I logged on here to see what was going on in the world of mountain bikes, first time in literally years. I stopped visiting cos I felt like the feel of the place had gone from bike geeks and weirdos to management consultants setting leiure time targets. Inevitable, I guess when objects of desire and ‘lifestyle’ coincide. Nevermind, I got on with just riding my bike. For years. Everything works, still does. When the odd bit needed replacing a quick search on chain reaction found what i wanted and i didn’t have the faintest idea about ‘developments’.

Anyway, I logged on and saw this post. Having built up and ridden a load of On One and Planet X frames I had to have a read. Sad to find out there some kind of issue and then some sensitivities with ‘communications’. So it goes, I always used to like the fact I dealt with humans – warts and all – but maybe it was more than. Parts failuree and points of contact going silent? Not good by any measure.

So, great news Brant is back on board – without doubt, love him or hate him, a bike geek.

But then I read on. 29 is the new 26. 650blahblah. 26 ‘for kids’. Hahahaha. All those things that people did on 26″ wheels for, what? 4 decades? Kids stuff. NewProduct™ would have saved from the shit times we didn’t realise we were having.

It would be a cynic of the highest magnitude to imagine the big bike companies rubbing their together at the thought of filling garages and sheds not only with proper ‘grown up’ bikes and myriad cluttered boxes with spares, upgrades and such and then doing it all over again for ‘the little’uns’. Endless gravy chains (fluid shifting, my droogs!)

It all comes back to me. The annual obsolescence cycles (no pun intended), infauxvation, William Burroughs. “Hustlers of the world, there is one mark you cannot beat: the mark inside.”

**** that shit. I’ll check back in again in five more years. Maybeby then the increasingly oversize, ponderous riders will have traded their 29ers in for crown green bowling and 26ers will have had a rennaissance. Or not, IDK. Whatever. I’ve a garage full of 26 size spares’n’tyres and a bunch of secret trails. See ya later suckers!

(But: good luck to On One.)

Everything and nothing all at once. I find it very therapeutic, usually something bothering me pre-ride has been mellowed out in my head. Or I figure out what to do about it.

Totally this. And seasonal adjustments – wow, look at those shrooms, fly agarics! Oooh! Ceps?! Ah, birch boletus. Or, uhh, where’s that rocky bit? Can’t see under all that snow etc.

Never really imagined myself in someone else’s vision of how things should look… sounds weird.

yep, just set it up; chicken’s been marinading all day, kids’ fave sausages all ready and i can almost smell the chorizo and red pepper already…

I used to be terrible at changing bikes; after getting the nth new steel hardtail that rode broadly similarly to the others and beginning to wonder about *another* one, I thought to myself, “hang on, why do i *really* want to change things?” Realised it was my life and not my bike that needed changing and, after a period of ‘financial readjustment’ in which i rode what i could get, have been enjoying the same ride ever since. ymmv.

Gifts?! For page boys?!

Nada. The honour of service to the family, that’s what my boys are getting.

No seriously, please go and have a lie down. You must be very tired. You’ll do yourself a mischief if you carry on being so wound up.

Why do you think I’m wound up? You’re not very good at reading people so I’d stop trying to do it – you’re onto a loser on that path.

Pleased you can keep sidestepping reality; some people need other means to do so but for you it seems natural.

What I did say, which you obverussly din’t read through all your steaming bile, was that maybe those who lost a loved member of their family might have wanted to pay tribute to someone they saw some good in.

No mate, no steaming bile just no time for dealers. If a family wants to cvelebrate their beloved dealer-in-the-family and the luxuries their death pimping bring, well, **** ’em too. (And no, no time for arms dealers, investment bankers etc either; soulless, exploitative capitalists – whichever side of the ‘law’ they operate on – *can* be judged for the scumbags they are.)

Maybe they want to celebrate the positive aspect of his life, and what he meant to them. He wasn’t born a drug dealer…

Oh you silly, silly naive relativist; sadly I’ve known, lived with, and watched junkies die their sordid, sad lives. Dealers are parasitic scum living off their own communities and should not be mourned for a minute. “Positive aspect of his life.” **** that, I can only imagine you’re still grooving to your Gary Glitter discs and bemoaning the cruelty of all those nasty judgemental types.

Wonder how many who were looting JJB and setting fires are helping tidy up the community they care so much about?

**** ’em both.

Can’t really comment on Cornwall as my family left there when Cumbrian mine owners poached the best miners in the mid C19th. Enjoyed a week there in May tho’.

Stein tho? He’s made me and my missus enthusiastic about food and recipes that we would never have though of. CHeers Rick Stein.

Local people have their environment shat up ‘in protest’ because two gangs of oppressive gun-wielding **** have been taking pot shots at each other. What annoys me are the armchair revolutionaries who have never lived in this kind of shithole imagining some kind of solidarity with the rioters (not here in the Daily Mail of cycling, mostly on Twitter/Facebook).

It *looks* as if it will provide roughly ~50% daily energy but the down side is, as folk have pointed out, you don’t own them. We’re not moving anywhere soon as we only bought this place last year (and as a result don’t have the spare cash for our own installation) so it seems like a reasonable idea. But I need to hear from actual users about how much juice gets pushed out on a monthly basis, rather than the from sellers, before I start thinking seriously about it.

Oh yeah, for those outside the glory lands there are other schemes around the country: http://www.uswitch.com/solar-panels/%5B/url%5D

Wait ’til The Man steals it from you. I’ve been running into problems since FTW got sanitised and no longer means ‘**** The World’.

lol, tbf wheelz it even says ‘1979’ up top of t’video box. if 1979 vounted i’d definitely have had this:

because it is peerless amongst the whole post-punk fallout

sorry man, missed that amongst t’kwality stuff 🙂

Oh and it seems as if I’ve had my reactions fully reconfigured by FB now… i was looking for the ‘Like’ button for Honey Bane 🙂

cos as good as their elevators cover was their red crayola cover was even better..

