Sam, your irreparable flat being in your tubular tyres? (I was camped next to the singular-mobile) …never seen them in real life before. Respect for the all-rigid singlespeeds: the clif climb and then the braking bump-mungous fire road descent back again must have been pretty painful!

that wet wet wet song was by some 60's band originally. REM also convered it round about 1990. Both versions rather a lot more listenable.

Tiny Dancer isn't that bad is it? I have it burbling away on youtube at the mo. Surely 'Nikita' has to be his biggest ball of cheese.

For me, 'Angels' by Robbie Williams really makes my skin crawl. Oh and that god-forsaken version of 'seasons in the sun' buy westlife too.

24/12 at Newnham. I am not riding anywhere tomorrow for I am now a Broken Man.

that'll be the Thudbuster[/url] you want then. Oh and it really shouldn't matter how you spell it for the purposes of an internet forum. We all know what you mean. :-)

is there such thing as an 'everton' jury too?

and legal folks, is there a civil case to be had on th part of the victim irrespective of criminal case's verdict?

(edit) I am really thinking of when oj got off murder but still lost his civil damages case to the family of the woman he definitely didn't murder…

I used an ss (taller teeth) chainring (think the chain has more chance of 'walking off' the ramps and pins of a shifty middle ring), a bashring on one side, an n-gear jumpstop on the other and took some links out of the chain for good measure. I did drop the chain on really bumpy stuff at speed but for the sort of riding you would use a roadrat for, i am sure that would be fine!

… too right BigJohn: Floyd (the dog) weighs more than my children! (yes, both put together i think…)

1) fatmuthahubbard off here has a dog named Floyd.

2) …and Nick Mason once paid an absurd (and at the time record breaking iirc) amount of money for a vintage Ferrari Dino once.

3) I bleddy love Pink Floyd. Especially 'Animals'.

nothing to add to the above good explanations though.

thanks for clarifying that peeps.

I camped there with the mini-wilsons last night. It rained quite a bit in the night but is currently quite windy and on-and-off sunny. campsite is damp but firm. official practice/bike demo stuff is 12-8 today: I'll have spin round the course this afternoon. If i only took one set of tyres i would go for wide spaced not-too-tall knobbles in a soft compound flavour.

eh?? How is that better than a straight crank arm?

Barel uses Rotor Q-rings (think biopace) for DH. But you also have to set your chain device up to 10mm away from the ring to account for its changing diameter. Sounds a bit too much faff to bother with. With my current rubbish skill level and silly-steep DH trails round here I hardly pedal my dh bike anyway!

I have heard that those vibration-daming bar plugs for road bikes are also a bit emperor's new clothes. Any experiences of them?

unsurprisingly? I'm flattered you notice my mumblings on here to have formed an opinion about me already.

oh the thread was closed wasn't it? Perhaps I wasn't the only one who thought it was all getting a bit strange…

Nice one nobhead

Lanesra…did your legal team from last week give you an 'internet forum insult threshold' over which you can get on the special red telephone to them?

…and does this internet libel business extend to Gerrard being tarred with the same brush as some already convicted criminals on a public forum? Go and post it on a Liverpool fan site and see how you get on there, eh?

I'm sure I remember your outrage with Fabregas' disgusting behaviour…

In Father Ted Craggy/Rugged Island style, I'm sure there must be someone on BikeMagic called Easlehc who rips into Spurs every couple of weeks too.

mrs julian was in The Bike Cellar this morning (4 miles from newnham) and they had mud x in 29" flavour. I will be racing this weekend on normal size versions.

(highly impressed with wife's new-found interest in tyres :-) )

I've read this thread right the way through and am still mostly moved by the new-to-me word 'cumgullet'. 8O

Captain, mrs julian has just bought me the newest mint sauce jersey from thecyclejersey.com. Not enough pink though imo….

miaow.

Old rebas have v brake bosses, are silly light, stiff, reliable and great damping. Buy one, get it serviced somewhere nice and have change for a kebab. :D

I too will be reprazentin' the joy of NRS with my retro 'team' version. And a selection of loud jerseys and a not so loud Trail Snail Racing team one. Hoping to camp by the long straight flat bit on the edge of the main field so I can heckle sponging-machine on his solo 24 and pass him bottles of what he *thinks* will be energy drink.

Caraway seeds. dunno why but the taste just turns my stomach.

Also tea with milk is ace but black tea: yuuuuuuurgh!

Mmmmmmmm, pastis……
Water and ice cubes. You are not supposed to put ice in it until water is, but I have never heard a reasponable explanation for this.

You can also put mint syrup along with the water (comes in can-type bottle in french supermarket) and call it 'un perroquet' (parrot), or grenadine makes 'une tomate' (tomato). Or almond syrup makes it something whose neame escapes me. These are somewhat frowned upon by some serious pastis drinkers (think bar ends on risers) although still very nice to drink.

Finally if you are a rascally student type, pernod and snakebite and black is pretty devistating. Oh and pernod is by no means the best pastis, just the only one in most pubs in the yookay. The others are very noticeably different and worth a punt.

