I feel some sympathy for the people in charge of managing these routes when confronted by mountain bikers.

They get moaned at because a trail is a lumpy unrideable mess, so they put down a lovely smooth gravel path. Then they get moaned at because it’s too easy. They must sometimes think we’re being deliberately difficult, and as a user group we can be a little bit “goldilocks”.

It’s too difficult, it’s too easy, it’s too lumpy, it’s too smooth, as a user group we can encompass opinions ranging from “trail centers are too smooth”, to outrage that people have been braking and leaving bumps!

I wouldn’t like to try and keep us happy, we’re a bunch of asshats. (Not me, of course, but the rest of you. 😉 )

And let’s not forget, they don’t only cater to us, they have to cater to at least some access for EVERYONE, right down to the unsteady on their feet or in a wheelchair. Someone wheeling Granny to the viewpoint doesn’t relish the challenge of slippery roots and rock drop offs.

Also recommend a physio. Recommending yoga or pilates for an already bad back is a bit like recommending a healthy diet to someone having a heart attack.

Right now you need targeted intervention, then when it’s sorted you want a lifestyle to keep you generally well – quite possibly involving yoga.

(The downside with physio is that it’s basically up to you to make yourself better based on their advice – that’s why so many prefer woo and chiro-quackery. No effect, but no work to do either.)

I went over the bars and landed on my chest and my lid’s peak, and not my face.

XC riders all have huge bulbous gallic noses, so in order to protect them the peaks would be so big they’d strain the rider’s neck muscles, so they don’t bother.

You’d think you’d be able get a full sized 100bhp bike that’ll do 100mpg if ridden, err, ‘normally’.

Normally? 🙂 And 100mpg where? My old ZX-7R did 70 odd MPG on the motorway at 90mph – so the previous owner told me, officer.

But fuel consumption will only get worse as environmental measures get stricter because of exhausts choked with catalyzers and fuelling set to protect them. A bike mag got a power commander and some exhaust spares and made a 600cc sport bike faster, more economical, and reduced emmissions (CO2 was undetectable with their equipment) – but it was a bit louder. Apparently noise is considered as bad as poison and CO2, so it would never pass whatever it is motor vehicles pass to be sold somewhere.

I’ve commuted my current commute on a ’96 fireblade, a ’92 GPz500, a 2000 KLX300 enduro bike, and a ’07 SV 650.

I’ve got 50mpg on all four of them. I guess if you’re going the same kind of speed, it only takes the same kind of energy to do it.

The KLX was amazing in town. It was also amazing on A-roads in the rain in the dark on FIM enduro tyres and 6 volt electrics. But not in a good way.

Get him doing judo.
Next time he gets attacked, all the teachers will hear is he tripped the other guy up, or threw him on the floor. No-one will think ill of it, the uninformed don’t consider anything not involving fists to be fighting at all. (Most folks don’t know the direction martial arts have taken since UFC et al.)

As for so many dogs apparently going against the nature of the breed, could be this is considered a good breed to put some pitbull into and get away with it…?

Bacon.

The simple fact is that when you come to buy a new bike in a few years, it won’t have 26in wheels, that’s all.

It’s going to be very interesting…
No, it isn’t, it’s the opposite. It is un-interesting, it is anti-interesting, it is to interesting what black is to white, it is the thing that if banged into some interesting would annihilate both and release an amount of energy proportional to the speed of light squared.

Interesting, it is not.

Serious failure to check facts there by the editor.

(It is not interesting.)

*self important bump*

Fuel gets to the carb, but not from the carb to the motah?
floats sticking?

Ah yeah, me, I have one – about 4 yrs old I think.
They’re a bit heavy but once you’ve mashed up a hill it’s hard to imagine what would be more fun going down the other side. Awesome fork (it’s so dialled) absorbs everything while the back clatters off everything. Riding some other bikes it seems the fork is set up a bit playful, pops and hops about easily.

Also a surprisingly good technical climber.

I think it’s the perfect ‘ride up hills to ride down hills’ bike, which is the definition of a mountain bike, right?

😆
Was the OP in the:
Left turn lane
Right turn lane
My turn lane
…?

