Email from dcl earlier today, the ride is definitely ON, 18.30 weds at Plym Bridge car park, press and various local teams in attendance.
I will be bringing kitted up kids for the ‘its not just for rad thirtysomethings, its a faaaaaaamily thing’ angle, as is dcl.

dcl, you have mail btw.

Just posted the Wednesday ride on xcracer too. (many localz there).

The Evening Herald website comments page, (albeit totsally irrelevant to the council’s decision on planning) is getting quite funny. Some prankster keeps upsetting the local objectors with the calm application of local knowledge and actual facts, rather than poo-slinging and catastrophising about the woods becoming an MX wasteland.

IMHO a positive press article and as many emails as possible to the council is the real way forward though.

cynic-al – Member

That’s ripe for a project.

Watch this space.

😀 😀

Shirley you could make your own Al, it looks like you could have the urt triangle of a ‘Motorworld Special’, the front off a kids bike and the middle could be whatever you wanted.

The nimbyism round our way is awesome. Plans for a skatepark near me were successfully blocked over concerns about ‘noise’. The site is 300m from the nearest house, and right underneath a four lane 70mph flyover, adjacent to a sewage farm and main line railway. Since then they set up the speedway track next to it (to much local objection but not mine: it’s ace and no trouble to live so close to), perhaps it is worth another go now…

ooooh, there are some proper scoundrels on here! I would like to name and shame carlphillips for forcing me to fit loads of his not-really-that-old bits to my bikes. He even made mrs julian have his nearly new 990 cassette cos it was pink. The cad!

And if that there crispybacon sends me one more nicely-done photo of me or my family at bike events/forum rides i will just explode with computa-rage.

No trails at all in those paticular NT woods jim_kirk, so nothing to shut down by building ‘official’ ones. Recent sanitised trailcentre trails in Haldon have not stopped the ongoing less official development of ‘proper’ ones elsewhere in the same wood, in fact several of them crisscross the gravelly blue trail! The woods round Plym Bridge way are managed/owned by three different bodies, already a designated bike area in fc-run woods half a mile away and lots of semi-cheeky in 2 other woods a further 2-ish miles away. I can’t see the new trails making a difference to official or unofficial trail networks on other people’s land. Plus there is just so much more technical/rooty/daft stuff to ride on down here. 8)

GW – Member

Don’t understand why you didn’t go with to the first reply!

in this case yes, (depending on how soon you want your mirror fixed) but if i did that every time i asked something in this forum, I would probably be living in vietnam driving my kids named Theolodius and Melody around in an lwb defender listening to some awful guitar bobbins music. etc.

‘Rabbit Run’ by John Updike. Nice so far, but i have never seen the word ‘foreshortening’ used so often.

A good big-ish motor factors shop would be worth a ring. If they are local I would try GSF car parts, our local branch is excellent and friendly and probably have a much-cheaper-than-skoda (but fits the same) one in stock.

2nd hand black box reba teams, if you can afford a front hub swap too the maxle one is even better (easily serviced/dropped to 100mm). Almost as good as fox and lasts three times as long 😀

Some first-class, ill-informed and well-worded Nimbyism in the ‘letters’ attachments in the applications. 😆

I have accessed my inner ‘outraged from woodford’ and sent them some impeccably-worded and lenghthy comments both in suppoort of the plans and indeed the ‘new direction’ of the National Trust, and also attempting to put another perspective on the notion that Mainstone will become full of hollering littering bandits, emergency vehicles and silver audis.

At the end of the day, a national trust ‘red trail’ is going to be even less ‘red’ than the one at haldon and a whole lot shorter. Fun and fast if you are fast in the first place, but ultimately safe and not exactly Innerleithen. I can’t see anyone travelling any distance to use it, or any massive increase in injuries to cyclists. A great one for beginners to ‘proper’ singletrack and local yoofs with enthusiasm, a crap bike and no transport, which TBH is just perfect for the local community IMHO. (rad dudes can and will continue to ride in Cann or drive to Gawton/Chipshop/east dartmoor. locals will incorporate it into longer rides but will not really be banging out lap after lap with so much else to ride nearby)

Well done NT 😀

Quite a few locals on xcracer.com too, so I have just posted something about this on there too.

Not sold out, and Shred Events facebook page says entries on the day are fine. Apparently the course is a real beast! 😀

Yes, this way you are most likely to get the lacing right by replacing exactly what you just took out. But before you start, loosen them all off a full turn at a time, working round the wheel until all very slack. Otherwise you may find that loads all break and your rim goes doolally, and will be very much harder to keep straight without some odd combinations of spoke tensions acting on it.
Long winded, but you will get a better built wheel in the end.

I am sure Stoner was on here recently showing off photos and schematics of his impressive DIY home reactor.

‘Generation A’ by Douglas Coupland is set in very near future where bees have died out and he projects all sorts of problems with plants, flowers and veg due to pollination or lack of. So not bees then.