And, lest we forget, recently killed by the met…

From the blessed Jah Wobble:

And now the buildings change, now the people change
Everything changing, spirit and matter most apparent
Realised there never was anything to worry about, to doubt was insane
The limited callow isolated individuals living on housing estates in
Chingford
Large detached houses in Kew, tower blocks in Tottenham marshes, become
my gods
I see an accounts clerk from tooting, I see Zeus
A sanitary inspector from the London borough of Haringey and Brahmin
stands resplendent before me
For 5 minutes I LOVE EVERYBODY
There is only love
All action ceases
The mile end road once a blood-stained battlefield of bacchanalian
excess
Becomes the garden of Gethsemane
A bitter 72 year old ex-Docker becomes the ever compassionate Buddha
A Cypriot minicab driver becomes St. Francis of Assisi
The 22 year old Glaswegian checkout girls IS the divine mother
I LOVE EVERYBODY
My spirit is free
I am limitless in space
Time and matter
Simultaneously the planet Neptune part of the structural support to
Vauxhall bridge
I am your left breast I am Stepney I am Peru I am divine and so are you
I love everybody
I am nothing except a mere cluster of notes
A road sign in skelmersdale
I ran the roman empire
I was a lavatory attendant in hull
I am everybody and everybody is me
Spirit – who put the spirit in matter? – love

It defies human decency that people still buy the rag and will, in all likelihood, do so even though they are funding corpse-looting scum (they can try and pin it on Wade but that’s clearly an individual being offered up whilst the amulance-chasing – and invading – culture remains).

As per Lowey – two boys join their sister here at the weekend and so three under tens mean no riding at the weekend. Mind, I just had a cracking ride this morning and, judging by my manager’s diary, I should have another one on Tuesday and Thursday 🙂

Uhh, you do know that whole left brain/right brain stuff was abandoned by head knockers about 40 years ago? I think TJ just hasn’t spent much time thinking about art or looking at the ideas behind it and realising that there is a rationale behind most of the stuff that the Daily Mail has a pop at. As DrJ says, there’s more to it than interior design.

Hmm, I’d say reality – particularly emotional reality (if there is such a thing) – is complicated and scary! I tend to find that men simplify it in a way that means they don’t have to face up to its complexities until a point comes when fate forces their hand and then -snap- the shit hits the fan. Still, with six billion people in the world, all getting it on in a wild variety of ways, there’s always going to be a lot of different perspectives about this 🙂

Ahh, bjork’s inspired gravity harps and sharpsichords or some tired old plastic punks on a third comeback tour? Or some recycled 80s synth basslines? Or anotherbunch of re-re-re-cycled indie ‘lads’? I love Bjork, i don’t think everything she tries works (for me) but, bloody hell, she keeps trying to think of new ways to make music and all power to her for it.

I’ve come across a few emotionally unhinged blokes, but never one that explodes with crazy and are unmanageable

tbf, i share an office with someone who researches domestic violence and I wouldn’t be in a huge hurry to agree with that, at least based on the things I hear.

sharki, blessed be man. I hope the spell gets banished and your paths are full of possibility.

everybody’s pretty mental once you scratch the surface; you just need to find a variety of unhinged that works with yours.

Yep, this pretty much nails it. It’s when people become convinced they’re totally sane and everyone else has some kind of problem that they’re a small step away from dismembering prostitutes and making stuff out of them.

Gave me a rear qr for free

Sigh. Back to bum chums.

I can’t be bothered watching the OP’s video of himself opening the box (which sounds almost as if he was expecting to find a scratch…) but would love to know how carefully it’s opened. It is a tiny little scratch, btw.

might be how the avi files were encoded (xvid, divx, etc) – i get the same with me telly. The TV will decode avis encoded one way but not the other (and i never remember which)

Similarly, email me a dot f dot wilson at gmail dot com if you’ve got memory map. I’ve got a few .mmo files

Image is no concern because everyone looks a dick on a bike, spd sandals or five tens no one cool’s going to be very impressed. It’s just the thought of turning something I do to unwind into a little mirror of the work environment – targets, competition, routine, strategies etc – that puts me off. It sounds **** mental to me (and that goes for any kind of leisure time sport). Mind you, racing seems popular with plenty of folk so my thoughts are just a drop in the ocean here.

Use black as the font colour. That usually stops things looking rediculous.

Is my failing memory failing me but are DVATC ‘a bit keen’ (ie. race whippets)? No probs if so, just wondering.

Lots of very pleasant woodland & BWs between Belper and Matlock

Actually, that’s pretty tempting thisisnot… but I think I’d have more trouble convincing the missus it was a cuddly family pet which woud lay little bonuses…

Light Sussex Bantams it may well be.

Cheers for that! After a bit of reading it looks like Australorp bantams or Dutch bantams seem like good bets…

Now for a bit of skipsurfing for the materials for a run…

Cheers Alan, that’s really useful. Does their pecking cause problems with veggies and flowerbeds? I guess young seedlings would look tasty to them but we’re building a greenhouse so would probably be able to keep younger plants safe.

tasty eggs mmm. Not sure about the feats of tree ascent. We’ve got trees and the neighbours do too so I could be kept busy. But then it’s time the kids learnt to climb trees.

I might have to have a look at the garden and think about space – pretty sure we don’t want to give up a chicken-sized space, even in a movable ark, but we’ll see..

Derbyshire with the occasional foray elsewhere.

You want to try the white peak for mud. Still, crc cheapo wtb mx/stout folding pairing are coping okay so far.

Handful: “No back probs with my Chameleon.”

<sets up chiropractor business and waits>

😉