Sounds like you convinced yourself that he was *not* turning off at the exit after yours, and you were wrong. Why did you assume that?

Gladly the whole thing has just been a learning experience.

From some posts on this thread it seems you can go to the gym and lift little weights, and get the same effect as the guys who lift the big ones. Turn down the incline on the treadmill, the resistance on the spin bike, makes no difference.

Seriously, to all the carbon loving weight weenies, no-one’s saying that your light bikes mean you’re not fit, we all acknowledge that the typical XC bike rider is built like a bunch of twiglets wrapped in sausage skin.

Get into other things.

I can understand some people only being into cycling, it can make perfect sense.

Just not in this country.

TNG. Compensate. That annoyed me.

“Captain our [piece of technology] is [working less well]!!”
“Compensate!!”
“Aye sir!”
.
.
.
Really, you needed telling that..?

B5 was great, latest BSG was great (let’s pretend the ending never got made), Farscape was great.

Wouldnt it be better to get your child educated in a language more widely spoken internationally? Rather than one with limited appeal outside of one small nation, where most people there speak english anyway?

Thing is that learning languages is a skill that can be learned, so by learning Welsh she’s learning that skill. And learning languages does good things to your brain (haven’t heard that Welsh is an exception). And learning dead languages can be useful in an archeological way.

I have, I thought The RAID did it better.
.
.
.
Only kidding, thought it was great. 🙂

I’ve only ever “raced” with an engine, at hare scrambles, but I imagine some of my experience might resonate with some of “the rest of us” who’ve been passed downhill on an MTB?

When it comes to being overtaken, don’t worry about the (other) crap riders, they won’t be overtaking. Don’t worry about the expert riders, they’ll burst into view in your peripheral vision, wheels at hip height, leg cocked in thanks, having ridden up a tree to go round you. Worry about the merely good riders – good enough to want, but not get, past. They ride over you.

Then, one day, you arrive behind (another) crap rider. He checks his shoulder and pulls over, you quickly do likewise – figuring he’s seen a looming expert jockeyed death machine skipping along at head height behind you. You stop. You look back. No-one’s there. You look forward into the uncomprehending eyes of someone who has in fact stopped … to let YOU past!? 😮

(One experience that doesn’t translate is on a fast open part, being passed and sprayed with a rooster tail composed entirely of brick sized shards of flint.)

Always remember never to say always or never.
You can’t help someone up a hill without getting nearer the top yourself.

instead of egg?

You mean you poach your eggs in beans..?
That. Is. Genius.

I like mine stacked in pairs on toast.

Upper one is done in a frying pan, no water, a little oil.
Lower one is done in a saucepan, using beans instead of egg.

Try it!

I think he’s tripped up using the word aptitude.

Racing wheel to wheel at 200mph and deciding “either you let me through or we both die”, takes a certain something. Let’s be honest, a lot of the motorsport types who’ve gone out and won and won and won have had a certain trait in common – they were basically psychopaths. 😀

Women are less likely to be psychopaths, so generally are less suited.

If the challenge was simply putting in fast times they’d be better represented. (Out of interest, how do ladies do in rallying?)

I think the majority of drivers haven’t been taught how to overtake

IAM training would teach that.

But this forum (possibly this thread) has offered the gem that advanced drivers are boy racers too immature to confine their antics to the track.

The thing with ASLs is that you are only LEGALLY allowed to enter the box via the feeder lane,

So an ASL across 3 lanes must be entered from the left, then anyone wanting to set off from the right must ride 90 degrees across the front of the queue (dodging round other cycles that got there first)? Who the hell came up with something so utterly dangerous and useless and stupid!! How did this non-idea get implemented all over the country!?

(And the times I’ve ventured my motorbike onto an ASL to allow the bikes behind onto it, THEY weren’t allowed on there anyway cos they didn’t approach from the right place!! Well, never again! 😆 )

scuzz, put down the keyboard and step away from the crazy person.

Bikes with lots of cylinders, power and bodywork are a pain to work on and consumables cost a lot.

Definitely, and can be hard to clean the expensive metal bits. The SV is very open to cleaning, obviously a supermoto is too. (I think the best road going supermoto would be the KTM, but the £2K limit might be tight.)