Not a fan of slugs, but then what would the birds eat? And who would hoover up the dog mess on the cycle path near work if the slugs didn’t? I’d have to get rid of dogs too then. 😕

More seriously there really aren’t supposed to be anyrthing like as many cows in the world as there is currently, there would be all sorts of benefits to the atmosphere and availability of farmland to produce more calories per hectare is we weren’t so keen on beef and cow’s milk products.

520’s are maintainable if you have a supply of those teeny tiny bearings, and the time and inclination to do it. I have found a clean and regrease significantly improved performance and life on 515’s and 520’s without bothering finding and replacing bearings, grease had gone dry and brown inside. Depends how much £20 for a new set is worth to you i suppose.
This is the tool to take up slack in bearings on 520’s, only 2 or 3 quid in most places.

Although you could probably bodge it by mashing some molegrips onto the spliney/toothy plastic collar instead.

Clubber, 17 or 18mm internal width iirc. Like a 717, but claimed to be 40g lighter (some customer reviews would suggest there is a LOT of variation in weight particualrly white ones) and easier to mess up the wheel build, requires/needs less spoke tension otherwise they can go all wrong.

I nearly bought some when they were £45 a rim a 2 or 3 years ago, but for a few quid less, possibly 40g weight penalty, easier on/off of tyres and my then-fledgeling wheel building skillz, i went for 717 disc instead. Now the olympics are £30 and 717’s a lot more, and I am better at buiding wheels, I would reconsider them though…

685 on xc bike, looking at the start line at races i think that is pretty wide for a ‘race’ bike but it is my all purpose one. 710mm on singlespeed and bullitt for ‘gurn/stood up leverage’ and ‘control’ factors respectively. I think my shoulders are too narrow for there to me much point in me going much wider.

scotsman – Member

You are kidding on price? I bought an offroad shock for my KTM race bike last year cost me over a grand.

I stand corrected then. (not all that often you hear that on here these days is it? 😆 ) Usually I hear MX riders disbelief at the cost of dh bikes and components compared to top flight mx stuff. Anyone know how fox bike shocks/forks compares in price to mx ones?

I don’t get your distrubution/warranty comment either, they would be imported through mountain bike component recognised importer and distrubuted to bike shops anyway so any warranty claims………… you get where i’m going with this?

As far as i can see, ‘crossover’ brands for parts are still relatively few and far between and mostly at the expensive end. Fox shox and renthal. (Although my brother in law has a manitou tractor/hydraulic lfting arm thingy, and shimano do fishing reels of course)

Kit is different: fox, alpinestars, thor, poc, sidi, tld, o’neill all sell to ‘other’ markets.

I suppose calling your shock a cane creek is just one step further up from selling to an established bike distributor as opposed to distibuting it all by yourself. Spesh, giant, scott and trek all distribute themselves in the UK because they are big and recognised enough, many big brands here are also owned by the distributors too (dmr, kinesis, ragley, nukeproof, identiti, halo etc). Perhaps very small volume high cost sales in an ‘unproven’ market (ie new shock with new brand for significantly more money than the competition) felt too risky to doo without the support of a more recognised brand name? Plus, if they had turned out to be rubbish we would be remembering cane creek’s rubbish not Ohlins’. I wouldn’t be suprised to see Ohlins ‘reclaim’ the shock if it continues to be popular and reliable.

My old scott genius seemed rather sensetive to seatpost heights with its supa/slack seat tube (bent to have room for the shock) Someone posted a maverick (comedy slack seat angle for same reasons) on here the other day with a layback thomson seatpost (the one that looks bent) the wrong way round: apparently the seat clamp has quite a range of angle adjustment.

Houns, seems from a recent thread that huge stacks of spacers under one’s stem are all the rage: about 50mm should do it 😀

It may have been sited there because the water supply was there, and people from other directions may have been used to a good old hike to get there.

In terms of economics/logistics, before proper running water came to my nan’s village in the 20’s/30’s (remote Pyrenees, mostly poor farm labourers) they had a population of 1200 or so and only 2 of those plus a few hand pumps around the village. They both still ‘work’ now, though one is not reccomended for drinking out of now and no one does their washing in them anymore.

scotsman – Member

Anyone know why Ohlins market them through Cane Creek?

because then everyone would be asking why an ohlins pushbike shock costs so much more than than the equivalent quality ohlins motorbike shock.

Oh, and to be slightly less moany, i think distribution/warranty/links with bike shops would be much easier via a recognised big brand rather than ohlins themselves getting to know a whole new market ‘alone’.

As before, even spayed male cats can spray, both my mum’s did in later years. I remember once as a teenager ignoring our family mog in favour of the games console, don’t think it was a coincidence that he peed on the screen after i kept shooing him off staring intently at New Zealand Story. Kind of an ownership/attention thing? I don’t think they chase lady cats after spaying, though same family mog also got a chubby on (like a dog’s but smaller) if you tickled him in the wrong place. That was a bit wierd.

