hilarious.

and showing up in an A4…

quality.

A little tip for Snowboard boots, (I used to import and sell them) check the base of the boot, they only make the lasts in whole sizes, then they build the half sizes by increasing the size of the insert in the base of the actual boot, (not the liner) you can remove this, it drops your foot down and gives more room in the toe area, worth a look.

Other suggestion would always be to take time buying boots, go in the store wear them for some time, bear in mind in the store you and the boots are warm, the moment you get on the snow they shrink due to the cold, your feet on the other hand expand with the pressure riding places upon them so always go over size.

Useful measure, don’t use US or UK sizing, use mondo point, 28.5 mondo point which is around a 9 – 9.5 UK is actually the length of your foot measured from the toe to heel, so 28.5 cms, measure your feet, know your actual size.

Bindings do amplify pressure points so ask to try the boots on in your bindings in store, a good shop should let you. Personally I’d never buy boots online, big mistake and if you get a decent pair hang onto them, I ride step ins and they’re ven more difficult to get decent boots for, I’m still using obsolete Rapidfire Shimano’s as a result, no idea what I’m going to do when they wear out..

Hope this helps.

nols – Member
Going out on the SUP board later igrf?

Nah it’s sunny, warm, the water’s flat, think I’ll go home and stick needles in my eye instead.

Take plenty of hetracil, give it to the locals up there, like beads to the natives…

No, no it meant mine was..sorry, Just Googled Road Bike Crash, almost enough for a thread in itself to cheer me up..

Oh and on second inspection, I can’t actually see your pic the link must be bust or it’s behind some security copy protect wall.

Whathaveisaidnow – Member

Looks like a scene of crime photo to me . . . .

” . . .bike came to rest here, roadie catapulted over wall sarge . . .” 😆

Northwind – Member
Regretably there is no alternative to a Religious belief system that gives kids moral guidance and sets boundaries.
And yes, this is incredible cobblers.

Ironically, despite not being at all religious, and coming from an irreligious family, I’ve ended up with a fairly “christian” set of morals. Reason being, they mostly make sense, which is why they’re shared with most other religions. And the reason for that, is that religions don’t create morals- they coopt them.

Honour thy father and thy mother
Thou shalt not kill
Thou shalt not commit adultery
Thou shalt not steal
Thou shalt not bear false witness
Thou shalt not covet

Not a trace of religion in that. And the rest is basically copy protection.

Interesting quotes, who said that and why should it be true?

I can’t stand evangelical Atheists any more than the the other sort.

There is no proof, we can argue all day, but the fact remains, even for those allegedly claiming faith we are agnostic, like it or not.

As to the bringing up kids thing you need to have done it a few times to get it, once they stop believing in Father Christmas (yet still hang those stockings up) they get it and the whole God hypocrisy thing, but it keeps them in line, they ‘get’ right from wrong, which unfortunately in this day and age fewer and fewer folk do, so give me the Catholic method over the hand wringing lefty liberal way any day.

Now folk using their ‘God’ to justify wholesale slaughter or to swear themselves in to another parliamentary session so they can renege on their election promises whilst fiddling their expenses, their rules? Sorry they don’t count, so if Cougar could just absolutely prove to me beyond all reasonable doubt that shooting that bastard bank manager of mine in the head is not going to impact on any future condemnation of a lifetime here, I’d like to hear about it, because there are a couple of other types that have it coming…

Nov 5th last year, some kids had been busy ‘trail building’ digging a bloody great hole to make a gap jump unfortunately they hadn’t gotten round to building the up trailside kicker and Autumn leaves had fallen since they started and me riding it last, Nightriding, came round the bend full tilt Helmet lite saw it too late didn’t get enough lift and front wheel hit the other side, went right up in the air came down head first, knocked me even more stupid, came too dog licking my face.

Why I get drawn to thread like these as a moth to a flame I do not know, but here goes.

Seriously the only true path to follow has to be Agnosticism surely if we’re being pedantic? You don’t seem to get many extreme or fanatic Agnostics.

The reason folk want and let their kids (including my own) become Catholics or queue up for Catholic schools is simply because of the moral guidelines taught. Regretably there is no alternative to a Religious belief system that gives kids moral guidance and sets boundaries. You can hardly point at the State and say things are right or wrong on the say so of politicians and everyone knows how easy it is to get kids to do what parents tell them is right or wrong. (well you will if you have any – not).

That’s about it, so until such times as a latter day L Ron Hubbard comes along with something modern deep and meaningful to point them at, these conversations will continue and Religious schools will still have queues forming with no doubt Atheist parents within them (That should better call themselves Agnostic because they really don’t know anything for sure).

Sorry about that, Rant ends.

I feel much better now, thanks.

