I don’t know about cycling etc, but my parents run a scuba diving business in spain. They have to have certain protection set up behind the scenes (insurance for them, contract with a local private hospital, access to a decompression chamber) and I think they have to check clients’ insurance. They certainly have a day insurance package they offer to people without holiday insurance (although a decent holiday insurance policy covers most dives – other than particularly deep dives/stuff without an instructor present). I’m not sure how much of that is national law, how much is canarian law and how much is common sense but I can’t really see why anyone wouldn’t have that in place for their own protection. My parents have had claims against them – stupid stuff that the insurer has successfully defended, but it’s nice to leave it to the insurer rather than doing it yourself!

On the road bike around the holme valley and over holme moss.

I’m on “normal” plusnet (broadband only) but considering fibre optic at the moment. I think that the one I am on is 70GB (daytime use – overnight is unlimited) but the fibre optic offer I got through is completely unlimited. Apparently (haven’t read the small print…)

60p from the vending machine

I’ve done that, it melted the seal…

My minimum target is 7 hours per week of activity – running, cycling, swimming and gym work. This time of year I rarely go beyond 8 hours, but can add a fair amount over summer when longer rides get more appealing.

I’ve just bought a Trek Domane, the Synapse looked tempting but nowhere local seemed to have any in stock.

I’m not a huge romantic and don’t expect big gestures, but my oh claimed that he ‘couldn’t find any cards’, gave me some chocolates from the shop at the end of the road (which sold cards last time I looked), spent theevening swearing while trying to fit new mudguards then came to bed late.

A bit more effort than that would have been nice! I didn’t get him much, but at least I’d thought about it in advance and cooked something nice for him.

He turned up outside work with an evans bag and told me there was something in there for me…
Bottle cages.

Which were mainly a ruse to get me to take his new tyres and mudguards home in the car while he cycled back. He’s now busy fitting them.

Ah, romance.
The claim that he “couldn’t find” anywhere to buy a card was not entirely believable!

I like sugar, but not stirred in so well so it sinks to the bottom and then I scoop it out with a spoon to have some vaguely coffee flavoured sugar after I’ve finished the drunk 🙂

When I’m out on a ride I fly up hills after that 🙂

I spotted a couple through Facebook when i’ve spotted them and wondered how they know my friends. The first two are people I went to secondary school with in the midlands.

One had been to primary school elsewhere in the country with my housemate at university, while another moved to Leeds and worked with someone I know through my running club.

The same university housemate went to school with someone else I met socially a couple of years after uni.

Looks like mine hasn’t shown up yet (I got the validation email) so I might give that a go.

It very much depends on the situation. If I’m in the car and a bike is filtering through traffic behind me I tend to spot it in my mirrors earlier if the light is flashing. Coming towards me on an open road I find a steady light easier to spot/identify. I’m often scared as a driver how easily bikes disappear, even with lights. Last week I turned left out of a junction at traffic lights onto a two lane road and as I turned I was aware that a bike was behind me. I checked my mirrors to see which lane he was in as I wanted to move over to the right hand lane and even though I knew he was there and was actively trying to spot him I struggled to find his light among the car lights.

A variety of lights tends to work best, but as I only have one (at the moment) I tend to go for steady unless I’m filtering through traffic in which case I might temporarily switch to flashing. But given that I tend to avoid that sort of road on my commute it’s mainly steady 😉 On the back I’ve got one which has multiple bulbs – some stay lit steadily and others flash so that it’s more of a pulsing effect.

I’m also often surprised at how dim some lights are – I’m often muttering away to myself about bikes without lights just as I realise that they do have lights, just not particularly visible ones…

My contracted hours are 9-5 m-f plus whatever else is reasonably requested by my employer. That’s what it says in my contract so for me staying late within reason isn’t doing more for no pay, it’s doing what I’m already paid fairly well to do. I knew what the job involved when I got into it, and although I’d like an assistant to pick up some of the excess work I’m not in a position to rock the boat if I value the rest of my career.

A bit harsh on gran canaria, parts of the island are lovely and the cycling is amazing. Depends where you stay really.

I’ve got a nanolight with SRAM Force which I really like for the price – but on the other hand I don’t have an encyclopaedic knowledge of how other bikes ride.

