a “float night”… Low pressure and perfect wind?

I had it last year, the GP knew very little about it but did some research on my behalf. She took bloods but said she was starting me on amoxicillin straight away. She also described why the tests were so ineffective – basically, it only comes back positive if your body has the correct antibodies as they test for the biproducts of your own immune system doing its job.

My bloods came back positive. I had a month of antibiotics (I think) and they seemed to help.

My bite was also on my elbow and looked similar.

PHP threads are never as funny as Photoshop threads… :(

It’s generally easier on a mountain bike, Charge Spoons and SDG Bel Airs have a pronounced “hammock” which helps you sit in a consistent position. So if it fits your arse, you’re laughing.

I find WTBs are more of a solid perch and the shape/width just seems to cleave me in two!

I can pretty much look at a roadbike saddle and tell whether or not I’ll get on with it. I like narrow, flat (front to back) and rounded (side-to-side).

When I had a long, low and racy hardtail, I preferred saddles similar to my roadbikes – presumably because the position is more rotated.

Yes this I know, but I’d say I’m pretty average.

I wasn’t being flippant, there really is no such thing as “average” when it comes to saddle fit!

And a saddle that is comfy on one bike, might not be comfortable on another… I like SDG Bel Airs on mountain bikes. But I like Prologo 134mm on my road bikes. I like a Charge Spoon on my hybrid but I can’t use that on a mountain bike or a roadbike.

Every arse is different, one man’s sofa is another man’s barbed-wire fence.

Glad it turned up safely Ben! And thanks for the endorsement.

Looks great, although I would agree, a little lower might work better.

Thanks again!

Been bitten by a Tick in the last 12 months? Could be Lyme disease…

In spring last year, I started having terrible motivational problems, constantly fatigued, couldn’t get out of bed in the morning and was sleeping 14-15hrs a night.

I had no interest in anything, felt lethargic, depressed, spent 2 months living in a complete haze and barely remember anything that happened during that period.

I remembered that I’d had a couple of tick bites prior to my symtoms, so spoke to my GP who knew nothing about Lyme disease. She did some research and agreed to do tests. It turn out I had Lyme disease and a course of powerful antibiotics seemed to do the trick.

It doesn’t explain your Greek Renaissance, but might be worth considering as it’s not very well understood and has such a broad spectrum of symptoms… Good luck!

Probably my favourite photo in the world

I can see a cockatoo in that photo… ;)

Well it clearly is there, you’re wearing special shoes!

I say we should just adopt my definition and to hell with all the swimmerists, kayakers and wheelchair-basket-ballers…

With a few rule changes, wheelchair basket ball could be reclassified as light entertainment, along with Robot Wars.

What about Sumo? That falls foul of both mine and Keith’s definitions of sport…

No, cos then Great British Bake Off and X-Factor would be sports…

Gatsby: You’ve really never seen a pair of these?

I actually have a pair, very similar but a different brand. And having playing in a pair of Chucks, I can attest to the fact that it would take a helluva a lot more than spikey shoes to improve my game!

Anyway, I always thought they were just a way of aerating the greens and saving the green-keeper a job ;)

Sadly, it’s a sport… However, I’m willing to accept that it falls into that awkward hinterland betwixt sport and game on the basis that you could play it without any problems in normal shoes, apart from the fact that the bowling lane owners insist…

It’s quite a clever ploy by the aforementioned bowling lane owners to elevate it to sport status, and thus be eligible for funding.

If only the Bridge powers-that-be had thought of adopting their own special footwear, they wouldn’t be in this mess!

My rule of thumb is that if you don’t need special shoes, it ain’t sport.
This rule kinda breaks down with swimming and martial arts but by and large, it works…

Cycling (with special shoes) = Sport
Cycling (without special shoes) = Dicking about on a bike or commuting
Cricket = A game
Golf = A game
Darts = A game
Rugby = Sport
Football (with special shoes) = Sport
Football (without special shoes) = Dicking about with a football…

See? It seems to work…

I have a Stihl MS181 which is perfect for the work you describe. And I bought one of these safety clothing kits.

Also, a few hours tuition with my brother, a landscaper with all the relevant certs.

I’m guessing you have a small garden MoreCashThanDash?

