AIM & QNC – The Habit of a Lifetime and How to Kick it.

Wooo so i’m out of the loop, ace news! Bloody love AIM

My submission:
Octave Minds (Boys Noize & Chilly Gonzales collaboration)

if you are going so fast down hill that you can’t give way to someone coming in the opposite direction on unofficial routes then you are out of control, and riding beyond your ability

Otherwise known as having fun.

I take the point though, you need to be aware of whats around you. I’d happily step aside if I was riding up and someone came blasting down (so long as its not on a direction marked climb), I think you get more time to see things coming when you’re climbing, makes sense to me.

Yeah I get that and yes its usually a tailwind. I still love it though, natural EPO

I cant believe its not been said yet but Natalie Bennett. Irritating voice and cringe worthy content every time

When I had my big crash I initially thought that I wouldn’t want to touch my bike, I was scared of riding it, I hated the state that I’d stupidly put myself in by carrying on with this idiotic sport etc etc.. all normal I think. As I went through the recovery process that all softened up so that by the time I was allowed to ride my bike I was really excited to. I was super tentative to start with but in the end it hasn’t changed my riding too much.
I guess my point is don’t fret about it too much now, you’re just reacting to the injury that’s just been inflicted. A bit of R&R may have you seeing things differently as the pain fades. When you’re physically able/allowed to get back on the bike again, that’s the time to have a go and assess the impact that the crash has had on your riding.

Oh and I’ve just read the OP again and realised the smashed up bike, maybe hire/demo something nice when you get back to inject a bit of the shiny kit effect into your return.

I rate this place

http://bistrobetws-y-coed.co.uk/%5B/url%5D

I’m stuck in the past with 1×10 but as the question is about ratios I’ll weigh in. 30t – 36 gets my rather heavy orange up the majority of the riding I do. It handles anything in a trail centre easily and any of the pedalling back up bits of the local woody trails. It will and has been winched around longer rides in the brecon beacons but if that was my main riding then I’d be looking at putting some more teeth somewhere.

Yes just a bit, redbull rampage next? What a hero

I always assumed that the difference between mission control and motion control was pretty stark once you’d got the compression damper out. if it’s the plastic swiss cheese holey tube its motion control, if it’s a more stumpy thin thing with a head at the bottom containing the shim stack etc its mission control right? Pictures would be useful but I’m at work at the moment.

I looked at this a couple of years back on my forks and now you’ve tickled my interest again ? My issue is that I’m in between medium and firm springs on my u-turn lyriks. With the current damper settings and the medium spring they’re really divey, even with max. LSC. With the firm spring and damping wound right to a minimum they’re just a bit too harsh and never get full travel. I’ve stuck with the firm spring for the moment as I prefer getting beaten up a bit but not diving. Lets assume the shim stack is as it came from the factory (big assumption I guess as its been to TF at least once), I could get at the shims but I’m not sure what I’d change to make it better.

Hmm, sorry for the slight hijack. I’m talking myself into sending them away again…

Yeah you’re missing out. Whether you care about what you’re missing out on? that’s your call.
I like my hardtail because its raw unplugged riding, it punishes you for each mistake but feels so sweet when you get going nicely, and it reminds me of messing about in the woods when I was a kid. I like my FS as it lets me get away with stupid stuff I’d never dream of on my HT. pop off that lip into a sketchy mess of braking bumps, roots and rocks? Ok. You have a bit more buffer between ‘ambitious line choice’ and ‘eating dirt’, it promotes silliness and speed, both are fun.
And yes as mentioned you’ll then hop back onto your HT and sometimes inadvertently hit that silly line or boost off those roots just before a fading out drop and you’ll realise that its actually alright.. but you wouldn’t have done it before.

I’d hire a good FS for a day or talk a shop into letting you take one for a demo. You’re never going to qualify it by saying its *faster *less technically challenging *more techy… but you might just find it quite fun.

We’ve just had good results with a motion activated cat scaring water sprayer, £17 from amazon. Not the most elequent description but bloody effective, I cant get the link at work but search and you shall find.
Its also very amusing watching an unsuspecting moggie getting gatted by it while gearing up to drop a turd on our new veggie patch. (the cat that is, not me).

If you find the route that this cat uses gets up onto the wall you can set the water sprayer firing arc to cover the area.

I’ll go a -1 on the Aldi gloves.
If you’d asked me a week ago I’d have rated them but the recent couple of cold mornings have been agony trying to use the brakes with freezing finger tips. They’re still good above 3degrees ish and reasonably water resistant, though they just about wet through as i get to the end of a wet 30 min commute. Oh and they’re suprisingly ok on the mountain bike too.

But the bottom line is that I’m looking for something more for the proper cold days. I worry that the ski glove style construction means that they rely on the bag membrane for keeping your hands dry so when its cold and wet the outer and insulation soaks through and then you get wind chill. Is there anything thats waterproof on the outer? Or am I barking up the wrong tree here?

Downton Abbey seem to have managed it:
http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2014/nov/03/isis-in-crisis-is-downton-abbey-dog-best-character-die

ride fast, land flat!

or get someone to teach you

Yeah the parkrun could be a good shout soon, be warned that its a race (of sorts) and so its very easy to get caught up in it. The positive side of this is that being fairly fit you’ll push yourself a wee bit harder than you would otherwise and probably suprise yourself. the negative is that you’ll hurt like hell the day after.

The usual response to starting out (that i ignored, injured myself, then went back to) is start slowww. For the first few weeks of runs you want to be going slower than you feel like you could/should be going, and also a lot shorter distance than you are capable of. At the moment your fitness way outstrips your bodies capabilities so you are just trying to acclimatise all of your joints to this new form of exercise and impact. If you just go out now and run to the limit of your fitness i give you about 3 weeks until you hit your first knee or foot related injury.

