Yeah, but that’s a Swiss balloon, not your common old tat bit of rubber 😉

Yep fine, head to Greece, Crete, Corfu, one of the smaller Islands.

Some great sandy beaches and kids just need a bucket and spade and a splash of water and they are happy for hours. Although one of ours went through the tasting everything phase and just wouldn’t stop eating sand. He only stopped when he bit a chunk out of a bar of soap.

Our 3 were born and raised the first couple of years there and they survived.

I assume they are still napping, try and get somewhere close to the beach so you can head back after lunch so you miss the strongest sun and get a bit of a snooze, can’t beat a nice snooze after lunch.

Plus pretty much everyone speaks English, so if you need a pharmacy for the little one for what ever reason you’ll have no problem communicating with the pharmacist.

Something similar happened to me years ago when I was 17. Blokes says I’ll give you cash, went around to his place the next day to pick it up. Turned around and said f you. I ain’t paying. He was a proper meat head, even my dad who was a bit tasty when it came to a scrap decided on this occasion it just wasn’t worth it.

Moral of the story, people are always full of good intentions in the heat of the moment when the adrenalin is pumping and it’s just happened. After they have cooled down and actually consider how much it will cost them, most will try and get out of it.

If he/she comes up with the cash today/tomorrow, okay, if not, report.

Holy crap, that pair have just won the lottery 20 times over, is it real?? That would have ripped their head off.

Lucky lucky buggers.

^^^ THIS Trice ^^^

I would say if you are serious about getting a boat, go and do your competent crew and then Day Skipper. Then perhaps look at renting for a bit, charter. Great when the weather’s good, not so when you are waiting for half decent conditions.

Also are you good with your hands, you can do many of the jobs yourself….

They can be fun, but they are a money pit…….

Love coming back to this thread, bloody great to see how you are progressing. Shed loads of storage room in that back bit too. Very nice job sir!

Normally they don’t take kids on their own under 4. They will do lessons for younger kids, but you need to stay with them. Simple things like if they fall over on the travelator they struggle to get up again with their boots and ski’s.

Plus even if they enjoy it, they do suddenly get tired and that’s that, they want to finish there and then.

Did this a few months ago, don’t stress, if you switched it off and it didn’t conk out, you should be okay.

Diesels do make a funny noise running on petrol though, you loose the low down grunt too 😉

Although you will always and I mean always start to have a higher heart rate every time you fill up from now on.

I’ve got a set of Endura Singletrack knee pads.

Can get them on and off without taking your shoes off and I wear them all the time for my up and down, up and down, up and down riding. Comfy.

Not worn them in the hot weather yet, but after several months of use, I’m happy with them.

Watershipdown, even the music has me blubbering.

That and plucking nose hairs.

Has that video actually been watched 85 million times?

I’ve made a mistake haven’t I, it’s not really 85 million views…surely?

Not just me then…..

…..I had to buy a new bouncy bike as I couldn’t keep up with the whipper snappers on my hard tail anymore….Well I could, but I’d spend the next couple of days with a stiff back and deep heat on my legs…

You do suddenly realise you aren’t indestructible any more and you have a limited time, but it’s just made me more determined to cram more in and enjoy myself even more.

I love having kids, gives you an excuse to do all the silly things again (and use them as the excuse) that you couldn’t do when you were younger as you didn’t have the money or the freedom to travel.

For the past 3 – 4 weeks I’ve really got into Alcohol free beer.

Okay, I’m in Switzerland, so not sure what you get in the UK, but the stuff I’ve found isn’t bad at all.

I think I’d struggle given the choice between a good British pint of chop juice, but compared to the Lagers here it’s blooming good.

I drink water all day at work, don’t mind a cup of tea, but nowt beats a nice cold beer, plus you have the bonus of not having to worry about driving the car, hangovers or feeling groggy the next day, having to get up a couple of times for a slash (drink 3 pints, pee 6 and all that), it’s cheaper and less fattening…..and for a man approaching middle age, these are important factors.

Enjoying reading about this….keep up the cracking work, looks a great project.

The older I get the more I just do what I think is productive with my time.
If I’m in a meeting that really has nothing important for me and has just been called by a project managed because he/she has nothing better to do with their time other than call meetings, I quite often get an important “text or call”. I politely excuse myself saying something critical has come up and to call me if there is anything specific they need from me.

I go back to my desk, get on with my actual “work” and leave at a reasonable time, instead of staying late and trying to catch up with stuff because I’ve had an hour or two of my time wasted….

