I am still considering whether I will boycott them when my daughter reaches year 6. They are an incredibly stupid idea, dreamed up by a government whose education policies were imbecilic (little has changed since, of course).

It doesn’t take a genius to look at countries, such as Finland, where educational attainment levels are higher at 16, and think ‘what are they doing that works?’ (clue – it’s not endless testing or homework at an early age). However, the thickies in power are singularly incapable of finding their own arses with both hands, so there’s little chance of any progress on that front.

JP

11.30 – 8 on weekdays. 11.30 – between 7.30 (if I’m biking, which is most Sundays) and 10.30 on weekends.

Still don’t feel like getting up at those times, though. When I was an undergraduate I would regularly sleep until 4 in the afternoon.

JP

Not sure I see the point. Eagle cassettes are either really expensive or really heavy, the mechs are vulnerable and the range is not really a killer point for me. 11 – 46 covers all of my needs, and, I suspect, those of most people in the UK.

JP

Canada customs are an absolute pain in the arse. If you can avoid shipping stuff I would.

JP

I ride at Wind Hill and every week and there’s no shortage of new, high end bikes there. Only see one or two e-bikes each time.

JP

Used to get them everywhere when we were living in Greece. The biggest I saw were in a terrible hot springs shack in California – massive!

JP

My original Shimano SPDs (first generation XT) were still going strong after 25 years. Never changed the bearings or any parts and never even greased them. They may still be working – sold them with my last bike.

JP

I’d be interested to see how the poll was worded and the sample group.

I’d imagine the real figure is significantly lower.

JP

The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.

Socrates 469-399B.C

It’s an apposite quote but unfortunately not one of Socrates’. I recall it being posted many years ago on a forum, and, having read philosophy at university, with quite an emphasis on Greek philosophers, it struck me that it didn’t really sound like him (or Plato using him as his mouthpiece). Further investigation suggested that it wasn’t.

JP

kayla1

Member

Don’t think it’s quite like this. The planet can support a certain amount of people living their life at a certain level. The trick is finding that level, where if everyone on average lived at that level then the natural world would replenish at a rate equal to or greater than the population consumes it.

That doesn’t mean we can’t have things, do things and go places. We just need to tone it down and make beter decisions. Personally, for me I think it’s too late sadly, there are far too many selfish people and people with their heads in the sand to turn it around now.

How some people are going to be able to look their grandchildren in the eyes in future, I don’t know. There are no excuses for the rampant consumerism we have now, the impact this is having on the natural world and the problems stacking up for future generations to deal with is well documented. Choosing to ignore it is a personal decision, entirely down to self-absorbed, entitled, selfish lazy attitudes. Putting your wants above others needs.

All of this.

It’s the same sort of thinking that makes people vote certain ways. If you tend to think ‘me, now’ then I reckon you’re more likely to vote UKIP>tory whereas if you think ‘others, later’ you’re more likely to vote liberal<Green.

‘Others, later’ is the way we should all be trying to live our lives.

I understand your points, but I think this is overly simplistic. I’m a natural liberal, (big and small L) and am firmly in the remain camp in relation to the EU. However, I have a strong dislike of policies that encroach on the traditional notions of liberalism.

I would suggest that moderation and changing of habits can have a beneficial effect on the environment. What will ultimately produce the most wide ranging and meaningful results, though, will be technological solutions. When we try to predict the state of the environment in 100 years’ time we’re doing something akin to the Victorian Tory politician who predicted that London streets would be 6ft deep with horse excrement by the end of the 20th Century, given the expected rate of population growth at the time.

JP

I’m not saying that taking measures to recycle, cut down on plastic use, etc are not worthwhile – I’m just pointing out that a single minded pursuance of an eco agenda does not necessarily lead us to some sort of modern utopia.

JP

Thanks all.

JP

The problem with this is that if you truly want to be eco-conscious you wouldn’t be able to do anything, other than live a miserable subsistence existence. You certainly wouldn’t be riding a modern bike – aluminium and carbon fibre are not materials that are particularly great for the environment when you take into account all the factors of their production.

I find the notion of limiting personal freedom (cars, travel etc0, very worrying, especially when individuals call on governments to have responsibility for enforcing it.

As for limiting air travel, has anyone considered the effect that this might have on developing countries that rely heavily on tourism and few other economic resources?

As with all of these things, reality is a lot more complicated than the rather simplistic ‘this thing is bad, this thing is good’.