Honda Hornet loads about, enough poke to make you grin and as tough as old boots.

Another great choice.

I bought an SV to hack to work and back, and it’s so good it’s almost persuaded me to ride on the road for fun again! Engine is punchy revvy and fun but totally unintimidating, it’s light and flickable but stable.

Effectively the selfishness of the line jumper compels everyone behind him to drop back and re-establish safe distances, sending a slowing down wave through the flow of traffic which we are all familiar with from the motorways.

You could of course always check what the HC has to say about this…

See page 1 (yes, PAGE ONE) of this thread for that:

168
Being overtaken. If a driver is trying to overtake you, maintain a steady course and speed, slowing down if necessary to let the vehicle pass. Never obstruct drivers who wish to pass. Speeding up or driving unpredictably while someone is overtaking you is dangerous. Drop back to maintain a two-second gap if someone overtakes and pulls into the gap in front of you.

The overtakee is required to help the overtaker past if necessary, and the overtakee is responsible for re-establishing the 2 second gap. We knew that 24 pages ago, but some people think they know better than the highway code.

Derailleur gears, especially on a mountain bike. A gearbox completely unsealed and open to the dirt, with some of it on the wheel thus adding to unsprung mass.

A mobile phone that is impossible to grip without touching the antenna – utterly cretinous.

I’m not interested in wingedness, it’s another word for dogmatic.

A X wing govt who had good evidence that a policy normally considered Y wing could do a lot of good would find it hard to implement, because it’s not of the correct wing.

Same with greens, they absolutely must follow green dogma regardless of all else.

We need a follow the evidence party, but as it would want to legalise drugs, build nuclear power stations, be completely uninterested in immigration, and have a fiscal policy of “we’ll let ya know when we’ve seen the books, and then a mix of right and left”, it would be unelectable.

(EDIT: I didn’t RATS, but a scan suggests that’s kinda what the thread is mostly about! 🙂 )

As an aside, I want a new strict code of conduct for the house of commons, if they were required to act like adults they might start thinking like adults, plus they’d (accidentally, at first) listen to each other and realise that things are more nuanced than their party fed dogma.

However, that flexibility doesn’t extend to cheesecake and cookies.

Burn him!!

You should eat the pie-leo diet.
A wide variety of whole foods, in pie.

I occasionally get that after a bad cold. Didn’t occur to me that my swollen nose was an internal zit until someone suggested it.

So (that one time) I squeezed my nose, and it hurt. Then I squeezed it more and something “went”. I actually leaped in the air while recoiling from my hand, went blind for a few seconds, and blood and puss came out my nose, which made a change.

I highly recommend it. (I am not a doctor.)

It’s possible to say that there was no pwnage on display without actually being on the side of IDS.

Nevertheless, this video invites the thread to descend into a combined argument on tories vs others and Scottish independence so should be closed immediately.

(29ers suck!)

A dog had a growl at us one day, and the owner said “he’s never liked bicycles, that’s why I’m walking him on a footpath”.

Why, you, ah, err … 😳

Is it true that those airport fire engines are that shape so that they can mow down fences and gates to get to surrounding fields?

Couldn’t give a stuff about wingedness – or even democracy for its own sake. Just critical thinking, and evidence following.

For example. We currently still have prohibition of (some, arbitrarily chosen) drugs, we can barely mange to build a nuclear power station, and we sold all our carrier capable aircraft for spares right before buying two aircraft carriers.

Also, watch a debate in the commons, then in the lords. Then tell yourself the democratically elected house gives us anything of worth.

Not sure what wingedness any of that makes me, but yearning for wingedness of any stripe seems daft.

Ah, I’m back in for a moment. The whole accident rates since speed cameras is easily tackled, the propaganda officer at my speed safe course tripped over his own feet with this one.

Turns out (according to him) that before they can install a speed camera at the particular accident blackspot, they must also “fix” the area. It might be extra signs, resurfacing, changed priorites, (re)moving hedgrows, white paint, street lighting… And then they bung a speed camera somewhere within a mile of the place. And fatalities go down! Because of the camera! Right?

When Swindon threw all theirs away, fatalities dropped by 100% that year. (From 1 to 0 mumble mumble but that’s 100%.)