The idea of sleeping with ear plugs makes me nervous.

Use cotton wool – dampens the outside sound

For recovery this rice bucket training looks very interesting :

I always washed my eVent with the Grangers 2-in-1 in wash and it seemed to work ok.

I had/have an Endura Venturi eVent jacket and a eVent Pace 3×3 and always thought they were great, and didn’t need (or have) pit zips to keep comfortable.

Paclite is useless if you are going to be wearing a rucksack – just not robust enough for the wear from the shoulder straps.

I have a Rab jacket in pertex plus and it seemed pretty boil-in-the-bag to me, thankfully it has pit zips and I only walk in it.

I’ve been running a Maeco Arete 25L dehumidifier constantly for over a year now – seems very good and I haven’t noticed the running costs – they are dwarfed by the plasma TV and AV system costs :-)

Certainly works – it is in the centre of the house and fighting a shower room, a bathroom and a tumble dryer – which causes some humidity even though it is a heat pump one.

I’ve been working my way through all of his videos – just listening – whilst I paint my summerhouse !

If you get the Thule Velospace then you can also use it with the Backspace cargo box, which is handy.

https://www.roofbox.co.uk/scripts/rbvehsel4_tab.php/car-specific-accessories/thule_backspace_xt_cargo_box_no_938300/Qx%40w%2C6M42VAwp3%40Rb%7B~cC4ure_CvE3

You can also add an extension rack to the velospace to allow a 3rd bike to be carrried on the 2 bike rack, or a 4th bike to be carried on the 3 bike rack, or one bike to be carried when the backpace is being used, as shown above.

https://www.thule.com/en-gb/bike-rack/accessories/thule-velospace-xt-bike-adapter-_-938100

Thing that worries me mostly about ageing ebikes or second hand ebikes is battery cell repair – I see places that can repair/service motors but not if you get a battery problem outside of warranty or even want to replace an old battery that is losing performance.

That guy on youtube linked to above (with the spreadsheet) has a link to an advice channel – go to his About page on YT and the link is at the bottom.

Chris Boourne provides lots of videos talking about tax concerns on pensions and investments, might be worth reviewing.

https://www.youtube.com/@chrisbourne-taxfreeinvesti9688/about

Not looked at this properly but this guy on youtube also has a spreadsheet : https://youtu.be/T494TnOD9sE?si=bHeJEFP5tI09UH1B

The is also RetireEasy whch is cheaper : https://www.retireeasy.co.uk/

And EvolveMyRetirement, whcih can run Monte Carlo on you investment plans https://evolvemyretirement.com/

I don’t think any are as flexible as Voyant.

The 4% rule is based on investing in US stock, so a UK or even global investment portfolio will yield different results – for a UK dominant portfolio the percentage is more like 3.1%. And it also assumes the usual 60/40 portfolio.

You can improve on this rate by employing some additional strategies, described very fully in the book “Living off your Money” : https://amzn.eu/d/5JQLJcS

Regarding seeing an IFA, they are probably using a cashflow tool, like Voyant Go.

Although this software is not normally publically accessible you can get access by joining the Meaningful Academy website, which is a significant, but one-off, fee of £695, but you get the first years access to a single user version of Voyant Go, and can then retain access at £120 p.a. You also get some training modules on how to use it and also on the way this IFA advies his clients to manage their money – basically partitioning money into buckets of risk vs time.

You can model inflation, investment returns, events like downsizing your house, taxes, etc.

You can find videos on youtube describing the software.

Seriously? You talking about South East Wales, right? The Valleys? There are a lot of problems down here but land access is definitely not one of them! There are loads of bridleways, loads of forest, and absolutely no-one at all cares if you ride across the mountains on the trackways. It’s an absolutely brilliant place to live as an MTBer!

Go look at an OS map – check out the number of areas with an orangey-brown border, both pale green and yellow shaded.

These are open access lands, and “One fifth of Wales is mapped as ‘access land’ where the public have a right of access on foot.”, and not for cycling.

Then go and look for the number of marked bridleways, it is not very many. There might be many tracks you go down that look like bridleways, but if they are you are lucky.

I’ve also noticed that many of the OS footpaths don’t seem to map that well to reality – I end up using the satellite view mostly when out walking.

