As for le tour, its the best three weeks sport of the year…

Why, does it coincide with something interesting?

Mccett – you have taste sir!!

(Says the owner of a ’96 fireblade and a YZ crosser – is that a 250..?) 😀

You had me until that bit. When did you last need to push the pistons in on your car (FWIW I use a screwdriver anyway) and when did you last store your car upside-down

Well I push pistons back in every time I change pads on anything, cos generally the news ones are thicker than the old. I don’t store my van upside down, but my dirtbikes and mountain bikes have always spent a fair bit of time that way up just as a normal part of being ridden. 😀 And I think the manufacturer would expect and allow for that.

When perfectly mundane technology hits mountain bikes it (apparently) behaves completely different – especially brakes. In any petrol powered vehicle with new pads you just ride or drive with a little more care for a few miles.

But when you put brake pads in a mountain bike?? Oh no no! That is completely different! They must be heat cycled, no, baked, no, they must be used gently or they’ll fall apart, or is it used hard or they’ll fall apart, or..?

See also “you need a special tool to push brake pistons back in” and “brakes un-bleed when upside down (but don’t re-bleed when the right way up)”.

Well lung cancer is a disease, smoking isn’t.
Diabetes is a disease, drinking fizzy pop isn’t.
So I guess obesity is a disease, even if over-eating isn’t..?

EDIT: All the above diseases CAN happen without the activities listed alongside.

Don’t wanna watch it because of the drugs? Strange reason. I’ll be not watching it because it’s the dullest thing it’s possible to do with a bicycle, stretched out for ages. Contrast with the recent DH WC rounds, that are not televised! WTF is up with that?

Needs more drugs if anything, if every now and then a rider might have their heart explode like a grenade while a rash of carnivorous testicles sprang off their back and attacked bystanders it might border on nearly approaching to be kinda a bit nearly watchable.

At 43 seconds, is that a paperboy binning all the papers!?

Was there not too long ago, and thought I saw some bits smoothed out. But this isn’t a bridleway, they’re gonna maintain it with an eye to controlled degradation. It’ll be rough again soon. Sooner if it’s ridden!

you were not paying enough attention to the road around you. That and not seeing the police car!

Rubbish! Can you really not pass an object across the car while looking at the road?? As for spotting the rozzer, maybe the OP did and thought nothing of it, as all they were doing was moving an object across the car.

That said, in this area the law is an absolute ass. As was the copper by the sound of it. If you get lucky with a no nonsense beak he might give the cop an ear bashing and throw him out. If not…

Yeah, there’s all sorts a determined crim with a grudge could do to you when they buy your car, simply not register it in their name and drive it through a bus stop while dressed like you, wearing gloves to make sure only your prints are and DNA are on/in it. For example.

But maybe the person buying your computer just wants a computer. I’d delete all personal files and browser history, un-install all software I wanna keep, and run the recovery/Windows disk – or just do a format (full not quick) and install if you can.

Paraphrasing here, but: if you wish to make a curry from scratch, you must first create the universe.

On my motorbike I overtook a light aircraft, he was flying very low and following the A303. It was dusk so I wonder if he was running late and getting lost.

I’ve just realised…

Steel framed rigid single speeds with daft sized wheels can be cool – just not the ones usually mentioned on this site! 😉

So what’s wrong with a dog following their owners wheel?

As others have said, THAT isn’t a problem – but the videos have encouraged people with far less predictable mutts to try the same thing at the wrong times and places. I think the only things a dog would do that would be a problem are either poop on the trail, or burst out the bushes right in front of you.

(Or attack and kill you, I suppose.)

Unfortunately there have been a couple of viral vids of amazing trail dogs charging down bike trails an unwavering 4 feet from the rear wheel of their owner.

Most dogs will not do this.

Two points.

This idea that science cannot investigate some medicines is nonsense. Trials don’t only work on pills, they’ve been used to evaluate everything from blasting people with radiation to massage. Acupuncture repeatedly fails the tests.

Also, the low level niggles that people tend to seek out alternative cures for are the kind of things that come and go anyway, if you manage to get to your local shaman before it goes away on its own, then you think he cured you. That’s why you have to do large scale well run trials, not collect anecdotes.

If you have localised muscle pain, you need physio (call it “targeted exercise” if you prefer) to make the muscle different to how it is now – more different than a few small holes in it.

I dont doubt that acupuncture has no effect beyond placebo, but I would love to know how a double blind trial of it actually works. Surely it will be pretty obvious to both the patient and practitioner whether or not acupuncture is being administered?

The people running the trial are blind to who gets treatment or placebo. The patient is blind as the control placebo is typically either needles that don’t pierce the skin, or needles shoved in at random rather than real (for want of a better word) acupuncture points. The practitioner will of course know what’s what!

No effect beyond placebo has ever been measured in many many well run and controlled double blind trials, and there’s no physiological mechanism that could explain it. Complete woo.

If offroad wasn’t harder than onroad, we wouldn’t actually HAVE roads.

Too small for riding on.
Build a RC buggy race track/skills area.

It says “bike forum” at the top

It’s a bike forum within the context of a mountain bike website. Off topic roadie and commuter stuff isn’t any kind of problem generally, but it means occasionally some numpty appears with his vid of critical mass assaulting a police officer or someone launches a rant about how everyone with a car is a tool and should be taxed and legislated out of existence and expects an unreservedly sympathetic ear because “this is a cycling forum”.

That’s like a biker going to a motocross forum and launching a scathing indiscriminate critique of van drivers and then being all bewildered at the lack of support “on a motorbike forum”.

Not that unreasonable is it? Given the price of raw materials these days. Surely there would be a bit of difference between an XS and an XL in terms of raw material costs?

I heard that some unscrupulous manufacturers build the large bikes with hollow frames to keep the material costs the same!