From past experience I feel your pain.

Hmmm, not just me then. I wouldn’t say pain, just stiffness/aching. If I’m immobile it takes me 30 seconds of moving before I’m fully upright, comfortably.

If I’ve been active and on the bike, no problems and feels much better (apart from Saturday where I took a full susser for a test ride and road like a possessed monkey…..but the smile on my face made up for the achy back. Funny I did some stretching Sunday and things have been better.

Problem is I sit in car at least 1.5 hours and day and have a desk job. Have been trying to move as much as possible lately, always take the stairs and I’m currently trying to work from another office one day a week which I can commute to by bike.

Not really pain, but it’s not 100% that’s for sure…

wow.

The eagles are not bred in captivity, but taken from nests at a young age. Female eaglets are chosen since they grow to a larger size – a large adult might be as heavy as seven kilos, with a wingspan of over 230cm. After years of service, on a spring morning, a hunter releases his mature eagle a final time, leaving a butchered sheep on the mountain as a farewell present. “That’s how the Kazakh eagle hunters make sure that the eagles go back to nature and have their own strong newborns, for the sake of future generations”, Svidensky says.

Well I’m no fat boy, but I could do with loosing a few KG’s. Okay, I’m 6.1, but even so, Endura Large comes up snugg.

If I fall off everything snaps.

You must be a young’en!

Mine shatter 🙂

This is one of my little lads at 3.5

Right….I’ve got 6 months 🙂

Funny, his twin brother is scared sh1t3less, he’s got his balance, but he definitely wants to know Dad is behind him.

Those two little lads are proper dudes. For sure they jump better than me 🙂

That’s a chunk of aluminium inside an electromagnet. Science is *ACE*, isn’t it?

Now that is cool.

Good work, would love something like that myself.

Same here when I had a muff mouth….and if you use the Mrs hair products the whole World smells better for a day or two 🙂

End of the day if your work hasn’t suffered whilst doing this “extra project”, or used funds that weren’t budgeted for, what’s the problem, you all work for the same company and if your idea is for the benefit of the company then everyones a winner !!

Das ist sehr crazzzy!!!!

Sandra Bullock however (mentioned earlier) has always had a special place in my dreams and I think I could probably tolerate quite a lot. Having seen her interviewed a few times she comes across as a pretty well sorted and “normal” individual.

^^ This, I’ve always had a thing for Ms Bullock.

Yep, always put my hand over the top (and switch off my helmet mounted one) for other cyclists and walkers (seriously, we come across loads of people walking late at night..always they’ve had a few beers and the smell of dope is in the air, but everyone says hello and is happy….which is nice).

No pretty girls to keep you “motivated”??

Thanks again guys, very helpful to hear your views.

Bearback, considering the riding you guys are getting up to and the positive comments, it says a lot.

Yep, two reasons I’m really pulled to these bikes.

Good family run LBS which is a Scott dealer, if I’m spending a few 1000 I want to know I’m getting a good after service and when I look at how my current bike suffers in certain Swiss conditions and then I look at the Genius, it seems to me, they have really designed the bike to deal with “real life” environmental conditions.

Hole in the floor at a roadside cafe in Greece. There wasn’t even a handle or anything to hold onto! How are you supposed to squat down over a hole without a handle to hold onto! More to the point, how do you get back up again!!!

They actually aren’t that popular now, lived there for a few years and most places use the normal sit down jobies (which normally look as though a Tsunami of Pi%% has just done the rounds)…

The only thing that worried me about the “Turkish” 🙂 bogs was you’d stand up and find your Red Wood had landed in your pants and not gone down the hole….shudders……

To be fair they pretty much guaranteed a clean breakage…which must never be underestimated.

Thanks Milkie.

Sounds like a nice sturdy bike. The different settings with the suspension is a big selling point for me

I’m hopefully taking it for a test ride soon.

Cheers

GL

Anybody else had this done?

Looking at that x-ray, thankfully not!

Get well soon.

Yet earlier, Houns says he’s 36.
I wish people would stop being so surprised that some people don’t want kids

I was actually replying to someone else’s post.

36 really isn’t that long in the tooth. I would consider having a tattoo quite permanent even though laser treatment is quite good now days (so I hear)….unless there is some reversal treatment out there…having the snip is a pretty big decision.

If we are all to believe that we will live into out 80’s and 90’s perhaps further, we still have a long way in front of us even at 36…..hopefully.

You are in your 20’s and you know you don’t want kids…so surprised by this statement…

The only thing I was certain of in my 20’s is I liked bikes, beer and shagging.

