I had a Giant reign powder coated in ‘Antique Copper’ it was lush!!

Buggers would move then 😉

I think however if I did I would get this and zip tie it to my bike rather than a bell

Cos I don’t use it enough to warrent going out and buying a bell and we only have one cycle lane in our town so normally I avoid it (I would I guess if I did use the lane on a regular basis).

Surely if the council have bothered to paint and mark out a specific area / lane for cyclists to use then the cyclist have the right of way??

We only have a few cycle lanes where I live and there is a white line down the middle of the pathway and in one side has a picture of a person walking every so many yards and in the other side a picture of a bike (common practice I guess). Now I only use it rarely because I’d rather ride in the **** road than have to keep saying ‘excuse me’ (don’t want to ride with a bell) to get past groups of people walking and taking up both lanes and the amount of single walkers who walk in the cycle lane rather than in the walking lane is unbelievable!!

See thats what happens when you ride your mums bike, wear her helmet and borrow your sisters jeans!!

Im in Somerset and had a few inches to deal with! wierd though cos my work hasn’t had any, driving up the A303 and it’s almost like someones drawn a line and one side had it and the other didn’t!!

Not sure if you seen my other post but Mrs Jackass is now 8 days overdue, the last thing I wanted was to worry about snow and getting her to the hospital!!

Old Vanilla R shock on my Giant Reign and a newer Vanilla R on my 2007 Commencal.

Both amazing and really want my RP23 done now. However saying that I have also had some Boxxer’s and Pikes serviced and adjusted by TF but not ‘Push’ tuned and they were also so much better afterwards.

I was talking to a guy at a race who had the same Boxxers Teams as me, he was on his second pair as he wasn’t happy with the way they performed. Mine were TF tuned straight away and I never rode them standard. Just doing the standard car park up and down test you could notice the ‘plush’ness of mine over his!!

Now that looks like a ‘Specialized’ I would own!!

Is that the 2020 Langster??

So if ‘normal’ frame designs aren’t your bag how about this:

This was an import to a shop in Manchester Avocett Sport LTD in which was selling for £650.00 2 years ago

Is that the new name for JJB? Surely it was £65 not £650?

Sorry mis-type there, young people don’t only get experience from making mistakes they also get it from spending time on the roads!!

Whereas young drivers its cockiness and in-experience, older drivers its reaction times and health problems.

Totally agree with that and young people can only get experience from making mistakes – we all remember our first knock! and hopefully they grow out of their cockiness (I know I did when I hit a lamp post outside our house and having to tell my parents) but with old people they get stubburn and insist they are still more than capable of driving.

If you look at the statistics they often refer to death from driving accidents and ages. I do however wonder how many simple knock and bumps are reported from young and older drivers?

Also a lot of young drivers have accidents with more than one person in the car which put the statistics up as more people are injured or sadly killed.

That is rather nice, not sure why but I am really taken by this at the moment:

Certainly my ‘non’ biking friends thought I was slightly mad getting one! They however don’t seem to moan when you can take all the seats out and help them move!!

Trouble is now I always end up driving which is properly why I end up with all the crazy old people on the road – lol

You really are impatient waiting for Jackass jnr if you’ve the people carrier already!

Well ive had it 2 years now so yeah I guess I was a bit eager!

It has nothing to do with the fact I can get 4 bikes and 4 people in it honest! 😉

A crap days riding is always better than a ‘good’ day a work!!

Bikes on Classifieds yet?

NEVER!! Looking to buy ANOTHER one actually – thinking if I have a road bike to get to work it might be the only chance I get to ride for a little while!!

Tried curry, sex and even long walks and still nothing!!

Think they are going to break her waters on Thursday and see if that moves it along if nothing has happened.

Will keep you posted 😉

You may be covered by paypal so don’t panic just yet. Paypal should also have an address for the guy so try and see if you can find his details through there.

