That site linked from it is pretty freaky:

http://www.datepixs.com/index.html

Personally, as places where you have to travel to get any riding in go, London is pretty good, trains to the trails are easy and pretty quick, and if you have a car apparently that’s okay too. I found London better than Nottingham in that respect.

It does suck in comparison to living right near trails and not having to travel to ride though. Living in Derbyshire is great. Working from home today – I think I’m gonna go for a quick road ride and to swim down some easy rapids in a nice fast flowing river at lunch time.

Joe

At Afan on Saturday, on my 85/60mm ‘full suspension’ rig, I was being slowed down by a guy with four or five inches at each end. Are today’s riders cossetted by technology?

No, there are just slow people and fast people, same as always. I got slowed down on my unicycle by a couple of people on very fancy full sus bikes at Cannock on Saturday. That’s not because they were cossetted by technology, it’s because they were unfit beginners.

To get a NEW bike with hub gears, mudguards, chain cover and a rack would cost in excess of £300 though. Doesn’t have to be some fancy racer type bike, durability costs money!

Really? I know if you buy a pashley or some other name brand, they are not cheap, but surely there are loads of cheap 3 speeds. Like this:

http://corporate.marketplaceadvisor.channeladvisor.com/storefrontprofiles/processfeed.aspx?sfid=101713&i=68979856&mpid=86&dfid=1

Joe

Also, just a general tip – don’t live in actual central London (like zone 1 or 2 of the tube). Almost everywhere in that area is either super expensive (Mayfair), or a dangerous place to live (Elephant & Castle), or both (Camden, parts of Brixton). It is way cheaper to just live in zone 3 or so, and easy to catch the tube in / night buses back when you want to go out. Plus, you get a London bike commute that way, which is great fun. Living in Zone 1 is a mistake that people who come from outside London make (we did it for a year), and it is just a hassle, you get mugged, either actually by muggers, or by skanky landlords, you have to live in a tiny flat where you can’t fit bikes, and generally it sucks.

Joe

What SE666 said. While running 3 chains on one cassette appears to make sense, you are never going to magically get more wear out of a component for nothing.

Yeah you are. Because chain wear is not linear – a longer chain wears the cassette much quicker than a correct length chain. So 3 chains used for a short period of time each will wear less than 1 chain used for 3 times the length. Otherwise we’d just use chains until they snapped and not worry about buying a new chain with a new cassette.

Joe

JOe: nowehere near a 2 – 3 month waiting list, depending on what time/day you go.

Ah, maybe they are less trendy now* – a few years back when I was living in London, I called up and the fat duck was fully booked for 2 or 3 months (however many months ahead they take reservations), every sitting, every day.

Joe

*or maybe the mass food poisoning put people off

The wheels are £135 new if that makes any difference.

http://www.fredbakercycles.co.uk/609/BONTRAGER-Race-wheels.html?referrer=froogle&utm_source=google&utm_medium=froogle&utm_campaign=pid609

Personally I don’t like my Bontrager road wheels at all, they are silly wheels with a wacky spoke pattern and not enough spokes that means they are a right hassle to true, and harder to keep true. They came well under-tensioned too, so make sure you true them well before you use them. They aren’t very lightweight either. On the plus side they are pretty cheap and do the job as long as you’re careful about truing your wheels / checking them every so often.

Joe

I was also asked myself about bike prices by a woman who wanted to buy a cheapish bike to commute. I said to buget for at least £300 if she wanted something reliable. Reply – “No, I dont want a PROFESSIONAL bike!”

If you just want a reliable, potter about town bike, a £50 5 speed Raleigh or similar (or even a 3 speed hub gear) from the local 2nd hand bike shop will do the job and probably be way more reliable than a fancy modern £300 bike due to having an ancient 5 speed chain and stuff. So she is kind of right. I put in quite a few miles on an old 5 speed ladies bike a couple of years back. It wasn’t as smooth as my fancy road bike, but it did require no maintenance except puncture repairs, and had a full chainguard and mudguards, so no oily legs, dirty back, or chain maintenance required. Those things will go for thousands of miles with pumping up tyres being the only thing that needs doing. Unless she has a 10 mile commute or something, she probably doesn’t need to spend £300.

