A mate of mine did for a while manage to have his partner believe that his orange-couloured 224 and his orange-coloured 5 were the same bike. :D
My wife rides more than me so no worries about that sort of thing in our household. She has helmets and gloves to match each of her 5 bikes. (and thinks i haven’t noticed that yet :lol: )

The trouble round here is the peak fares. Off-peak is still suprisingly ok in the south west (price per mile, compared to our recent experiences on network southeast). In fact in the summer when the traffic is silly, Cornwall on the train (and the train still goes to pretty much every remotely good-sized town barring padstein, wadebridge, helston and launceston) then the train is way cheaper for one person than the fuel in your car and cos of all the emmets on the roads, usually faster too. Devon is another story though. Terribly poorly served by trains imho.

OT, but my favourite recent discovery is the Stagecoach ‘explorer’ bus ticket where you get to go all over Devon on stagecoach buses (long/rural and exeter/torbay urban routes alike) for £7.50 a day or £22 a week. As such it is longer in time than the train, but ludicrously cheap per mile and with no peak/off-peak times at all. What does even a zone 1/2 day or weekly travelcard cost on TFL these days?

As such this week I have done plymouth to exeter uni return (4 buses and 95 miles all in) for a third what it would cost on the train for the times i needed to travel, and not including £3.50 for buses to and from plymouth railway station in the first place.

All animals killed for human consumption in the UK must be bled to death in order to remove quickly any potential toxins that occur in the blood at the point of death.
The only real difference is that non-halal is usually stunned first, however a massive wound to the neck is reputedly enough to cause a near-instantaneous loss of consciousness anyway.

]

I didn’t realise the importance/safety of quick bleeding. Is this another one of those ‘public health’ religious laws? -perhaps halal butchering made sense food-hygeine-wise back in the day.

On his youtube channel there is some just extraordinary playing, as well as a cover of ‘Genie In A Bottle'(as in Aguilera) with him doing loads of oldskool magic tricks in the video. The man is a genius.

should have asked the hipster for Belgian knee warmers instead.
oh and online at least, it seems that evans sell 5 or six different embrocaton creams. 8O

Sounds like this seller should just ditch ebay and sell his stuff on pinkbike or craigslist (gumtree for ‘mericans). Ebay will argue that this practice is for the fraudulent sellers who sell just one or two mobiles or other physically-small but expensive objects: proof of delivery is really just proof if delivery of a box that seems to weigh as much as it should. Hence holding funds until buyer posts positive feedback. However this in turn makes it easy for someone to make multiple buyer accounts with ebay and paypal and scam sellers by claiming item was lost, broken or just a couple of bags of sugar in a fork box. And then getting a free whatever-it-is, or reselling it under a different ebay account.

However, all all ebay/paypal’s (it is a complete joke that they claim to be two separate entities: haven’t been so for 10 years!) policy changes and fee revisions in recent years have either favoured established businesses selling high volumes as buy-it-now (Amazon, anyone?) or made it harder for the little folk. They also do little or nothing to combat ‘drop-shipping’ using stolen credit card details because the loss is the credit card company and/or the retailer the fraudulent seller uses: ebay is just by far the easiest platform to use for this and they still get their fees/commission so have no interest in stopping this.

On the other hand, if you are woollyhatshop or leisure lakes selling on ebay, its no skin off your nose to have to wait a few days for individual payments to clear (in fact i wouldn’t be surprised if ebay don’t bother with this for their ‘power sellers’

Ebay loves to milk the ‘broken laser pointer’ story, but really that is the last thing they want to be: the real money is in being like amazon or tescodirect and being a high-comission easy to search platform for shops and sellers that already exist but don’t have the profile or reputation of giant internet sellers.

meehaja – Member

My step dad is anti immigration, he lives in france and doesn’t speak french. My mum was recently moaning about not getting the winter fuel allowance as she needs it more than most, what with living in a 500 year old drafty farm house. In france.

Both return to UK when ill for “free health care”

fwiw, not that I am particularly in favour of it but health insurance in France is pretty reasonable (as it only needs to pay for GP-level care and the 20% of hospital treatment that is not funded via taxation by the state anyway (incl for EU citizens iirc). Depending on what is wrong and how often they need to seek medical help, they might be financially better off not spending on travel/accommodation and instead insuring themselves and seeking treatment at home in france. Of course that would mean learning to speak some french though!

