The parents of Ryan Saltern were on the news this morning, raising awareness of #ryanslaw.

He was a 31 year old, walking to a party late one night and was struck by a car in a hit and run. He sadly died, and the driver was given a four month suspended sentence – charged with careless driving.

The parents want hit and run, failure to call 999 and failure to render aid to qualify as dangerous driving. I don’t quite see how the two correlate to be honest, but I can understand why a parent would want something positive to come out of something so dark.

I see loads of people driving now distracted by CarPlay/Android Auto or whatever touchscreen system they have in their car. It’s incredibly easy to be distracted by them, and I’d like to see a study into those systems being disabled over a certain speed or voice activated only. It would be a inconvenience to me too to be honest, but I imagine there is little question people are distracted by them at times at least as much as holding a phone.

Hypocrites and virtue signallers unite.

Outcry at SUV drivers while buying plastic frames for sport, manufactured using fossil fuels and fitted with metal components extracted for no other reason than somebody’s hobby and then shipped around the world in the same way. NIMBYers annoyed with the world and getting involved on a forum using devices also made in countries using fossil fuels to make them, and ship them – probably updating them every two years just because too.

They’ll put the thread behind them tomorrow though when they jump in their fuel efficient cars to drive to a trail centre or ride start, smug that the unnecessary journey their taking is in a small, fuel efficient car.

Meanwhile, SUVs make a great headline while ignoring all of the hot hatches, performance saloons and large engine diesel estates because, well, the headline is less punchy…

Aren’t sweeping generalisations great. You can just conclude anything you want to.

Browsing around I really like the look of the sentinel of I go the crash replacement route.

I have a 2018 Smuggler frame hanging up in the garage. I swapped to a Sentinel and although I really like it, I keep thinking I prefer the Smuggler with a 150mm fork – I’ve kept hold of it thinking I’ll rebuild it (probably never get around to it)…

It rides a lot lighter than the Sentinel. Try and get a go on one if you can…

Iamtheressurection you question my statement then answer the blooming point. Of course it’s the finance co who set the GFV and yes no dealer has to offer that figure. BUT WHO ON THIS PLANET WOULD ACCEPT LESS THAN THE GUARENTEE?

I’m confused. Where did I say (or imply) anybody would accept less than the GFV? That’s a completely separate point and I have no idea what you’re getting so caps locked about.

I simply wrote it in response to you saying, and I’m paraphrasing: that’s impossible, why on earth would a dealer offer less for the PX than what’s in the contract.

We both know that’s not always the case, and that when it happens, cars generally go back to the finance house or get refinanced and kept.

A mistake lots of sole trader businesses make is under-costing their own labour with the result that (as someone above said) you end up run ragged and earning less than minimum wage (taking into account all the hours worked)

Very much this. Paying somebody £23k a year (or taking that salary yourself), adding in employer NI/pension costs, holidays, sick days and so on, and then taking that total cost and trying to recover it across the whole 12 months would give you a cost price of £34 per hour labour.

I don’t know many shops who feel they are consistently getting that, but if that mechanic isn’t you then you need to make profit on that in order for you to get an income from the workshop. So, let’s say you want to earn £10k off the back of that one tech then you’ll need to be selling out at £46 per hour.

That’s allowing for a very low £6k share of the overhead, £1k for damages/losses and being 80% utilised on retail work March to October and 50% utilised over winter months. I reckon you’ll dream of these numbers in the first year or two, to be honest, and once you factor in bike building and non-paying warranty work, along with goodwill, they look a big ask.

I’m not in the cycle trade, but have friends who are and know they struggle to get a good return from the workshop.

There is an assumption in the above numbers that you’ll be VAT registered pretty quickly and paying 20% VAT on all retail sold…

EDIT: Just seen your coming from the motor trade – presume you’ve done the maths already.

Why on earth would they make an offer lower than the figure you have in the contract?

The finance house set the GFV, not the dealer and the contract is with them. If the dealer doesn’t want to buy the car at that price then they don’t have to, any more than you have to sell it to them. Any number of reasons for that, maybe it’s not in great condition, maybe it’s over mileage, wrong colour or maybe the GFV was too high in retrospect – plenty other reasons too.

Another dealer might offer more, but failing that, the car will be handed back to the finance company.

Sadly just the song that was playing when we all had to recreate our accounts, as opposed to the ability to miracle terabytes of data from thin air…

Cloud storage would cost me several hundred pounds a year. For that, I can easily buy a few suitably large HDDs and stick them in my NAS

I don’t think anybody would argue that local NAS for large volume backup is always going to be more convenient and likely cheaper. 4TB for example with B2 would cost about £170 a year, which would get you a couple of hard drives in RAID 10, and those drives would likely be replaced ever three years or so, so about a third of the cost before enclosure.