Remember this campaign – https://www.cyclinguk.org/article/trails-wales-what-happens-now

It didn’t happen, which sort of conflicts with Wales desire to increase tourism.

I’ve had right arm/hand problems for a long time now, including trigger finger, golfers elbow, tennis elbow, fingers/hand/arm going numb/tingly, etc.

Pretty sure it basically issues with my forearm muscles, or the fascia over them. But also got some trigger point issues in my pec.

Beofre going to a doctor try going to a good massage therapist to see if they can locate trigger points that are sore, or other problems. Sometimes they are remote from the pain site and cause several more closer to the pain site.

Mine used a Gua mssage blade on me to good effect, and the trigger finger and numbness goes away when all the muscles are in decent shape.

The 20mph speed limits might actually be detrimental to them getting to somewhere to walk , providng another excuse to not go!

I am not talking about cycling here in the valleys anyway as there are too many uninsured youths in hotted up cars or motorcycles speeding and making the roads extremely dangerous – so I won’t touch the roads myself, even though there are some great ‘mountain’ roads and climbs.

A lot of the land is open access meaning that you can walk anywhere but not, interestly, cycle. And there are precious few bridleways and many of those aren’t really passable.

An upside is that there are more gravelled routes to provide access to the wind turbines, but some of these are closed off for access as well.

It doesn’t have to be expensive. When they implemented it here they just put a 20mph vinyl wrap over every 30pmh sign. There was obviously some cost in labour and printing but they didn’t actually replace any signs.

£27m here in Wales – not chump-change: https://www.southwalesguardian.co.uk/news/23661719.welsh-government-spend-27m-changing-20mph-speed-limit-signs/

Looking at the general population in south wales a probably better use of the money to save more lives might be education on diet and exercise, the number of people here in South Wales who are grossly overweight and do nothing to maintain their health is very high, with loads of messages about mental health issues and support on social media apps for the area.

Especially crazy when you consider how much open-access land there is in South Wales and the valleys.

One has to wonder about priorities when you consider the large NHS waiting lists in Wales vs the costs of implementing this speed change – signage, etc.

I have a pragmasis chain and d-lock per bike and a torc mega anchor between each pair of bikes – the ‘garage’ is more of a shonky long outbuilding with a narow roller garage door and ropey old slate tiling that wouldn’t be much of a deterent – I took the view that any insurance assessor would not class it as a proper garage for insurance purposes but technically as the bikes are all locked with gold standard chains and d-locks to an immovable object (the wall) they should be covered anyway.

I spaced mine (4) both vertically and horizontally so when folded to one side they fitted together as well as possible, with handlebars fitting between the fork and front wheel gap on the adjacent bike for example.

Also so they were as close as possible horizontally so I could have a single pragmasis wall anchor between pairs of bikes with chains and a d-lock one each bike. The bulk of the chain was also a consideration when looking at the spacing between the racks.

For the U.K., Apple’s data comes from the Met Office

That doesn’t seem right as it is often very different for forecasts here in south wales.

Didn’t Dark Skies aggregate several models for it’s forecast, so I would assume that Apple weather does the same, otherwise what was the point of buying them ?

For progression a week with the Warren Smith Ski Academy is a must and his videos/books are then a handy reminder.

I’m in the Rhondda and all the Met Office, BBC, Accuweather and Apple apps all seem useless so I generally take votes between them for consensus.

Shure Aonics for ultmate hookiness ?

for an LED based TV it is worth looking for a well reviewed model where someone has published their calibrated settings on the web, which you can then easily apply to your new TV.

For most TVs (especially Samsung…) the supplied/default settings are normally awful so this will save a lot of messing around. That’s one reason it is not worth going to a shop to look at picture quality (unless it is a speciallised shop that has callibrated them), plus they always use unrealisticaly good source material and sometime refuse to let you view anything else.

Seems like a sound decision, it sounds like watches aren’t for you.

They are the male equivelent of women buying stupidly expensive handbags :-)

Or buying a large, expensive 4×4 to drive round London.

Or loads of expensive camera gear when you have no artistic talent (I tried to placate this with some 4/3rds gear for a while before beating it and getting a Canon G7x ii).