Joe

well let’s see: Cool Restaurants: Catch the train to Maidenhead, walk to Bray and there’s Heston’s Fat Duck or Hind Head Hotel, also the Roux brothers Waterside Inn (overpriced IMHO). Catch the train to Marlow and there’s the Hand and Flowers (Michelin star) or Vanilla Pod,

I wonder how many of those you could get a table at without 2-3 months notice though?

Joe

Make sure wherever you actually live, it is in south / south east London.

Trains from Waterloo / Clapham Junction out to Dorking for tons of great riding (it is easy to do a 40 mile ride from there, with loads of singletrack & a few hills).

Joe

Welsh ones:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dafydd_Davis

with an average of 7.2% and a a maximum of 12% it’s not that steep

Those are average gradients for each km aren’t they? Supposedly in a few places it gets >15% for very short bits (I’m guessing the corners). But your point is probably right – average of 7.2% isn’t *that* steep, although obviously the length will be a killer if you don’t pace yourself.

Joe

Does he already have a 34t compact front ring? Or does he have some silly macho front chainring setup? 34t rings are quite cheap, although I don’t know if you need to mess with other things, cranks etc. to put them on.

I have a triple, which is great for situations like this. I don’t usually use the granny gear, but when you need it, it is nice that it is there.

Joe

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/818852

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word/HA011406121033.aspx

That’s an NCT bus isn’t it?

They seem to have a bunch of drivers who really don’t like cyclists – I got one trying to run me over on purpose near the Vicky centre, and others have given me hassle before. It is weird – Trent Barton drivers are generally quite polite, whereas NCT appear to have a real problem with aggression.

Then I guess it is the same as the bus service – Trent Barton drivers say hello, give change, and say thanks when you get off, NCT drivers hide behind a sheet of glass, if you’re lucky you get a grunt, if you’re unlucky you get shouted at for not having exactly £1.60, or for taking too long getting your money out, and they are just generally grumpy.

I would not bother with the police – they don’t care unless there were a)lots of witnesses and b)you got injured. The other things might be worth a try.

Joe

The singlespeed thing – I can see if you’re somewhere pretty flat, but 42×17 might be slightly too high for me, and 32×16 would be dead low, roughly equivalent to the lowest gear I use on my bike ever.

I find I need my 42×21 gear, and I spin out down the hills in 54×12 (at a bit over 40 mph). I can’t see singlespeed being any use on my commute across Derbyshire?

Does anyone actually do a proper hilly commute on a singlespeed? Mine has 395m of climbing and roughly the same amount of descending, with some decent length hills and some jolly steep ones. Do you just use a silly low gear and freewheel on the downhills? Or can you pedal at 200 rpm?

Joe

I’ve got the Carradice SQR Slim seatpost bag.

http://www.dotbike.com/ProductsP4955.aspx?utm_source=google&utm_medium=base&utm_campaign=FGL

It is 16 litres, which is enough for change of clothes / lunch / tools.

No sweaty back at all. Not bladder compatible though.

It would probably not be good for a technical offroad commute, but is a zillion times better for road riding than a backpack. It comes off the bike quickly too, which is handy.

Joe

Accountancy or Law are better professions. Stable respectable plod along jobs that command a reasonable income

Maybe, although right now, none of the big firms are hiring many graduates – maybe it’d be okay in 3 years, who knows.

and which can lead to some high flying jobs.

But the high flying jobs = 24hr, ridiculous amount of work give them your soul type work. Much worse than computer support. As a bonus, they have a really high drop out rate as people discover they don’t want to spend their whole life at work. Oh yeah, and it can be hard to get the jobs as a mature student, as they don’t want people with a strong personality, they want people they can mould into being one of them.

