I have to say im still not sure about the look of it

Really? I think you could kit out those Treks with componentry hewn from rotten animal carcass, fitted using a toolkit consisting of a damp mossy twig and half a breezeblock and they'd still be one of the prettiest bikes out there.

Bloody gorgeous they are.

Doesn't it allow for different rotor sizes?

Good god WCA – is that true?

The future's yours.

And I've honestly never bought the Guardian in my life.

The domination of Tescos and the like is progress, you're quite right. It's unfortunate though that progress doesn't neccessarily mean improvement.

I assume the progress you speak of refers to your being able to spend less time shopping, spend less money to do so, and being offered more choice.

Those very much are benefits, no doubt about it. Although of those, to be honest I'm not sure the third really counts.

Choice. We have so much choice. Endless choice. Flavours, colours, textures, sizes, shapes, and any combinations we desire thereof.

Given less choice, would we be less happy? I don't know. Does more choice always equal better? Would we be more content as a people if the choices of frozen pizza/tv/anodised headsets were in the millions as opposed to the current hundreds? Would my life be any worse if I hadn't specced the specific hub and spoke colours on my current wheelset? I doubt it.

Currently my home is served by about 30 or 40 TV channels, but I still have as much difficulty finding something to watch as I did when we just received four. I sometimes wonder if choice is all it's cracked up to be.

So for me, the jury's out on that one. But the other two I agree with. I don't enjoy time spent shopping, nor do I like throwing my money away. So I recognise the modern methods of removing the need for either as being beneficial to us.

Unfortunately as far as I can see, those two advantages (three if you love your choice) comprise the extent of the benefits to come from what you're calling progress.

Because the other side of that progress is inbalance, injustice and the destruction of a society that functions in a logical and human way in favour of the creation of one that, in my opinion, very much doesn't.

That extra few quid I spend over you buys me so much more than extra wallet space. The extra £30 it costs me when we buy our respective 72 engagement-point rear hubs goes on much more than the alumininium, plastic and steel. The thing it pays for is more than just a product. It's my personal contribution towards sustaining a way of life I think is right – one that's unfortunately being ravaged by a nation's single-minded focus on the financial.

The opinion that the internet is the best thing to happen to mountain biking is very valid if you think of it only in terms of your ease of access to cheap choice. But there is a much bigger picture, beyond even the obvious that biking is about so much more than the products we choose. A bigger picture beyond the hobby that you yourself may very well not care about. Or perhaps very much do care about, without even realising it;

Many of us now live in communities that have no sense of coherence. We don't know the names of the poeple that live 3 doors down. We dont talk to each other, and we've all developed a mistrust of each other. We see the youth sat outside the (chipboarded) local shops and we're threatened by them. And we go home and listen to the news and read the paper and complain at the state of the world we live in. How society is broken, and how the streets are dangerous, and how everyone is so self-absorbed and unwilling to help those around them. So many speak of having lost faith in the world.

And yet the problem starts at home. Without that sense of community, without the communication between those we spend our lives around and those we should be there for and rely on, we start to fragment, and our happiness and contentment suffers.

We need to feel like we're all in it together, and that we're all sharing the same world. And we need to relearn the value of each other, and think more of others and the wider social environment than our own relatively insignificant short-term gain.

So whilever we conduct our lives from the end of broadband connections (irony noted), or scurry from our front doors and into our cars to drive to distant characterless, soul destroying superstores (did you say you hated shopping…) to buy our supplies, we're knocking further nails onto the coffin of civilised soceity.

And while people may lay blame at the government and be correct to do so, I think the solution starts at home also. The way to stop this, as far as I can see, is to vote with your bank balance and choose which future to support.

Even if you sometimes think it's largely futile. Though I find it tragic, you'll be glad to hear that the future is yours as far as I can tell. I unfortunately don't hold much hope for a better world. I feel outnumbered. Outnumbered by those like the clients that would laugh you out of the room should you ever ask for their support when faced with unfairly gained competition impossible to face.

I feel impotent in my ability to change anything. But I can't let that feeling of futility destroy my hope. And so I'll continue to try, in my own little way making a difference by playing the long game and investing in the future while those around me I wish to help call me a fool.

Blimey, that imposter syndrome sounds familiar…

I have very little family and I'm it's youngest member at nearly 30 with no kids on the horizon, so I never feel the need to bother with it.

When you strip away the big dinner and family gathering (otherwise known as gluttony and quiet frustration – both of which are possible at any point during the year should anyone be that bothered) it's hard to see Christmas as anything other than an opportunity to sell lots of tat to lots of frenzied sheep.

My attitude towards it isn't helped by the fact that I used to work in advertising, and looking from that side of things Christmas was the most ungodly, unkind, soul destroying, money grabbing time of the year.

I dont' sit there being miserable, but I certainly don't find any enjoyment in the season beyond the time off work. I hope to be riding Wharncliffe Woods or the Peak on Christmas day. That's more like it.

+1 interrupted seat tube. Been there – perfect bike in every other way but the lack of seat height adjustment was a pain in the arse, as often physically as metaphorically.

