End of 2018 my parents sold the family home they and we had been in for 36 years. Less than a year later and the buyer has bulldozed it and is having a much larger, more modern house built in its place. Seeing that was tough, but in a way it’s good as it means that it will always have been our house only, in a way.

I wear Shimano, OH likes FiveTens. Both are more than good enough.

Kona Unit 2020

Kona Unit X 2020

I wouldn’t buy a bike without a bottle mount now – having gone packless for the last couple of years I absolutely hate wearing one. Other half is exactly the same. She wears a small hip bag to carry phones in, I have a frame bag with tools, tubeless repair kit, Co2/pump and a snack bar if I need it. 625ml bottle on each bike. Very few of our rides are longer than 2hrs so have never needed more than that.

Not ridden the proper MTB since 22nd September. Weather has been so rubbish I just can’t be bothered with getting cold, soaking wet and muddy tbh. Fair weather rider and proud of it..!

Deliberately misgendering someone is on a par with using the n-word, regardless of whether the person in question is an arse or not. Don’t do it.

Other half swears by her new Ariat Insulated Tek Grip: https://www.ariat.com/gb/en/INSULATED_TEK_GRIP_W_M_ACC.html?dwvar_INSULATED__TEK__GRIP__W__M__ACC_color=BLACK

So much so that I’m about to get some as it seems I now suffer from Reynauds.

Deftones
Coheed & Cambria
Karnivool
Tesseract
Sleep Token
Issues – Beautiful Oblivion

So, self and OH are thinking of popping up to Glasgow (her home city) from Surrey mid-December for a football match. Looked on trainline.com – around the £300 mark for a pair of train tickets vs around a third of that in fuel. Hell, even flights from Heathrow are only £75 each. Not really encouraging people not to fly or drive, is it? It’s exactly the sort of journey that the train should be perfect for, but not at those prices.

You won’t get around it. We had the exact same thing – I was a FTBer, other half had owned a flat in Scotland that she sold over a decade ago, but because of that she wasn’t a FTBer so we had to pay up. £4.5k on a £285k house.

If you’re a couple and you’re living in the house, even if it’s just her name on the mortgage then you would have what HMRC terms a “beneficial interest” in the property; as they define it – “any future entitlement to capital proceeds from the sale of the property, to income or to occupy the property”.

Sorry, you’re going to have to stump up.

Not the only one, and he makes it look easy..

Just a note of caution given your posting history regarding maintenance issues.. Be really really sure that you’re prepared for the additional costs if you hammer an e-bike as much as you have your previous FS bike..!

Also, you’re not meant to be running it in Turbo permanently. The great thing about the Levo is that you can set the amount of assistance and current limit for each mode as they’re not fixed; plus there’s the BLEvo app that allows you to do crazy stuff like control the assistance level based on your heart rate.

I’ve never posted on threads like this before; I don’t know why – maybe because I wouldn’t have anything to say that others couldn’t say better, I don’t know..

tom84 – you are not a horrible person; a horrible person wouldn’t recognise and acknowledge their feelings, let alone post on a forum in a way that suggests they want to change. If you haven’t already, do speak to someone, someone anonymous. In my last counselling sessions, I opened up about stuff that I thought made me a terrible person but my counsellor helped me accept my thought processes for what they are, and showed me that I’m not as bad a person as I thought.

Currently awaiting a referral for CBT after my recent counselling, as I’ve accepted that my spiralling suicidal thought are something that I can control and not something that I just need to accept as “just how I am”.

funkmasterp, I’m in a very similar position at work at the moment, and tbh have found that even just updating a CV and contacting recruiters has helped; even if I do nothing to actually change my situation, just taking steps to make me think I could feels positive.

Have struggled with self-harm and suicidal thoughts on and off for about 24 years now – have had counselling but never any medication as I’m scared of the side-effects. Next Friday is the 5-year anniversary of my other half’s younger brother stepping in front of a train, 8 years after their youngest brother died of cancer, so it’s a tough time for her, and why I feel like I can’t speak to her about my feelings. I have other people that say “You can always speak to me” but mostly I don’t as I don’t feel that close to them, or anyone.

I don’t know what the real point of this is, other than to say thanks to everyone on here who’s ever opened up and been honest. You’re all awesome. Hang in there.

New 2020 Kona Unit X is where I’ll be looking soon hopefully.

Zee, no question. Got them on both our FS with Spesh bottles for added compatibility. Never dropped a bottle, even when the bike went cartwheeling down the trail at BPW.

Being pedantic I know, but that’s slot dropouts, not sliding.

Being pedantic, they’re track ends, not dropouts 😉[/quote]
Touché 😂
Edit:Ffs, I can’t get nested quotes to work after beer..

Being pedantic I know, but that’s slot dropouts, not sliding. If it were me I’d be using chain tugs.

