I pay full whack because I like the little shield symbol…

I have started counting the number of good responses from motorists versus rude gesture, etc whilst out and about on the road bike.

If a motorists slows down on a single track road I give a cheery wave and more often than not a wave is returned.

Sometimes I hop on the pavement to let a truck go by and I’ll get a flash of the hazards as a thank you.

Riding through town I more often than not get rude gestures and the like.

So far the friendly waves outnumber less friendly hand gestures.

The other day I even had a works pickup stop with two builders in thanking me for stopping at the red lights at a cross roads….Crazy!

Outline+ (Onenote client)
FickrStackr (photo viewing app, integrates with Flickr, Dropbox and a few other cloud based locations)
Year Walk (game)
Goodreader (swiss army penknife of file handling)
OHDVideo

Just seen, not read the other posts (busy day at work). Hope the perps get the book thrown at them.

Edit: Type the reg number into YouTube, there are now nearly 20 copies up there. Good stuff YouTube posters!

Video now removed for being too graphic on Youtube.

Crikey must be bad… Anyone know of any other links?

+1 for a protest ride.

I used to ride Reba forks with remote lockout.

Lockout is useful for climbs. Though with Rebas dirt can into the internals and cause the lockout to stick. Single speeds usually get ridden through filth so the lockout can become sticky.

I modified removed the remote lockout and reverted to a manual lockout for this reason. The XXX hydraulic lockout may be a better option.

+1 Shimano in wide fit versions.

I’ve got a RT57, fast and comfy.

If I had a choice of either it would be the RT57 for me. Not ridden the RT58 so this statement is made in complete ignorance to the RT58.

Single speeders are only angry when we are going up hill. Going downhill we coast and on the flat we spin with a grin.

Therefore riding a single speed imitates life. Riding with gears is like being on Prozac, every day’s an easy day (if you want it to be so).

My take on this is:

Rollers + Netflix on laptop/tablet + lobotomy = Z2 session

Lezyne V10 does the trick for me. Lightweight and not silly money.

It’s doable on an SS if you are used to it. If you ride with gears then I would say you need a few months getting used to SS. Especially as it’s uses slightly different muscle groups (especially honking up a hill). Which can quickly tire over a long ride.

IIRC I only walked up a couple of climbs in Newcastleston on the 7stanes routes. But then everyone was walking because it was ankle deep mud.

I used a 32:17 (26er) ratio. You could drop to a 32:18 (26er) and still be ok. There aren’t many flat bits and as long you keep spinning you will be fine.

100 rpm with a 32:18 is about 20 – 22 kmh which is 12 – 13 mph. My avg speed was around 8 – 9 mph by comparison for the whole ride.

For comparison I did the SDW in 11h 15m (single speed) two weeks before the K100 2011.

I finished Kielder in 2011 in 12h 59m (single speed again).

I made it to the last cutoff (78 miles) with only 2 minutes to spare. But this mainly due to changing pads.

How much of the course is fire-road/triple track slog?

Lots, probably 80%+.

To add to the other suggestions of training. If you live in the south, if you can crack the South Downs in around 12hrs then you will be able to do Kielder. The weather will be more grim and bike more prone to mechanicals, but mentally if you can crack the SDW in a day then you can do Kielder.

Where mind goes the body follows and all that…

For me it’s the apps.

Long story short bullet point style
* Irrational hatred towards Apple, had an Android phone
* Wished to buy tablet, better support for OS on Apple stuff than Android (had to resort upgradring to custom roms to upgrade Android phone as Motorola are useless)
* Purchased an Apple iPad due to higher quality apps IMHO
* Grew tired of Android apps being flaky in comparison
* Swapped the Android phone for an iPhone 4
* Result = happy with phone and not bothered nor tempted by the 4S or 5

I did it in 2011, went through six sets of pads. I would consider single speeding to remove a potential point of failure with gears.

I didn’t bother with the bag drops, I carried all of my food with me. Again less to go wrong.

At the 55 miles stage in Newcastleton there is a great big marquee tent full of soup, rolls, flapjack, etc. The tomato and basil soup the kind ladies were serving was the best soup I’ve ever tasted!

Cheers guys. Budget is around £40 – 50 so CRC sounds ideal, thanks.

You could always try the drip…drip effect.

Talk endlessly about getting a new bike and bore them to death so it is finally a relief when you do buy the bike because you stop boring the other half about buying a new bike.