Too complicated to measure meaningfully, but it would be entertaining to see some sort of measure of brits who learn to speak the language of the country they live in. Seems that the expat stw community does very well at this, but then largely they don’t run fish and chip shops in magaluf.
A friend’s dad lives in a lovely rural village setting in Italy, hardly speaks a word of Italian (his son and daughter-in-law do but live in UK) but it’s all ok as all the neighbours like him so those that know a bit of english to explain stuff to him deal with tradespeople, doctors etc and explain/answer all his post etc for him. :?

I only tune away from r4 (to absolute 80’s :oops: ) when the archers is on or rarely if it is a repeat i have already heard. Although Just A Minute christmas special was still funny second time round.
I am often asked at work how I know a little bit about such a large and random range of things -usually the answer is Woman’s Hour.

Yes Mr Hunt. The buck stops with you, shame you and most Minister seem to forget that.

In 2011 Andrew Lansley even tried to do away with this too. Originally the health and social care bill planned to remove direct responsibility from the secretary of state for health. What is remarkable is that in the reshuffle, Cameron’s second most notoriously publicised and well documented ‘cabinet minister for sale to highest bidder’ was replaced with the current no. 1 seed. :evil:

2 watts of all-valve retro loveliness btw its a guitar amp and the mrs says it will look lovely in th lounge. Schweeeeet! :D

it was announcing Maggie Thatchers death so more a case of light the blue touch paper rather than some intelligent insight that garnered extended attention.

I think my longest thread was about the then Archbishop Rowan Williams poking his beak into politics, and what this meant for the relationship between state, monarchy and church. It turned into just another few pages of regular stwers argiung about the legend of Dawkins and whether Jaysus was real or no. Not really the thread I had set out for. :?

Having found my nice old park tools one didn’t work on cup and cone cl hubs/rotors, I got this one and its fine. And 1/4 the price.

Great post above. I forget which bike but i saw recently on the interwebz a bike with hydraulic discs where the brake cable ran almost all the way to the brake mount, where there was an arm actuating a hydraulic lever actuating the brake caliper itself. As per comments above about cable stretch and housing compression that is the worst of both worlds surely? I assumed it was some kind of late april fool. :?

[edit]
Found it. Although in fairness to TRP the reviewer didn’t find cable stretch a problem with their posh cables and said overall they were pretty good.

LoCo – Member

Yes got sacked from a bike shop in Cardiff after having to have 6 weeks off on doctors orders after a big crash, near death and surgery

8O and :evil: and what a pity you industry folks don’t do naming and shaming!

I had to postpone a rough-and-tumble course once after I spannered myself in Smith’s Combe (so worth it!!) but i still went to work and got loads of stuff done i otherwise wouldn’t have had time for. When there are all these terrible sttistics about how much sick days cost businesses and the taxpayer, what is the statistic for how many fewer sick days cyclists take than non-cyclists? Despite supposedly a hugely stressful and emotionally demanding job and the 2 fantastic pathogen-vectors asleep upstairs who should bring me all manner of terrible bugs home from school, I am 2nd out of 65 with just over three years without a sick day. Wife rides loads too including commuting and she is similarly good at not taking days off sick. I am sure bicycles have something to do with this.

takisawa2 – Member

Classic album.

The zenith/nadir of Bono’s mullet too. (delete as appropriate) :D

For me to has to be Appetite for Destruction, Pills/Thrills/Bellyaches, Gold Mother and ‘The Stone Roses’ that really got me into not listening to whatever was on the radio.

Does this budget steel ring look machined?

If it is, how much more machining/cost would it be to make it narrow/wide? For longevity and price I could live with the extra 80 or so grams in weight.

All this talk of people not having pay rises for years really boils my p*** when i think that the union at our place are arguing that a 3% payrise is too small!… Don’t think the union guys quite realise how lucky we are…

All the trade unions which represent my colleagues have argued the same, however nurses going on strike doesn’t seem to be to popular! I would imagine that the pay deals unions argue for is at least partly based on what they think an employer can actually afford to pay its staff.

Meh. I got piddly pay “rise” similar to Miketually’s, which means that I am now only about 6% a year poorer in real terms than I was 4 years ago. Oh and I will get time plus 0.6 (not even the two thirds any more!) for the pleasure of working on christmas and new year’s days this year. Ho ho ho!

Boris won’t have the same support outside of The Republic of London as he enjoys in it.

Indeed. Actually its a little bit worse by how his support by ‘Londoners’ is weighted towards the suburbs not ‘proper’ London. IIRC at election time it was ernie who provided us with a breakdown of votes/comment about this, with the implication that if even a bit less of commuterland was included in the election then Ken would have been mayor.