A lot of people saying it’s a pain to manage to consistently find the right conditions which I admit does sound like a pain an MTB-er can’t relate to (never been to the Quantocks and found them flat that day).

But can’t you get a surf bat with a little sail on? I’ve seen that I’m sure. Then you don’t need waves at all! Be careful though, saw some guy who’s sail seemed to have snapped off, it was about 50 feet in the air on a big lanyard dragging him along at a hell of a rate!

Oh, re: wetsuits, if yer strolling alnog with the zip undone down to your belly to show off yer chest – it’s on back to front.

HTH.

The ramblers are an association dedicated to closing countryside access to other user groups. You reminded them that they ain’t finished yet.

(Walkers, however, are just people who walk.)

Wonder why they waited 25 miles to pull them over? Perhaps they were hoping he’d do over a ton?

It’s a fair point, if a copper is prepared to just sit behind and watch while you’re speeding, that’s a strong implication that it’s not dangerous. (M’lud.)

After all if a bike was about to fall off your roof, or one of your wheels looked loose, he’d stop you immediately, not spend 3 miles “gathering evidence”.

(I am not a lawyer, by the way.) 😆

What could a mountain biker want with a bike park? Mountain bikes are serious offroad vehicles and a bike park has nothing to offer us…

Ahem:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcxkR5y68d4
(video embedding still a complete mystery to me. No S’s in my http, still don’t work, bloody useless…)

2CVs are like camper vans. They were awful hopeless relics but dirt cheap so were bought by those penniless alternative types, such as surfers. Then well off weekend wannabe alternative types decided they were “cool”, got in the market, and sent the price up – so they’re now expensive hopeless relics, and thus not even remotely cool.

5k for a fun summer car? See this thread:
http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/another-middle-aged-sports-car-thread-with-a-twist

Good coaching coaching tip (sic).

Don’t tell a nervous rider “just stay loose and let the bike do the work and it’ll be fine” then immediately go straight over the bars.

What about when Chuck Norris manuals?

Assuming that to some extent you use your legs as suspension, then to some extent the bike is unsprung mass.

Currently have a huge amount of 80’s Hornby gear doing nowt (not the really collectable stuff, sadly) – planning on a layout based on shelving attatched to the inside of the garage walls.

Any inspiration welcome.

Steampunk multi-storey buildings on the wall served by suspended tracks, all inhabitaed by a motley collection of space marines, WWII GIs, and daleks.

Can you not get a windscreen extender and/or a bucket seat (+ cushion for the missus)..?

http://xkcd.com/1173/%5B/url%5D

Quite a while ago, but, set off to school and rode over the clippings from a hawthorn hedge. Dozens.

That’s just bollocks. This is actually a cycling forum isn’t it?

No.

Bus lanes are there for public transport – which is a social good – as it reduces pollution and congestion for a given volume of people. Cycles are allowed in for the same reason.

As are motorcycles. If you’re in traffic, you are traffic – by the same token if you’re happily whisking past traffic then you are not traffic. Motorcyles are often a superior solution to cycles, they take up a similarly small amount of space and have the same jam busting powers in town with far more useful range and speed outside of it.

Weird figures in the linked article:
New research published by Transport for London today found that the collision rate for cyclists using bus lanes increased 273 per cent.
…
Figures also show that, over a 10-month comparison period, the rate of motorbikers being in a collision in a bus lane increased 133 per cent.

But bizarrely the collisions were not between pedal cyclists and bikers – but between vehicles and bikers, and vehicles and cyclists.

So the motorcycles are making cyclists crash into cars? I doubt there’s a causal link. Something like (for an example) introducing more (or even just one more) cycle lanes that run up the left hand side of traffic at busy junctions during that period could account for the increase in cyclist collisions. And the sample sizes these figures are taken from are too small for real statistics, cyclist collisions rose from 7 to 21, for example. That could be a single critical mass ride meeting one white van.

The only negative effect on cyclists from bikers sharing bus lanes is a diminished sense of privilege.

Here’s a forum for back pain.
http://www.rebuildyourback.com/forum/index.php

(Be sure to ask them about rigid 29ers while yer there. 😉 )

So filter and stop between the cars, no big deal for them, they can get free and clear

So we can get squashed? You’ve never ridden a m/c I take it?

Commute on one every day, ridden for over twenty years. I was trying to make the point that in a lot of circumstances a motorcycle refusing to enter an ASL is worse for cyclists than the biker, as they end up stuck behind him.

But we are there for the same reason as you, safety and an ability to accelerate out of the way.

So sit at the back of it then, not infront of the cyclists

So you’d rather we accelerated past/between you once you’d started wobbling along, not eased through while you’re stationary?

And for those asking what motorcyclists should do – they should not filter to the front unless it’s safe to do so.

So filter and stop between the cars, no big deal for them, they can get free and clear. And if you followed them on a bicycle and got stuck between two queues of traffic, well that was a situation you should have seen coming.

You probably couldn’t legally enter the ASL from that point anyway without crossing a solid white.

If the law is the law and no moaning, then they should target the most flagrant ASL rule breakers of them all first – cyslists!! Everyday I see dozens enter each ASL straight through the solid white line.

Doubt this would even make the top 10 in a cyclists list of dangerous driving practices though.

Traffic enforcement has nothing to do with what’s needed, but what’s easy. If this follows the speed camera policy then pretty soon we’ll be hearing that “two thirds of accidents are caused by encroaching on an ASL”.

(Seeing as ASL rules are so vital to road safety, they’ll also be looking to fine cyclists who enter them through the solid line, yes..? 😉 )

The user group totally forgotten here is motorcyclists. What would the cyclists here prefer them to do when they filter to the front? (And bear in mind you might be behind them when they do.)