the colour is fabulous!

v’s on my commuter/towpath kiddy trailer tug only.
you don’t need anything more on the road.
they weigh a bit less
they are cheap (until you start eating rims, but my first set of rims lasted years even when i rode them in all sorts of offroad filth)
they are a bit less nickable i suppose.
easy to fix and set up/adjust wherever you are and whatever day of the week it is.

But the performance and extra weight of discs is well worth it for me for properly going offroad.

Big Bike Bash.

conjunctivitis was good for me the other day: ward manager got a bit spooked and sent me home for the afternoon as an ‘infection control risk’. Yay!

just because you don’t think you would have the same reaction in the same situation doesn’t mean you can’t be understanding of that reaction. I work in a grief/loss/angst/rage/general-messed-upness ‘industry’ and honestly, if it were possible to quantify and award ‘grief and pain’ points for things, the loss of your child would be right up there. And so the understanding and acceptance of a wider range of ways of dealing with/not dealing with your grief should be right up there too.

Have a look at how other non-western/americanised cultures deal with their grief. They don’t go to the tabloids but they do and say some pretty unusual-by-our-standards stuff.

Sure the parents might look back on this in a few years and wonder if they needed to make such a big deal of it but anger does strange things. Including wanting to make life as difficult as possible for other people if what they do comes anywhere near the subject of your loss. At least they aren’t starting fights in pubs about it (yes that does happen in my professional experience and yes it is hard to explain to the magistrate too).

dunno how true it is, but the man from hope told me that using a socket damages the seals

if you use just the right size socket so it presses only on the outer race of the bearing you’ll be reet. Also if you can fit it through the drive hole in your sockets (1/2″ drive) then a 10mm axle and nuts works just lovely as the pitch of the threads is ‘shallower’ and squeezes them in nice and gently.
But i would sooner spend £20 on the proper ones if i didn’t have the right flavour sockets to bodge it.

I’m not sure its about being an ‘attention whore’ as such.

i know a motivational speaker-cum-endurance athlete who i was talking cycling to over christmas: she suggested that through her incredible drive to beat her rivals, or rather not to lose against them, VP has backed herself into a rather difficult corner where she will only be fulfilled by continuing to win everything and anything less than perfect will be very depressing for her. The downside of being so excellent at a competetive sport I suppose.

It was always about 2 days sooner before they changed publisher and went monthly a couple of years ago. Perhaps the ‘every other month’ pace of life made it easier to get posted before sending out to the shops.

Most mags use the ‘get it before it hits the shelves’ as a selling point in their ‘please subscribe to us’ blurb. And their subscribers generally do, certainly the bi-monthly ‘has anyone got the mag yet’ threads on here would suggest so anyway. And yes I have got a whole t shirt every year from Dirt. And i save a whopping £8 a year by subscribing. Woo!

as an aside, it comes in an opaque grey plasic heatseal bag with ‘dirt’ written on it. Goodness knows what my postie must think I read…

Pieface – Member

Just viewing this on my Latitude and I’ve realised my Diesel’s are no longer the correct presription. Also my Calvin Kleins are a bit tight so I’d best go and change into some Henry Lloyds. That remindas me, need to pop into Tesco on the way home to get some Goofella’s. I think I’ll be ok to leave the Kona outside, as long as I Kryptonite it outside.

When I get in it may be dark so will turn on the Osram’s, then walk across the Karndean to store my Ortliebs in the cupboard. Then its off tot he Armitage Shanks for a wee.

excellent: it could be straight out of a Douglas Coupland book. All feature some delightfully damning ‘product placement’ but Shampoo Planet is brand-mungous.

oh FWIW my boss calls his iphone a ‘phone’ and gets all flustered if we go on about how flash it is. But I don’t think he has got any further than putting a load of Genesis albums on it…

bah, Dirt mag in shops and my subs copy still not through the post. Same as the last six or so issues :(

ulianWilson and fatmuthahubbard from STW have been creating loads of secluded singletrack in Cann. I’m sure they’d be glad to show you if you promise not to build poorly constructed kickers all over them.

whaaaaatttt?!? …but i built a poorly constructed kicker just the other day! Alright, that is overshadowed by the other poorly constructed kickers on that trail. And yes one trail is so secluded it took me some weeks to learn where to find it again.

IWH, do you night-ride? Best way to do all the less, ahem, obvious bits. We are usually out wednesdays and some thursdays: give us a tootle sometime…

…i suppose by those odds my luck is running thin and there is little point in me doing the lottery.

My helmet crushed but did not break
I lost about an hour of my life memory wise

TandemJeremy – Member

Ampthill – that one sounds quite clear.

