First, arrive at said climb with plenty of speed to carry you up.

Second, ever seen a trials motorcyclist accelerating up a slippy slope? Where is his weight? Over the back wheel! Where is your weight when pedalling hard? Over the front wheel!

Learning to hang off the back will help with traction a lot. Think of pushing the pedals forwards, not down, but still keep a bend in your arms and your chest low.

If there are some big lumps to get over, accelerate ’til the front wheels’s over, rock forward to pull the back wheel over, then over the back to apply more power.

(Or just buy an uplift.)

Round my way they must all be doing fine, as they don’t seem to want my business. Dropped a bike in and asked for it to have a new bottom bracket in a week. A week later and they ‘hadn’t got round to it’.

Dropped a wheel in and asked for it to have new bearings in a week. A week later and they ‘hadn’t got round to it’.

Asked to order a bottom bracket (different occasion), was told to get it myself off the internet.

I would moan about poor customer service but as they never did anything, so I never paid anything, I guess I am not actually a customer. Foiled!

There is no such word as “loosing”

You loose arrows with a bow, so could definitely be said to be ‘loosing arrows’. (Confusingly, you might also ‘lose’ some of them and so be simultaneously loosing and losing arrows – which is where the confusion originates I imagine.)

Your background doesn’t tile. Not sure about the button, and it doesn’t even say what it does. “Click here for prices” would be better.

@weeksy

Riding on the road is about forward observation, lines are chosen above all else to aid visibility and are decided ad hoc as the situation unfolds, all roads are ridden as though you’ve never seen them, anything you can’t see is a hazard, brakes are used sparingly if at all.

Riding on the track is about learning the way and putting in utterly consistent inch perfect laps – despite what you can or can’t see, lines are chosen for maximum speed, brakes are used late and hard.

They’re very very different.

Don’t understand why people keep mentioning race tracks. Riding on a race track and riding on the road are two skillsets with basically no overlap at all, beyond the rudiments of a bike’s controls.

Maybe not realising that is part of the problem for guys like this.

(Seen blood riders on a mission a few times. For the handful of seconds you get to observe them applying the system it’s a privilege, there, past, gone – was he ever really here…?)

One thing to bear in mind with the nuclear “waste” problem.

It’s not a waste problem, it’s a semantics problem.

The “waste” typically has about 97% of the original energy still in it.

Our nuclear “waste” is an enormous stockpile of nuclear fuel.

There’s no harm in nipping a foot over the double whites for a moment, not where he did it.

The issue was hugging the left verge on the approach to a left hander – he could easily have gone round that corner at that speed* if he hadn’t done absolutely everything wrong, and then target fixated on the car. Another vote for ‘first ride this year and very rusty’.

* not actually that fast, even with the fish eyed go-pro’s tendency to make everything look 200% more dramatic and awesumz it still didn’t look quick.

When riding on the flat you only need to overcome the rolling resistance and friction inherent in the bike and wind resistance. Riding up hill you need to overcome all that, and gravity. You need to do more work.

To maintain a steady speed you can maintain your cadence and increase the force you apply to the pedals, or you can keep the force and change the cadence (ie: go down the gears) but you’re still doing more work. You can’t just go slower and keep the difficulty the same for one simple reason:

If you stopped pedalling, you’d roll backwards. You have to exert some effort to just stay still, unlike when on the flat. That’s the ‘extra effort’.

Mountainbike.

When they were called klunkers it was about pulling bikes out of scrapyards and bouncing downhill for giggles. I love the fact that if your brakes weren’t good enough you just fitted a Bigger Lever.

I don’t get why it’s not the other way around. Bigger wheels roll better, but turn slower, right?

So doesn’t it make more sense to have the bigger wheel on the back (doesn’t steer, doesn’t have suspension on a HT)?

No. It’s harder to push a wheel over something than pull it over something (anyone who’s used a wheelbarrow knows that). The front wheel is being pushed, so has a greater need to ‘roll better’, the rear is being pulled (if you’re free wheeling) or actively trying to climb up obstacles (if you’re pedalling).

Ever seen a motocross or enduro bike with a bigger radius rear wheel than front? And while the world of offroad motorbikes isn’t immune to some marketing guff, it isn’t to the same level that golf clubs HiFi and mountain bikes enjoy. 🙂

Watched some motocross the other day.
The track had bumps.
The riders used their skill to use, jump, or avoid them.
They seemed to be enjoying it.

Did you try using your skill to use, jump, or avoid them?

It might be fun.

Otherwise, well, kinda wonder why you’re on the dirt, really, if you wouldn’t find that sort of thing fun.