Given their cost and high profile, it’d seem high-level fakes are most common around Rolex

If you uy from ebay nowadays the seller first has to send the watch to an ebay centre that verifies the authenticity of the watch. That happened with the sale of my speedy – I also had some spare fake straps and a book on the history of the Speedy and sent that direct, which ebay chased me up on.

From my viewpoint, for a normal sized person (0n a large frame) 650/27.5 mountain bikes look well-proportioned where 26ers looked too small/BMX-like and 29ers look a tad too large.

Plus the fact that 29ers roll over stuff more easily, combined with slacker angles, means that you need to seek out ever more technical/steeper terrain to get the same ‘adrenaline rush – which reduces the amount of accessible riding areas.

I quite like the ingenuity of some of those Seiko mods and the waterproofedness and accuracy is dependant on the person that built it up and how well equiped his workshop is.

I sold my Speedy moonphase on a while ago – I bought it for my 40th and because my father had an Omega, but always felt guilty for 1) succumbing to the massive marketing campaign of the watch industry that hypes the value of ‘luxury’ watches, and 2) succumbing to the typical male weakness to covet shiny, technical stuff for it’s own sake, and for a mechanical watch with it’s inherent inaccuracy this seemed particularly pathetic and pointless.

Anyone got a Seiko 5 Submariner?

Anyone got a what now?

I think he means one of the ‘Seiko mods’ that you can find on Ebay or Etsy, along with easily accessible user reviews on Etsy.

Like this for a Sub:

(https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/1408244570/mens-automatic-seiko-mod-black-nh35a)

Or this for a Seamaster:

(https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/1459658044/bb58-style-custom-built-homage-classic)

or this for a BB38:

(https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/1459658044/bb58-style-custom-built-homage-classic)

Not recommending any of these or any seller as I have no experience of them.

I previously used an RPM powerball successfully as an exercise after some heavy percussive massage work, although this time the muscles seem much ‘ropier’ and the gastron blade seems good at clearing that up. Probably 25 years older than my previous episode of tennis elbow though.

Try the scraping method (also known as the graston technique) at home, you can use a butter knife rather than buy a tool, and maybe use some desicated coconut oil or other lube for more effect.

I’ve had acupuncture for my problems (and clasps, and different forms of exercise straps) but it/they did nothing, but this worked for me, and using a knife is cheap:

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=tennis+elbow+scraping

I used my jigsaw massage gun and exercises a lot last year when I had tennis and golf elbow issues, which helped keep things in check, but a Gua Sha scraping tool proved very useful to really clear them.

I had similar lower back pain on the left side that wasn’t going until I laid into it with my jigsaw massager a couple of times and now the tender area is dissappearing.

I originally bought one of those jigsaw massage attachments after seeing a post on here about something similair, and it was so good I bought a smaller Bosch 12V coordless jigsaw especially for it as the Dewalt was a bit bulky.

I often get ‘sore’ points appearing on my thighs, which the massager gets rid of, and last year I had a lot of issues with my right arm which the massager kept in check. (Now I have a gua sha scraping massage tool which has really helped fix the arm issues).

It has a ball attachment and a cone attachment and both of them are useful for different types of massage – with the cone for cross massage of muscles.

It is very powerful so a bit of a blunt tool and some care is needed – and dessicated coconut oil to lube the skin so as not to rip it.

The large amounts of power is good though as you can hammer the problem area and compare it to the good area on the opposite side of your body to help locate the issue. I did this with a knee issue which turned out to be problems at the back of the leg, which a physio failed to locate but reluctantly accepted was the issue when I pointed it out based on the tools ‘findings’.

Thought I would see Bird mentioned…

Odd, because Canadian RDA seems to be 600 IU/day for an Adult, and the UK is 400 IU/day which seems to contradict your argument. Both Canada and the UK seem to agree that taking more than 4000 IU/day might be bad.

The book has several chapters discussing vitamin D issues, the reductions in cancer rates, diabetes rates, depression rates associaed with decent levels of vitamin D (with lots of references to supporting trials and meta analysis data) and is worth reading (£7.59 on Kindle).

It suggests that it is desirable to maintain a vitamin D level of at least 20ng/ml for strong bones (preferably 32ng/ml), but the current UK recommendations at the time the book was written were 10ng/ml (and a 400UI dose intended to achieve that), enough to prevent the onset of rickets/osteomalacia.