If I look back to my 20’s and now, 39, I’m so different I wonder whether I should change my name!

I…………actually “we” popped 3 of the little blighters out from 34 to 36 (twins involved)….

They drive me crazy sometimes, but you watch how they pick things up and remind you how bloody great it was to be a kid and you wouldn’t change anything.

Seriously….putting on a rain hat is that difficult?

Classic! Good clean “dirty” fun.

BTW, could the last shot be classed as a “no make up selfie?”

….

….

I’ll get my coat…

Sorry for delay in getting back to you guys, stuck in meetings yesterday and techi presentations today.

I’ll let you into a little secret….when I first started to try and move out from IT operations (batch runs and tape monkey tasks) I thought about going into Unix…tried to read some books, spent a bit of time with the unix team on my days off etc…but the “position” fell through when the head of the team was fired….at the same time I picked up a Network book that made perfect sense to me and the rest was history, as they say.

Anyways, I went searching through my old books and found the following:

Both O’Reilly books.

Unix in a Nutshell, System V and solaris 2.0….I’ve had a look through that one and I reckon it’s just commands for someone that knows about Unix already.

2nd one is sed and awk, had a quick look through it (whilst the kids were trying to look at the nice animals on the front cover)and noticed there is a bit about regular expressions then moves onto sed and awk. Know a few basic things on reg exp from the Cisco World.

Now, before I go delving into the book and bearing in mind that I’m not looking to do anything really fancy, just take text, order it into a uniformed style and create files to boot commands back into cisco boxes, are sed and awk still active….or is it old hat? Just looked, think I bought these books back in 97.

Funnily enough, one of the presentations on this super “controller” which will configure and control “ALL” network devices from a central point (Cisco have been talking about this for the past 4-5 years I think) started mentioning Python….and how us Cisco nerds need to start understanding a bit of programming…..my Geek levels might go through the roof down this slippery slope.

Had a Cross DX from them for a year now.

Customer service is spot on. Everything turned up quickly and well packed. Only thing they didn’t do was put the front brake on the right…..but that’s not the end of the World is it.

Bike is great, well finished and very good build quality. In a year of proper hard riding I’ve had to replace front brake pads.

Highly recommended.

Tell you what also, their own branded clothing is good too. Had a set of 3/4’s and impressed with them.

OP, you should just relax a bit and enjoy the ride. I cant see any problem, but the one you are making.

What I suspect is that you are getting angry because you perceive someone is benefiting from your hard pedaling work. Its not going to make you any slower.

I suspect you are moaning about this as shouting through audi windows has become less attractive for you.

Just ride and enjoy it FFS. This kind of attitude stinks.

You’ve made so many assumptions…you must be the all knowing Oracle.

My original post wasn’t aggressive or arsey, just perplexed. At what point did you get the impression I need to relax? I’m just stating a couple of situations and asking the forum their experiences on whether this is the norm, I didn’t rant and rave or accuse people of shouting at other people….that seems to have been taken care of by yourself.

As far as I’m concerned, it’s dangerous. When you are riding in a group you know someone is behind you, when it’s done in Stealth it’s dangerous.

Chasing someone down after they’ve past you and then sitting on their wheel, maybe in a race where you may have a chance of recovering and winning said race it’s okay I suppose, although probably frowned apon by the pro’s if you don’t pull your weight?? (I don’t really have a scooby to be honest), but on a normal ride just seems a bit weird to me.

As for shouting at people in Audi’s…..did you really write that??

Sure it’s me who’s got the stinky attitude?

as for the FFS….really? Silly person.

Who cares

Well….me for a start 😉

I think it’s a bit rude, but more importantly, it’s not very safe if you don’t even know they are there.

I had bean soup for lunch yesterday and today….I think I may have stumbled apon a solution 😳 😆

no need for any stealth ninja stuff..

Exactly a quick hello is all that’s needed, it’s just polite

On the two guys I went past, both ignored me when I said hello as I was over taking, but then were quite happy to stare at my harris until I clocked what was going on.

On the other side of the coin there was another bloke on a dropped bar bike towing his little in a trailer up a 350 odd meter vertical climb. I said hello and commented fair play, good bit of training, we ended having a bit of a chat and in the end I stayed with him a bit up the climb for a bit of moral support, he was blooming fit, but still, always nice to suffer in numbers!

If you are willing to sit inches off of someones wheel, the least you can do is acknowledge them, with a greeting.

As other have mentioned, it’s safer to know someone is there.