Reading the topic I had this vision of the poster typing on his phone while riding and hoping for a reply before he stacked. 🙂

I’d say take care to get something that is goretex. Cheap brands with made up ‘nafftex’ layers leak quickly and copiously, IME. My HG goretex kit is still water proof after more than 3 years of ~50 miles a day ride to work use. (You do need to use a wash in waterproofing elixir from time to time.)

I remember a small article by Douglas Adams, written at a time when he spent his time half and half in the UK and US. Both countries have laws/rules/habits/precedents against ‘overtaking on the left’, and ‘parking against traffic’. The UK police generally don’t tend to care about parking against traffic and the US police generally don’t tend to care about undertaking.

Naturally Mr Adams managed to do both manouvers in the ‘wrong’ country in quickish succession, safely (he claimed), and lamented the arbitrary manner in which certain guidelines are picked up and applied as absolute law.

Regardless, in the UK undertaking is effectively utterly forbidden, unmarked police cars will cruise the middle lanes of quiet motorways at 65mph in order to dupe you into doing it, and traffic law is generally not subject the due process we should expect.

So I won’t be doing it.

(Much).

every (other) Ethernet cable we tested and listened to also worked better in one direction than the other

Really? Must try turning the cable round at home to speed up my broadband.

That’s one problem with a cycle lane – works quite well when everyone’s overtaking you, but in this situation (focussing on the mechanics of it) you are basically filtering past a solid line of traffic, on the left, past junctions, in the dark.

Would you approach that differently (or not do it at all) if there wasn’t a foot-wide strip of orange tarmac there?

If all MTBs had always come with 29 inch wheels you wouldn’t even bother to ask, would you? Then again, if she’s a novice do you even care about a minute differences in wheel size that might eek out a coupla minutes over 2 hours of racing? Find the best deal you can that fits, it will have wheels, they will be some size or other, and who cares what.

You open by saying that there should be more cycle paths to get more ordinary folk using cycling as ‘active travel’, then repeatedly moan about how cycle paths don’t suit elite roadies on training runs. (Frankly – so what?)

You also say that cyclists don’t like using cycle paths and later give one of the reasons as they’re full of cyclists getting in the way. 😯

But worst of all:

allow family’s to enjoy active times together

Turn off the PC and hand in your router, yr internetz iz revoked.

Before I read any geek links, presumably any car that can generate more than 1G of downforce, irrespective of the car weight, can be driven upside down?

“1G of force”..? 🙂

I started riding bikes offroad over 30 years ago, me and my mates didn’t have access to trail centers even if they did exist. So we just clattered around local woods and ranges and where we did get air it tended to be the odd natural roller. I’m still more than happy to jump off something like that.

But deliberately manufactured trail center jumps are steep faced and deliberately kicked, they seem designed to give you 3 feet of altitude for every 6 inches forward and I have no idea how you’re supposed to go about it, even if most of them weren’t only about 3 inches wide. So, it’s cos they build them wrong! 😆

Ah, yes, followed that for a while on the news til it was canned.

Originally specced for the US army, it has very efficient ‘loitering’ capability at altitudes well beyond the range of a disgruntled tribesman with an AK47 or RPG so could be filled with cameras and sensors and stay on station for ages.

That original intended use partly explains the low payload. In a cargo carrying role, using wing like lift from the body means it can avoid venting (very finite, very useful and very expensive) helium to ‘make up for being empty’ as it can be set up to be just about too heavy to float off on its own.

Sure, it’s 300 feet long but it’s mostly hollow. If the 400 foot long version is also a third bigger in the other two dimensions then the extra helium alone would more than double the payload.

Unfortunately, from some angles it looks like a bottom.

Until MTBs routinely have different sized front and rear wheels/tyres then I can’t really believe that anyone is taking the performance issues of wheel size seriously. But these ridiculous little toys are just for fun, for most of us, so no big deal.

(I’m actually thinking of going 69 when I replace my knackered fork – or 46, or 6650b! 😀 )

I’m not 6’4″ and I ride a hardtail.
Hope that helps.

jam bo
2% tolerance. I think your being a big picky.

“you’re”.

REAL mountain biking, is putting some kind of bike on some kind of terrain because it’ll be fun. Find a combination of bike and terrain that doesn’t tend to lead to the sort of injuries you tend to have.

An MG Midget, late-ish model. Why put a redline on the dial when it won’t rev past 3000? Dunno who picked the gear ratios but it could barely pull 4th on the flat on a still day. In the year the one I bought was registered VW released the golf GTi, and some poor sod bought this!

Lots of weird stuff going on here.
The point of a bike is exercise?
Well actually the point of a bike is it’s a mode of transport. With an electric motor it’s possibly a better mode of transport.

