A motor-bike, of course.

Just had CRC refund me for a bottom bracket I (no quibble) returned on Thursday, free, via Collect plus.

Went to LBS, whose prime function these days would be expertise and convenience – “please put a BB and chainring on that”. A week later, “oh we couldn’t find a BB and forgot about the chainring”. 8O

So decided to go hollowpoint and ordered a crankset from CRC on Sunday; it was on my desk this morning.

Some stag do things I’ve done that were awesome:
Paintball, karting, mountain biking, coasteering, a meal with some adults talking enthusiastically about the paintball, karting, mountain biking, or coasteering.

Stag do weekend that could have been grindingly dull and awful:
Racing to finish the next pint, again and again, for three nights in a row in order to be “hardest”. What made it fun was that I knew there was no way I could keep up, so a few pints in when people’s vision went wobbly, I’d drink an inch or two from my glass, then swap my glass with someone who only had an inch or two left. All night. Every night.

I bounced out of bed at 11:00 am every day fresh faced and ready for brekkie after apparently going pint for pint with them and they thought I was well ‘ard!

(I quite liked the strip club too.)

Those were ear muffs.

I’d un-scrap the harriers (well, it IS all fantasy), stop any future spend on the eurofighter, put electric catapults in the new carriers and buy F18s, and make the airforce the airborne arm of the army.

I’d do the legalise drugs thing too – they’d be regulated and available (and taxed) from pharmacies whilst the expensive war on drugs stops.

And I’d tax bicycle wheels ferociously for every inch over 26.

Hi roller on front.
Hi roller fitted wrong way round on back.

Works brilliantly in everything.

I know someone who’s a food scientist; when faced with a fridge full of isotonic and electrolytonic (and so on) drinks he glanced at the labels, said “no way” and bought a full fat coke. He reckons these sport nutrition manufacturers are packing all the extra chalk and uranium and whatnot in to make a selling point, not because you need it.

If the doc says he can’t find anything (fingers crossed) you’ll still want an explanation – the weird minerals might be it.?

(Just out of interest – anyone ever seen a sherpa drinking pukeozade sport or the like..?)

He’s a fantasist, running around the world booking multiple hotels and leaving by the back door, pretending the black helicopters are following him (he’s alive and free, so they’re not).

His operation is so devoid of anything worthwhile to publish they went after an online news source claiming it was really an arm of the CIA (or illuminati, or whatever) because they have (gasp!) contacts and sources all over (gasp!) THE WORLD!

Nevertheless he IS guilty of publishing protectively marked material which he paid people to steal.

I ride with my GF, who is slower for a variety of reasons but it never gets annoying. The only habit I insisted on breaking was that of pushing up every hill.

Although I do still need to shout out shifter and digit combos to get her in the right gear and she has to stop to pick up her bar end tassels a bit too often I really enjoy every outing; but I’ll caveat that by saying *I* ride for fun, never enter any events, I don’t weigh myself, my food, or the bike, or ever time or measure anything I do (outside the bedroom).

A simple “all wheel drive” mountain bike would be a unicycle with a knobbly tyre.

Just my thoughts:
Road cycling is an incredibly dull sport, and it’s very dullness is also why cheating reaps such rewards, and is so common. It’s basically about spending several weeks in a state of constant exertion and agony, with a relatively tiny skill requirement. The only meaningful increases in performance are in the ability to burn more calories.

But I don’t think these people can be taking half of what they’re accused of cos if they were they’d be giant walking lumps of heart muscle covered in testicules by now.

I rode bicycles offroad from about the age of 5, there was a little copse opposite the house the local yoofs dug some little rollers and berms into, from there into my teens me and my mates progressed to the local army ranges and old railway tracks and such, bikes ranged from BMX’s to drop barred ‘racers’ to ‘mountain bikes’ (Remember the Raleigh Mustang!). This is the period within which I did my ‘training’.

I seem to remember we would find a lump, or drop, or whatever, and ride at it and see what happened. If you’re scared, get someone else to go first by ‘daring’ them.

HTH

People don’t understand our system – they think they vote for a Prime Minister, not one of many MPs who then form a government from among themselves – so we need to educate people or change the system to what they think it is.

Also the last time I watched some footage of a debate in the Lords and a debate in the Commons, I felt that we’d be better off scrapping the Commons and keeping the Lords. The commons was sound-bites, puns, dogma and point-scoring… it was like STW forum live; the lords had an intelligent discussion. 8O

Sounds like your lower back muscles are weak.
Weak muscles get stronger with exercise.
A sport physio will be able to offer good advice on exercise for the muscles in question.
The internet can offer … advice on exercise for the muscles in question.

And remember; stretch what you strengthen (and strengthen what you stretch).