Does this mean he won’t be on Strictly and we’ll miss Binners nailing his nob to a plank and felating a donkey?

Link for those who missed it

I don’t, maybe one day when I run out of hetracil, worse things have happened, I went out on a stand up paddle board yesterday…

It could be Iranian

Just a point of detail, who will be wearing the gimp mask again? Binners or the Donkey?

Hmm I wonder if Bradley reads this forum, I must admit were it me I’d never want to debase myself either, but the thought of getting a STW ‘big hitter’ to nail his nob to a plank using a breeze block whilst fellating a donkey on national TV would convince me, even if it meant dancing with Anne Widdecombe.

It just has to be done, anyone know Bradley well enough to give him a buzz?

Sorry to read of this chum, lost my old boy last year, and the dappy vet girls couldn’t lift him to take him ‘away’ so i had to hold him while they administered the injection, him looking ever trusting at me as the light went out, absolutely the worse moment in my recent life, so know exactly what your going through, well not exactly i haven’t had your other recent trauma for which you have my continued respect.

That forum link, I didn’t have it at the time Contact Rodney he’s the Finn distributor local to the UK, the dinghy world is small enough for that personal touch.

Denmark eh? That Jonas dude was unlucky to lose to Ainslie, he beat seven kinds of crap out of him on the circuit most of the week and Ainslie was really jammy to podium, possibly helped by his kiwi mate by taking the dutch guy out at a key moment.

P&B or Purple Marine or go on the Y&Y forum and PM Rodney, he’s on a thread at the moment organising a regatta for forum regulars, he’s the Finn importer so would help. There’s a renewed interest in the Finn post Olympics.

There’s some knob in the sailing commentating about ‘playing the joker’ he’s referring to sailing’s discard system.

Then one of them went into detail telling us what ‘toe straps’ were for.

It’s so dumbed down in the vain hope folk who don’t know about sailing are actually watching which of course they wouldn’t be and nothing of any value is imparted to those of us who do and are interested. Pathetic .

Just thought I’d better report back in with my tale..

Eventually after much jiggery pokery involving tethering my iphone downloading a big chunk (and blowing my data allowance for this month) I eventually got it all downloaded, both my home and work routers are BT with apparently some firmware issue that wont allow files bigger than 2 gig to download, at least that’s what their help desk tells me, (i’m still waiting for them to call back with a solution, like that’s ever going to happen).

So what’s it like so far?

My MB Pro is about 18 months old and suffered the last upgrade from Snow Leopard as I said previously, but it has definitely perked up a bit with this, I don’t think it’s quite as quick, I kept a start up disk with snow leopard and some old software that wouldn’t make the jump to Lion, so I’ll try compare later.

I had to switched because they dumped mobile me and iCloud is much improved and the mail programme which became super clunky has also been retweeked (you get little flashes on the desktop now of important mail conversations you’re having).

I’m old guard Macman so never use launchpad or mission control, I view them as a sop to the ipod generation of dimwits, but they look kind of pretty if you’re feeling glum in this sad arse summer we’re having.

I haven’t lost too much software other than parallels this go round and it all got placed in a nice folder saying something along the lines we’ve screwed you again you can’t use this stuff go buy some more, but whatever.. It’s quicker and I’m happier about that, if anyone else has found anything else useful I’d love to read about it, you’d think they might have provided a walk through, they used to in the days you loaded from CD’s, this app store delivery sucks imv.

So that’s about it from my perspective..

+1 won’t be watching, didn’t go for it when I had the chance of entering (years ago)and try to ignore the immense corrupting influence it still has on many of the sports I’m into. It’s about money, a gravy train, and a bullshit media fest, I’m sick of it already and the millions it’s costing..

I can’t download it, paid for it two days ago, there’s some glitch with BT Routers not taking files bigger than 2 gig, waiting for a firmware upgrade..

Don’t bother with Mountain Lion from Snow Leopard, it’s slow and crap, and don’t forget lots of stuff no longer works with it, wait a bit until you read the reports, those of us stupidly locked into Mountain Lion, need to change in the hope of improvement, personally I wish I’d stuck with Snow Leopard.

One of these would be kewell – just saying.

Hmm that didn’t link..

Try this

PeterPoddy – Member

It’s to do with people that cannot abide to see someone having fun, doing something they can’t or just simply getting away with it. It’s envy. It’s blinkered. It’s moral superiority. It’s trying to force people to fit in, to do what they are told, to be wrong.

And that’s why motorcycles have always succeeded in pissing people off. You see a freedom that you want to take away, to control, to batter down with a better point of view.

And that’s why we do it. Because we can.

But I’ll bet nobody, or very few people here feel like I do (I’ve asked this on STW before, so don’t lie to me)
Its a bike. Weather it has an engine or not, weather you wear Lycra, leather, tweed or a suit, they are all one and the same thing to me. I see no difference at all, only minor details.

