High Line is a nice walk and there are some nice places at the meatpacking end.

If you like Concorde, they’ve just repainted the one on the west side.

You can easily spend a day at the Met.

Electric scooter rental in Central Park is really fun.

Brooklyn great for cheaper dining and good beer.

Los Tacos No1 near Times Square.

Wah Fung No1 in Chinatown for lunch.

There’s a great Belgian bar near Times Square that does draught Chouffe.

Crown tickets on Statue of Liberty, but you usually need to book months in advance.

Edge is a cool thing to do; also there’s a nice bar at the top of the Freedom Tower.

A tour with a local (GetYourGuide) plus entry to the 9/11 museum is well worth it.

It depends on the rockiness for DC tyres…

Wicked Wills are a good compromise between speed and grip, plus they do them in a 700g-ish version.  Used them for 2 weeks in Madeira and only got one flat when I twatted a too-soft rear on a rock in the east side trails.

Fast Traks/Ground Controls good if less rocky.  Plus they are half the price and last for ages.

Totally agree on the trail tyre weight problem, I used to run Snakeskin Hans Dampfs on my trail bike but they don’t mak them any more.  The super trail/ground are about 200g more per tyre.  I found a few NOS snakeskin ones on eBay so bought 4 of them!

A friend got one of these this week.  For £2500 it’s a bargain:  new SRAM GX Axs T-type, Reynolds carbon wheels…. 11.9kg once I’d made it tubeless inc. pedals.  Build was pretty good, needed a little bit of grease here and there but generally spot on.  Rear brake may need a bleed, indeed the random Hayes brakes are probably the only spec oddity.  Very nice!

I got a Mavic microspline freehub for some ITS wheels that they don’t make a microspline freehub for. Bearings might be cheap (don’t know yet) but those are easily changed.

Currently looking at a set of Elite carbon wheels if anyone has seen those?

Absolutely heartbreaking and shocking. A true gentleman and awesome competitor.

From what I’ve heard, the Supercaliber shock isn’t all that reliable…

It’s times like this that remind me how awesome the mountain bike community are.

Yes, it’s crap. Aged 39 you don’t expect to be dealing with this sort of thing. The really tough times will be in 12-24 months when she comes out of rehab and the “recovery” is over.

I keep telling myself it was a time bomb because the artery dissection she had was just that – genetic most likely. We were lucky to have as long as we did (14 years). But that doesn’t help my life being torn apart. There are enough people who have gone through this sort of thing to give me the strength that life is not over – like Lego, it will be rebuilt differently but it will be rebuilt.

Happy trails

Gee

No real news, she has a bed in a rehab unit on a waiting list, likely a few weeks away at least. Still fully locked-in other than moving her eyes up and down.

Thank you, everyone, and to Chipps and co for making this sticky. The support means a lot and helps me stay strong and know that there’s a way through this.

No change, she’s still unable to do literally anything. A very long road ahead.

Update Monday 26 April evening – today, we had expected her life support to be switched off and I had prepared myself for that. I spoke to the doctors and nurses last night about the process, organ donation and soforth.

However…

The doctors reduced her sedation this morning and were extremely surprised that she appeared somewhat able to open and close her eyes on command. It is very erratic but there appears to be something there. She has also come off forced ventilation and is now on CPAP, which was described to be as assisted breathing with her initiating the breathing. This is good news, of sorts, this early and means she is not end of life care at the moment.

So, they are investigating whether she has “locked in syndrome” which affects 1% of people with the type of rear brain stroke that she has. The syndrome is a spectrum of consciousness with some people having greater awareness than others. The doctors need to take some weeks to figure out what level of consciousness she has and what, if any, quality of life she would have. That determines decisions about life support.

I am going in to see her tomorrow morning to see if I can elicit a response. They think it being morning and me would be most likely to elicit something. I am then not permitted (Covid) to see her again unless she returns to end of life care.