I was more thinking about your bugs going for the kitten, not the other way round!

Oakley have a 100% markup on their sunglasses. Oh, no that one’s true.

My favourite niche conspiracy is quite close to home for me (only ‘famous’ person to appear regularly in my nan’s old family photo albums)

Conspiracy goes that: not only was politician and scourge of french organised-crime mafia types Yann Piat the love-child of Jean-Marie Le Pen (as well as being ‘officially’ his god daughter), but that her motorcycle/drive by murder was also ‘comissioned’ by someone high up in the party, if not Le Pen himself.

I read somewhereorother that much of Wilson’s (no relation!) wibblings about being eavesdropped etc turned out to be bang on, despite everyone thinking he was going a little loopy about it all at the time.

Roper, isn’t it you with all the big spiders? That is going to be interesting!

Anecdotally boy cats are a bit ‘snootier’ and less interested on you than girl cats on the whole, although I have known a couple of ‘drama queen’/clingy males and aloof females that would be exceptions to that trend. Both may claw your furniture to ribbons and bring you (and your spiders!) dead mice or parts of dead mice as presents. Neutering is essential for both sexes imho: male’s behaviour is much more people friendly after the snip, and females will be very odd and howly when in heat and of course curse you with kittens.

Milkie – Member

So whats this?

Duffs I think. Sorry, you did mean the trainers didn’t you?

Otherwise, its a cable pull-to-hydraulic pressure so you can have the unreliability of both cable and hydraulics use your roadie sti’s with hope calipers. Really they should have a crack at doing a rival to the excellent bb7 road brake, surely they have the tooling etc to do it all in house?

Couple of my mates were early crop circle-ers in East Cornwall round 1990-2. They were on some awful/unintentionally funny documentary, cut between beardy types who had visited their ‘work’ (if you can call falling around a field a bit drunk at two in the morning ‘work’) commenting on the ionic energies and similar guff.

I never even realised i had 170mm cranks on one bike i had a few years ago till i took them off. But I do have 170mm on my bullit, more for pedal strikes/ground clearance though. (hmmmm, not that i actually ‘pedal’ it that much. 😳 )

Professional hat on here: philconsequence is bang on.

d45yth:
Fluoxetine doesn’t increse your serotinin as such, it stops your brain taking it away too soon. Pharmacodynamics not the same as MDMA. Although i have known folk with bipolar get ‘high’ with antidepressants that is as much to do with their own illness interacting badly with the drugs. Perhaps that is where your opinions come from? If you don’t have an affective or bipolar illness, you shouldn’t be any ‘happier’ on fluoxetine than you were before you got depressed.

OP:
The bit about seeing your doctor before you come off your dose is good mind, anecdotally and in my professional experience SSRI’s can be difficult to ‘withdraw’ from for some folk, and of course we don’t know how depressed you were before you started. If you have been on them a year and tey have sort of helped, longer term studies tend to suggest your risk of relapse is lower of you give it another year or so than if you discontinue AD’s at this point. That doesn’t mean “don’t stop”, just go see your doctor with an open mind is all.

45 in most shoes including trainers and spesh bike shoes regardless of sock choice, for shimano I fit 45 with thin summer cycling socks, but more like 46 with anything wooly or sealskinzy. [edit] never tried their wintery boots, mind.

Oh BTW, just in case anyone (yes, you Elfin) was mistaking my ‘attempt at keeping the debate sensible and balanced’ for ‘not being a bleeding heart lefty’, Cable rules!. 😀

Woppit, am I right in thinking the quotation marks mean you are posting someone else’s article/comment column up there ^^?

Otherwise well done, nice writing style. I love the term ‘capitalist discipline’, out of context that sounds well funny. 😆

but today is wednesday, that’s outrageous: everything i have ever ordered from superstar has come the next working day. no idea about planet x, ordered a couple if bits and it was pretty quick iirc.

Long answer:
The bush itself is the small round metal or plastic bit (like a hula hoop crisp) -the idea is that the bush wears but the mount kit (the actual ‘offset’ bit) doesn’t. Given that you will be inspecting your bushes every time you swap between standard and offset mount kit, if anything your mount kits will last longer, possibly at the expense of the bush itself which i suppose might get worn a bit quicker if you are frequently pushing the mount bits through it. But the bushes are dead cheap compared to say brake pads, so for me it would be worth potantially say a tenner’s extra bushes per year.

All that said, you may really love your bike in new low/slack geometry and not bother swapping back. Mind to check the shock stroke/linkage movement etc with the offset mounting kit on: either no air in shock or remove spring and refit, then cycle the suspension and make sure nothing knocks anywhere it shouldn’t and that your back tyre won’t rub a hole in your seat tube.

Short answer: buy a proper bushing tool, a bag of bushes and go for it. 😀

Elfin, that card is all sorts of wrong! 😆 (btw, that ‘hairdo’ for next years bbb please)

Congratulationz Emma. 😀