Front wheel in ‘bottomless’ muddy puddle on woodbury common doubletrack and OTB to head, with obviously broken but not clearly not ‘disentegrated’ helmet and 1 hours memory loss here too. I didn’t even know where I was and for an hour after I had a memory span of a couple of minutes: mate kept having to reming me of what was going on. The funny thing was talking my friend through basic Neuro observations on me, and then piping up with the same ‘bright’ idea a further five or six times before i remembered I had already said it. I still have the helmet in a cupboard to remind me what might have happened.

So I suppose that makes me a lottery winner too. Stangely enough (in some circles here anyhoo), of the eight people I regularly ride with there are a further three ‘winners’ amongst us too by the ‘broken-ish helmet with memory loss/ 30 seconds plus of unconsciousness’ rule.

Who’d have thought, eh?

8pm to 8am here *rubs eyes*

errr, its not made by shimano, it is just compatible with it. It is more a dercription/distinction for the benefit of road riders, as campagnolo parts often require different shape tools esp. bb’s and cassettes.

It was still the better buy though imho.

Both sets are just rebrtanded generic tools but icetoolz ones are a bit hit and miss, some of their stuff is great and other bits somewhat less great.
And yes i have a few ‘proper’ shimano tools and they are well solid.

second an inbred or 456 (how long a fork will you be putting on it? 456 if its 120mm fork or longer.

You may need a ‘normal’ headset as more recent genius’es’ have integrated ones iirc, and certainly a narrower seatpost but this will be the case whatever frame you swap to. Try a longer fork and more sag and rebound damping on the back end first though: mine handles completely differently now and has taken far more than you would expect a ‘marathon’ bike to.

the bikehand one. It has a chainring tool and the other bits look a little bit beter quality i think. Also the ‘socket’ type tool for ht2 bb’s in the icetoolz is good but does not fit on truvativ gxp bb’s. hence the bikehand’s one is a teeny bit more versatile.

plenty of ladies in the soggy bottom series. about 50 in every 500 across the classes/ages. Although the elite/expert has been a 2-rider race all season.

Maddie Horton (fullysussued.co.uk) ran 3 ladies-only skills weekends to conincide with the races and got quite a few ladies into the fun category who probably wouldn’t have thought they had it in them. Might be worth seeing if you could set up a similar thing?

although formula rotors do seem particularly ‘sharp’: I swap wheels and brakes a bit and they definitely seem better than shimano xt or avid ones whichever of my brakes/bikes are biting them..

…or perhaps its my own mind ‘reassuring’ me that it was money well spent!

The Wrigleys family were from Saddleworth, one of their sons went to America to make his fortune and made Wrigleys chewing gum.

Along with Nuclear Submarines, Wrigleys is now one of Plymouth’s most famous products. When the wind blows the right way my local cheeky trails smell of juicy fruit.

Also Plymouth was the location of quite surely the most boring and depressing stage ever of the TDF: to celebrate the new cross channel ferry link with Roscoff via Brittany Ferries (originally set up by a conglomerate of Breton farmers as a means of getting there wares over here), they shipped the whole ‘caravan’ over here in 1974 and went up and down the newly-finished A38 Plympton bypass three times. Yes, a straight (and at the plymouth end there is nearly a cat 1 climb: woo!) three lane dual carriageway up and down for a bit. I am so proud to live here.

Far better though is Newnham park being here too, and that back in the day Tinker Juarez could be seen ‘loosening up’ riding past my house (2 miles away!) before races.

And he won’t get to see our twins, due in June.

(slight hijack) I remember your thread about ivf back along m-f, that is very excellent news! I feel a ‘name m-f’s babies’ thread looming in a couple of months. (hijack over)

Depending on how ‘improper’ they are, and how serious the stuff they have made up about you, i wouldn’t blame you for cutting them out until the children are old enough to work out for themselves of someone is filling theior head full of doubts and nonsense. Depending on their ages, their faith in you as consistent, available and trustworthy parents is of vital importance to their own personal development. (read up ‘attachment’ of children if you want to find out more.But not too much or you will find yourself paralysed with overanalysis of your own parenting ‘style’ :-))

we call them ‘earwigs’ (old family joke)

I think the germans also refer to a catchy tune as an ‘ear-worm’ (whatever that is in german)

this morning it is ‘Big Empty’ by stone temple pilots. Dunno why, I haven’t listened to it for months at least.

frequent ones that pop in are the pink panther music and Buffalo Soldier. I have neither of these 2 pieces of music in my collection/ipod. No idea why they ‘appear’ so often.

