West Coast in July = midgefest. I’ve camped up there early May before it gets really bad, and I wouldn’t consider taking kids up there camping any time in the summer, unless you really like spotty moaning kids. To be honest, I wouldn’t camp up there myself, except if I could wild camp somewhere high up above the midge-line.

Whatever you do, don’t stay at the campsite in Kinlochleven by the loch. That is the midgiest place in Scotland – sheltered, warm, near loads of water. Beautiful campsite, but a nightmare of a place.

The Kingshouse campsite was fine when I stayed there as it was windy, but might be really bad if it wasn’t.

Joe

Which are the tyres that are guaranteed no punctures for a year? Have you tried those?

Aha,

http://www.dutch-perfect.nl/frm-gb.asp
http://www.allterraincycles.co.uk/product/109143.html

Or what about slime tubes?

There is a thread on CTC about this, dunno if it says anything not said here:
http://forum.ctc.org.uk/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=25352&start=0

Joe

I’ve used green tyres. Horrible and slow to ride, and they made it feel really horrible and bumpy cos they didn’t really absorb shocks in the same way, I’d not touch em with a bargepole.

Would tubeless tyres with sealant help at all? There are some pretty impressive videos of people riding over nails / glass etc. with tubeless.

Joe

proper shoes prevent injury, and its usually the Nike one’s etc that **** your feet/knee’s up as they are fashion shoes rather then running shoes.

Although as I understand it, there isn’t actually much evidence that trainers prevent injury, and in fact there is some evidence that injury levels have increased due to the built up running trainers we use nowadays, and that people would be best off running in shoes with minimal soles (like cheap plimsolls or whatever) or even barefoot.

There is a surprisingly good article about this on the Daily Mail website (it’s an extract from a book)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1170253/The-painful-truth-trainers-Are-expensive-running-shoes-waste-money.html

Joe

Oh also, I can recommend “The Art of Running”, which is a book about pose / Alexander Technique style running. This is a kind of running that is designed to be efficient and stop you injuring yourself. Less pounding the ground, more constantly falling forwards. Makes running a much easier thing to do.

Joe

If you live somewhere where this is easy to do, run off road, not on.

It is lower impact (until you start crazy mad fell running that is) and way more fun.

Joe

I thought the iPhone>O2 marriage had a finite timespan, may2 years, after which other providers would get to offer it?

Only if Apple or O2 decide it isn’t worth keeping it locked to them. Which seems a bit unlikely right now.

Joe

Is it an old 10 speed with touring bike tyres, not pumped up very hard?

I have a 70s steel road bike at my parents’ house, and it feels lovely and smooth whenever I use it because of that. Although it is not as fast as my normal bike for the same reason.

I found wheels made a huge difference. 32spoke 3x handbuilds are very stiff and harsh. Lower spoked and different laceing make for much more forgiving wheels over normal roads, there’s no way im going back to handbuilts!

Really? Surely any decently built wheel is jolly stiff. If a wheel flexes enough that it makes a noticeable difference, then you’ve just got a weak wheel and are heading for broken spokes? You didn’t change tyres at the same time did you? Or change rim depth or something else?

Joe

front and wheel reflectors were removed ages ago

Out of interest, why take reflectors off a bike? Do they make it work worse or something? Or is it just a fashion thing?

I can see why you’d take off pedal reflectors, just because you change over the pedals, and the back one might go if you have to fit a mudguard (I guess that’s why a lot of mudguards have reflectors on), but other than that, why not just keep them on?

Joe

I like the Continental GP4000 S.

Yes it is a sort of race tyre, but it appears quite resistant to punctures – one so far, in about 3000-4000km of riding, and that was when I hit a great big lump of sharp rock, about 2 inches across – flipped up and cut a line out of the tyre.

They feel like they go fast to me, although to be honest I don’t notice a massive difference between 23mm tyres (except my nasty Bontrager ones where I noticed that the front tyre had not much grip in the wet, which was not confidence inspiring).