That has to be a joke

Quite possibly! I suppose it would be quite amusing being a ‘mole’ and throwing journalists the odd piece of comedy misinformation.

Apart from Russell and Bromley????

:lol: :D

Same article (well it was one of those ‘our man in westinster political comment’ things) also said Cameron was more popular/less unpopular with he public than the party itself yet the Westminster conservatives are already sharpening their knives. Journalists, eh? :?

Done all on that list except the group high-five at the very end. Although riding to the sea fees like cheating for me: -almost unavoidable where I live :D

I would like to add:
-Ridden a mountain bike in a cross race and beaten people on cross bikes.
-Owned a singlespeed mountain bike (whether you liked it/saw the point is optional!)
-Fallen off in a trailcentre car park/reclaimed railway cyclepath.
-Burnt yourself on a disc rotor.

According to last saturday’s edition, the Independent’s ‘mole’ (their word for him/her) inside Westminster Conservatives says Theresa May for next Conservative leader. I thought she was giving up… :?

what’s the national average wage these days? £26k? IMHO that’s a pretty insulting salary for the job, stress, violence, responsibility, risk of getting sacked/sued/prosecuted/hep B from being bitten/spat on etc etc….

Bigdummy +1

How old is he again?
Seems to me the limelight has made him have to confront this earlier than he might otherwise have wanted to or indeed needed to.

-of my four gay man friends (who all say they are totally gay ie definitely do not like the ladies at all. Anymore.) only one of them knew he was gay at Daly’s age, one a bit later, one had girlfriend and a child, and one was married to a lady for several years. (FWIW the average age of realising/coming out amongst my lesbian friends and family is quite a bit lower. Not sure how that compares to the rest of the yookay though…)

btw they build into just lovely lovely bikes. Do it! :D

Anyone ridden a Sab la Rocca from Planet X? It looks a rather good value/low risk purchase, whole bike for a bit more than an ultegra groupset from merlin.

I have newest 10sp tiagra on my bike, and functionally/ergonomically it is hardly different from last version of 105. Except it has little shifter windows/indicators in the top. How quaint!

Nope.

All part of the game for Mitchell surely: as above, this is just another chapter in his career and there are still plenty of opportunities and doors open to him that are not open to brighter, more capable, more experienced but less well connected people.

As a party/chief whip of any political party, I’d have thought Mitchell should be understanding of:
1) the need to cut off a bad branch for the good of one’s party even if it is the press and the public’s understanding at the time which is at fault, not the individual being instructed to resign.
2) the myriad ways in which one might be stabbed in the back, and the range of people who might be holding the knife.
3) you just don’t start messing with the police’s funding, conditions and pensions! Has he not seen The Shadow Line[/url]? :lol:

Also the man is reputed to be a proper bullying nasty piece of work, even for a party whip. The political party he happens to represent comes a long way down the list for me.

shimano mineral oil is not the same as “mineral oil” under other ‘labels, its a specific formulation with tight QC, when you look at how much R&D shimano put into their disc brakes its worth following their advice

I love shimano brakes but…

…shimano’s r&d has improved and revamped their brakes umpteen times in the last 15 years, we have over theose years had exact same lever assemblies across deore, lx, xt and saint all at the same time but for somewhat varying prices (2002-04 iirc), fancy linky things in levers for better pad clearance, centerlok, icetech pads and rotors, two, four, two, and now four again pistons, crazy bleed systems when the new brakes were harder to bleed/get the sneaky hiding little bubbles out than the old ones that you could do in 2 minutes just like a car’s brakes, leaky seals and no spares beyond complete calipers or lever assemblies, and yet they still manufacture and spec the exact same formulation of brake fluid. :? Amazing how they got that bit just right the first time around!

Seriously, it would be useful for some chemist type to tell us what is really in shimano oil, magura oil, lhm and indeed other people’s (halfords/bikehut, juice lubes etc) bike-specific mineral oils. Perhaps its just good luck but the only one of my 3 sets of shimao brakes i ever overheated had shimano fluid in it, and not happened since i used lhm…

breadcrumb +2 -parallelogram pivots would wear, get a little bit slack and induce squealing. iirc lx ones lasted a bit longer than xt before that set in. But if yours feel ok you might as well fit new pads and see how you get on. When they work they are allegedly easier to get power from than single pivot brakes. At worst you will find they do squeal and you have to get a whole new brake, and then you will have some spare pads for it.