Love the banner ad at the bottom of this thread (on my screen at least)

MONDAY TUESDAY WEDNESDAY THURSDAY FRIDAY SATURDAY SUNDAY EVERYDAY'S A SALE DAY
chainreactioncycles.com

How can anyone compete with that.

I am happy to pay more at my LBS than shop online, and I'm also happy to wait for them to order stuff in. I get first class service, advice and information, loans of tools, quick jobs done free and instantly, and I do get a discount (even though it would never match wiggle/CR).

But I'm lucky to have a great LBS staffed by a team that have worked there for over a decade and really know their stuff. Faced with bad service at high cost, perhaps I'd be singing a different tune.

However I think there's a bit of a bigger picture that affects my buying habits. Firstly, on a personal note I find the quest for cheap sources of expensive bike parts quite hard to take seriously. I hear people saying they managed to save 30 quid on a King rear hub and wonder why, in the position to blow lots of money on unneccessarily expensive parts for an ultimately pointless and notoriously expensive hobby, they argue over £30.

Bargain hunting in a largely middle class, expensive sport is quite an odd paradox in my mind. If you're that keen to save money, buy a cheap and adequate bike and stop wasting money on kit you'll never do justice. Otherwise, open your wallet and shut up.

However that is just a personal view that will no doubt be torn limb from limb on here and one I don't for a moment expect anyone to share.

That aside, what I can't help but agree with is one point mentioned above. I don't want to live in a world where only the likes of Tesco, Currys and Wiggle exist. Their disproportionate buying power is a dangerous thing, and upsets the balance of power, taking it from the hands of the producers and into the hands of large business.

Ask the agricultural industry (particularly dairy farmers) what damage Tescos and the endless supermarket price wars are doing to their livelihood. They've put the country in a state where producers can't afford to exist and do what they've done for years, so the things we buy end up getting shipped from half way round the world.

Yes, we get it cheaper but the knock on effects are huge and I think it takes a certain level of selfishness to be okay with that.

Vast purpose-built superstores with immense carparks, situated miles from communities, while the chipboard gets nailed over the local shop fronts. Just doesn't seem right. Where I live I'm surrounded by farms, and yet none of their produce is available at my nearest Tesco. Tesco provide choice – mega choice – but I don't want or need mega choice, I just want good quality fresh local food.

They've killed the local petrol station too. Selling fuel as a loss leader has forced independant filling stations (and associated shops and services – focal points for a community) out of business as they can't possibly compete. And so I now have to drive miles to wait in the endless queues at one of about four huge 30-pump filling stations, when I should be able to just nip down the road.

Should the online sellers be successful enough to completely wipe the country of it's local bike shop competition, we suddenly become very much at their mercy. Suddenly if they don't stock what I want, what do I do? My bike needs fixing, what do I do? I need to borrow a BB facer for half an hour, what do I do? I need to try on garments for fit before I buy, what do I do? I need to physically show someone knowledgable some problem I'm having with my bike, what do I do?

And if an importer/parts supplier won't meet the price demands of the all powerful online retailer they'll be cast out with nowhere to go, and they'll disappear.

I'm not a communist/hippy/particulalry wealthy, but I'm very much against the large-scale way of doing things. Capitalism works, but after a point (the point at which I believe it's termed rampant) that success is outweighed by it's irrelevance. It's impersonal, not sociable, not community spirited, just not really… human.

And that is what happens when we consider price alone. Life becomes more about balance sheets, facts, figures and statistics than it does about people.

I don't want to shop digitally in the same way I don't want to shop in a warehouse sized superstore, herded from isle to isle, blinded by the fantastic offers on Golden Grahams, Lee&Perrins Gutamalan Guava Bean Sauce and £30 DVD players and fed through the checkout conveyor line like a two legged cash-producing cog in an immense money-making machine, waiting patiently in silence while surrounded by my fellow human beings also waiting patiently in silence. It's not human. It's not right. And so I'll pay a little more in order to escape that world.

I feel genuinely sad that I see my pound as a more valuable democratic tool than my right to vote, but that doesn't stop me using it as best I believe I can.

During handsfree riding, on one bike I track straight, and on the other I always end up having to fight the tendency for it to veer left.

So it could well be the bike.

Ride up Jenkin Road from Brightside to the top of Wincobank – there are few more comedy steep hills in the city 🙂

Yes, put it back in the frame/forks or you'll only realise you've left it at home when you get the bike out of the car and try attatching your wheel.

JonEdwards – Member
Worked straight out the bag on my Condor Pista. A bit of bodging to create some spacers for the set on my other half's Roadrat.

What was the bodging involved to get them to run on the rat?

I fancy fitting some of these to mine (despite the ample clearance – I'm a tart and hate the look of normal guards).

Go on then I'll bite – there isn't a hill at Wincobank? Really?

I love how people have had time to find these particualr quirks of when it does or dosnt work, rather than taking it to a garage to get the thing fixed so you dont cause a sodding accident!!!