I think they do the normal GP4000 in wider than 23mm if you don’t like narrow tyres. If you get those, get the black ones, because they have the special compound that is supposed to be better for punctures, faster rolling, grippier etc. whereas the colour ones don’t.

Joe

It is great fun if you time each bit and race across them. Or perhaps we are just sad and nerdy and over-competitive.

Joe

It weighs over twice as much, though…

Those G4 Macbooks are incredibly heavy. One of my mates has a 12″ one, it weighs about twice as much as my Dell 14″ laptop (which ‘wipes the floor with the G4 in terms of real performance’ as the guy above said).

£350 for one of those relics is insane. Do people really pay that much for a years out of date, famously unreliable Mac from the days before Apple realised that the G4 was a dead end?

Joe

Try this:

http://www.bikemagic.com/news/article/mps/uan/3263

Usually you shouldn’t need levers to put on most tyres, except downhill ones.

Joe

– Magnetic compass on the iPhone. It has satnav, if you need a compass, buy one from a camping shop and save 200 quid.

But the reason a lot of satnav things suck for anything other than driving, is because they haven’t got a compass it it. A compass makes total sense for walking directions, finding your way on a bike and other things where you’re likely to not be following a completely predefined route. The real question is why the hell do people build GPS units / gps phones and not stick a compass in there, given how small and cheap a digital compass is.

Joe

BT now have a minimum 12 month contract period, even for just line rental. Most others are similar.

If you are lucky you might be able to move with it, but if you’re not careful you might end up being charged a cancellation fee equal to 8 months line rental.

Joe

If it’s mostly on road, what about a road bike, or at least a cross bike? Something that can take mudguards and has drop bars. It’ll be more efficient, faster, more comfortable once you’re used to it, and needn’t cost as much as those very fancy hybrids that you’re looking at. Nice narrow bars are better in traffic too.

There are road / cx bikes that take discs if you want them for some reason, although without fiddling you have to use cable discs I think.

If you really want a hybrid, then make sure it has all the rack and mudguard mounts, it makes a massive difference.

Joe

Their families policy is a bit scary too.

It’s written by a fathers for justice activist. Such lovely things as making single parents homeless, banning gay civil partnerships, forcing divorced couples both to have access to the child even if it is not in the best interests of the child, legalising marital rape etc. etc.

Obviously they want to basically make it impossible or incredibly difficult to marry foreigners too.

I guess not very many people vote for them who actually read the policies though.

Joe

I don’t necessarily think the benefits are in performance, I have S-Works road and mountain shoes, there’s probably only a small amount of difference between power transfer, but the road ones are just so much more comfy,

Hmm. That’s what I’m interested in. If it is just comfort, then I’m not fussed, as I’m comfy enough. But if it made pedalling easier, then the fancy shoes might be worth having a play with.

So far we have here is people saying that in terms of efficiency they are either not very different, or completely night and day different. It’d be nice if someone would actually test this (and could save some of us from having to buy two pairs of expensive shoes / pedals).

Joe

It’d be cool if someone did do a study on this – get a load of very fit road and mtb riders (equal numbers of people used to road and mtb pedal systems), get them to ride a turbo trainer with a power meter, with each rider trying both mtb and road pedals, and see if there were actually any efficiency advantages.

Joe

I can see how road shoes might be more efficient if you’re mashing away at the pedals and putting lots of power in, like in a sprint in a race. But if you’re just spinning along keeping the pedals turning, like 99% of the time, are they really massively more efficient?

I can see if you have comfort issues with MTB shoes, they are worth trying, but that isn’t a problem I have. I ride a fair bit, although not ‘proper road miles’ (about 5-6000km a year at the moment), and I’ve never had any hot spots or problems with normal SPDs, even on 100 mile+ rides. Never really done a really long ride though, I guess I might think differently if I had?

I guess also have a quite efficient pedal stroke from 7 years of primarily riding fixed wheels on flat pedals on unicycles. To be honest I don’t find SPDs massively more efficient than flats, although they are jolly nice when you’re spinning like mad down a big hill.

