On antibiotics FWIW.

Have you coincidentally got some sort of bacterial infection too? Otherwise “what it’s worth” is negative, you’re risking the side effects and allowing bacteria to develop resistance to antibiotics for no benefit except placebo.

I reckon this list is really the “Top Ten world cities you wouldn’t really think are that good but actually are”, so basically discounting the 20 or so cities people know are good (London, Paris, Prague, New York etc).

I’m from near Birmingham and I’ve lived in a fair few places, three years of uni in Manchester, one in California, London and Lancaster for work, a couple of years in Lyon and now Paris. I’ve always said Brum is up there among the best, the real difference being you need to know where you’re going, i.e. be a local or have a local guide. There’s no “tourist trail” to speak of, and if there was it’d be crap.

I’d like to hear what those saying it’s not in their top 10 in the UK (or saying it’s a “shithole”) really think set apart the likes of Liverpool, Newcastle, Manchester, Leeds etc above Birmingham. For me it’s well ahead in terms of music, nightlife and food.

cinnamon_girl – Member
Clint.

No way are you cool enough to pull off Clint.

No, Johnny Depp is his outside bf.

Normality

I’d take the bike, assuming that as it’s with work you’ll get a taxi straight from the airport to the hotel and back. The only real extra hassle then is waiting for the bike bag to come off the plane.

If you go running it’ll still be cold, damp icy and completely dark, and if you find nice trails up there you’ll kick yourself and just end up taking the bike next week anyway.

http://www.zagaz.com for French fuel prices. €1.092 cheapest for diesel (gazole) in Pas-de-Calais but €1.058 in Dunkirk.

I’m just a parent trying to get the full picture and the truth. Which often leaves me feeling stuck between a rock and hard place.

Good analogy. Let’s imagine the “hard place” is science, let’s imagine it’s a concrete floor, the the weight of evidence behind it is the whole world. Then let’s imagine the “rock” is the weight of evidence against the efficacy of vaccines, proportionately sized. So you’re standing on a concrete floor with a grain of sand in your hair. Now brush off the grain of sand, go home, get your kids and get them vaccinated, so they they and those around them aren’t at risk of preventable infectious disease.

has anyone else had no other contact apart from the almost immediate confirmation email?

Same, went the bank transfer payment route after my card wouldn’t work and they’ve neither confirmed nor denied whether I’m getting one.

hose length 1350mm…

Is this long enough generally for a large 29er frame??!

I’ve got a 1600mm hose 100mm travel reverb on a 20″ 29er hardtail and it’s huge. I anticipate having to cut over 25cm 27.5 cm off when I eventually get round to trimming it.

Fair, the horoscope comparison was maybe OTT, but my point was that those buying it for medical information are mugs. It’s nowhere near as accurate as the tests available to health care workers and only gives vague indications of any real risk. Hence the FDA ban.

I think the interesting part is really using it as a paternity test, finding lost relatives, and seeing the ethnic makeup of you genome. The last one in particular I think could be an eye-opener for certain people.

This is a product for people who read their horoscopes marketed as “genetic testing”.

I’m out.

Keys, RSA SecurID tag, spare contact lenses, Navigo card and phone.

I like the word “portmanteau”, meaning a word constructed from two words, which is itself a portmanteau of the French “port manteau”, meaning hatstand. The French for portmanteau is “mot valise”.

In fact I like any French word used in English, just to see the look on a French person’s face as they struggle to remember the English for things like “bon appetit” or “bon voyage”.

Even better are things like “double entendre” which exist in English but not French. Trying to explain to a French person that the right way to say something in English is to say it in incorrect French can be quite fun.

Yep, found the same thing here in Paris which surprised me. Maybe there are just lots of yanks here too.

My favourite was the one where they go on holiday, but have so much luggage the plane comes apart at the seams. Then the python squeezes it all back together.

Have you never heard of a spoiler alert?! Some people…

’76 Jaques Anquetil Gaspipe French Randonneur (commuter)
’06 Norco Six that’s getting sold for pennies soon
’13 Felt Nine hardtail

No, the second one is longer in every dimension. The wider the bars, the further forward your torso will be. Swap the bar dimensions and the two might be similar in length.

Have you thought about contacting your car insurance company? Not necessarily to make a claim, but they may be able to advise you in what to do. the best thing to do may be to claim from them, then let their legal team deal with securing reimbursement from the manufacturer. Your premium may go up a bit but would be a lot less hassle than chasing compensation on your own.

Give it three months and you won’t have this problem any more.

A big Volvo with a T5, model and age depends on budget really.

extinction seems to be a normal event, perhaps we’ve missed ours

For reasons I shouldn’t have to explain, I VERY much doubt that.

I’ve got the M442s (or something like that) that came OEM on a Felt hardtail. I was planning on changing them on the assumption they’d be bobbins but they’ve actually been fine, had them on for over a year with no issues. I think I saw them for about £45 for the pair at one point on Merlin but they don’t seem to have them any more. If you want really really cheap brakes I wouldn’t hesitate.

