For Scotland: http://www.travelinescotland.com/welcome.do
For Elsewhere: http://www.traveline.info/index.html

or maps.google.co.uk
put in your route (directions button) and click the “Bus Shaped” icon and it will do similarly…
That travelline actually seems to work.

Google maps has never offered me anything other than an apology or a real good larrf when in public transport mode though.

What do you think you’re gonna do on it, and what do you want it to do well?
– Go fast from A to B?
– Get out and explore?
– Ride up hills (just about) so you can ride down them (fast, doing skids and popping off bumps)?
– Uplifts and DH?
– Race? If so XC? Enduro?
– All day rides or lung bursting 1 hr blasts?

(BTW – option 3 is the “right” answer. 😉 )

Some pretty stupid decisions made with public transport though. A bus from my place to work in the city center would drop me off at just before 8 or just after 9 and take over an hour to get in. So I can arrive an hour early (having got out of bed far too early), or arrive late. As can anyone else on the same route who works in the city center, ie: lots of people.

So me and pretty much everyone else don’t use the bus.

Also once tried to figure out how use buses to get somewhere across different “zones”. Fighting with their useless web pages, holding several layers of map on ‘mental acetate’ in my mind, and lots of google maps to try and find where cryptically named bus stops actually were, and I never did find out if it could be done.

Stuff like sensible times and a website that allows here -> there queries would get people on buses.

pedals at quarter to 3 and heels down a bit

Or quarter past nine if it’s morning.

Singlespeed_Shep – Member
The problem is there are two types of cyclists,
People who love riding bikes
and
People who have bikes.
The later often being more of a problem.

I disagree. The small cluster of idiots riding bikes in Callander a couple of weeks back were on posh bikes, wearing ‘polite’ cycling bibs, heading off for a bivvy – yet were blocking road, no signals, weaving about etc etc.

Absolutely. I have an encouragingly tiny collection of anecdotes regarding blatant cycle commuting stupidity, but all feature someone in lycra on an expensive bike (and none directly involved me). The “real” cyclists seem more prone to bloody mindedness and a sense of higher rights – and judging from their posts on forums, an imagined martyr status too. The people on cheap bikes in office clothes just ride to work and back, no trouble, no fuss.

EDIT: The people with cheap bikes and office clothes also make up the majority by a long long way, which is good.

Stop buying into the latest media craze that there’s a war on Britain’s roads. There isn’t. I’d have noticed it. Occasionally there’s a crash. Sadly, sometimes even a tragedy. Yes, the crazed righteous and wannabe-oppressed make a lot of angry noise. The other 99.999% of us just get on with our day, and enjoy the jumped up clipshows that crop up as alleged documentaries.

Awesome. 😆

There’s nowhere you’d be legally allowed to ride it. 👿

Just thinking though, we don’t actually have any conclusive evidence that she was in the wrong (on the road, leading up to the collision)

I’ve written and abandoned exactly that several times myself! Somewhere it was said that he was going downhill. Some roadies like to use descents to get a buzz, and the guy “didn’t feel the need” to report the incident, his response to her tweet was “I’m super hard, and your car sucks”, and his story has evolved from being flung across the bonnet and through a hedge (while remaining on the bike) to clipping the wing and having a wobble.

The young lady’s tweet “it was my right of way, he doesn’t pay road tax” may be two statements, with the mention of tax having no bearing on right of way. If asked what happened she may have said “The fool came round a bend on my side of the road and clipped my mirror”.

Possibly.

My second tick, I went to the docs so that the bite would be “on the record” in case I got ill (GPs being useless with lymes). They said the tick had broken the skin so I must go to ‘minor injuries’ down the road. “Pah” thunked I, and tried the local pet shop instead, but they were closed. The local Tinknels had no tick pullers, just lots of hardy hairy-knuckled and woefully outdated folklore recommending vaseline, fire, firearms, or sucking it off with a frogs arse.

And so in the end I actually went to the damn hospital. Their tick pullers had a picture of a dog on the wrapper.

A Nissan driver today:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlGZ5rr_v6A

ASL’s, complete rubbish.

Just given drivers a new line to pull up at, meaning the cheeky space that bikes and motorbikes used to have available to pull into at the front is often gone. If the ASL is clear, then a motorbike is expected to filter and stop between the rows of traffic – and if you’re following that motorbike then you’re stuck. And because even a cyclist shouldn’t enter it through the solid line then in most cases you must filter on the far left if you want to use – and in some cases even a cyclist can’t legally enter it because it’s ALL solid white line.

No wonder they’re not enforced.

I ride a motorbike into work into a so called cycling city, that has loads of cars, predictable gridlock, and loads of bicycles. And every day I see nothing happen at all other than a load of people get to where they’re going.