I had a 2011 Pro, last year of the FS versions. Ran it with a dropper, 1×10,760mm bars and a 170mm RC2DH Lyrik up front. As said, 450mm reach on a medium, and about a 66.5° head angle. Waaaay ahead of its time! Only swapped it to go proper LLS with a Bird Aeris 145.

Fancy organising a STW private session then?! I’d be up for that…

Rampworld Cardiff run by Manon Carpenter’s dad as well, IIRC.

Rampworld Cardiff? First Monday of the month is over-30s from 8pm-11pm, and BMX or 26″ jump bike hire is £8. They have a foam pit too..

It’s grown adults riding bicycles in circles in the woods – I think some people are over thinking it a touch..!

USA, 2019..
Vaping deaths: 9
“We need to ban vaping!”
Mass shooting gun deaths: 335
“We need more guns!”

<slow clap>

https://geometrygeeks.bike/compare/pole-evolink-158-2018-l,bird-aeris-145-lt-2018-l/

Not exactly a lot in it! The Geometron is waaaay longer, but then so is the price.

I demoed the advance Aeris 145 two and half years ago and bought one on the pre-order. As others have said:

+
Properly progressive geonetry
Metric shocks
Boost
Sensible bearings
External cable routing
Threaded BB
The level of customer service
No model-year nonsense
145 can be run as 145 or 145LT (160mm travel, with up to 170mm forks) via a linkage swap that also increases the progressiveness
Lifetime transferable warranty
Rides great, amazingly capable (far more so than me)

–
Occasionally a bit overkill for tame XC (not that it bothers me)
Short head tubes mean low stack; I’ve ended up with 20mm of spacers under the stem and am about to swap to a 40mm rise bar to get comfy
Needs an adaptor on some frames with the Super Deluxe shock to get a bottle in (but I believe Bird are working on their own)

In fact, that last point is one of the great things about Bird as a company – if people on the owners FB group start talking about stuff they’d like (different linkages, more tyre clearance, adaptors for bottle cages, etc) then most of the time Dan and/or Ben will pop up and say “If there’s enough interest then we’ll make it” – and then they do. They’re always tinkering to improve stuff, but in ways that can be retrofitted to existing bikes as well.

If they made a LLS 29er e-bike with a Brose motor and a bit more stack height I’d be all over it.. 😉

More round. I fit Specialized helmets as they’re typically long/narrow and the OO just didn’t suit me.

Full-fat high fructose corn syrup A&W Root Beer (as imported and sold by my local garden centre – they have diet, and proper American cherry vanilla Dr Pepper as well for anyone that wants..)

Fox’s 15mm front through axle effectively forcing RockShox to abandon their 20mm, which they’re now having to try and make up for with Torque Caps. Back to 20mm front axles will be next..

https://securityforbikes.com/

Loved it – Gee deadpanning it at the start was hilarious – but it’s really interesting to see just how differently people like him see lines.

If you really want to see insane, watch Gee and Dan’s “chilled” run down the race line at Dyfi. Just nuts.

https://www.pinkbike.com/buysell/list/?region=5&q=216&category=11

Take your pic…! In fact, top of the list is a freshly-serviced Kashima RP23 at £100.

EDIT: https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/Rear-Shocks/109119/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=%28fox%2C+rockshox%29+216 also.

In all honesty, how is that any different to buying parts for your car? You have to provide the reg number (and chassis number is better in most cases) so they can ensure you get the correct parts. And it’s not like a Bosch alternator is just a Bosch alternator – just because you have one on your Ford, doesn’t mean one from a Toyota will fit. And whilst you can swap wheels within the same group (usually), they don’t all have the same offset or brake caliper clearance. Want to fit Volvo seats to a Mazda? Not without a lot of welding… We have a lot more cross-compatibility within the bike world than sometimes we realise.

Cavalerie Blackbird but in aluminium, and with the geometry of a Bird AM9. Oh, and able to fit a bottle and small enduro frame bag too.

Anyone got a pair of the women’s in a 38 they want to swap for some 39s?

Any of the modern crop of trail/enduro bikes (140-160mm travel) should be fine – lock out the shock and fork and pump up the tyres for the road/XC stuff, then unlock and let a bit of air out for the fun stuff. Lock them out again for the ride home. Job’s a good ‘un.

You can use a tool like Magic Jellybean Keyfinder to interrogate your system for its current licence key.

Subway Vegan patty

New Kona Unit/Unit X? Has sliding dropouts for SS as well.

Oh how I wish they were doing the 2.6 in white, not just the 2.4 😔

Yeah, it does look like an ebike (they all do really), but if I had the money I’d be getting one of these faster than I can blink.. The Brose motor is so quiet as well, and doesn’t have much drag when off or above the cutoff.

Seen the 2020 Kona Unit/Unit X..? Modern geo rigid steel with sliding dropouts and takes a 29×2.6 tyre… Looks like it’ll take a short suspension fork too.