In the event of a disaster, I like the security of an encrypted, easy to access off site back up. I still back up locally, cloud doesn’t replace it in my case.

Most of my friends don’t think about backups at all. Keeps me up at nights 😉

I’d second or third using an offsite backup that keeps versions or snapshots of backups. If you have a problem with iCloud (be it ransomware, accidental deletions or some MacOS/iOS update with a bug) then any changes will be mirrored in the cloud.

The last time I looked, you can’t look back at snapshots of your iCloud files or folders such as you can with TimeMachine for example. It’s not a backup service, as opposed to syncing files/folders across devices – plus everything has to sit within the iCloud folder.

I use Arq, and B2 from Backblaze, similar to the standalone Backblaze but cheaper – 300Gb for example is costing me about $1.70 a month ($0.005 per Gb per month). In my case it’s configured to black up an external drive if t’s present, OneDrive, a SharePoint folder, iCloud folders and some photo folders… Easy enough to set up.

It’s not really about “the right for more cavity wall insulation”, is it now.

But you knew that.

Yes, but throwing in the suffragettes was so broad that I thought an equally obtuse reply was appropriate. I really don’t know how they can be considered together, other than both were protesting.

I read their brief a while ago when they first appeared with their Brexit style logo. IIRC, they were asking the government to immediately agree to deliver and fully fund a £500bn plan (their estimate) within four months, delivered over 30 years, to ‘insulate Britain’ else there’d be consequences.

Is that not hopelessly naive?

Were the suffragettes right to disrupt london and other cities the way they did the way they did?

Are we really putting the right for a woman to vote, and the right for more cavity wall insulation in the same discussion?

Bellends on both sides. Can’t think of anything more intelligent to say, really. Tired of it all.

Protest like this serves very little purpose other than making the protester feel better about themselves. Clickbait personified.

I’ve got a Surly Bridge Club and love it. Set up with drop bars on a 60mm stem, but was on a flat bar and longer stem previously.

Comfy, lots of clearance and full mounts for everything. I’m on 42c with Kinesis Fend Off Wide, but it’ll take much bigger too.

Threaded bb, vertical dropouts and totally solid when loaded up. Easily within budget if you can find the components…

When we changed the kitchen we went from Amtico to Polyflor Camaro after ready the reviews and getting a few samples. Saved about £10-15 per square metre and it shows.

It’s a bit thinner, shows any imperfection in the adhesive underneath and we’ve chipped it and badly scratched it already – the Amtico had nothing but a few scratches after ten years…

Is that an inference you have just made up in your head because no one said that.

It’s literally what he said, so I did: Substitute cyclist on a narrow road for that bollard

Are you suggesting that you’d like to be passed by people who are unable to judge how wide their car is….

I’m saying I’m comfortable being passed by somebody on a country road today who was unable to judge three inches yesterday because they should be a lot further away from me – and three inches should make zero difference. I can barely see how the two correlate at all.

Have you never pulled into an empty parking space and been a bit too close to the bay on one side or the other? I know the width of my car, but you know, sometimes I’ve not been perfect. It doesn’t mean I don’t know how to give the right amount of space to other road users.

Substitute cyclist on a narrow road for that bollard, and there’s no sympathy for those drivers.

Take their licences from them, they’re not fit to drive.

I think that’s more than an over-reaction, and hardly comparable.

If it’s not, just to be clear, you’re happy to be passed on a narrow country lane by a competent driver as long as they maintain three inches of space?

The plastics are a bit cheap and the infotainment, climate and steering wheel buttons/systems are actually worse than the bad reviews, but it’s a good car overall. We’d buy another one despite it.

There’s an over the air update going on as I speak which I hope sorts the terrible/over aggressive lane keeping assist.

There was an investigation that found huge amounts of plug-in hybrids were being handed back (after x years) with the charging cable still in its original packaging. They were/are just a big tax swindle

I’m sure there’s some truth in that, but also confident many will have plugged in to a tethered wall point. My wife’s ID3 still has the cable unused in the boot, but it’s charged once a week…

I don’t have a PHEV, but they make a lot of sense for me. 90% of my days are under 20 miles when I don’t commute, but big miles on the other 10%.

SC do tend to be mopped up by the dentist/consultant/GP types

To a non-mountain biker (you know, the vast majority of people) we’re all just a bunch of **** riding bikes around the woods.