This is the STW forum. It’s inhabited by rambler operated sock puppets, tubby IT managers who puff along at 12mph on burled up all-mountain bikes, and bizarre whippet like Mekons who like to squeeze into lycra hot pants and tube tops and grind up hills in the rain… And you come here for advice about WOMEN?

Stop prevaricating, lay your eggs in her brain and maybe when they hatch in her sleep the larvae can eat the married guy too.

Must be a thing with buzzards. I had exactly the same experience when out on my KLX once time, the bird just cruised head of me for ages – I guess maybe 20mph with no wing beats!

I was quite enthralled, superficially it looked very relaxed and effortless but there were continuous small movements from it’s tail and wing tips.

I remember a story about little girl who whined that some porridge was too muddy, some was too artificial, some was too gravelly, some had braking bumps, and then some bears brutally ripped her head off and ate the soft bits and everyone said “thank God for that”.

A tale of caution.

I don’t think the British Empire did anything that any previous Empire didn’t – with the exception that the British Empire banned slavery (a practice so old it pre-dates sharpening the sticks we used to hit each other with) within itself and then “ended”* it by enforcing the ban with a bloody big fleet.

(I wasn’t in the British Empire so deserve no credit or shame.)

So just for the exercise, what massive shift in the entire world conciousness (good or bad) did any other Empire leave behind?

*Of course, slavery on a much smaller scale does still go on.

It’s not the booze at all. It’s the person.
Well worth a read:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15265317

Ramblers have morphed from a gutsy bunch of countryside lovers making things good for its members to a red-faced gibbering monolith only concerned with making things worse for others.

They remind me of American evangelists, fantasising that the presence of homosexuals/non-walkers will cause earthquakes and floods, and any and all rights for these ‘others’ must be resisted.

That said, if getting a route changed to shared use ends up with a 4 meter wide tarmac road then let’s just leave the access rights as they are and keep the cheeky singletrack as singletrack.

It’s possibly pointless to take a forum/interest and treat it like an individual, but why not. Mountain bikers moan if a trail is too difficult. They moan if it’s too easy. They moan if it’s too soft. Or too hard. They moan if it’s too lumpy. Or too smooth. They moan that Ashton court is too artificial. They moan about braking bumps in trail centres. Mountain bikers moan about trail erosion. Mountain bikers post vids here all the time showing mountain bikes ripping brown grooves through green ground. Mountain bikers moan about others using legal rights of way. Mountain bikers ride wherever they feel like, because they ‘should be allowed there’.

I love pitting my skill on two wheels against the terrain. Been doing it so long I remember when mountain bikes arrived and I felt glad someone had invented a bike for the kind of riding I did. The sense of kinship with a trail rider is obvious, we love the same thing. Mountain bikers get the whole network, they had 5% of it. The government’s own investigation held recreational use of green lanes to be insignificant in erosion, and the green laners were stiffed out of half their access anyway. If one group of people can be treated that shoddily, any of us can.

Ultimately, the argument against trail riding is the same. The damage WE do is ok, the damage THEY do is not. Mountain bikes do far more damage by their sheer numbers, but it’s damage spread over 100% of the network, not 2%.

Mountain bikers hate trail-bikes almost as much as they hate people who run different sized wheels to themselves.

Maybe mountain bikers should break the habit of hating by default, stand back, and think. What a fantastic bunch of nutters offroaders are, pitting everything from ponies through fixed wheel single speed bicycles to 1960s vintage trials bikes against our glorious rocks and mud. What a privilege to know them.

The pipehouse was made of great big ROCKS. From what I’ve seen (and I’ve been there once upon a time) and read It’s only become “ruttable” now that a softer (but temporarily flatter) surface was lobbed on top.

I remember when I started mountain biking – quite some years before anyone I knew had even heard of a mountain bike – and if a patch of ground was muddy it never occurred to us to blame someone. It’s the countryside, it’s MADE OF MUD. We rode round, or through, or somewhere else. We used to put on wellies and old jeans and actively look for muddy hikes.

I sometimes wonder if everyone else is the same species as me…

Yep, lack of bridleways (or whatever) means more use of those that there are, making them wear worse and get busier, meaning they need to be downgraded or turned into motorways, and so on.

As for ease access vs interestingness of challenge, simply (hah!) make it so the further from the log fence bordered carpark with information point and viewing spot you get, the gnarlier the terrain is allowed to get/remain. That way the ‘lightweights’ will never get to, or complain about, the good stuff.

Trials on 2 wheels is un-timed attempts to beat a piece of terrain without putting yer feet down, or falling off. The top guys are the ones who balance on and leap across skips, cars, and giant cotton reels.

Wonder if the horse equivalent of STW has “What horse shoes for…” threads?

I see the ramblers have got into this thread too. :roll:

OP: keep riding, sounds great. Is there actually such a thing as horse ‘trials’, in the way that a biker would understand the word?