Unfortunately, humans have an obsession with apocalyptic scenarios (much of the middle ages was spent with the assumption that the end of the world was nigh), and the environment has become a suitable cause for the type of zealot who a few centuries ago would have been obsessed with Revelations.

JP

So I need to feed the cable in when raising the saddle? For some reason thought it would be the opposite.

Cheers,

JP

raybanwomble

Member

DW link so not interested, that’s for trail bikes. Commencal will wipe the floor with them again with their design, with a bike that costs a third of what they will sell this for.

Lol! – because of course an armchair ‘expert’ from a bike forum knows more about these things than multiple world champions.

JP

You will be in a world of pain importing anything from the US at the moment.

My company imports a few things from the US (mainly amps and musical instruments) and the only way we’ve done it without it getting stuck in customs for weeks on end is to import it through a UPS account. Stuff that got sent by the manufacturer from the US took 4 weeks or more to arrive.

JP

link?

EDIT: actually you can now buy a single bag of beans from Collona without subscribing.

I can do you a deal though – specialtycoffeehome.com.

Look back at Neolithic times and ask yourself would you rather live then or now. You can do the same for pretty much every period in history and you’ll get the same answer.

JP

I blame my iPad and this lovely forum software.
I didn’t think the colonna ones I tried were anything special but I often buy their coffee (when I pass the cafe that sells it, annoyingly they only do subscriptions not by the bag mail order)

We can sell you Colonna beans by the bag.

JP

Note to online retailers: JUST TELL US WHEN AN ITEM IS NOT EX STOCK.

I understand your point here, but I think it’s worth pointing out that there’s probably not an online retailer in the world that’s selling a reasonable number of items that can guarantee that everything listed in stock is actually in stock.

There are myriad reasons for this, which people on here just don’t seem to understand. For example, if you’re selling on multiple channels (website, eBay, Amazon, etc) there can be a delay before products are synced after someone has bought an item. If one person buys the last of item X on Amazon, then someone else tries to buy it on the website before Amazon has synced, then you can easily have a problematic situation. Sometimes a replacement item will be sent out and the member of staff will forget to update the inventory. Sometimes human error means that the inventory was slightly wrong for a product in the first place. Sometimes the supplier sends a different number of products to that specified on the invoice. etc, etc.

I’m not defending companies who have everything in stock when it isn’t – I’m just attempting to show that expectations on here can be a bit too high. Online retailing is not as easy as it looks.

JP

Colonna Coffee Nespresso compatible pods are the ones to get. The owner, Maxwell, is a 3x World Barista Championship finalist and knows his stuff. Other pods are patchy to say the least. The compostable ones really do work as well.

Specialty Coffee is defined as that scoring 80+ not 95. If it were 95 there’d be virtually no coffee that would meet that definition; I’ve only tasted a few coffees scoring 95 and over (and I’ve tasted thousands of specialty coffees over the years) and they’ve all been exceptionally rare and expensive. You’re correct in saying that ‘artisan’ is a meaningless moniker, though.

JP

Depends where you ride. I’ve got a heavier wheelset on my Mega – Magic Mary ultra soft with gravity casing on the front and a HRII DD on the back on Hope 35W wheels and I don’t ever really think I’d want to compromise grip and durability for speed and weight reduction. Heavier wheels also deflect less on really rocky stuff.

The only time it felt draggy was when I stayed at a friend’s house in Surrey and we rode Swinley. It felt like I was waiting for the track to go downhill but it never did.

I also think that you soon get used to a lightweight wheelset, then it just becomes the norm. Unless you’re constantly riding with people who are fitter than you then it doesn’t make any difference other than the initial wow factor when switching from something heavy.

JP

jjprestidge

Member
Some weird viewpoints on here. If you like technical stuff then more travel, slacker angles and greater length will make things much more enjoyable and will almost certainly be faster.

Depend on how you define “technical stuff”, I suppose. I certainly find tight switchbacks (with or without endo turns) easier on my 301 with 66 degree HA and 1170mm WB than on anything longer and slacker that I’ve tried.
Same as some people criticised the HB 160 for being too short – horses for courses, strokes for folks, I guess.

For me technical riding is stuff like the black runs at BPW and equivalent but more natural stuff elsewhere. I’d rather have a slacker head angle and the bike be more stable on 90% of the stuff I ride (steep, rocky, drops, etc) than compromise all of this for the sake of a bit more agility on very tight bends (which don’t form much of my riding).

JP

Some weird viewpoints on here. If you like technical stuff then more travel, slacker angles and greater length will make things much more enjoyable and will almost certainly be faster. I don’t subscribe to the idea that mincing down technical runs on a bike unsuited to the job is any fun at all.