Joe

Is there a link between people who ride road bikes, and those who ride on the pavement I wonder? Ie are those who ride on the road a lot more, rather than just viewing it as a way of getting to the trails, more tolerant of it and thus less likely to ride on the pavement.

I’d guess people who ride road bikes ride on the road more partly because it is way more hassle to go up and down kerbs on a road bike, and partly because they are just not as scared of the traffic as people who don’t ride on the road much. Also I guess they’re usually going at much closer to car speeds than the pootlers.

Personally I dunno why anyone (other than little kids) bothers riding on the pavement, it always seems to be slow, puncture prone, dangerous at junctions / driveways and a general waste of time.

Joe

If you’re going to trail centres, surely the routes there are loops? So you can just dump all the camping gear in a bush near the start of the loop, ride the loop, then pick it up again. I’ve done that before.

Personally, I’d be happy with minimalist bivvy gear and a bit of discomfort in almost any place except Scotland in summer, where even tent camping is often a bit midge-tastic. I’d do hostels / bunkhouses etc. if possible, especially if I was only going to trail centres, which are usually near some place big enough to have a hostel.

Joe

I wonder how much power your average gym person can actually produce? If you then assume the machines are actually going at 50% of the time or so, and that there is some level of inefficiency in converting it to electricity, I’d be surprised if you could power very much with it.

Although Rinky Dink sound system manage to power a whole sound system off two cyclists: http://pages.zoom.co.uk/rinky-dink/technical.htm

They are getting 120W off two people constantly pedalling. So I guess with a gym full of machines, you might get a bit of power. But then you’d have to look at how much energy is used in running a gym, I bet it wouldn’t even power that.

Joe

It will be interesting to see how they plan to enforce this. I think the iPhone must be telling them it is tethered during the call set up.

They probably just look at how much data you’re using. If you’re using tons of data, then they’d look at what you’re doing on it, and see if it looks likely to be from a phone or not. It’d be easy enough to tell surely, things like web browser user agent strings would give it away (or maybe there is something in the routing information that does).

Joe

Their site lists ‘old skool vegan’ shoes, I dunno if you can get em in the UK though.

http://shop.vans.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?productId=301920&storeId=10001&catalogId=10101&langId=-1&vcategoryId=SEARCH

There is a Danish one, where the pushchair bit detaches, leaving you with a bike to ride too.

Ah, http://www.triobike.co.uk/default.asp?clicked=359

Joe

you can get orange to do that too joe, i think most will now?

you set a predetermined lower limit, when it reaches it, it automatically tops you up (or so i understand)

The Virgin one I have, it seems to charge me exact amounts – ie. if I spend £4.33 on calls in a month, I get charged that, it isn’t really like top-ups at all – it’s more like a contract, except with no monthly charge.

Joe

Virgin used to do a thing that is a pay as you go, but it automatically tops up by direct debit. It is great for people who spend tiny amounts (like my £3 a month or so), and don’t want to worry about topping up / having credit expire.

I don’t know if you can still get it though, I can’t work out from their site.

Joe

As one of the offences in question was 37 in a 30, at the end of a 70, at 2am, I fail to see how than can have led to an accident.

Right, so in the middle of the night, he couldn’t spot a massive yellow box on the side of the road. Maybe because he was tired and not paying attention?

Yeah, it is really hard to see how someone driving when they are too tired to pay attention to the road is unsafe, I mean no-one has ever been in an accident because they’ve fallen asleep at the wheel, or been driving for too long. If that was a problem, we’d have things like laws about how long professional drivers can drive without rests, and other things like that.

Joe

It appears to use 5W electricity per metre squared, which seems a bit wasteful. So it’s like a replacement for curtains, but very expensive and you have to waste power to use it.

Joe

Cool, I needed a new bottle, and was just thinking about buying a couple of sachets of energy drink for a 200 mile weekend I have planned.