Personally I think you’d be an idiot to go to university just to do something like accountancy or law, unless you are really interested in them. It’s like a waste of 3 years, followed by a waste of the rest of your life. You might as well do something that interests you at university.

Joe

Personally I did computer science, cos like gadgets and technology. I’ve done work with hardware and it turns out that nowadays most of the complexity is in the software / firmware anyway, so they get a programmer / ‘software engineer’ (i.e. me) in. Although engineering has a lot of programming in the course nowadays, so they do get a basic idea of how to write software, and they do get to play with some big dangerous toys that us software people don’t.

Engineers I knew at uni either went into military / defense related firms, or to city banks. If you don’t like making things that kill people / help other people kill people, many engineering careers are a bit limited it seems.

Joe

I used a space blanket once (and I’m note sure how close yours is too that), however I nearly sweated to death, so suggest a breathability check.

Forget it. This is last resort emergency stuff, the sort of thing you might carry to use if you’re out on a remote epic and need to stay warm when you’ve broken a limb.
If you’re going to bivvy by choice you need a goretex bag or similar, plus a carrymat and a sleeping bag (or just a liner if its warm enough).

It is actually quite a bit different from a space blanket. A bit condensationy, but nothing like a plastic emergency bag or plain foil bag. I still wouldn’t choose to use it unless I really didn’t want the weight of a sleeping bag etc., but if you don’t want to carry a ton of gear like this guy is suggesting, it’d just about scrape by.

Personally I think the best solution for bivvying I’ve found is a waterproof down sleeping bag, with no bivvi bag. Lighter weight, and just as good as using a separate bivvi. I take a camping mat if I am going to be sleeping on rocks, or it is cold out, otherwise, you’d be amazed at how many places you can find a comfy bit of ground to snooze on. In summer my sleeping gear is 540g, which is enough to make no difference to my riding fun.

Joe

Yes. I used one for a night in a forest in Snowdonia (I think it was April, some time in spring anyway). It snowed on me. It was cold and uncomfortable, but I survived. I wouldn’t choose to do it again though,

I’ve also slept in one on a summer night in deepest Surrey, but with a sleeping mat. It was not all that cold, not so uncomfortable, and okay.

They are noisy and cold compared to a sleeping bag, but very very light / small. It is a bit of a hassle to repack into the stuff sack, but doable.

Personally, having experimented with it, I wouldn’t plan to bivvy in one of these, but it is a handy emergency thing to take out on a very long ride just in case.

Joe

I loved Glastonbury when I was little. The bands topping the bill were current, really great bands who we really wanted to see. I was in my teens, and it really felt exciting, the bands playing were our bands, that we wanted to see.

This year, two of the main headliners are in their 60s and the others are in their 40s. Their biggest hits were in the 70s, 80s and 90s. It’s like a heritage festival or something. I’m now 30, and it just feels a bit too old for me, it’d be like going to one of those “top hits of the 80s tours” or some such sadness.

I know it’s not just about the bigger bands playing, but it used to be that you could see a load of great small bands, along with a few bigger bands at the top of their game, whereas now it seems like you can see a load of small bands, and some bands that had big hits 10 or 20 years ago and haven’t really done much since.

Joe

Replacement screens for laptops or computers with integrated screens are silly expensive. Looking on the internet it is at least £150 for a 15″ or £500ish for the big screens, if you buy a refurbished part and fit it yourself. If you pay someone to fit it you’re looking at £400 upwards, and for the bigger screens more like £700.

Joe

Anyone?

As soon as you call something a race, rather than an ride, it gets expensive, because you need different insurance cover.

And they have to run it on a dedicated track that isn’t on bridleways / footpaths or roads, what with racing on bridleways being illegal.