Until the next one…

I find Shimano more comfortable but to be honest I believe it depends on the shape of your foot.

If you’ve never bought Shimano, buy some in the sales and try them out. If you don’t like go back to Spesh.

First time application and first time rider.

Entry accepted and I’m in :-)

Back in the uni days a guy I used to share a house would piss the bed every Wednesday eveing (the big night out as student was Wednesday night). Come Thursday morning, without fail, he would be on the landing drying his mattress with a hair dryer.

Same chap also wrote his name in shite on a wall by sticking a biro up his bottom.

Also the same chap mentioned in a matter of fact manner that he had made a hole is a melon about an inch wide, warmed the melon upto body temperature and he made himself shall we say “less lonely” with said melon…I never did eat any fruit in that house hold for a whole year!

Pipedream 400 is all you need for the UK.

Used it down to -10c with extra clothes on and had a decent nights sleep.

Finished Kielder 100 on a single speed a couple of year ago when it rained non-stop.

Not really done much road biking in rubbish conditions, new to the dark side. For Kielder I kept warm by keep pedalling and had a gilet and base layer. I guess for the road wind chill in more of a factor.

Planning on doing the Fred Whitton this year.

What do people wear, full on water proofs or would a gilet and constant activity be enough to keep warm?

Seems like the
industry is flailing around looking for the
next best thing and sales advantage but is
actually putting everything at risk by
confusing the market and alienating it’s
customers.

I have recently bought a new bike recently, a 29er…though with 23mm tyres and drop bars…

I shall not buying any new mountain bike kit for a while until the dust settles on this issue.

I am a short arse at 5’6″ and at the moment I’ve got a light weight racy HT and a heavier long travel HT. I need to sell one to find room in the garage. So I will be selling the racy HT. If I were to consider a 29er HT it would be just for xc riding which would limit my riding (echoing Cy’s quote regarding the Solaris being more suited to long steady rides for short people a couple of pages back on this thread).

Hopefully we shall all have a drier summer this year and I will be dodging trees on wooded singletrack on my 26er. With the option of putting on a lightweight wheelset for longer distance events.

I will not be making any major MTB purchases for a while because I want one bike that can do multiple jobs and at present it is not clear if this is possible with a 29er for a short arse.

An alternative is to install this.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lim.android.automemman&hl=en

It stops applications that take up too much memory and that are idle or ones your are not actively using on the screen. Be warned though if you haven’t got enough memory then this cause other apps that you are using to stop for example if you are flicking in between a web browser and email.

You can specify apps the app will avoid from being stopped.

delilah…genius

Are any of the Garmins now Ipad compatible?

Kind of…wouldn’t bother if I were you as you need to pair the watch with the iPad every time.

http://www.dcrainmaker.com/2011/10/garmin-iphone-ant-adapter-and-garmin.html

http://www.dcrainmaker.com/2011/05/inside-look-at-downloading-fr310xt.html

http://www.dcrainmaker.com/2010/05/first-look-at-wahoo-fitness-ant-iphone.html

As above, if you’ve got a turbo I wouldn’t bother with resistance.

I use the rollers for base training stuff and the turbo for more hectic periods.

SS + road = best of both worlds!

+1 KMC Z610

UN54s, I had bling but had issues with water ingress.

Gone back to old school cartridge BB’s, last ages, less faff.

I used to use Endomondo, they changed their privacy settings whereby all rides were public and could not be set to private IIRC. And also the phone software had “follow me live” enabled and could be switched off. Bit like GPS tracking software meets Facebook.

For this reason I left Endomondo and started using Strava with the privacy settings enabled.

Edit: double post.

I assume you mean the grub screw. Send me your address and I will pop one in the post (in exchange for good karma). Email in profile.

I’ve got a few Reba cannibalised for spares.

Not sure which one is the quietest but if you get specific tyres such as the Continental Home Trainer tyres these reduce noise almost by half.

It made the difference between waking up my other half up or not at 6am in the morning.

is there a specific requirement to use a UK-based company?

Only other than convenience for support and not having to worry about timezones, etc. I had to contact a hosting provider in the States to have a domain transferred that was stuck in limbo.

Classic, never get tired of watching it.

Hmm, phoned Knights Motors and they said they didn’t do auto gearboxes anymore.

Any other suggestions?

Thanks

Cheers Keith, much appreciated.