I’ve got a few mates who do this for our annual snowboarding trip, they say it’s no hassle at all in winter. Not sure if the direct alps trains run in summer though.

Bike carrying details here for eurostar. If your bike bag is less than 120cm and you can get a direct train to the alps then you won’t have to pay.

If you end up having to go London – Paris and changing for a TGV to the Alps, the TGV leg is free for a disassembled bike in a bag or 10€ for a fully built-up bike. However, in this case the only way to guarantee that your bike will be on the same eurostar is to pay £30.

I’ve never been brave enough to calculate this myself so I’m certainly not brave enough to check yours for you. However, for the dually, the term effective rim diameter would suggest that any offset etc is taken into account in the quoted figure, precisely so it can be used to calculate correct spoke lengths. That’s if its not a total misnomer…

How would you re-write a bible story for the present day?

Ctrl-A

Ctrl-X

Warren St has stairs to get anywhere from the Northern line. I’d do Euston and walk, I think there are escalators all the way up at Euston but I’m not 100%. Choose KX entrance carefully for the bit you need to get to if you want to totally avoid stairs, there are a few flights of 5 or 6 if you go in the wrong door.

I’ve had the same problem trying to change bank account in the UK while living in France, they all want you to sign something saying you’re resident in the UK and I’m not (and I’m not sure if spending two weeks back in the UK over Christmas really counts as “resident”).

I do know that HSBC will allow you to open a bank account abroad using your UK address temporarily until you have a foreign address sorted, as long as you have a UK HSBC account registered to that address too. I’m not sure if they’ll let you do this from the UK, but it’s worth popping in to one of their branches and asking.

Edit: Just re-read the OP and looks like you already have a Spanish address so that won’t be a problem. I would still try HSBC as they seem to be the most international of the major banks, but try Santander too as they’re a Spanish company.

Details of different suspension designs here but 4-bars don’t have to look like the picture you posted, as the suspension can be linked to the frame (via the shock) without one of the ‘bars’ having a pivot half way along.

Could be related to this.[/url]

@andyfla: similar prices are available for Europe, so you could go and see the whole of France or Italy instead.

For getting a bike bag on virgin trains: try to find out in advance if and where there is a disabled carriage, and stick your bike bag in that part cos there’s loads of empty space. In 3 years of back and forth to Uni I saw one disabled person on a train, and there would have to be at least two for all the space to be taken.

Also, never ever admit there’s a bike in there, or they’ll at best want a tenner, at worst refuse entry to the train because you haven’t booked a bike on.

MoreCashThanDash – Member
*spots rickmeisters lazybike’s comment*

*closes curtains*

FTFY

I’ve also got the no-M8s (M7) and although I can’t fault it either, it seems generally slower and less smooth than the Nexus 4 I had before. Whether this suggests the Nexus 5 would be better than the M8 for the money I’m not sure, the HTCs definitely have a more premium feel though with the aluminium construction.

If you fancy a really big screen (more like Iphone 6+) wait for the Nexus 6 coming out in the next month, 5.9 inch screen for 400-450ish quid.

Maybe someone should mention some up sides too: If she’s in all day she’ll probably have your dinner done when you get in.

I’m in exactly this situation at the moment, except that my girlfriend does language classes for three hours every morning, so that helps occupy her and she gets some human interaction other than with me. We have gone through periods where she hasn’t done anything though and she did struggle with the boredom, and it has resulted in some arguments between us.

The hardest part is that if you’re going to be working a full day, when you get home all she’ll want to do is talk and interact cos she’s been bored all day. If you’ve had a hard day and all you want to do is sit and relax in front of the TV because you’re tired, or go out on your bike or generally switch off it can be difficult.

My advice would be to get her signed up to some decent group language classes, if nothing else to meet people in the same boat as her. A lot of people find that they learn languages much better being “immersed” in them, so she might start improving her German quickly once there and the lessons will just reinforce that.

Other advice would be to get in touch with Expat groups, find the Irish pubs etc. Foreign languages are hard work when you have to live in them all the time, so time chilling out in your own language can be a godsend. If she can make friends over there she’ll be much happier too.

🙁

Never mind.

+1 talk to your wife.

Also talk to the midwife, doctor or whoever does post-natal visits. The perception of post-natal depression is that it only happens to mums, but dads can have the same problems. They will know this and can put you in touch with a counselor if you want/need to talk it out.

How on earth do I put on 2 1/2 stone and still look buff?

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/steroids

Some top punning in those captions. Shame they used “[rhymes with lone] ranger” twice, but “Hedge fun manager” is a belter.

If you can be arsed, you could check Strava times for world cup downhill courses for “average joes” on modern bikes, and compare them to DH world cup times from 1994…

Edit: this is on the assumption that well-used places in the alps etc might have some routes that haven’t changed too much since the old days. I have no idea if this is likely or not.