I think all that bit is true, as to the growing up bit, having quite literally grown up and to some folks perspective grown old riding all manner of bikes, I’d tender the following personal observations.

I always feel safer on a bike with an engine rather than one without, and the advice I give any younger person taking up the idea of biking on the road is to assume your invisible, whatever you ride, the difference however, the bigger the bike (and its engine) the more road space you can command, none would tolerate you riding either your road or atb down the centre of the road whereas things like Harleys for example can command that by their size & presence. Scooters, mopeds and the like very often can’t or get edged over, by bastards in cars.

As to growing up, that gets forced upon you with the years, your reflexes and ‘bottle factor’ or slightly less of it. They are for risk takers and mostly young men, who will have their thrills, as long as they are prepared for the inevitable (I don’t know anyone who hasn’t stacked at one time or another) and that it is survivable and hopefully doesn’t involve any innocent party, then it’s life, live and let live it’s their choice.

I’ve done a bit in the Pyrenees, even had it mapped on trail guru which was a forunner to Strava, but their site has up and vanished and taken all my pics with it. I can’t remember the name of the nearest village, but they ran a tractor-trailor uplift and had rental bikes and all sorts of other weirdness (big wheel scooter things) on hand if they felt you couldn’t ride a bike well enough.

As I’m typing this I’m wondering if iPhoto might have the map co-ordinates, I shall go look and if it does, I’ll return and edit, it wasn’t a bad spot, nothing to difficult and about a 45min – 1 hr descent.

Assam is the stuff that puts hairs on your chest.

Branded stuff, down here we tend to that hard water Yorkshire Tea in the green box.

Must be one thing coming from Yorkshire they don’t feel the need to prefix with the word ‘Honest’ often wondered what it is about Yorkshire that they feel they need to say that.

No, sadly not, which wasn’t the worse of it, it came just as our insurance was at renewal and we obviously had no choice but to notify them, now they refuse to cover un attended vehicles with bikes on board, which, given we’ve never claimed before in twenty odd years we find pretty annoying and limits our ability to do demo’s.

So all in all a bloody disastrous incident.

Well there’s quite a bit of furore in the Saiing world right now over the exclusion of Windsurfing in favour of Kitesurfing a bit earlier than expected.

Lots of nations will get excluded in favour of a new sport that hasn’t really got itself established yet in a bit of a politically and probably financially motivated decision by ISAF, and there are suggestions that the old sailing classes should have been dropped instead since they are fairly discriminatory (i.e sex, body weight etc).

philconsequence – Member
i’m REALLY hoping that one or two of my patients decide they still want to go to the cinema this afternoon and watch it, fingers crossed they let me know before 10:30 so i can try and get the last couple of un-booked seats as it’d be great to watch it before people get out of work this evening and start posting all over facebook and twitter about it

If you’ll excuse me the impertinence Mr Consequence, but what kind of patients are they, my mind quite boggles at the potential outcome if they were of the er what can I say ‘disturbed’ variety?

Just asking.

Jetstream Forcast

I’d been predicting 23rd of July for it to snap out of this current spell, for some time, I’m hoping it holds good, it’s a depressing nightmare, not to mention what it’s doing to trade..

Thanks Brant.

Now I know I’m going to regret asking this, but wtf is Steve Jones and what does he ride?

The Standard Covert is a brilliant ride, I use nothing else, trail, climbs, park, Alps, one bike does me and I’ve got access to all of them, but….

That Yellow Carbon jobbie they bought over and kindly donated to Monmouth pikey appeal, is something else again, how to describe it? It’s just more ‘live’ gives everything an ‘edge’ wouldn’t have thought you could improve a bike any more but it does.

Hob Nob – Member
Price wise, well, we shall see but at that price you’re in the realm of Ibis/Santa Cruz/Yeti/Intense carbon etc which are (rightly or wrongly) perceived very much as high end boutique brands, where historically Transition has been at the cheaper end of that market.

At ~£2k I would have thought they may have been on to something. Still, if past years stock are anything to go by, there are normally a fair few Transition’s kicking around with hefty discounts to get shot of them

It’s always a mistake for a vendor to enter the fray of a pricing discussion, but here goes..

At 2k?.. Well they are 2k, the 400 you pay to the Vatman, not much we can do about that, and in any event there are unlikely to be many more than 100 pcs made for worldwide consumption this go round I’m led to understand so, cutting the price and margin to achieve volume would be a pointless exercise.

Carbon is carbon and if the process aint done right, I for one wouldn’t want to a) Ride it or b) sell to another fellow rider, as it was personally I had my reservations about even bringing them into the UK.