Adjust the pressures, and almost anything’ll do. Seen regulars from here on top of the charter house trig point in cludgy conditions, fully rigid bike, clown wheels, slick tyres, riding everything. Get on with it! :lol:

Good call on green laning, until the redsocks and bobble hats have you banned. But the gentle nature of that or a trials-y kinda motorbiking would be good. Has all the technical demands of mountain biking but probably doesn’t make the very specific demands of your knees that matter. Hell, you might even find cross country/enduro/hare scrambles are ok, and they are very hard work – you wanted to be active.

Or for a out the box idea try my other big hobby, corde lisse! :lol: (But yes, really.)

Why bother being pedantic?

I don’t know of any mountainbikers using the trails either, just cyclists (theres no mountain?).

Appart from a slightly lower compression piston, revised gearing, softer springs and damping (i.e. all internal changes so far) and a headlamp and a brake light, there’s no difference between a WR450F and a YR450F. To anyone watching it go past it’s impossible to tell the difference. And to a member of the public a XT(whatever capacity theyre at now) probably looks exactly the same too!
Well you wouldn’t call someone out pony trekking a steeplechaser, despite the horse having 4 legs, nor someone out rambling as a fell runner despite etc. Trail riding is pony trekking on a motor bike. The only real difference being (from my experience) that pony trekking doesn’t require you to pick the horse up and kick start it several times per mile.

There’s loads of MXers and 4x4ers in Wiltshire and they’ve helped out with new signage on the Plain. I guess that’s a sign that they enjoy good relations with the MOD and will continue to trash the trails use the trails.

I doubt there’s any MXers at all, no motocross riders I know find greenlaning remotely interesting. But still, damn those 100kg motorbikes, I bet all the military tanks and trucks trying to use Salisbury plain are always getting stuck in their ruts.

Good bl00dy grief… :roll:

All mountain bikers are swivel eyed loons, but it’s ok because their swivel eyed loonery is based around actually enjoying hurtling down hills, grinding up climbs and drinking muddy water straight off the front tyre; no harm to anyone (else).

The objectionable swivel eyed loonery is in the persecution of a bunch of recreational countryside users who have more in common than not with anyone on an MTB, who use a mere 2% of offroad trails and have only ever asked to be allowed to enjoy what little remains to them.

And as a mucky two wheeler I must point out, “a bicycle isn’t a horse”, just as “a motorbike isn’t a landrover”.

ChrisE

Klumpy – I still can’t accept that you argue ‘Green lanes are roads that were never tarmacced’ then will not accept that when totaling up the kilometres of routes open to ride, you do not include the ‘ordinary road network’. You can’t have it both ways!

Right, and for mountain bikes we include all the cycle paths in city centers… I’m talking about pitting two wheeled machines against offroad conditions for recreation. It’s so ridiculous, mountain bikers objecting to trail riders makes as much sense as a cross country MTB-er objecting to All-Mountain bikes.

Wrong question.

Is it IL-legal? If not, do it. I know it seems a small difference, but laws should be few telling us what can’t be done, not many and telling us what can.

Such a load of toss being spewed on this. Green lanes are roads that were never tarmacced, bridleways and footpaths are rights of way that were opened up under right to roam, neither has anything to do with the other. For every kilometer of green lane there are twenty of bridleway and footpath, puts the whinging in context really.

Mountain bikers quite rightly ignore the restriction to bridleways – that’s how ramblers got their footpaths after all. Green lane bikers would love act the same, but the moment you have a number plate it gets a lot more perilous. It’s not being in the right or not that makes it easy or not.

The depressing thing is how everyone’s a rambler at heart. “Well I’m not doing any harm, but THEY shouldn’t be here…” A phrase I’ve seen used here is “jealous of those having more fun”. Quite.

I got SPDs then fitted the ‘multi release’ cleats (ie: that come out really easily). Even an instinctive leg twitch will pull my foot free, but they still help loads for pedalling, and even popping the bike around a bit.

Case closed.[/url]

Physiotherapist – GP might send you, you might have to find your own.

I had wasted lower back muscles on one side, with desperately bad flexibility thrown in, and a herniated disk – all from a snowboard crash two years old. I saw a private physio TWICE, and am without symptoms. If you do what they say, you’ll get better.

(chiropractic/acupuncture users say things like “he’s really good, I’ve been seeing him for 10 years”. Why aren’t they better yet?)

All the nuclear waste (and weapons) we currently have is actually viable nuclear fuel – for reactors not based on 1950’s designs. It can be used, drawn out, enriched, used, drawn out, enriched, until there’s “none” left.

Happens at full lock at very low speed == power steering something or other, and not necessarily bad. But maybe.

Will it do it at a standstill?

Inner tubes.
Oranges.
Kendal Mint cake.
Pipe Tobacco.
Hipflask.
Flippers.
Condoms.
Swarfega.
Clingfilm.
Trenching tool.