The prognosis remains extremely bleak – 90% of people with this syndrome die within 4 months, usually of a chest infection. She may also suffer further strokes, or other complications. The chance of her regaining anything other than the ability to open and close her eyes with greater consistency is essentially zero.

Please, please do not see this as “good news” – tragically, the outcome is still most likely to be the same, but perhaps we will be able to ask her some questions before that happens.

Do keep thinking of her. I have told her the amount donated so far and I just know the idea of seeing the impact of her fundraising with her own eyes is probably a big part of what is driving her to keep going.

She is one hell of a strong fighter, that’s for sure.

Can you not change onto an earlier flight or go the previous/next day? If this is a schedule change or cancellation and rebooking you should have options, assuming the flights are not full. Which airline?

You can get a free train to the city centre from the airport the day you arrive.

Whilst there are a few airport hotels, I would consider Airbnb too?

GB

I went there today. Rode old Red Bull, Fox and Beast. Trails in fantastic condition, few puddles but mostly perfect amounts of slidiness on the rocks. A fantastic day out.

As above, cafe closed. Bring lots of water. I also took my dirtworker as the bike wash is closed.

They are… eventually… they spent so long designing a square taper BB that isis came and went, so did octalink, and by the time they eventually came out with a BB it was for HT2. Great components, I’m still using a set of hubs that are 16 years old and a 25 year old headset, just don’t expect Hope-like adapters etc.

I was up there yesterday. Rode over via worlds end so didn’t appreciate any need to book, oops. I was very surprised by the step up in challenge of the black route; much more like a jump line / berms from a bike park. Very fun but I foresee a lot of ambulances… I passed a family on hybrids on the way round…and one chap with what looked like a broken wrist and a worrying back where he’d landed on his rucksack. Talked his mates through what to do and checked in at the trail centre – they’d called it through. Hope he is ok.

It was fantastic and clearly the result of a massive amount of hard work. The whole place was riding so much more flowy than a few months ago. Few bits of chicken wire need doing before they shred a tyre but other than that is amazing what’s been achieved.

The high wooden drop/roll-in is closed, oddly.

For the rear I believe your option is the velosolo spacer kit.

Thanks – have dropped you a message. Little heavier than the mach4 but looks like a lovely bike. Let’s talk price as £1800 used with zero warranty for a frame is waaaay high.

Thanks, both. Appreciated.

1995/6 Fat Chance Yo Eddy with M950 XTR, King hubs and headset. The modern width bars, decent pedals and nice grips make it a brilliant little bike and I ride it regularly when it’s dry out. Only the forks are terrible – and even then not too bad for a 20 year old product. Very flexy.

It depends on the airport.  Generally the guidelines are 2 x 35g are ok, however in Poland and Czech we have been asked to remove them.

Gunk degreaser – big can £10 from Halfords, lasts for ages (not the aerosol).

Amazing – thank you. Replacing the quotation marks fixed it.

Rob – thank you very much for your time, that doesn’t seem to work – I get a “did you mean to enter a formula?” error.

Any ideas? I copy/pasted it in and changed both cell ranges to the ones I need. Tried entering as array formula and normal formula – no difference. I thought with an array formula that you didn’t enter the curly brackets and just press ctrl+shift+enter?

I did it in 2016 on 32c cross tyres – Vitoria Cross XG TNT. They are pretty bombproof tyres usually, ride them on rocky trails a lot, but even they succumbed once round that loop. Bad luck though as I just clipped a flint or something. Given a choice I would have 38-40c tyres, but they don’t fit in my cross Bike and riding a mountain Bike is cheating.

I do a similar road/off road mix to you and I’ve used Shimano SPD-SL pedals off road for ages on my cross bike – I don’t like the feeling of MTB pedals on the road. I don’t get off and walk, so it’s not a problem. They take a surprising amount of battering (dropoffs, mtb trails, Dirty Reiver 200km etc). Shimano all the way for me. Worth saying I don’t do cross racing, where road pedals would be idiotic.