Santé! :D

spectators are pretty much always very welcome at newnham. My family popped in and out a few times last year (we only live down the road). Not sure about camping but i suppose there will be so many people there i doubt anyone would notice one extra tent…

avid bb7 road versions seem to be the popular choice round here. I'm sure someone will be along at some point to tell you about how ace they are. If they are anything like the mountain ones mrs Julian has then they will be fine.

Most entertaining reason for the existence of God.

My mother in law is irritatingly evangelical and what more sensible Christian folk would probably sdescribe as Not A Good Witness. She once advised the RAC man at the motorway services that she didn't need a membership as she was (and I quote directly here) "with the Lord".

20 yards out of the car park and her car dies.

*booming Almightly voice* I may have created the heavens and the earth but i don't do ****' breakdown recovery.

I've got a polycarbonate bodum 1 person cafetière and its fine. Starting to let a few granules round the silicon rubber seal on the plunger but a good old fashioned tea strainer collects the stray bits. Cheap as, too.

yeah. I think its basically silicon spray lube. Can't say it completely transformed the performance of my forks, but it does feel a *little* bit plusher. Apparently its good to spray on your frame to help mud fall off it better: I will try this at 24/12 and report back!

my enduring memory of any wheeled transport under the influence of Rockwell's drug of choice is my head screaming "sloooooooooowwwwww doooooooowwwwwn!!"

At 10mph. :oops:

there was a similar event a couple of years ago in the states somewhere. IIRC Myles Rockwell won it in body armour/peakless fullfacer on a road-ish bike with bb7's.

I am one of sponge's plymouth riding accomplices, and I find my nics a little bit eyebrow raising in the local mud: so many roots and off protruding buts of rock locally (not quite so bad at newnham if i recall correctly). I will have a nic on the front if its dry-ish, but mux-s (or i suppose any other widely spaced super sticky compound) are the way forward if its filthy.

btw the course is still an absolute hoot even in muddy winter badness. Most of the climbs are nice and hard or surfaced so the sketchiness is all downhill. And there is a river crossing to wash your bike off each lap :)

Oh and as i type 2 miles away from newnham its abslolutely lobbing it down!

are they loose ball, cup/cone? and did you service them yourself?

Stuff on park tools site about it if this is the case.

CaptainFlashheart – Member

tankslapper – Member
Pastis anyone

51, I hope? A Ricard at a push.

:idea: I've got some Henri Bardouin in the larder. Glaçons?

oh and fwiw as a dual nationalitied-up frog, I reckon its all sour grapes. Thangewverymuch, I'm here all week.

hora – Member

Why did Mazz put a ti spring in to save weight? Why not work on lighter forks if they want to do that?! It just seems to be either a marketing ploy or trying to shave weight off pigheavy-forks?

Hora: open bath damping weighs more (looooooads of oil) but is what made them reliable back along. So a ti spring offsets some of the weight without compromising the strength of the fork by building it skimpier. Perhaps building the uppers, crown or lowers significantly lighter worked out less cost effective than spending more on a job lot of ti springs. They are not the only manufacturer to do this either.
At least we know ti springs work as a weight saving measure rather than unreliable cartridge dampers or flexy lower castings…

O course I won't be in the market for new forks until they are 'old' (haven't bought a brand new fork for years) so I will be happy to watch and learn….

hth.

tim, iirc there will be a 15mm spacer in your fork (behind the topout bumper) that you remove: this lets the fork extend to 115mm then.
The sram service guide pretty much explains it all.

edit: no reason why any (normal not air u-turn) reba couldn't go down to 80mm if you put another 20mm spacer in.

At the moment only scott service them in the uk. In money terms it is comparable to having mojo or tf service an air shock except that the genoius shock is possibly more complicated to work on (particularly the newest ones) so seems good enough 'value'.

Look at it glass half full: you take it to a bike shop who send it away for you and are in to recieve it when it comes back. Also you pay them and they are responsible for the welfare and whereabouts of your shock once you leave the shop. And I have heard that Scott just have a load of new or serviced ones on the shelf so the turnaround is very fast even at peak times. Mine was fine when i sent it off (just a couple of years old) and i still had a brand spanking new one back in a couple of days.

Still cheaper but now by not so much

…i would imagine that this is a factor (along with warranty, advertising etc) in how the importer sets their uk prices on most things.

Complication of ordering, delay in recieving goods and no warranty, versus paying a bit more from a UK seller => how much you can expect people to pay for the product you sell.

…as long as they continue to make a profit from the advertising and (probably more lucratively) the phone voting they will keep churning it out :(

…just poor quality casings then? :(
richiethesilverfish off here works for the distributor iirc: he may be able to reassure you that you had a 'friday afternoon' batch. tbh intense tyres are more well known/notorious for their love-or-hate handling characteristics than their toughness…

i've got 4 sets of intense tyres between skinny xc (system 2) and 2.5 downhill and they have all been fine. Though i wouldn't have system 3's at 50 psi: my suystem 2's rarely make it past 35: do you ride rocky/jumpy trails at that pressure? Would that rupture the casing?