The book quotes that the Institute of Medicine in the USA backed a level of at least 20ng/ml in 2010, and also in 2010 Osteoporosis Cananda recommended a minimum of 30ng/ml.

So maybe my memory abut the Canadian RDA had it swapped with that the Osteoporosis Canada recommendation, but the book quotes as justification (of that value being correct) that a study of surfers in Honolulu, with heavy sun exposure of 30 hours a week, the average serum vitamin D levels were only 31.6ng/ml.

The book also points out that mortality rates worsened as levels were pushed higher than 32ng/ml, so the large dosages being promoted by covid-activists are probably harmful – even Dr Fauci said that he was taking 7000UI I seem to remember.

So the book recommends a supplementation of 1200Ui during the winter months, assuming that you get enough sun in the winter, and doesn’t recommend a higher dose unless you have medical advice to do so.

I was on that but now am on 2000UI as the pills come with some vitamin K2, which is suppossed to reduce some risks associated with the vitamin D supplementation.

I’m planning to add a Tongsheng motor to a utility bike following TJ’s positive experience. This fire danger reminder has me wondering what a good source of the battery would be?

I’ve seen recommendations for

https://ebikebatteries.co.uk/product-category/ebike-battery-pack/

Vit D isn’t a harmful supplement

it can be harmful to take too much, and it is probable that many people over supplement nowadays since the pandemic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_D_toxicity

This book

Discusses trials data and points out that too much vitamin d is as bad as too little for its health benefits, and argues that Canada’s RDA is much more likely to be correct than the UK one, and that a dose of 1200 iu is the best guess at a safe supplementation level without a blood test.

As well as the eBike Motor Centre that was posted above:

EBike Motor Centre

EBike Motor Centre on Facebook

there was another service centre posted on another thread previously, E-Bike Motor Repairs:

E-Bike Motor Repairs

E-Bike Motor Repairs on Facebook

which looked interesting as they showed some Shimano motors they had worked on.

Another option to that mentioned is the new CYC Photon motor and fitment to a normal MTB frame, which is similair to the Bafang and TongSheng TSDZ22 motors but smaller (with a 34T chainring option) and it seems much better built with lots of good reviews on YouTube and very favourable comments about the torque sensing feel of the motor.

The motor is unfortunately also non-user serviceable with a warranty of 2 years and CYC reckon it should last two years (!), but E-Bike Motor Repairs say that they can service CYC motors (and Bafang) once they are out of warranty.

I also spotted some encouraging comments on the E-Bike Motor Repairs facebook page with reference to CYC lasting UK winter weather:

“Lev Leon
E-Bike Motor Repairs did you do any mods to motors to prevent water from getting in ? i used to have custom emtb with cyc motor. went through harsh underwater situations will 0 water inside. ( checked right after ). …”

“E-Bike Motor Repairs
Lev some we do yes but some have no ways to add an extra seal. Yes I also have a cyc x1 stealth and find it great.”

The other CYC Motors, and the stock Photon, come in UK-law busting power options only, but an enquiry to CYC yielded that they do an EN15194 compliant version (250W, 15.5mph, sticker showing 250W and the voltage and manufacturer), although this is special order.

I don’t fancy ordering it from HK and having to return it to HK if there are problems, and CYC also seem very tardy answering email queries (can’t blame these small companies too much for that) so I have emailed around the three UK distributiors I can find to see if they can source the motor:

Electric Bike Conversion (https://electric-bike-conversions.co.uk)
BesBike (https://besbike.co.uk/)
Paradise Cycles (https://www.paradisecycles.co.uk/cyc-photon-mid-drive-motor-kit.html).

(I’ve got nothing to do with these shops or CYC, or anything to do with the bike industry…)

Paradise haven’t replied but BesBike have said that they should be able to request that version, so I think I am going to go through BesBike, plus their batteries as the new CYC batteries seem an awkward shape for a FS MTB.

The CYC equiped bike is going to be a full-fat cruiser for recovery days whilst I attempt to get fit enough to ride the normal mtb the rest of the time (it’s hilly round here), and if that doesn’t work I will get an Orbea Rise…