Half an hour with a leaf blower leaves me with a pile of leaves the size of a family car… And that’s every weekend during Autumn… :(

Once you have one, you’ll find lots of uses for it… ;)

I have a small Stihl one, it’s brilliant…

Also, electric? Are you serious?? The beauty of a leaf blower is that you frap it up, walk once around the garden and voila, all the leaves are in the road/next door. Much quicker than sweeping.

If you’ve got to faff about with plugs and flexes, AND not be able to venture more than 15ft from a mains socket, it kinda defeats the object of the exercise.

Just pointing the leaf-blower at the dying embers of this thread on behalf of all the others like me who Sky+’d the final episode and have only just got round to watching it!

Wow, VERY powerful… Some of the best character writing I’ve ever seen – Woody’s vows had me belly-laughing, Kelly’s return had me sobbing like a girl… But FFS, if you’ve been left emotionally damaged, hiding behind the sofa or in need of therapy, have a word with yerselves! Bunch o’ bloody bedwetters! :p

I think those that felt disappointed with the actions of certain characters, or felt it was anti-climactic, you’re missing the point a bit: Every character, every storyline, every stereotype was a metaphor for the whole project – This is England…

…Where hatred lasts for generations because otherwise good people will commit despicable acts on behalf of their families; where people will turn a blind eye to monstrous crimes as long as they’re committed in revenge.

But people will continue to fall in love, forgive their loved ones, get pissed and grow old. Because This Is England.

I learnt all about the Prince Rupert Drop by watching a video on IFLS website.

I dont think anyones suggesting the policmans killers are likely to be getting excess attention and probably punishment but rather they wish the same standards of enforcement were shown to drivers who kill and seriously injure people who are not police.

Had I been standing at the side of that road, the killer wouldn’t have ploughed us down because we wouldn’t have been trying to apprehend him and take away his liberty.

Dave Phillips wasn’t just an innocent bystander, he became a victim of this crime BECAUSE his employers – the Crown – put him there.

There are no circumstances why you or I would have been there in that capacity (unless we too were Police Officers), so it’s impossible to compare Dave’s case with a revenge attack.

There are no mitigating circumstance, PC Phillips didn’t antagonise his killers, or choose to put himself in a position where he would be killed, he did it because he was duty bound by his job to do so.

So the fact that his killers have been charged with murder has nothing to do with some perceived “looking after their own” scenario, it has all to do with the fact that someone was killed for no other reason than he was employed to try and apprehend these people.

It seems there are a few keyboard law experts that fail to be able to grasp that difference.

Murder because it was a police man, anyone else and it would be death by dangerous driving. Really bugs me how they go all out when its one of their own but a normal member of the public and its just a petty crime.

This is probably the dumbest thing I’ve ever read on STW… And I’ve read – and written – some pretty dumb shit in my time here.

Dave Phillips was a man who was brave enough to devote his career to putting himself in situations where this could happen, and all to protect people like you. While you were sleeping safely in your bed, he was dying whilst trying to protect the lives and property of people like you and your family.

And you have the nerve to question whether he’s now getting preferential treatment because of the uniform he wore? I wonder if he’s grateful for that. I wonder if his wife and daughters are grateful.

His case is being treated no differently to if it had been you that was killed that night, but Jesus Christ, he deserves far more than you!

Slight update to this thread, I ended up getting the Mavic H2O… Sizing-wise, I’m 6’1″, 85KG, slim/average build and the Large absolutely drowned me. I swapped it for a medium that fits like a glove. Well, like a well fitted jacket!

I’ve not tried it in the rain yet, but I’m heading out tonight and it’s not looking good!

Quality-wise, the Mavic looks fantastic, really well tailored and with some nice features. Arms are nice and long and well-shaped and it’s got just the right ‘drop tail’ at the back.

However, it’s not what I’d call packable. You could get it in your back pocket at a push, but it’s a lot bigger than the Assos that it replaces. On the other hand, it’s designed to be properly water proof, properly breathable and is lined for comfort… I don’t think anyone has ever come up with something like that that is truly back-pocketable!

So, I’ve decided to keep this for when there’s an 80% chance of rain, or if I’m setting out in the rain, and I’m going to get the lightweight ‘race-cape’ version for more emergency use or riding in changeable weather.

