I agree. Legalise.

the few off-roaders that are left are going to be by far the bloody hardest to get rid of

Count – There’s logic behind what I’m saying and we’re 100% on the same wavelength. I’ve got to go offline as they’re locking the office, so TBC tomorrow 🙂 (unless the thread falls into some kind of 1 thousand post irrelevant argumentitive nightmare, in which case I doubt I’ll bother).

The few off-roaders that are left are going to be by far the bloody hardest to get rid of.

My apologies for going silent on this front… thank you for your further replies.

I’ve made the leap to bullhorns (fitted over the w/e – very nice feel) and I’m currently running singlespeed while I find the ideal soultion.

I have fitted bar-end-plug mounted brake levers that route the cable straight down the inside of the bar and out through a hole further back near the bend, which is very tidy.

Ideally I’d like bar end shifters that route the cable internally (which I’m not sure you can get) and then fit some clamp mounted brake levers to run the cables externally.

The hunt continues, though with the added benefit that I know at least the brake cables are out of the way should I go for a clamp-mounted shifter solution (like that Pauls jobby). I’ll have to get my hands on some bar end shifters and have a look at the throw, see if it’s going to be a viable thing to convert them or whether it will be uncomfortably awkward as JoB says.

Let’s hope my LBS is feeling patient next weekend… 🙂

I’m a singlespeed newb, but I find the contrast bewteen these two posts hard to fathom:

soobalias
52:18 on 700’s hilly road commute.

binners
I find a 36:16 perfect for road duties. Mind you, I live in Manchester. It’s as flat as a witches ****

In my head, they’re the wrong way round. Is my perception of flat/hilly way out? Or does two teeth more/less on the back make a much bigger difference than I think it does?

I run 44:18 and it spins out on flat road at any decent kind of speed and is useless up any kind of realistic hill.

Looks a lot nicer out there this weekend than it was when we did it last weekend. We had horizontal hail driving down our lugholes at one point.

Good pics, I’m jealous. My shock was in for servicing this w/e so road bike only 🙁

44:18 for 700c flat road commute.

Comfier than a road bike? Eh? How can restricting your positions to a choice of one be more comfy?

More upright position – less stretched out – more comfy.

That was my thought. Contrary to the belief of most serious cyclists, having your back perpedicular, rather than parallel to the floor is more comfortable for the vast majority of the cycle commuting public 🙂

Personally, I’d take a cyclocross bike over anything else if I had a few off-tarmac miles chucked into my commute. But then I would, because I’m a serious cyclist. Someone who chooses to spend his sundays up muddy hills in wind, hail, rain and snow rather than watching Top Gear repeats on Dave, thus I’m not really representative of the vast majorit of people 🙂

What’s wrong with hybrids?

It’s only an image problem. IMO the average hybrid is comfier than a road bike on the road, faster than a mountain bike on the road, and will glady deal with firetracks and towpaths as well as any mountainbike 🙂

If your commute doesn’t involve either high speed road riding or heavy going offroad, why have a machine that specialises in either and sacrifices the other when you can have a machine that does a perfectly acceptable job of both?

It’ll be Manpax next.

Dirt and the other DH that was very similarly titled?)

Grip? Rush?

i have a large pile of MBUK, MBR, WMB and dirt from the last 5 years or so that i advertised free to collectors on here. nobody local wanted them, and i’ve not managed to get over to glossop lately to drop em off with the only person who showed any interest. so they’re cluttering up my hall, and although it’s a sensible option i’m loathed to just chuck em in the recycling…

Try the Retrobike forum, though only being from the last five years they probably won’t be of much interest to enough folk. Keep them another ten years and people will deffo want em :o)

Advertise them free to collector on here and Retrobike. Somebody will make use of them. I passed on about a tonne of MBUK, MBR and MBI mags that way, which is more satisfying than chucking them in the recycling skips…

There are no other good magazines out there.

Hence, I assume, Chipps starting Singletrack.

portly

Negative

mid life crisis sufferers

Negative

with delusions of gradeur

Check

who think that riding around on an expensive push bike somehow makes up for their dull job

Check

in engineering

Negative

or IT.

Check

The most amusing being the ones who pretend to like something purely so they can be on first name terms with a washed up ex bike journalist come budget bike company owner or some muppet who draws pictures of sheep and waffles on in a pretentious manner.

Check. JoB commented on a thread of mine the other day and I was star struck. But then I got star struck when I saw that Barnsley bloke from Life On Mars and Ashes To Ashes in Meadowhall on Wednesday, to the point where I’m still name-dropping it two days later, so I’m not sure if that’s particularly relevant.

Love it.

The Ladybower is the best pub for a post (or mid) ride feed and pint, by miles.

I’ve never understood how there can be such a hugely successful counterfeit industry. Someone posted a link to a counterfeit watch webiste the other day on here, and the site was boasting how if you could tell the difference bewteen their £500 copies and the few thousand quid real thing they’d give you double your money back or soemthing.