Joe

Maybe I am just lucky, but I’ve never run road bike tyres that you couldn’t get on and off by hand, by making sure it is in the depression of the rim at the opposite side of the wheel to where you’re putting it on / taking it off.

Tyre levers for taking stubborn tyres off maybe, but I reckon no road bike tyre needs levers to get it onto the tyre.

Downhill bike tyres on wide rims on the other hand, blimey those are a nightmare.

Joe

Absolutely no reason why you can’t use any phone on any network – just stick in the SIM card and go. The network does not care, and does not know what you actual device is.

Any 3g phone will work on any network, 3g or not, and any 2g phone will work on a 3g network, but obviously only gives 2g (GSM) functionality

No it won’t. Not on Three. If you use a 2g phone on 3, after a couple of weeks it will get disabled.

The reason for this is because they pay Orange to run their 2g network. Every call you make over it costs them much more than 3g calls (which run on their own network).

It will seem to work, but then after a couple of weeks your sim will be disabled until you buy a new phone to put it in.

Joe

I’ve run loads of group rides with people I didn’t know. I’ve had one ride where I had to go back to the cars with someone, as they couldn’t get up the hill from the car park (the little slope at Penmachno), and clearly weren’t able to even walk the route, let alone ride anything. Other than that though, people have got tired sometimes, and a few people got injured, but in any incident, people have just got together and made sure everyone is okay.

I wouldn’t bother with disclaimers or anything like that, or getting leadership awards. I think if was some kind of qualified group leader, and made a point of that, I’d surely be under a higher duty of care to people I was leading – I’m sure I was told that with respect to my long since lapsed lifeguarding/water rescue qualifications.

I’ve never seen a case like this get as far as a court though, the only case I’ve heard of of this nature, where a person is doing a dangerous activity and gets hurt (actually against a juggling club, about a unicycle related injury) are because they were hoping for a payout from the insurance (and once it got to court, they lost). I suspect if you don’t have hefty insurance, you’d be somewhat less likely to get sued?

Joe

LED’s are actualy more efficient the higher power you run them at. So a 100lumen LED, running at 50lumen might be using 60% of the power it would at 100lumen. So 1 LED at 100% is better than 2LED’s at 50%.

Not true – see the datasheet (the graph on page 8 is what you’re looking for)
http://www.cree.com/products/pdf/XLamp7090XR-E.pdf

This is why small LED’s with big heat sinks are better in bike lights than the big LED’s that you used in D&T at school.

No it isn’t, it’s because the power leds are able to be run at 1 amp, whereas the LEDs you used at school are running at .02 amps (and will blow up at about .05 amp)

Joe

8.5 hour ride today. Was something like 23 or perhaps a bit more for the last 6 hours or so. I drank about 4 litres of water.

I think I am a little bit sunburnt though.

Joe

Certainly worth it for the views alone, let alone the riding (which is supposed to be good too).

There is a bike park too with a gondola and lifts and things:-
http://www.northstarattahoe.com/info/ski/the-mountain/mountain-hours.asp?category=activities-summer

I imagine road bikes take a bit less stress, but my Dad’s steel road bike is still riding fine. I think he said the other day that it was 52 years old. He was riding it to commute every weekday for many of those years and it’s still his main form of transport round town.

A horrible thing to ride mind, it has a super uncomfortable saddle, horrible pedals, 5 shonky gears, dodgy bottom bracket bearings and hasn’t been oiled for years.

Joe

Matlock to my house on Saturday. I have a monster route planned, 59km, 1670m of climbing, 1692m of descent. Probably about 6 or 7 miles of road on the route, but you can’t have everything, other than that it has a nice mix, rocky descents, rooty woodland singletrack, a bit of canal path, almost all uphills rideable, and it does finish at my house which is jolly convenient in terms of planning. As a bonus, the trails should have dried off over the last couple of days so should be riding great, and tomorrow is forecast to be a good one.

Joe

click on ‘member’ after your username on a post, or on your username at the top of the screen where it says “Welcome”.

Joe