So, the week the Transition guys spent riding with a few of us dispelled any doubts we might have had and I’m now head of the queue for one of these bikes, prior to this I’d just spent the winter building a boat at one of the few specialists that offer half decent carbon repairs to bike frames and we’d had a not brilliant experience with carbon race frames from that now defunct Pronghorn company, hence the doubts.

As to the comparison with what we would refer to in a banter environment as ‘yesterdays brands’, our intension with Transition is to build a community, with more uplift events and rider get togethers going forward, so as well as a bike hopefully your buying into a bit of a brand culture, with folk of like minds and rider attitude, with us at Surf Sales backing your play, so whilst we aint ever going to be the cheapest around (we wouldn’t want to ride or sell stuff that was) we won’t force a huge race team marketing budget onto the consumer price, hence the relatively reasonable value of the metal frames, we’re going very much with the ‘bro’s not pro’s’ free ride culture with an emphasis on additional skills training with the growing travel to the mountains market.
Our snow and surf background always has an emphasis on knowing enough to keep you injury free, nothing worse than down time off the hill/water/snow due to stuff that could be avoided with a little help from folk who have been there before you.

So in that way we are raising the brand profile, prior to us being around Transition was a direct to market via a shop and the service I gather wasn’t as it should be, with us in place backing our retailers as well as consumers play there will be an on cost for that sort of service, if you don’t want/need that kind of thing then that Brant chap seems to have a solution, there is nothing if not choice in life..

Hope that clears things up a bit.

Do you think they’d get the joke if we sent them one of the kayaks we sell for Fresh Goods Friday? 😉

I use these, should declare an interest in that we also sell them, but they are very good, I also use them sailing.These guys come up on google as a source fro them

Kali stuff generally is excellent quality and very well priced.

Been an Apple evangelist since 1987 and the old Mac Classic & 2 cx, got the first iPod, even have a Newton rotting somewhere in a draw, I loved it back then when we were the rebel alliance against Bill Gates death star.

But now, I hate it everyone has them and blame the iPod and iPhone, so does the bread knife so i got her what ‘they’ the technical phone elite are proclaiming as ‘the best’ phone on the market right now, some HTC affair.

Took me ages just to work out how to make a frikking phone call and as to syncing with her contacts, forget it.. It doesn’t hook up to iTunes, (I thought they’d let even the PC rabble have iTunes now), so no, in our world the iPhone still rules, frankly I’d hate to live without it now, it’s a weather forecaster, tells me how windy it is, I strava with it on the sea as well as the land, it doubles as a sat nav if I’m lost, if I don’t know something I ask it, it wakes me up in the morning, plays me the radio or iTunes, plays movies, has all my family pictures, and vids of stuff I get to see in my travels, connects me with Facebook and twatter if I want, is a calculator and a camera, is a compass, a torch, a hard drive, a piano, a tide watch, and a notepad, it really is the wonder of the age, not saying android doesn’t do the same but if it does, it’s so geeky like everything else PC, I can’t be asked to find out how…

Now if only they’d fit a bottle opener..

don simon – Member

FTFY..

Knight rider…

Take up wind or kitesurfing, find the spots they go and most of them ride off road when there’s no wind, that’s the way of it on the south coast. There are some great guys and a good crowd down there you just have to seek em out..

I’d go for Eastbourne then you’re midway between Brighton and Hastings, Bexhill is a bit Gods waiting room and there is a bit more riding round Eastbourne, south downs way , stuff like that..

Mud has it’s place, it’s called the winter I’m sorry having it stretch from April to mid July is just not acceptable.

I think we need a change of government or religion – whatever.

+2 Cap’n B’stard, the reason I took that monstrosity out yesterday was because I’ve got bloody SAD syndrome and it’s s’posed to be summer, but in truth for me Mountain Biking has always been pretty much a winter sport, the trails round here get so nettled up, we have so much narrow single track, but even the bridle ways have closed out with this amount of rain, the nettle growth has been mental.

This is what temporarily alleviated my melancholy, a bit of weirdness tbh, but it did convince me road biking is still as wrong as it ever was..

Edit, it has rat traps not SPD’s so I haven’t totally transgressed.

stilltortoise – Member

Find quieter roads.

In the South East of England? As it was I took the old A20 and some trails next to the motorway, but I nearly came off at the hands of a bloody mini pine cone, I’d forgotten how sensitive road wheels are, scary!

Strava

Not sure I’d go to the lengths of doing it for pleasure, I still prefer off road, although it was a pleasant enough lunchtime diversion trying to snap out of bad weather induced gloomy mood, I’ll not be hanging up my baggies, I am going to see if can cobble something more suitable together that aint a total bone shaker.

It got me thinking a bit, you wouldn’t go fast on a motor cycle with a live frame would you? Maybe it’s time for the road bike suspension revolution.. 😕