Wait 5 days and try again. The part isn’t missing, it’s not been nicked, you’ll get your money back even if they insist on delivering again and you just have to return it.

Apologies for the click-baitey title. The package was delivered to a neighbour but no note was left through the letterbox and the online system said “doorstep”, hence the alarm.

Please remove those pitchforks from my bum, thanks.

Thanks all., especially bigynn and mick_r. Think I’m happy now that it’s going to fit.

Pics will come when it’s done 👍

Yes we’re going to assemble upright (the F-i-L has managed it easily enough before) and won’t have loads of room left (240 cm floor to ceiling with carpet removed).

I’m panning on removing the correct amount of skirting to get a neat fit, hence needing the measurements.

I’ve never had issues with UPS before, which is why I hesitate. I have authorisation to leave on the front door (small porch) and it was marked as such on the delivery note.

We live kn a cul de sac and you wouldn’t be able to see our door unless you’ve walked up our drive, past the parked car.

So if UPS do have tracking info on their vans, I’ll get in touch sooner rather than later.

The CEO comment was reference to a hilarious thread from a couple of months ago, glad most commenter got it.

Thanks for the anecdotes.

Well which is it, is it an old product which has been improved?
Or a new product, which obviously cannot cannot have been improved, because it’s new?
Can’t be both.

My mum used to whinge about this, which I though was particularly pointless and pedantic.

It’s could be a “new formulation”, which is an “improvement over the old formulation”. The new is a development from the old.

Consensus is they are incompetent at best.

Consensus is that it varies massively and the most critical factor is the local person who does the final stage of delivery.

Round my way, I have issues with our Yodel man. I keep on having parcels chucked over a fence in to the back garden and being left as “back porch” 🤦‍♂️

Me and the little one got out Saturday morning in the fields and woods behind the house, Gosforth (newcastle)

I’m not saying it’s unfriendly mind

We stayed at an air bnb in Hayfield for a weekend and were told our behaviour was disgusting. What did we do? We parked two cars outside the house. As soon as we move one, they ran out and moved their car in to the space 🤣

Great playpark there though, we rode there along the canals from Marple with kiddies on bike seats

They’re not indicators, they’re the park-anywhere lights.

jonba’s got the gist of it.

For work out of Newcastle I wouldn’t discount living further south but within reach of the A1. Yes it gets slow on a morning but it generally keeps moving and you’re not stop/start/queueing through residential rat runs so much. It might also open up areas with better outdoors access.

Chopwell is pretty accessible but can be slow to get to in after-work traffic (20 mins for 8 miles from my place of work) and spends 6 months of the year being a wet and slippery bog. Still good fun though. Hamsterley is better but about an hour.

Hexham is also fantastically provisioned for a town its size but is pretty prices and the local MTB has taken a hammering from forestry work :-( still plenty of more XC stuff, less messing about in the woods.

Link for the curious

https://www.chainreactioncycles.com/brand-x-ascend-cx-85mm-105mm-dropper-seatpost/rp-prod159175

I might have to try one of these…

Wasn’t there a report (from Which?) recently that checked out “green” energy companies credentials? IIRC only two were actually “green” and bought or made green energy instead of just buying credits and trading..

Here’s a link from the Indy, but I havent’ found the Which? source yet.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/renewable-energy-suppliers-green-electricity-which-research-a9123566.html

Whether you mind the finer details of buying credits vs. buying from a supplier, I like that my Ecotricity payments go back in to actually building some infrastructure.

Haven’t read all the reiplies – a pop top is great – can be airy and light – but tit’s so much warmer and quieter downstairs, behind the insulated panels than upstairs in a single skin tent (so it’s colder than a normal tent).

We have a lining made from reflective silver bubble wrap stuff that does a great job making it dark up there for the summer months and keeps it warmer.

You can also get covers that go over the top, which help for blackout and keep it cooler during the summer too.