He does say he’s new to these things so don’t panic.
I once bought a wheel from another forum and then never heard from the guy, ended up contacting Paypal and suddenly the guy starts emailing me saying he’d cut through his phone line whilst gardening and hadn’t been able to get online to get my details. Wheel turned up a few days later so it was either a very strange excuse or actually genuine!!

My insurance company got wheelies to call me when I put in a claim after the wife drove over my Giant Reign frame. They offered a crazy price on the Reign X frame which from what I can remember was a 1k frame at the time and offered it to me for 700 quid. I just told them that I needed a bike ASAP due to a riding holiday in France and had already replaced the frame. They were fine and just told the insurance company I had sorted it myself and my insurance company sent me a cheque! I did however have to send pictures of the frame.

Thanks, think I’ll re-consider my options as I don’t think they take Shimano cassettes!!

I’ve always wondered about doinging something similar but with gas. My old man used to have a K-Series 1.4 engined Metro GTi that went really well.
Often wondered what that engine running on gas would be like in a ariel or caterham style kit car would be like.

Having met Tim in person he is a really nice guy and very helpful but I know what you mean about his phone manner! I think they deal with a lot of questions that in truth if us blokes RTFM we wouldn’t have to bother them – lol

My wife accidently rode over my Giant Reign frame and I claimed for it. I was going to france in a couple of days so needed a bike quick and bought something there and then. When I made the claim the insurance company said my frame was worth more than they would pay out (£500) so their cycle shop / company would do me a highly discounted replacement frame. When I spoke to the cycle shop I told them I had to buy a new one due to the holiday so didn’t want what they had to offer. The insurance company then called me back and offered the full amount in a cheque. They never even took of the excess which was a bonus!!

Kona beat them too it, like 10 years ago!! Never worked then, not gonna work now!!

I’ve recently put a 54mb wireless one in & noticed no difference whatsoever, presumably because my internet is only 10mb.

Correct!

Not sure about ‘cable’ but you’d very rarely get 10Mps on ADSL and there are other factors like upload speed etc. that can affect your download speed so 11Mps wireless connection is fine for normal home internet use.

Mrs Jackass is now overdue with our first child so no riding for me this weekend 🙁

A little DH track we found which is cool in ADH:

At the top of the first lift station where the freeridey berm and jump track goes down to the village is a fireroad that goes around the side of the mountain – left if you are looking down towards ADH. Follow this up, over the brow of the hill and on the right is a little track that is fast, has a few drops and some cool corners, follow it and you’ll end up on the last bit of the race track that goes into ADH. A great little ‘end of day’ track that you can do a few times without being too knarkerd!!

second spacecadett!!

Always rinse mine out and then freeze. Any left over ‘juice’ doesn’t go moldy and when you take it out just flick the bits of ice at the bottom out and you are good to go.

Oh and riding down the black ski run on your bike in July with thin mountain air and hot sun beaming down is the best fun EVER on a bike.

Insurance: I went onto the British Cycling website and under membership benefits there is a link to a company that BC recommends that covers competition (you don’t have to be a BC member though to take the insurance). I also called and double checked. Used twice now. As I crashed, needed medical attention in Alp d’huez and then air lifted to the main hospital my E111 or European Health card covered 85% of my bill in hospital and as I said I had insurance I didn’t have to pay anything and was just given letters to my insurance company who paid the rest. My friends had to pay my bill for the help in Alp d’huez which came to about 150 euros which I got back no problem as well. For some bizare reason the state sent me a cheque just before Christmas as they messed up my E111 charge and I had a 2 quid refund!!

One other thing you do need is a letter from your doctor to say you are fit to race(unless you have a race license). First year I did it it cost me £20 from the doctor but haggled with him as he wanted to charge £50!! Second year I wink wink changed the date on the letter. Not that I advise fraud AT ALL but as you are in a different country no one checks up and it’s just a tick in the box for them so ALOT of people just wrote letters from DR Jones or Smith or what ever saying said person is fit to take part in said race.