Definitely worth the money. Had one for 3 years of about 6-8 trips per year. Superb and easy to use. 10-20mins max to pack and rebuild. A 4″ fat bike tyre (on 85mm rims) even fits in – just.

There isn’t much as you can’t ride in the valley in high season. I forget the exact dates. Best to go elsewhere.

Assuming you’re going to Geneva, look at BA club Europe both ways – often not a lot more (especially if you book it as a BA holiday with a car included) and you get 2 x 32kg bags included which can be worth a total of £240. They are very particular about bag weight at Geneva. If you get one person in club then that person can take two bikes with them.

Buy/rent an Evoc bag, use plenty of bubble wrap and make sure you put a dropout spacer between the forks and another one between the rear dropouts. Stops them getting crushed. Take the rear mech off and wrap in bubble wrap. Get an old setpost that fits your frame, cut it down to about 10cm and put it in as far down as it will go to stop the seat tube being crushed. Take the disc rotors off so they don’t get bent. Put helmet, one set of kit and shoes in your hand luggage in case they loose your bike.

I recently discovered that mine fits in a normal Evoc bag. 4” tyres and 85mm rims. I think a winter trip to the Alps could become an annual thing! Currently in Chamonix and there are some really fun places to ride. I hear Courcheval is even better.

I think I peaked in about 2013/14… at one point I was mid-teens in XC. I’ve pretty much stopped training with any sort of intensity for the last year or two. After 20 years of flogging myself it was time for a rest, I wanted to be home more rather than away without the wife every weekend for 6 months of the year, I got the travelling bug (with the wife!) – plus work crept up on me so I didn’t feel like going for a 3hr ride in the dark 3 times a week all winter… Not done an XC race in 18 months and as long as the courses are so uninspiring and short I don’t see that changing. The only events I did in the U.K. last year were Mayhem and Battle on the Beach. If Gravel Dash didn’t keep clashing with marathons in europe I’d be there too. These days I go over to the continent half a dozen times a year and bimble round some proper courses in proper mountains. Roc Ardennes, Tiliment Marathon Bike, MB Race, Alps Bike Festival, Grand Raid Cristalp, Malevil Cup, Volcatt, Extreme Sur Loue, La Tramun… I was doing quite well at Tramun this year until I stopped for 10 minutes to enjoy the cheese, the crackers and the view at a feed station :)

What are the sidewalls like? Currently running Victoria TNTs as those are the only ones that seem to be able to cope with full on rocks rather than a grassy field.

I would guess either b-tension or cable is snagged/freyed somewhere along the way.

La Clusaz
Megeve

Yes. They are tight but with decent tyre levers they work. Make sure the bead is central the whole way round, make sure the last bit to fit is by the valve, gather the tyre together and force it down (with the valve at he bottom), use the tyre levers properly to stop it unseating.

They are a bastard but once on once and you have the knack it is fine.

Found some 25.4 5 degree bars on eBay… Toseek direct from China! We shall see… they didn’t just break when I hauled on them so there is hope… I know they aren’t retro, but no one made wide flat bars in the 90s!!

PS if anyone has a 5degree uncut Salsa carbon flat bar…

BBD?

Haha no USE forks in there – they seem to come up on Retrobike every now and again though so maybe post on there? He does have a million Kore stems though so if you ever need one of those….

More pics here

Pics of Yo Eddy

Yes I’m riding it – just conscious that I don’t want to wear out the transmission!! It’s already done 2 x 60 mile mtb rides round the Surrey Hills…

Build is:

King hubs
X221 rims
Champion spokes
King headset
Salsa shaft seatpost
Salsa promoto carbon bar
Salsa scandium stem
XTR M950 groupset
Pace RC36 Proclass

The cone bit on the axle gets stuck in the cone shaped hole in the fork leg. Try greasing between the two.

That course was brilliant – such an excellent combination of singletrack and fire roads. The singletrack was brilliant – really flowed well, passable-on and never too much in one go so you got stuck.