The lads I know on SC are all pretty fast to be fair, and buy them because their LBS has a long history with them and have always given great support.

Not sure why people want to judge others based on the bike they are riding. Do we also assume people on old 26ers are low income, non-professionals?

Nick1962 +1
I find Tommy C really watchable – boundless enthusiasm which doesn’t feel forced at all. Amazingly, I can forgive everything else despite me being a bit of a sociopath.

^^ BaskettCase is a new one to me, I’ll watch some of those 🙂

I’d far rather my kids asked me about it rather than leave it to their friends, or pornhub. My eldest is in a middle school, the oldest in that school are 13 and there are plenty of handsets passed around – bit harder to deal with than a copy of Razzle found in a hedge. He’d have been sheltered a bit more from it if he’d been in a two tier system, I’m sure.

Kids now have a lot to contend with based on how open everybody is. Around 10-12, based on his mates, many have confirmed their sexuality with a lot thinking they are bi or gay, and one thinks she’s trans. Whether you want to think they are too young or not to be thinking or deciding this stuff is irrelevant really, they are seeing it everywhere and discussing it at school – whether we’re all aware of it or not.

Somewhere between 10 and 11, we had some pretty frank discussions started by him and I just answered every question openly and honestly, and have had a few ongoing questions since thrown in here and there.

I said that while we’ll open any question honestly, I won’t talk about what him and his mum get up to. That’s private, and made it clear nobody should ever feel under pressure to divulge anything they also think is private, including any pressure his mates put him under.

His only concern was that if me and his mum were doing any of it, he wanted me to promise that he and his brother were never in the house 🙂

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Onzadog
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[…]what’s the downside of a Sentinel?

Not sure there is one to be honest, other than the longer travel and longer wheelbase mean it’s not as playful in the woods on tight, steep rooty stuff. Not sure I’d step down in travel to sort that, as opposed to stepping down a size (to add, because I think I’m between sizes really, and erred on the longer side)…

I went from a Smuggler to a Sentinel and I think the biggest difference in the ride was going from Fox 34 at 140mm to 36 at 160mm, and the slacker head angle. I never really felt the Smuggler needed more rear travel but felt beaten up on the front on some rides, which is why I stepped up.

For the kind of riding I’m doing at the moment I don’t think I’d want less than a 150mm fork, which for me would probably rule out the Spur for me.

Crisps. Any quality, and pretty much any flavour. I could live on crisps.

Liquorice too, but too much of that sends my heart rhythm all over the place so have to restrain myself…

I’m 5’10 on a large Sentinel, and on the days I’m in the woods in the slow, tight stuff I wonder if I’d rather be on a medium – it feels pretty long in those situations and needs more work than a much shorter YT I also ride.

If you’re on a 2021 Meta, then I’m not sure you’ll think it rides that much differently to what you already have – it’s not a snappy ride…

Four failures seems improbable, although obviously not impossible. They have had some water ingress issues on Tiger 900 shift-assist, but not that many failures. Have they checked the gear position sensor too, there have been a small number of failures on those which would also impact the TSA…

I’m the same as scienceofficer and reckon your cycling legs are weaker than your running heart.

I’m not a regular runner, but whenever I do run my legs are hurting at 10 minute miles while my heart is somewhere between 105 and 125.

I’d probably suggest not worrying too much as most new riders change their bike within the first year of owning it.

Buy whatever you like the look of the most: half the pleasure in the first year is looking at it and cleaning it. You want to love how it looks and makes you feel every time you open the garage.

FWIW, I’ve got a real soft spot for the Street Scrambler. I’ve done a fair few miles on one and although not my current bike it’s the one I think I’ve enjoyed riding the most in the last few years.

Not remotely fast, but plenty fast enough for a new rider. Forgiving engine with plenty of torque, reassuringly slow handling (versus a Street Triple, for example) and a familiar riding position.

I hired one about four years ago, a Cali, and hated it. Too small, too compromised, too expensive. Despite that, I coveted one every year since for reasons I can’t really explain.

This year I bought a converted T6. We’ve only been away in it a handful of times so far: I’m working Saturdays this year, and the kids have to be back at school on a Monday – opportunities to get away have been limited. We’ve wild camped and overnighted on a site in equal measure so far – but partly because the sites are so hard to get booked on this year if you don’t/can’t plan ahead. The kids (8 and 11) love it and I’m learning to deal with claustrophobia…

I underestimated how much it would add value as day van. Get back from a ride or walk in the hills, stick a coffee on, somewhere to get changed and eat some lunch or dinner before heading home; or heading to the coast for fish and chips in the rain with somewhere to sit/read/play cards/whatever. I’m liking it a lot for that kind of thing and it’s definitely extended days out in a way a car doesn’t.