Joe

For a proper race, i.e. not an endurance challenge on bridleways, that doesn’t sound so bad. Bearing in mind the endurance challenges, you don’t need to ask/pay for permission for riding on bridleways, you don’t have to marshal the course so intensively, or provide accurate timing or anything like that, and they still cost £20-30 quid.

Joe

I got most annoyed on Monday. I overtook someone on a road bike going up a hill, got to the top to find that they’d doubled their speed and were doggedly sitting on my rear wheel, was just looking forward to a bit of commuter racing with someone on a proper bike for once*, or even a bit of drafting to make the last 6 miles easier when it turned out they were going on to Ripley and not turning off to Belper. Hmph. There is no good racing on my commute.

Joe

*It isn’t fair to commuter race against people with flat bars in a hilly area, it isn’t exactly a challenge dropping them on the downhills is it.

so where are the pc fanboys?

Here, but I don’t see a reason that if you prefer a PC with an Apple on the front, and are willing to pay more for the fancy logo, as this guy is, and you’ve obviously got tons of money to spare, then you won’t get hurt by spending the extra. They’re just PCs nowadays except for the software, so they run Windows fine. Worst case is, you just run it in Windows and you’ve spent £500 more than you need for a fancy logo. He’s a kid anyway, they like fancy logos.

Only thing that it is worth being aware of is that a lot of places the tech support people won’t support vmware, if he needs help with the software he might need to just boot it into windows.

Joe

Much as I hate them, we have a smattering of students with macs. They seem to cope fine with the computer science course, it’s mainly Java here, but they do some C++.

Anything that is hassle, you can always use a lab computer, they have to use them for some of the exams/tests anyway (other than some courseworks which they can remotely submit).

If he has a fancy new imac in his room, then he probably won’t really need the external keyboard / monitor, just needs to learn how to transfer files to/from the laptop – it isn’t like he’ll want to carry the keyboard around with him.

Depending on what animation software they use, he might need to boot into windows (eg. if they use 3d studio max or some such), although if it’s something fancy he probably can’t afford his own copy anyway, unless there’s a super student deal on it.

Joe

If you’re on a similar contract to me, you should be able to do a certain number of days consultancy as part of your job, as long as your line manager agrees.

Here, we can choose whether to get the university to handle tax etc or to do it privately, i.e. Fill in a tax return but i don’t think that affects use of computers or using your uni title etc. It is pretty common for people to do consultancy and do their own tax.

You need to talk to people in your department who do a lot of consulting though – might be different at different places.

Joe

Munqe chick – Perfectly reasonable question in my opinion.

Isn’t the original question essentially “Is it okay to break the law if I’m in a hurry?”

Surely everyone knows that the speed limit is a limit, not a target average speed – if you have to overtake someone, you should wait until you can do it safely whilst going within the limit?

Joe

The Col de Cou route is a nice xc route, and obvious from the free map. It isn’t very technical, and has lovely views.

You go up to Avoriaz, Point de Mossettes, Les Crosets, then round to the Col de Cou and back down the valley to Morzine.

Joe

Virgin charge 30p each day that you use internet (for ‘unlimited’ 25MB per day limit, which is hard to go over on a mobile). Good value if you don’t use it every day, about £9 a month if you do.

Joe

There’s a guy in Belper who wears very bright clothes and rides a unicycle to the shops.

Oh no wait, that’s me. I certainly hope people laugh at me – it’s always cool to bring a bit of random interest into people’s lives.

When I was living in Christchurch NZ I was friends with someone who was probably the local nutter – a guy called Sugra, he wore flouro clothes and sandals or went barefoot, had almost certainly smoked and ingested way too many substances, it wasn’t obvious how he made money – I think mainly street performing – he was one of the best jugglers I’ve ever met, and great doing shows to families of tourists. But yeah – absolute crazy guy, lots of far out notions about zero point energy and conspiracy things. But on the other hand, one of the most inspiring people I’ve ever met. Just a real free spirit, in a really nice way. Got into all manner of random scrapes, like challenging the government (and winning) on the law relating to unicycling, going on spur of the moment round the world juggling trips, and generally being a bit of a legend for anyone he met.