‘lady grinning soul’ by Bowie

I like the colour.
XCL looks very sensible in comparison to these swoopy ‘boiled sweet’ tye xc frames. Which is a good thing.
What would the cost implications be of having swappable (ie 135, 150, maxle) dropouts on the evo?

what frame/fork? some seem to do fine with longer forks and others not so.
Also bear in mind if the fork locks out, it will probably do so at 130mm and give you a superb/daft chopper feeling on really steep road climbs.
Also rockshox air forks are mostly travel reduce-able by putting a spacer inside the air spring.

I must let grandma Betty know she has a kindred spirit in the pursuit of unusual cycling headwear. If you see a second/different sombrero’d old biddy making an epic pilgrimage to Wales (on a pashley trike no less, nichemeisters!) then say hi.

IdleJon – Member

(I almost rode into a grey haired old biddy who cycled across my path randomly last week – she was wearing a sombrero, I’m not joking.)

was this in leicestershire and was she on a trike? Sounds like mrs julian’s grandma, who was even been sighted on one occasion in the village wearing one sombrero on top of another sombrero.

is there still a tsr2 at cosford museum?

Edit, google is my friend: yes there is.

I loved some of the more random names presumably given by the americans to soviet planes. ‘fishbed’, ‘foxbat’ and ‘flanker’ for example. You wonder which ones didn’t make it out into the public domain. “Leiutenant, I have a trace on my screen. Looks like it might be a TU26 Buttmunch.”

I think this fellow has got it sussed:

…so are those 456 hubs any stiffer then? I might get one in the sale for a rainy day.

Gary, original post:

I had a chuckle at the cittick/coat-ick thread below. And i am a bit bored.

it was quite funny. Particluarly the bit where someone pointed out the cotic owners pointing out to the on-one man the ‘error’ of his ways.

oh and there was no smiley if any sort. I tend to avoid them if there seems a risk of them being misinterpreted. Just that word ‘chuckle’.

If that says ‘pompous smart arse’ to you then you probably ought to avoid any thread on here concerning singlespeeds, chris bling, alfine or rohloff hubs and for goodness’ sake stay away from that one about the new shedfire frame.

That’s the last time I try and start a comedy thread on an unseasonably warm sunny afternoon. *slouches off removing sweater which had been serving as a goalpost*

yikes, bored light hearted adfternoon humour thread turns all wierd. I’m sorry if i offended you Gary-M.

I probably should have started with my own, errr, variations:
Bontrager as ‘bontrajjay’
madone as ‘Ma-doe-nay’

and i perfer to say sram without the ‘sch’ or else it sounds like the eastern european slang for ‘todger’.

I am just waiting and waiting for TJ to come on the air.
*fingers crossed*

Hello.
Awesome login name!

whatever you do, don’t look at the spitting thread or the ‘right thing’ one either. Go and look at us all helping each other out on the bike forum and not arguing at all. You’ll be reet!

…are you doing the same psychology essay again Smee?

of course if you report it like that ^ then everyone will think he is a dirty swine. Just like they got the wrong end of the stick in the zoo thread.

Or they will look at CFH’s thread, have a little think about it and then wonder if you are a bit bored and trolling?

alas the zoo thread was on the old forum. But iirc the point was that smee/glupton used some ambiguous language (‘put him on his arse’) and everyone thought he sparked this stranger out for doing some kind of slow-mo “nooooooo” run from 20 yards away to rescue his child who had fallen over. Next to his own dad. (Glupton, that is.)

So what point are you trying to prove here smee? Flashy has been rather more explicit in his account of what happened than the original post in the zoo thread was, and lots of people aggree that it was a good thing.
You got everyone all hot under the collar and then told them you didn’t actually hit the bloke and then everyone was cross with you cos they all felt betrayed that you had let them think this for a bit.
I think if you had told the story in clearer and unambiguous language most people would have supported you in the natural parental reaction of ‘oi, get away from my child, you wierdo’. That they didn’t is because they all felt a bit wound up.

And anyway, how did you know the zoo bloke didn’t know your kid? Plenty of people that i haven’t know my 2 and 4 year old via school/nursery. It’s no more fair for me to ask you that than it is to ask it to CFH.

fwiw i think spitting on a cyclist is waaaaay more wrong than your (admittedly irritating) touring cyclist the other day.

(edit)…and if Smee had done the same thing in the same circumstances and reported it the same way i would be chapeau-ing him too.

perhaps the bloke in the zoo knew glupton/smee’s lad too?

i got some air in an xc race today.

rad to the power of max(light), me.