Keep an eye on here for anyone posting rides at Swinley – it’s a train ride from Twickenham to Martins Heron (or at least that’s the nearest station to the Lookout/Coral Reef (?) carparks). BOBMBC have regular rides over the week of differing speeds, tho’ they start from Crowthorne which might be more of a pain unless you’re driving.

http://www.bobmbc.com/
http://www.gorrick.co.uk/swinley/index.php
see map – Lookout’s at the top – there’s a lot of trails that *aren’t in the marked mtb area. They’re mostly – if not all- maintained by BOB members.

For a local bit of offroad there’s the Esher/Claygate commons, nothing much to write home about but there’s the odd section which meanders around.

I guess it’s a bit of a jaunt, but when I was living in Surbiton I hired a bike from http://www.hgbmotorcycles.co.uk/ (nr South Ruislip tube) for a day before picking up a CBR – but that *was* back in ’99 so mebbe there’s someone nearer !

Looks like a Hornet’s about 160 for a w/e, or about 280 for a week

(which if I was your neighbor and saw you knocking down their nest I would grass you up)

If I was his neighbour I’d go and shit up his wall myself !

In any case, you might find a lot of people would actually *welcome* some nesting birds under the eves.

And they ain’t gonna be there for ages, for crying out loud – let ’em get on with it then clear it off when they’ve gone. Big deal, you’ve got some shit to clear up – want some of our foxes and squirrels ? They crap/dig everywhere but they’re doing what animals do.

Dickhead.

I haven’t 😉
Re doing both cups at the same time – my (Cyclus) press allows both cups to sit nicely centred on the tool, it’s not intended (IIRC) to centralised directly on the headtube without a cup – ie it’s actually harder to get an even press when doing one cup at a time, which I’ve had to do with a Hope h/set which uses some separate press blanks – ie wouldn’t centralised on the tool.

To add a little more background to that – I’d tried to fit a PigDH to my Enduro. Lower cup was *almost* flush, about a sheet of paper off on one side. Couldn’t get it back out – neither could my LBS…tho’ they managed to create some degree of swarf out of the iside of the headtube 🙁 – bloke reckoned I should have greased it before fitting. Specialized UK(not far away from me) kindly got the cup out, reamed/refaced the headtube just in case, and said quite categorically that it shouldn’t be greased, as above.

It seemed the Pig DH – powdercoated – comes in a little oversized, had kinda galled in fitting it into the frame, judging by the missing powdercoat after it had been removed.

Oh, and the Spesh fix for getting the lower cup out where I’d failed with the proper tool, and the LBS with a blooming screwdriver (judging by the mess), was to use half-ally handlebar and work around the cup carefully. I’ve since used the same trip on an old Stumpie where I couldn’t get the cups out with the proper tool, and it works a treat without damaging anything.

>it’s just not good practice
Ahem..crank tapers…..

The cups are supposed to be an interference fit. IIRC (it was about 6 years ago) the problem they’d seen was where the cups could move around in the headtube ‘cos of the lube, ovalising it.

Check that the cups are going in square to the frame – you may need to do one at a time, if they’re not then push them out and try again. Ideally the press should be bearing on the *cups* or the outer race, not the inner race if the bearing is already fitted (tho’ I’ve previously fitted an FSA Extreme like that, where I didn’t have much choice at the time).

The cups *shouldn’t* be greased – if they are then there can be excessive cup<>headtube movement, possibly screwing up the headtube (that’s from Spesh UK)

>but could give you even tighter hip flexors (unless you’re careful to stretch them after/during class)

The instructor really *ought* to be making sure there’s a stretch involved after working anything – part of Pilates is to keep the muscles lengthened, and not allow shortening.
As others had said, there’s more flexibility work in yoga, but Pilates ought to cover what you want/need anyway – I’ve been doing it for about 7+ years now, ‘cos the core stability stuff is more useful to me – plus every time my gym tries to schedule Ashtanga they cancel it ‘cos there’s not enough uptake 🙁 – otherwise I’d have tried it by now.

But either really depends on how good your instructor is.

You could, of course, do both 😉
You’ll probably need a course or two to get the basics sorted. Certainly with Pilates, the more flexible/stronger you get, your instructor should introduce harder versions of the same exercise.

(There’s also a machine element to Pilates but yer average gym’s only going to do matwork – for the former you’d be going to a studio)

FWIW, I had about 2/3 of the (medial? – inside, anyway) meniscus removed some years ago after tearing it. Was great for ages, but snowboarding lessons – hard boots 🙁 – and unicycling has made it worse (actually both knees to a degree). I avoid running (apart for the train!), do squats very carefully, it’s really anything that twists the joint ain’t good..took me a while to realise the spiral staircase at work wasn’t helping..

However, a hardtail’s fine for me – realistically you’ll probably rarely ride a trail that’s got lots of big dropoffs/landings, and anything smaller, you don’t need the knees flexing through large angles I’d have thought – unless keeping a flexed knee on a long descent is a problem in itself.

But how your knee reacts to that sort of stuff could be completely different.

Full-sus now and hardtail later ?
😉

>Get a sense of perspective!!

C’mon, lighten up…I think it’s you that’s missing one, yer miserable b*gger 😉
This is first few days decent snow down here in ooh, about 15 years or more, cycling out of our close it was great to see all the kids having fun…though one of ’em almost took my shades off with a firking great snowball!
I don’t think most people are gonna miss a couple of day’s productivity in the grand scheme of things.

>London is a city that’s the financial centre of this nation
Oh well, if some of the greedy feckers stay at home they can’t stuff anything else up 😉

Well, it was quite a pleasant ride from Walton to Staines (partly along the Thames) Hopefully it’ll stick for tomorrow. I might even carry on a bit further going home, as far as Kingston or Richmond…and roll on a big overnight dump 🙂