For me the current crop of enduro bikes are more suited to the sort of terrain that I enjoy riding than anything I’ve ever owned.

JP

I had a 156 that I bought from my dad’s dealership. It lasted just over 50 miles before the engine exploded (despite just having had a full service including cambelt change). The Lotus that I had at the same time, in comparison, was a paragon of virtue, and never stranded me in 100k miles.

I’m not sure whether newer models are better, but a friend who has had 3 (155, 156 and 159) had constant problems with expensive suspension bits breaking.

JP

You can mix up citric acid with some water or use some generic descaler – it’s all pretty much the same.

JP

I regularly did 6 hour turbo sessions when I was training for Ironman. TV on, iPad on tri bars, all windows open. It was the only way I could get the long easy ride in each week without deserting my wife and newborn child for half of each weekend.

JP

Couple of hours at Wind Hill. Bashed out 2 runs each on all of the blacks and reds. Bit cold, bit slippy but still fun.

JP

Why is she being chased by Robocop? Did she steal the bike?

JP

You guys must have really bad circulation or ride in the Arctic to find Briskers not warm enough. I’ve found them fine at well below 0.

JP

We bought an Orbea MX for our 8 year old girl. Nice little bike – very light and with decent components for the money. The disc brake model looks like the one to get (wasn’t in stock anywhere when we were buying and Josie didn’t like the colour, which was a deal killer anyway).

JP

They seem to be all over the place – one minute they’re building one thing, the next it’s something completely different, and none of it ever seems to make it to the ‘delivering bike to the customer’ stage.

They’re pretty good at marketing, though.

JP

Just change the airspring for the 2019 version and there’s no issue. Only £38 and half an hour’s work.

JP

Usually start with Terry’s Belly (flow Blue) into Hot Stepper (technical red, with rock drop offs) back into Terry’s Belly.

Roots Maneouvre is pretty technical and natural feeling for a red. Dai Hard is one of the easier of the long blacks without any jumps.

Vicious Valley into Bonneyville is good for what you like.

My favourite is Insufficient Funds, but it’s not rollable.

JP

No issues so far with the Deore 4 pots.

JP

Send the freehub back and we’ll send you a replacement when we receive it back

That’s just pants. FFS, just send the right part out and wait for the wrong one to arrive back in the post.

That’s totally unrealistic for an online business – I guarantee you’d end up never getting 75% of the incorrectly sent stock back.

In situations like the one described, if it were our fault, I would usually reimburse the customer for the return postage and knock off the original postage, as a gesture of goodwill. Sending out a replacement before receiving the original back is generally not an option. People can be incredibly dishonest/lazy.

As an example, a customer recently kicked off about not receiving something within the 2-3 days we quoted. I refunded him, then shortly after I did that he emailed to tell me it had arrived. I asked if he could reiumburse us but he’s been strangely silent for the last 10 days, so has effectively got £160 worth of our products for free. Surprised people can be so unethical.

The moral of the story is that it’s very easy to throw your toys out of the pram with online companies, but in most cases they’re just trying to make a living and do as good a job as they can.

JP

High Roller II Maxterra
Michelin Wild Enduro
DHR Maxterra

Those would be my choices, but I’m more concerned with grip than weight/rolling resistance, etc.

JP

Lost interest when I read the 29 bit. Rest of it is a bit underwhelming also. I’m probably the only person that thinks it, but I find Canyon bikes incredibly boring.

Me too. Shapeshifter is a waste of time – added complexity and weight for few rewards. Just make the seat angle steeper and the head angle slacker in the first place FFS.

I’ve never understood why people think steeper head angles are better for riding less technical stuff. My Mega comes in at 64 degrees, yet I never wish for steeper geometry when I’m on flatter or twistier terrain – I just use a bit more body movement.

JP

Whatever is going on here?

I find it hilarious that anyone can claim that the Repack guys didn’t start up mountain biking as we know it today.

The fact that a few beardy British/French/insert nationality types rode touring bikes or other weird creations off road before the Repack days is utterly irrelevant; there are very few links between these bikes and the sport of mountain biking that took off in the mid-80s. When Specialized copied a bike to produce the first production MTB, it wasn’t something made by Geoff Apps, was it?

JP

I’ve always been fully open on LSC on all of my forks (most recently Yaris and Lyriks). I find that winding on LSC gives a little bit of support at the expense of suppleness and therefore grip.

Never used a fork with adjustable HSC.

JP