How does that go on? Madness.

Anyway, sorry, that’s off topic and I was hjacking as it was.

Sorry for slight hijack here but it’s on topic…

Okay Cy – hypothetically, let’s say I released a versatile steel framed roadbike with slotted drops, that accepted discs and racks and guards and everything, and just happened to call it a ‘Streetrat’, and the geometry just so happened to measure up very similar to yours how easy would it be for you to do anything about that?

I won’t, by the way. Don’t worry.

Just thinking that surely there’s a point where you could legally say ‘hang on a minute, this guy’s copying me’. Where does the line sit between ‘similar’ and ‘rip off’?

Jackthedog – this isn’t Nottingham Road, Ilkeston by any chance…….?

‘Fraid not, no. Why, you suffering the same thing?

There’s a chap who does this to me, up one of the bigest hills on our route home.

He goes fairly slow so I don’t want to hang around behind him as my normal pace is about a third faster than his. But as soon as I pass him he seems to take it as a personal insult and then hangs on my back wheel all the way to the top of the hill where we go our seperate ways. He’s a fit chap, I can never shake him, but I always think if he wanted to ride that fast, why is he never riding that fast when I first see him?

I think he just doesn’t like being overtaken.

Boys night in ingredients: Takeaway pizza, six-pack of beer, Lethal Weapon 1 & 2 in quick succession.

Dead Man’s Shoes was filmed in Matlock. Was it supposedly an ex-pit community in the film? I always thought it painted an uneccessarily grim view of the place really. Absolute top notch film though it is.

I went to college with a Greek Cypriot who came to England to study and find work. He moved into the flat above a family-run chipshop in an old Yorkshire pit village and worked in the shop to fund his study.

The shock must have been quite something, coming from his huge marble floored family home with swimming pool and balconies in a beautiful mediterranian village in Cyprus and ending up in a decrepit, poverty stricken, drug riddled, cold rainy isolated ex pit village.

That reply actually made me LOL I’m afraid to say.

Depends how you want to be inspired. Reading Dan Walsh has made me want to ride round the world on a motorbike and never, ever go near cocaine, and I’m currently reading The Wild Places by Robert Macfarlane, which is making me want to bugger off somewhere miles from anyone and be a complete hippy.

The FBI have turned up?

I don’t know how, but a girl I kissed once bit my tongue by accident. Bloody painful I can tell you.

You didn’t ‘accidentally’ try inserting your thumb somewhere you shouldn’t did you?

Shouldn’t laugh as it’s not funny, what she did is terrible. But I do find it hard not to find humour in this line:

I can’t distinguish between certain foods, like the difference between cheese and toast, and just toast.

This might be far from typical as property is a mystery to me, but a mate of mine is in the process of buying a repo flat in London.

Out of spite the previous owners have smashed all the kitchen appliances, torn out all the taps and shower, pulled up all the wooden flooring, treat all the carpets to a nice soiling and used something metal and sharp to scratch profanities into the windows.

He’s getting it really cheap (well, it’s in London so it’s still stupendous money) but it’s cheap for a reason. First thing he’ll have to do is spend a few grand putting right the damage.

The best tyres for Llandegla are the Maxxis Landfills:

+1

I wish they made bars too, nice wiiiide ones.

I’ve always wished they’d make cranks.

Thomson are just the definitive choice. Same with the stems, wouldn’t use anything else. Does the job, fit and forget, lasts for ever and doesn’t look flashy.

Anyone ever seen a bent one?

Apart from every layback post they’ve ever made which I think look bloody dreadful.

jackthedog – Gods own Manchester to the god awful Sheffield…All on road.

Ah okay, darkside. Say no more.

barca – What’s the A57 trail?

Have a look at these:

http://www.arranbikeclub.com/pdfs/arran_cycling_map.pdf
http://www.arranbikeclub.com/documents/ArranMTBroutes08_000.pdf

Taken from the Arran bike Club website :o)

its almost like Nirvana never happened

We can all dream.

Your Peak Pootle one made me want to ride.

Ours were hand-cut from the side of big plastic oil can things, I believe.

The stinger is baby?

I’ve long thought that way too many folk are really anal about their bike setup. I can’t count the amount of times I’ve had to listen to my fellow riders whine on about how a tiny issue with their bike has “ruined their ride”.

Stuff along the lines of
“that last climb would have been easy but I think my saddle is a couple of mil too far forward on the rails”
or
“I had a bit of a crap ride today, think my rebound was a bit too fast”
or
“the topout clunk was putting me off on that last downhill”
or
“I would have kept up with you on that last bit of singletrack but the anodising on my cable end caps isn’t an exact match for the colour of the aftermarket bolts on my brake levers”.

Occassionally it comes across as if the bike itself is the only thing that one can enjoy out in the hills, and if everything isn’t just so there is no possibility of succesfully extracting any reward from the act of riding.

And internally as I listen to it, all I can think is “cease your foul whining and just ride your sodding bike.”