I’ve sat near him at wigan matches and he’s a huge fan – he gets very animated!

Serious question – what happens if you are on holiday when it snows if there’s a law saying you have to clear it? Or unable to clear it for another genuine reason?

Because I like the snow outside my house, makes me feel all warm and cosy when I look at it from indoors, I shall be leaving it exactly where it is.

+1. I don’t expect anyone to clear it for me. I’m happy to leave it where it is. As far as I can remember no-one’s ever shovelled snow on my road, and everyone’s fine with that (the road itself gets gritted, the stuff on pavements gets left where it is).

My parents live in the canaries. After they’d been there a while I started Spanish lessons so that I can communicate better when I’m out there. My (catalan) Spanish teacher commented that I’d managed to pick up a broad Canarian accent which was noticeable even through my broken Spanish.

For the stuff like phone calls my take on it tends to be that I knew what my job would involve when I took it, and I get well paid for it so it’s more hassle than it’s worth to faff around trying to squeeze every penny I’m entitled to out of expenses. However, the flip side is that if they start being picky about the stuff I do claim for I might start checking exactly what I could claim for but don’t.

I was brought up in the midlands but my parents are from Yorkshire and Lancashire. I always got comments at school that I sounded really “northern” but now I live in Leeds I think I sound pretty southern. Once at a party I was speaking to someone who correctly identified (without ever having met me before) that I was brought up in Warwickshire. I wasn’t aware that there *was* a Warwickshire accent, let alone that I had it, and my vowels are very different to those of my school friends.

My sister on the other hand went to a different school, closer into Birmingham and spent her teens talking like a proper brummie. That disappeared when we moved to Yorkshire, and has gone through various phases. She’s now settled in Lancashire and picking up that accent, as is her 3 year old son who sounds like he’s going to end up properly Lancastrian. They seem to be encouraging him in his northernness, as he also spends a lot of time wearing a flat cap…

My 3 year old nephew not wanting me to go home, closely followed by him breaking the teapot on Christmas eve, and immediately going to find his toy tea set to offer it to his mum to use instead.

There was also a bit of time spent measuring him up and letting him choose what colour islabike he wants for his 4th birthday 🙂

I managed to break my 405cx at the weekend so have snapped one up to replace it 🙂

Chocolate wine. This could get messy.

I dread to think. It was hot when I arrived then I was told to turn the fire up 😯

Nope, but i got a TdF DVD.

I’m going to my sister’s and my only responsibility is alcohol. I like it that way so even though I went on a Christmas cookery day at Bettys and have a cake and pudding from that I don’t want to set a precedent so I’m not taking them 🙂

Got some Bailey’s from the petrol station tonight (worth any premium to avoid Tesco) so tomorrow the only bit left is to stop by the brewery to pick up the beer

Not so much stupid things you have said as stupid things you have done on the work computer.

My old secretary was Dutch and bonkers. Her English was great with a good breadth of slang and swearing but the occasional word had slipped her by. We were having a discussion about furry Russian style handwarmers. We referred to them by another name. She burst out into giggles. We said – yes, they really are called that, let’s find a photo on the internet.

“Muff photos” is probably not the best thing to type into a search engine at work…

I don’t have a company car but my boss does and they changed the rules here recently. The one she struggled with is that spouses can drive but not for commuting. Fair enough you would say, except he works just over the road so they car share and it would mean that he can’t drive on that journey. I think after a bit of discussion they agreed that as long as the car gets parked here it doesn’t count as driving to his workplace but it took several rounds or argument!

I don’t think I”ve ever called. I remember when I broke my ankle my mum bundled me into a car and drove me to hospital. She then drove round the car park and parked about as far away as she could from the door and made me hop inside (with crutches) rather than dropping me outside the door 😯 I was in so much pain I wasn’t thinking straight and didn’t question it, but on the way out after painkillers I gently suggested that she bring the car round…

(But I shall have the last laugh. Working between Christmas and new year then when everyone come back depressed I’m buggering off for a week of cycling in the Canaries :-))

Not a chance. 2 clients still want to complete deals before Christmas.