Recreational cycling is different as it’s basically pointless but what’s wrong with an electric mountain bike? It’s like an uplift service, anywhere you want it. The only people who would object to what other people ride are the sort who like to express their opinion on what constitutes “real mountain biking”, and who cares what they think?

Starter motors contain a clutch, the dust from which slowly fills them up until they don’t work any more. Then you call the AA, get dropped at a garage, and buy a new one.

Glow plugs and fuel lines don’t affect the speed the starter motor turns over! (Neither do tyre pressures, BTW.) 😉

I never buy food in the cinema. Best ever was ‘sneaking’ in several pizza hut pizzas… Although I think the staff just don’t care as red hot rucksack trailing clouds of garlic flavoured steam is hardly the last word in covert.

Someone should see if you can get a pizza joint to deliver to an actual cinema seat…

Also take care when talking about ‘sorting out her rear sag’.

Handy one this: if at any point she simply refuses to take on board a piece of advice you’ve been giving repeatedly for weeks, then get absolutely anyone else at all to give her exactly the same advice and she’ll immediately start doing it.

‘Big muscles gear’ combined with a chain made of solid rust. This guy is a machine!

There’s snowboard dual slalom – that’s damn impressive. Watching these guys laying down in corners while skittering right on the bitter edge of distaster carving on a 45 degree slope of sheet ice. The second run of each pair is also sort of a head to head race – if I read the rules correctly.

Keep seeing people mention ski cross – so they do boardercross on skis now do they..? 😆

One of the biggest barriers to entry for boarding is having lessons with the ESF!

Seriously, finding a good instructor can be hard – and if you’re just starting out how are you supposed to know? My first week of boarding was an agonising bruise riddled write off thanks to useless tuition.

I doggedly learnt to link turns on my pathetic local dry slope before going again and when I next hit snow I was away. (I’ll never go on a dry slope again though.)

As for which is for you? Well, boarders are the mountain bikers of snow (slower, bumpier, fallier, harder, cooler, having fun) skiers are the roadies (We go faster! We go further! Stop having fun and look at my GPS plot!).

battery technology hasn’t really come on that much in recent decades and probably won’t come on much in the decades to come, sure batteries have got smaller through the use of more precious and harder to find metals, but fundamentally the problems we currently face with batteries are unlikely to be solved any time soon.

Not really true. Lots of cool stuff in the pipline using everything from graphene (ie: carbon, abundant) to molten sugars(also plentiful). The biggest issue with a new battery is proving it’s safe – considering some of the energy densities this is kind of a Good Thing.

If we insist on using batteries then I think Vauxhall came up with the best solution. A cartridge battery system so when your car runs out of juice you pull into a petrol station style garage, drive over a station, and automatically from under the car your cartridge battery is replaced

Yes! (In principle, but doesn’t necessarily require the thunderbirds style automatic battery grabber 🙂 )

Also, some of the electric motocrossers look great but range/runtime on a charge is rarely mentioned, unfortunately. And the line between those and electric MTBs is geting pretty blurred. Electric motopedcrossers (will) rool.

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, by Julian Jaynes.

There’s the controversial theory of the ancient precursor to consciousness which is enthralling, and also loads of fascinating detail about the really weird stuff ancient people got up to.

(Really weird stuff.)

How about

speed of particle through space relative to an observer plus speed of particle through time relative to that observer = constant.

Possibly!

Would that work? or do you have to factor in the speed of the observer, relative to everything else?

No, in fact doing so would break it. Slightly off to one side, but an observer watching two other objects race toward each other can observe their closing speed as being in excess of the speed of light – but observers on or in those objects would not experience the closing speed as greater than C.

speed of particle through space plus speed of particle through time = constant.

No. Because there is no ‘speed through space’, the speed of something is always relative to something else – and it can’t relative to space as the existence of an ether (ie: an absolute or preferred frame of reference) was disproved by Michaelson and Moreley. (Who were trying to prove the opposite at the time!)

Did one when I was a kid, fantastic. Loved leaping out and doing the locks, after looking at images of the Telford Aqueduct mentioned above I’m certain we did that too – terrifying.

I recall that the route my folks figured out went round the back of lots of industrial architecture which was sometimes eerily fascinating, over aquaducts, and going through looooong tunnels where ventilation holes poured cascades of water over everyone. And lots of locks! Rainy days were spent in proper old cagouls laughing at it all and taking shifts.

Watching my mum drive was a laugh, she would point her finger in the direction she needed to turn for a coupla seconds, then point it the other way and push the tiller. Remember when my sister had a go; my dad suddenly started to swear and shout and rushed through towards the back. I looked along the boat out the open front door and all I could see was a brick wall – then CRASH!!

The first few miles of the drive home in the car were terrifying everytime we got above 5mph! 🙂