The other van I looked at was a larger, Ducato based, 4 berth panel van. It had the huge advantage of a toilet on board (and a crappy shower) and room to stand without popping the roof. I haven’t ruled one out in the future but I’m not sure I’d use a larger panel van for a day trip without an overnight, bit too big, too thirsty and not as easy to find somewhere to park.

I just need to learn to live with the rattles, squeaks and creaks. They make me want to set it on fire.

A friend of mine lives in HK, married to a Chinese citizen. She’s just gone back home to Wuhan with the kids for summer but he can’t go because he’s not a national. Despite HK having nearly no positive cases for four weeks, she has to quarantine for three weeks on arrival. In her case it’s in an 18th floor apartment, and the the authorities lock the door from the outside and have added tamper tape. No idea what the punishment is for leaving but I can imagine its punitive.

In a city of 8m people or so, they are averaging under 10 new cases a week, and HK is under strict control still – although that may be politically motivated too.

We have no idea just how easy our lockdown has been, or how relatively normal the last few months have been. We could have continued with masks and social distancing without any great fuss in my opinion, and relaxed the rules on isolating for close contact if double jabbed and that would have been a massive improvement, but the truth is there’s a huge slice of society who now couldn’t care less. The brakes came off for those people months ago.

I do hope that was a bit of Brexit tongue in cheek.

It was covering a few bases, I thought. Didn’t think anybody would pick up on it 🙂

A percentage of our population are scum. Always has been and probably always will be.

I wish we could track and trace persistent bellends and send them to an island to be bellends together.

What are people walking along a gravel road supposed to do when I ring my bell – nothing. But they appreciate me letting them know I will be passing them. It really is that simple.

It’s not how I see it at all. I ring my bell on a narrow shared path so that people know I’m approaching from behind and likely passing by pretty close. I’m not sure I want that to become accepted practice on the road…

Regardless of whether tooting the horn behind a cyclist is a dick move or not, what’s the cyclist meant to do upon hearing it? If the answer is nothing, which it should be, then what’s the point of it? I only need alerting if you’re about to plough into me, and even then, there’s probably nothing I can do about it.

It’s the same conversation about riding with headphones, what exactly am I missing out in riding on the road with headphones?

My average heart from yesterday’s ride was 150, max of 180 – both exactly two beats lower than when I rode the same spot a week ago unassisted.

In 90 minutes I did 2,300 get of climbing and 15 miles, versus 1,400ft and 11 miles.

I’m faster on every section, surprisingly, on the ebike – including the tight, nadgery sections through the off piste in the woods. Based on segment leaderboards, the fastest riders in the woods are on unassisted bikes – although not much in it.

I don’t know how anybody leaves, really: this site is such a part of my daily routine. Although I don’t really post much at all, I spend so much time reading threads that it would genuinely leave quite a void.

I’d probably get more into Reddit, or I suppose actually start talking to my wife sat next to me. 🙂

In the spirit of not answering the actual question, I like these.

Not brilliant to read in bright light, but tucked out of the way. I prefer them on the top tube on my enduro type bikes… Toptube mount

I’ve got a Decoy and a Sentinel, and love them both.

On the really, really steep loamy stuff the weight of the Decoy can be a big disadvantage, but nearly everywhere else it’s at least as fast.

I can’t imagine not having something like the Sentinel, but I can see it getting less and less use over time, especially at local ride spots where there are lots of runs through the woods which take 60-120 seconds, with 5-8 mins of climbing between each section.

I’m going out tomorrow into Northumberland to a popular wood with a lot of sections. I’ll ride for a couple of hours and do about 3,500ft of climbing on the ebike to ride the sections, whereas two hours on the Sentinel would be 2,000ft and nearly half the number of sections. Ebikes are perfect for this.

That reads as a very strong, very dignified and very positive way to go; she must be leaving a big hole. Very sorry for your loss, TJ.

My kid’s school dinners are poor – two different schools (8 and 11).

The youngest (8) would have a choice of things like really bready pizza, soggy fish fingers and so on if he ate at school – so he doesn’t. I really don’t get it though. There are tonnes of really easy, really cheap meals that they could cook if they really wanted to if, you know, they actually cooked as opposed to just heat things up.

Having said that, I’ve watched the average primary school kid eat at lunchtime and I can’t imagine the state of the place if they served chilli/daal/tomato pasta/rice dishes and the like as opposed to grey food that a fork can go in easily followed by a cheap biscuit or cake.