For £6 per hour on nice trails on private (er, is it?) land I, I would be expecting first aid, event village, marshals and a race plate. Facetious yes, but there are xc races run for profit that don’t charge much more than that by the hour-on-trails, partcularly longer/marathon ones. :? Last year’s 24/12 cost me about £3.50 an hour for the time i was actually riding my bike, and I got all the above plus swag bag, three nights camping, drinking water, toilets and hot showers too.

I don’t bother with this grammar/spelling joke, with the exception of picking up on the spelling or grammar of posts which are already picking others up on their spelling/grammar. I mean that’s just asking for trouble! :D

PS I lurk on another non-bike forum where they really are serious about all this, and zealously moderate/delete what they see as lazy typing or text/yoof speak. 8O

A bit less flash, but I’ve seen lots of s/h voodoo wangas on ebay etc. The newest silver one comes in alloy rather than steel, with proper sliding dropouts and built for/with a 140mm revelation. So either get the frame secondhand or get a new one and sell the parts.

fwiw I have a wide bas ssc sprocket and it is that which is a little bit eggshaped (ring is pretty round and was great with old smaler sprocket): shame really as other wise I would try and put the ‘eggs’ at right angles to each other to see if it cancels out..) I don’t get jumpy-chain on climbs, but it does make worrying creaky cracky noises under heavy load/gurn, and it is hard to get the tension ‘just so’ if you want longish freehub life and you don’t want it rattling off over roots and jumps.

OP, sounds like you know what the chainline should look like, only other thing I would check before an 8-speed (ie narrower) chain is that the teeth on chainring and sprocket are all nice and straight and free of burrs etc. Unlikely as they are new, but I have experienced this (with 1mm of bent tip on a tooth on a ramped chainrings on a geary bike) which only reared its head when the chain was under heavy load.

You soon learn that is bollocks as we pick people up with the most minor of injuries and illness who think they are going to die.

I’ll be sure to correct our ILS trainer next time I see him. :lol:
We are also trained that the quietest casualties (if you have a chioce of several! -only happened once to me and I wasn’t at work either) are the ones to worry most about, so lord knows what to do….

I used parcel2go.com a couple of times for boxes that size to Europe (not poland, mind): you don’t need and account with anyone in particular, and as far as i can tell a lot of parcel2go’s business is actually using their own business accounts/rates with well-established carriers and putting a bit on top which they pocket themselves, eg parcelforce worldwide or UPS is often still way cheaper through them than with the actual carriers themselves.

Mate’s super-fit dad died from an arrest very suddenly playing rugby (about 200 yards from where I am sat right now :( ) when we were 8 or 9, so mid 1980’s. I wonder if he could have been saved like SFB by people at the scene being better informed/trained and any/better CPR, or indeed a passing police car with an AED in it.

Personally I believe people will always worry about something, and cardiac arrests and vinny jones doing CPR will be displaced by some other worries in time, just as some other worries were probably displaced by this one. And fear/panic about sudden death is not uncommon in head injuries/concussion.

In fact an unexplainable fear of impending doom is sometimes an early indicator of myocardial infarction, so you could argue that people being better educated about this might seek help earlier and be in a safer place when they do arrest.

I ummed and aahhed about the Exeter date too as a mate was going, but with the added faff my shifts/wife’s shifts and childcare, I didn’t bother in the end. Wondering if i should have made the effort now!

As above, I haven’t taken a wheel to a shop or paid to have one built for years now (and neither have my mates ;) ) I have done well in beer and cast-off parts though. :D

First build is a huge faff though, (as above really take your time!) and Stan’s are expensive! FWIW though I have found the couple of flows that I rebuilt (superstar friday afternoon jobs it wold seem) much easier to get straight and tight than lighter and narrower xc rims such as xc717’s or xm317’s.

Once you have budgeted for a new rim and most likely shorter spokes (inner rim diameter AKA ‘ERD’ is such that your old spokes may well be too long) then you might be better off getting your friendly LBS or wheelbuilder to do it properly first time for £15-20 more.

do you mean the pad retaining bolt?
If so split pins are fine: you can get these in any decent hardware shop. Just use needlenose pliers to bend an end out once its in to stop it sliding back out. Tiny leatherman-alike-g tool keyring for a couple of quid and a spare pin in your trail pack, jobs a good-un.

@jamie, they are pretty hideous, non? Whole caadx range is similarly loud, like someone built up a generic/random framed bike and wanted everyone to think it was actually a cannondale by sticking REALLY HUGE LOGOS all over it. Is this so people can still see what it is when you are covered in mud at the end of a race? More i think about it, the more i think i might colour in the letters a slightly lighter shade of bleu or maybe black, and clear/heli tape over the lot…