Joe
P.s. I can’t see the detail of the picture of the crazy club person in Manchester above cos i’m on my phone, but I think it could be someone I know.

My bivvi kit weighs about 2 kg less than what i’d take tent camping – because it is just a sleeping bag bivvi bag combo. In a tent i’d need a mat and a tent extra whereas the bivvi has no real weight penalty over a sleeping bag.

It doesn’t feel risky either – very waterproof, and the 800g one is okay down to -something degrees.

I did camp out once with a blizzard survival bag – foil and plastic thing, high up in a snowstorm. That was not the most comfy night’s sleep ever – my current solution is a lot better.

I like both bivvying and camping – both good for different things. There’s something special about sleeping under the stars, and it is great not to carry a bulky tent and to be able to do proper riding whilst on a tour.

Joe

bivvy bag / tarp / paracord and pegs You are saving 1 kg in weight max for the loss of much comfort. I can get my camping kit down to not much more than 14 lb.

I use macpac waterproof sleeping bags. The summer one is 500g and tiny. It is waterproof and warm. If it rains, you have to sleep on your side. I don’t take any more camping kit if I am out in summer – I sleep on soft ground so I don’t need a mat. It means I can camp with a medium sized (20 litre) camelbak. The winter one I have is I think 800g. The lightweight thing does make a real difference, I know a lot of people say you can’t ride technical terrain with camping gear, and to be honest, even with my lightweight tent and stuff, I tend to have to take a bigger bag than I’m comfortable / strap things to the bike, both of which make hard riding suck, whereas with the bivvy sack, I just stick a tiny 500g weight in my sack and take a bit more food and I can still ride in comfort.

I wouldn’t bivvy low down in the Scottish highlands in summer thanks to midges, but then to be honest, summer camping in Scotland also sucks due to that.

Bivvying isn’t just about light weight (although compared to my pretty lightweight camping gear, I save about 3.5kg), it is about being able to just ride till you’re tired then camp up anywhere. Particularly in England (and also in many foreign countries), where you are not allowed to camp in a lot of places, bivvying is super handy, because you can get away with it pretty much anywhere – I’ve bivvied in woods on the outskirts of towns, on the Thames, at the top of Leith Hill, and various other places that were way too blatant for a tent, with no problems ever.

Joe

Dogs: ouch. £2500 a dog and more being quoted here:

http://www.pomsinoz.com/forum/news-gossip-chat/35605-taking-dog-australia.html

basically the same as the UK but warmer and slower. Warmer and slower sound good to me.

Yeah, I found it roughly like that when I was out working in NZ and Australia. Not so good for mountain biking in many ways because they don’t have bridleways / footpaths, so you end up repeating the same trails or driving to trails a lot. The warmer thing, depends on where you go, some bits are pretty similar to the UK on rain & temperature. Slow is definitely true – downside of that is there’s just less exciting stuff going on, culturally it is quite isolated, if you like music, art or anything like that, you’ll never see anything much international, no-one much tours there.

Joe

the standard of live out there is far far better than here

Personally I don’t reckon it’s better, it’s just you have different things and a different culture.

Joe

You can’t lose much by trying – I got the opportunity to go out to NZ working for 6 months, it was fun, not for me in the long term, but was great to have the opportunity to find out.

Bear in mind that lots of people move out there because they don’t like how the UK is going, and discover that much of the same things apply out there, plus you can’t get marmite or decent TV (two things people really moan about for some reason).

Have you checked the immigration stuff, to find out if you can work out there and can get at least a temporary working visa. If you’re on their ‘skills lists’, or young enough to get the 1 year visa etc.

Joe

I’ve always found wild camping is best higher up in the proper hills, not in the woods. There are plenty of places in the Lake District that are good for it. Google lake district wild camping and you’ll find loads of tips.

Joe