Not a Bristolian, but Bristol friends have taken us to one of the Meera Sodha’s Thali restaurants. Maybe not what you’re after for a 50th Birthday treat, but if you had a second night and wanted something more low key?

https://www.olivemagazine.com/restaurants/south-west/meera-sodha-at-thali-cafe-montpellier-bristol-restaurant-review/

I do, however, have a volunteer pass from trail building

Ace, thank you for your efforts. 👍

The last time I went to hamsterley (maybe a month after the ANPR started) the number of cars ditched in verges and forest roads was equally hilarious and disappointing. It cna only have got better as folks realise that a year-long pass for £40 is worth it…

Shiny car £10’000
Shiny bike £3’000
Petrol to drive there £5
Avoiding car park fees that fund the trails £priceless

And I’ll just wait for the “I’ve been riding there since before the man mad trails” and “I only ride the off piste”

do road.cc block comments on all ebike articles?

I think they disable comments on current legal cases.

Singles Night at the Institute of Mechanical Engineers

That would be next Tuesday’s lecture on Mentoring for MPDS.

Buy longer and cut them down. Run a nut up the bolt, saw the end off, file it then take the nut off – the nut will open the threads up again.

The pricing puts in in line with an Aluminium alloy Nomad, a whole chunk less than the carbon fibre Nomad…

Our X-reg, 99960 mile Yaris

You couldn’t get an extra 40 miles out of it, you monster?

Are these racks any good?

There’s a fair few in NZ who use them for overnight backcountry stuff on their FS bikes. I’ve heard good things form them (also before Thule bought them).

How the hell else are kids supposed to deal with this world they’re in I don’t know.

I wrapped stays with an inner tube and it ate through those in no time at all.

I did have to trim the flats shorter to fit around the cable bosses on the stays though.

All the best rich, hope things keep going smoothly as possible. I’ll shout you a drink next time I’m in the Riflemans, aye.

building/DIY rubble and dust (clogs up filter)

Stupidly sold the old vacuum before we did building work. The plaster dust clogged up the filter pretty quickly so bought a spare so we could be washing/drying one filter while the other was in use. It also made a bit of a mess of the normal head, but otherwise it’s all doing well now it’s been retired to a normal life.

taxi25 – I was about to say that you should by him a printer for a present, but if he’s old and alone he probably also values the interaction with you.

Who knows? That’s what makes this so exciting!

we went for the extra fancy head for hard floors but I don’t think we’ve ever used that

Same, although I recently started using the correct head for hard floors and it’s even better.

I thought that til last week…

Let me tell you about the time I was riding home and found my down tube was rusted through. Explained the increasingly wobbly handling….

Have you put any bird boxes or bat boxes in? They’re also on my list to do.

The feeders are starting to get some attention from the birds now.

Unfortunately most of the work in my garden is detrimental to wildlife as I’m having to remove a bunch of massively overgrown thorny shrubs…

No ethnic cleansing so see here, just a little unfinished business, I mean tidying up.

Without advertising precisely where I live, the site being discussed is this strip of land

My garden is backing on to the river, there is also the strip beyond the adjoining gardens and the car park to play with.

Bunnyhop, this is in North East England:-)

They’ll need to be big enough that they can’t be mown over.

if you do it properly the guys with the mowers might think the work’s been done by another section of the council.

I’m going to stake them up properly so they can’t be pushed over too easily, but sounds popular, think I’ll give it a go, thanks for the encouragement.

commuting bikes also have that additional element of reliability, like marathon tyres instead of the racing GP 9001’s.

Goggles yes – mostly reserved for when it big ups and fast downs. Keeping them clean and dry is a pain in normal riding conditions so I’ll use glasses.

I was a Lost Prophets fan. I thought I could listen to thefakesoundofprogress by dissociating the art from the artist (or one of them anyway). Turns out I couldn’t and I didn’t finish the album.

As other have suggested it could be about priority – a conversation interrupts whatever it is you are doing. Unless something is urgent, they might be better off with an email and it can sit in your inbox until you have finished what you are currently doing and check emails.

Email is great for creating lists and formalising things. It allows the author to draft and redraft what it being said, being carefully adjusted for tone and .

Maybe your manager hates face-to-face conversations. (I hate phone calls…)

Maybe her feet hurt.

Maybe you smell. ;-)

One place I worked at used ICQ as an intermediate – not as high priority to deserve a meeting but not so formal as to need an email. It was mostly used for MTB chit chat.

Newcastleton is a blue/purple fundulating rtail.

Kielder has much mroe choice of red trails. The classic red at Kielder is nearly entirely single track too, with technical climbs instead of forest road.