Cyclepoint (the one right outside the station with secure parking) hire bikes, not sure whether they just do town/hybrid type stuff or mtbs though.

I’m stupidly excited, given that I live in Leeds.

But I bought a copy of the YEP on the way home from my work Christmas party and there’s not a mention of it. Not a great start… (unless I’m too pissed and have missed it!)

I have a amphetamine with alfine 11, versa shifters and BB7s. And (I think) 35mm tyres. Heavy but I”ve been riding it on and off road (easy stuff) since April without a hint of maintenance.

joao3v16 – Member
I’ve not watched the programme, but from what I gather from the 7 pages on this thread: the BBC made a ‘documentary’ using motorists and cyclists who are giant testicles. Why not use examples of ‘normal’ people rather than utter penises?

Because they made it largely from youtube footage. Which is a rather self-selecting group. Both in terms of who wears a camera in the first place, and then the incidents they choose to share. Doing their own filming would presumably have cost more.

I originally didn’t watch it, then saw some comments that it was more balanced than expected so had a quick look last night.

The main thing that struck me is that it bears no real resemblance to my experiences on a bike. Yes I’ve had close calls and been hit once (twice if you include the time a pedestrian stepped out in front of me, but that was 16 years ago now), but the majority of my commutes are incident free. Maybe the odd thing where you mutter something under your breath or roll your eyes but nothing where I feel the need to bang on cars or shout at drivers. Maybe that’s also because I’m not that sort of person, but then I’ve only ever seen one shouty cyclist round these parts (when I was out for a run rather than on my bike – and I hadn’t see what the car driver had done to provoke it so I’m not sure whether it was justified or not).

There was too much focus on people getting shouty after incidents which seemed to be a question of angry people taking their frustrations out rather than being representative of cyclists or drivers.

I’d have liked more focus on understanding what’s going on – e.g. why cyclists take primary (which they covered a bit) or choose not to use shared use paths (the collision footage could have been used to demonstrate why above a certain speed cyclists are likely to prefer the road – in saying this I’m not taking any blame away from the cyclist who was going too fast for the situation, but saying that given the choice between cycling at a speed that’s appropriate for a path like that and cycling down a road many cyclists will opt for the road). Likewise a bit more about blind spots on lorries – we got a bit about improving safety by adding mirrors but not a proper explanation of why they were needed and why it’s still not a great idea to squeeze down the side of them.

Ultimately, if it’s a war which side am I meant to be on? I cycled to work this morning and I’ll drive home tonight. I sometimes run down shared use paths (in the dark and with no lights but some reflective kit). And most of the inconsiderate driving I see is directed at other cars rather than cyclists anyway.

It just didn’t reflect what cycling is like for me, and didn’t really seem to do anything other than give shouty people a platform.

I smashed my ankle to bits falling over a suitcase. Heading to the airport, the house had a couple of steps to get down to road level, I’m carrying the case down them. I put my foot down badly and slip, wrapping my leg round the suitcase.

It turns out that applying 20kg of luggage to right point on the leg is enough force to snap both bones and leave me with a plate and four or five pins in it.

The only good point was that it was on the way home from my holiday so I got an extra couple of days sitting immobile in the sun waiting for the insurance company to find me a new flight home as I missed the one I was booked on due to being on the way to hospital.

My parents live out there and I mainly ride road because I have my own road bike in their garage, but I’ve occasionally hired a MTB and there seems to be some decent stuff.

The drivers are amazing. I once had one sit behind me for about 3 miles (admittedly downhill, but even so) on a road where an English driver would have overtaken.

And a couple of times I was cycling along roads with a wide tarmac verge. The road itself was probably of a width where an English town planner would squeeze a cycle lane in, with a wide verge bit to the side. White lines down the middle, so if I was aware of a car behind me I’d move onto the verge if it was safe to do so to let them past. A couple of times the car stayed behind me because the driver still didn’t think there was enough room to get past me without crossing the line!

Just in the process of sorting some flights out to go back there next month 🙂

I always say canaries but I’m biased because my parents live there 😉 You get the odd storm passing through but you’d be unlucky to have a week of it. I mainly do road out there because I have a road bike in their garage but when I”ve hired a mtb it’s always seemed like there’s plenty of stuff to ride.