I’ve had a Bikeboxalan for a few years, it’s been abroad with me 2 or 3 times a year and has been loaned to a couple of friends. So it’s probably been on around 24 flights, and still looks as good as the day it was delivered.

There is no way anybody, not even a horse, not even Ronnie ****ing Pickering’s horse could kick a hole in the side of it. It’s completely bulletproof.

Yes, it’s quite heavy, but I have no problem carrying my road bike, shoes, spare shoes, all my kit, tools, towels, nutrition etc and being under the weight limit. Sure, my road bike is sub-7kg, but if I was carrying an MTB, I’d check another bag in for my kit.

It’s really manouverable in airports, the only tricky bit is if you’re on a crusher-run car park, but that stuff will cause problems for any bike box!

I’ve traveled with guys will all sorts of box, and most of them have had some problems at some point. The Thule ones look good but you have to lift the front and drag it along on 2 wheels which is bloody hard work. The BBA can be pushed along and steered really easily on its casters…

If I was taking a heavy DH bike, I might consider a soft bag, but for anything else, particularly a carbon road bike, I wouldn’t use anything other than a BBA!

Some twunt cut me up this morning on a moped then wouldn’t let me past in my Picasso… Wanted to bare-knuckle the little pillock…

I say leave them be, let the inept thin themselves out a bit. The bike companies get to stay in business and we get cheaper bikes plus quieter trails. It’s a win-win situation.

You or I might know how to operate them correctly and notice issues, many others wont, and that’s the reason for this recall.

But how the hell is our species going to advance if we stifle cause and effect and allow the morons to survive?

Personally, I think this represents a worrying shift in the dynamics of blame culture. If an individual is no longer held in any way responsible for their ineptitude, it means that the morons will just get richer by winning life-changing sums of prize money for their stupidity! People like wwaswas will end up wealthier than me!!

I fear it spells the end of the human race as we know it.

*walks away rather than accept that “settled out of court” is absolutely, in no way remotely the same as “were found to be negligent in a court of law”*

In STW style, I fixed it for you… :roll:

Settled. Not really the same as it being proven that it wasn’t his “own stupid fault”… Which it was.

You seem to be arguing people just just chance it and hope they’re not one of the unlucky few?

Unlucky few? Unlucky? What’s unlucky about putting a bike together completely wrong, probably ignoring the bit on the QR lever where it clearly says “Open” and “Closed” and then setting off with your lever fouling the disk???

For a start, if it were to foul the disk, the resultant noise would compel anyone with a brain to get off the bike and check what the problem is…

If said person was stupid enough to carry on riding in the misguided hope that the noise would go away, the chances of them being flipped over the bars are pretty slim, because most cyclist don’t suddenly set off at 20mph. The chances are that the front wheel would lock up, skid slightly and alert the idiot that they’d made a pig’s ear of putting their bike back together.

If, by some utterly bizarre twist of fate, they managed to carry on riding, ignoring the cacophony of mangling metal coming from their front wheel, to the point where crashtestmuppet’s torsional forces slowly but surely unbolt their badly-assembled quick release causing them to eat tarmac, then all I can say is that I hope their endeavors remove them from the gene pool as quickly and efficiently as possible.

These people should not be protected.

yeah you’re absolutely right which is why the US Government’s consumer safety committee has prompted 17 companies to recall millions of bikes Perhaps you should email them. Oh and apologies if you don’t understand physics.

So you seriously think there’s a huge problem with people setting off with their QRs undone and getting legged up by their own disc rotors? I suspect you know less about physics than me, and your common sense could do with brushing up.

You’d soon notice it fouling the disc, which would probably prevent you from riding any further? No? Probably preventing you pulling the brake? No? Probably preventing the torsional bla-de-bla-de-bla-de-bla… No?

There’s something fishy about this… Why would 2 of the world’s biggest bike manufacturers (Spesh and Giant) be part of a ‘group’ of which they have no PR control?

And why on earth would it be a problem that your QR lever might foul your disc when it’s in the OPEN position??

Is this the bike industry equivalent of the Facebook charges hoax that’s doing the rounds?

That’s reassuring to hear Bonesetter! Having tried a few, the Lakes felt the least bulky… I really like the look too, kind of Mad Max meets Bladerunner…