You can ride the course all the time (certain race week). However if you don’t qualify you can still do the race but at your own lesuire. Turn up within a 2 hour time slot and just ride the course. You get timed and placed but it isn’t really a race. I got a flat during qual so didn’t make any of the groups and found the race really good fun – actually caught up with some of the racers who’d were struggling!!

When I shared a house with some mates one night we were all woken to an all mighty racket in the garden, So we put the outside light on and opened the top part of our rear stable door. There was a badger ripping through our rubbish so we shouted at it (knowing not to go out there) and he stopped turned round and looked at us, grunted and then full on charged at the back door nearly breaking the lower half of the door then was showing his teeth and going mad at us!!

He then suddenly stopped, returned to our rubbish, picked up the Mc Donalds brown paper bag that was in the rubbish and went on his way!!

Badgers don’t just like mash potato they like big mac and fries as well!!

Ooooo I’ve done the Mega, recon I am in that que somewhere on the picture above!!

As said before DH bike for the qualifier!! Good pedally freeridey bike for the main race or a full DH bike – some dudes did it on hard tails and some of the crazy euro bikes you’ll see out there will make you wonder why you ever worried 🙂

Double ply tyres is a must, bash guard is also a good idea. The rocks you’ll ride over is crazy but fun.

As your riding it all the time whilst you are out there you’ll pick up the riding conditions and adjust pretty quickly. I must admit my first run out there I did think ‘wow I am out of my depth here’ but come the end of the week we were ripping it!!

Neil_Bolton (on here) last year got into the top 200 riders!!

I did it in 2007 and managed a 1hr 30min time which I was pretty pleased with as a virgin. Last year I crashed on the Thursday and dislocated my shoulder so sat the rest of the week out – bummer!!

Oh and arm pump – I suffered really bad with this. I had times when I took my hands of the bars and couldn’t straigten them!! People act differently though as others in our group were fine! By the end of the week though I coped better and was OK.

Great fun and certainly an event you’ll tell stories about for years to come!

(me on the left)

Have fun!!

Air Ambalance to Grenoble hospital after dislocating my left shoulder on the Megavalanche qualifying track!!

Lamest crash in the world – spent an hour with a cheeky lady doctor trying to pop it back in at the medical centre at Alp d’Huez but had no joy so I shared a lift with some guy whose foot slipped of his pedal and got caught between two slats on a small north shore brigde and was in a bad way! (Chicken wire would have saved his ankle from nearly being ripped off BTW!!)

We were in a club once and had had drunk a few too many shandies 😉 Anyway, mate gets lucky and pops to the toilet to purchase the protective clothing and sets off with his catch for the night back to her place.

We catch up with him the next day to see how he got on and get all the gossip and he’s very quiet and doesn’t really want to talk about it. After constant nagging from us it turns out that when he got back to her place and pulled out the packet of condoms he had bought in the club he had put his money in the wrong machine and had a packet of Smints – We laughed for days!!

Hang on, there was a lot of the ‘might’ word in there!!

Here wear this bubblewrap and cotton wool suit as you ‘might’ fall over on the way to school – FFS!!

What happens if the kids go to school with a child with one arm, do they ban that child from going to school as they will scare the other kids!!

If the child is scared or has nightmares, surely it’s the responsibility of the parent to explain that there isn’t anything for the child to be scared of and it’s part of life – Not to kick her off TV.

My Turner DHR also seemed to have good matching parts and had a real race look and feel to it.

I looked pimp on it too as I had matching black and red TLD full face and race kit, shame I was more ‘all the gear and no idea’ than Pro racer – lol

My Giant Reign also had the pimpest paint job all though that turned out to be the death of it 🙁

Yeah good fun considering we don’t have very big hills ‘down south’!!

Yeah tried to see if we could all get in!!

Going to see if I can make a new bracket to attach to my Maxle axle at the back and get a lower behind perspective or see what it’s like viewing forward from back with the forks and rear suspension working??

Ooops sorry the imbedding didn’t really work – lol

Heres the link:
My video on Vimeo