Fault occurred. I pulled over. I investigated it. My lights functioned normally. No risk of any accident. I continued on my way. Nobody injured or inconvenienced.

My Citroen of similar vintage does this exact thing too – mega fast clicking with no lights showing. Our motors probably use the same hardware.

Sometimes if I accelerate hard it goes away and returns when I brake, so it must be a loose connection – one I assume is around the steering column somewhere as that's what I punch in order to remedy it.

I put my christmas 2026 tree up in January 1987

Still happening regardless?

A rear wheel can be provided of course, hub dependant.

The original chap has pulled out due to lack of rear wheel, but there should still be three of us. Main car park at the top of Wharncliffe.

Room for one more?

Top car park at 9.30?

Well I'm up for doing a STW Manc to Sheff/Sheff to Manc, Ride of the Roses or something at some point, given a bit of time to perhaps plan some routes, trains and stuff.

And when there isn't a national weather alert 🙂

The slight weather panic, talk of lights and general transport issues are making me think staying local and riding the quagmire of Wharny with Pook and Kona UK might be a better bet.

I really like the idea of a Manc(ish)-Sheff(ish) ride though, so maybe another time.

I will be, unless it gets cancelled again

Which it has 🙁

Seems a shame to split, looks like a well sorted bike does that. If I was in the market and all that…

Actually you're right, it's a horrendous mess of a frontpage.

I have a friend who works for BBC online, I'll email her and tell her she's useless.

Really don't move to Halfway.

Sounds good if I can sort transport to Stockport. Haven't got the legs to ride out there and then back (! 🙂 )

I'm doing a bit of a peak thing on Sunday and I'd be up for something like that but for the fact that you'd be going the wrong way, living as I do near Penistone 🙂

If it wasn't for the ending up miles from home on the filthy side of the Pennines covered in mud trying to get a train back home bit, I'd join you.

I’m sure Freudian analysis of this trait would give us all a clearer insight into human relationships.

Or perhaps it would just show that men treat the sorry, tattered state of their underwear as a pretty insignificant issue, and so let things get to the point where eventually their women decide enough is enough, have a rant and go and buy them new ones.

Plus, don't all men hate normal clothes shopping? If I had someone to do it for me I'd let them.

I can't help with the camera issues you're having (other than saying just buy yourself an A3 scanner and have done) but just chipping in to say your artwork is lovely mate, top notch.

Grr at my lack of lights.

If it's for aesthetic reasons then I'm against it, but I'm fine if we're talking circumcylery.

Don't know what it's like to live there, but if you're commuting into Sheffield it's perectly feasible to do so by bike.

You get a rather wonderful, mostly flat and sheltered traffic-free route all the way pretty much to Hillsborough (in all that distance you'll literally spend about 4 minutes on road, half of which is along a lightly used factory access road) and then you'll join Penistone Road where you're ten minutes from the town centre and can happily sail past all the queuing traffic 🙂

Seems pretty epic at first but it really isn't – I live practically in Wharncliffe woods and nip up the TPT to Langsett and over Cut Gate without thinking about it. Penistone is what, half way bewteen Cut Gate and Wharny?

It would be a properly brilliant commute on a CX bike, and your commuter's bragging rights on STW would be immense.

They might not have any moving components, but they are a moving component. A quite vital one at that.

If you have doubts, Shimano or Middleburn is the answer.

all of us?

Okay, I generalise, and this is STW where to generalise is to leave gaping and glaringly obvious chinks in the armour of any point.

You might have found clarity SFB, and if so I'd say you're among a priviledged minority far outnumbered by the countless millions trapesing round shopping malls spending their overdrafts on irrelevant things they don't need, those staggering uncontrollably drunk from bar to bar on weekend nights, and those obsessing about directional speaker cables, screen size, high megapixel counts, complex compression damping circuits and rear axle paths.

Plus, I'm quite partial to a meaty vag.

Personnel opinion is that it will end up like skiing, DH being normal and a few doing XC, at least in the UK. There seems to be an anti work ethic in UK sport.

Agreed. Chipps wrote a column about it a while ago and it put into words what I was feeling.

It's not disturbing. It should be, but we've become a society so intently focussed on irrelevance that this sort of thing should shock no one.

We think we can buy our way out of any issues. What few seem to realise is that all the botox, make-up, silicon and aesthetic genital modification in the world won't bring an end to the hollow empty feeling we're all constantly and mistakenly trying to buy our way out of.

We have commodified everything else, including friendship and love, so why not our bodies?

Are you planning on going this Friday? Friday the 13th special round the cemeteries

I will be, unless it gets cancelled again 🙂

And I should be out in Ladybower or Hope Valley on Sunday morning too, no idea where I'll ride yet but will be heading out there for about 9/10ish if anyone fancies it.

My brain is telling me I shouldn't like that Kona, but my eyes are loving it.

Stick a Brooks saddle on it, some more swept back bars, an EBB and a hub gear and it'd look brill.

I planned to join the FNR last week but it was cancelled cos of the weather 🙁