There are loads of plans for starting running on the web however unfortunately a lot of them assume you’re starting from low fitness, eg. couch to 5k. I looked through some of them to get an idea distances and frequency to run and went ad hoc from there. You’ll know when you start to feel comfortable and want to push up the milage.

Oh and a good tip that I got when starting out was: Time on your feet is key, dont worry about speed at the moment as that will come. Its a lot easier to injure yourself trying to go too fast.

Diet Advice

But does it answer the question?
you know, the question.

How many bears could bear grylls grill if bear grylls could grill bears?

I’ve been on the receiving end of two toothy disasters, first with a hockey stick to the face. It pushed one of my front teeth back in my mouth, severed the nerve and broke the jaw around the root. The dentist had to take the nerve out and root canal the tooth, then he splinted the tooth to the ones either side until the jaw fixed up and it was right as rain! until….

I smashed it out along with the one next to it in a silly clumsy low speed crash into a tree. Apparently teeth with root canal fillings are more brittle than live ones. This was all a bit more fundamental than the first time around.. loads of messing about with crowns, then post crowns, a denture then implants. Brutal amount of money but I’ve now got better teeth than when I started, silver lining and all.

fingers crossed its a simple/cheap fix for you!

Yup I agree with the above wholeheartedly. Fingerboards are to be avoided for a good long while or your house will echo to the sound of popping ligaments and screaming tendons. It’s not a good feeling!

At this stage it’s best to rely on time down the wall to build up your finger strength gradually. Maybe you could get a pull up bar? But not to bash out loads of chin ups, you want to be doing dead hangs, L sits and leg raises to build up your static and core strength. Like this:

training guide ish.

but with a pull up bar.

For the offset hangs you can use a hand towel draped across the bar then grab the bottom of the towel with your lower hand.
Take it easy though, over training leads to the finger/shoulder/elbow injuries that are all too common down the wall!

It is absolutely mental, completely unrelated ministers wading into an issue on which they have no connection or credentials to comment. The only motivation is politicking.
All of the rivers get tide locked not too far downstream too, you can dredge all you like but when we have record high tides none of the water in the river can go anywhere and so it backs up.

Even if that weren’t the case its terribly naive to look at the amount of water on the land and think “yup, dig the rivers a bit and that’d all flow away.” As I said, mental. But politician mental which unfortunately means that it’ll have repercussions.

I had a stupid low speed tumble into a tree resulting in about £5,000 of dental work. It was all wallet pain, my mouth was surprisingly pain free

Thanks for the suggestions so far, I should have said that I’ll be dragging some mates together to enter the team or pairs event. I think that 24 hours solo would push the effort:fun ratio a little the wrong way!

I’ve just stumbled across xcracer.com so I’ll be keeping an eye on that over the next couple of months too. I’d be good to get something tee’d up for earlier in the year.

Edric 64 – Member
http://www.esca24hour.org.uk/

That sounds brutal! I think I’d need more than 6 months to train for that. I’m only allowed to start some light running again in January..

monkeychild – Member
Bontrager 24/12. fun, fun, fun!!!

It’s a party with a bike race.

This sounds ace. Maybe one to pencil in a bit later in the year.

29er tire levers.

I moped around for a while and discovered my way back into riding by trying a different type of riding to what I was used to. For me it was SS pootling around the New Forest just enjoying the scenery which slowly developed into longer rides, the night rides, then harder rides. Suddenly I was back to my old self.

Then I smashed my knee up and a couple of weeks later I snapped my foot off so I am just starting the process all over again.

but y’know. if you want to quit I’m sure you have your reasons…

(this should come with a facetious post warning)
but I agree with above, chill out and ride something easy, you’ll remember why mountain bikes are fun

double post…

yeah, mine was ok. just a crack not a proper snap and it was at the wrist end of the bone that apparently has better blood supply. anyway, 12 weeks in a cast then it was as good as new. shame that 11 weeks in my bike got stolen..

yeah sounds similar to both of my breaks, both of which healed fine in 6 weeks with nothing more than prolific sling usage.

Starwars day! :D

Excellent, thanks for the pics. now I’ve got an itchy trigger finger for a Zee

Does anyone fancy posting a pic of the mod to work with a Sram shifter? very interested…

clubber – XC Jeyboy
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1901656/OGC-unveils-new-logo-to-red-faces.html

that is too good. my personal highlight from the article:

“it is not inappropriate to an organisation that’s looking to have a firm grip on Government spend.”

I had a similar issue with mine, not to quite the same extent but I had to heave the stick hard from left to right to get between the gears. I rinsed it with WD40 to get me home, which kinda worked.
Apparently a common problem, on mine it was a bush seizing onto the gear selector shaft that caused it. The selector could rock backwards and forwards ok between 1st and 2nd) but it couldnt go up and down (the movement that takes you from the 1st/2nd gate to 3rd/4th etc.) The garage managed to get it sorted for not too much money.
While they were at it they noticed that the bolt at the bottom of the selector was coming loose as mentioned above, they thread locked it and nipped it back up to prevent any nasty bolt-to-gear interactions. this wasn’t the source of my issue though.

good luck, I hear its totally addictive.

(dont cook it with mint, honestly its horrible!)
but thats all the chat I have on the subject..

As above, make sure itunes is up to date
plug iPhone in
rename phone to ‘titanic’
wait for message ‘titanic is syncing’
feel like a winner