There really isn’t a problem. Anecdotes != data.

But one zen little thing I bear in mind on the motor-sickle is: you’re not actually competing with other road users, you’re just trying to get somewhere. If someone you passed passes you back or a pass you wanted to make doesn’t happen, well, that’s 1 pass in 500 that didn’t pan out. A lot of the numberplate shouting vids show someone who could’ve simply eased off the pedals for a second get angry for “losing” a space that cost more effort to defend than yield.

Real mountain biking? Well let’s nail it down – if you ain’t riding on a mountain, it’s not mountain biking, and if you are it is.

This has the quite horrific consequence that riding a road bike on tarmac in the alps is mountain biking, whereas riding a mountain bike on the Quantocks isn’t.

How d’ya like that?

If you want the bike that’s given the most to the world, it’d be the Honda C50/90. Entire 3rd world continents only function at all because of them.

Or it’s the ’92 Fireblade.

Coil Pack most likely

In a diesel?

We dont have an empire anymore.

Most people feel it’s appropriate for an island nation to maintain at least a modest navy. And our aircraft carriers weren’t even considered to BE aircraft carriers by the yanks, so it was modest.

We have sold our harriers to the US marines for spares rendering our present carriers useless, our new carriers won’t be around for 10 yrs and we’re buying the wrong (and very expensive) planes to put on them – if they ever work. So yes, it’s all a bit of a downer.

Everyone else- “Oh it has too many modifications and too much tuning”
Carole Nash- “Is it turboed? No? Is it stretched more than 50%? Nitrous? Not even a little bit? BORING”

Heh, remember the first time I called Carole Nash.
“Any modifications?”
“Well, here’s the thing. I want to fit an illegal race exhaust and my current company is being awkward.”
“OK. And when would you like the cover to start?” 😆

Carole Nash are bike specialists, I normally phone them up so don’t know if their site lets you “auto quote”.

Spin the chain while drenching liberally in mucoff, scrub with nylon brush, flush with water (hose or sponge), dry with rag, blast through with WD40. 5 minutes.

Dunno how big the stump is, but spades, pickaxes, scaffold poles and swearing will do it. The amount of swearing required is proportional to the size of the stump.

Basically, can you give a coupla mates a roast dinner and some beers and a future favour each for under 50 quid?

Left and Right wing are dogmas, as such they are inflexible and unchanging and so neither can be right more than half the time. A country needs to be run according to the evidence and state of things on the ground.

And, just maybe, this is what happens – with the difference between two govts being the actions they choose to highlight and the language they use to do so, more than the choices they make.

But maybe not.

anything above two grand on a bike strikes me as “you could buy a car for that” territory.

Or arguably more relevantly, a sorted 2nd hand motocrosser or enduro bike. (It’s cheaper to enter a motorcycle enduro than a bicycle one too.)

Bung out about a grand on a burly hardtail, or if you’re really keen to burn money buy that Boardman FS. 🙂

This thread, seriously?
There are people here who would bitch about oxygen.

I had 56, the Falcon.
By the time I stopped using it the wing had gone, all the transfers had gone, the rear tyres were slick, and the cosmetic shell looked like it’d been driven under a lawn mower. It was 2WD, and at full throttle it would go in a straight line with the front wheels at full lock. Great fun just hitting the gas and skidding, roostin’ n’ spinning on gravel and dirt.

Klumpy – I was with you right up to the last one. I do know what the oily bits are made of, so that when they get broken they can be replaced with better.

Fortunately my oily bits have writing on them that says what they are, so that I can replace them with the cheapest that the internet has to offer when they go. 😀

In my paper boy days, woman of a particular house is getting the milk in as I arrive, she’s in nothing but a shirt, not very done up, a knowing smile and lots of bewbage.
Excitedly telling a bunch of lads at school about it later.
“Which house?”
“Number xx”.
“That was my mum”.

I asked directions at a bar and they had to get the German speaking cook to help me – guess where?

Wales!

OP probably reversed out of their drive and straight over a cyclist.

If he likes wargaming, he’ll love crossbows and catapults. You actually fire the shots and knock down the castles make of plastic bricks.

Had this when I was a kid and it was a favourite with all my mates.

(It even had a rulebook, not sure if I ever opened it… 😆 )

I own one bicycle.
With 26″ wheels.
And gears.
That cost less than a grand.
Still has the original saddle.
I never change the tyres until they’re worn out.
I don’t know how much my bike weighs.
I don’t know the make of my wheels. Or gears. Or brakes.

Some festival, blokes toilet area had urinals that were basically set into the inside of the toilet area’s fence, and were reached by going up some steps.

Consequently, you pee’d standing 4 foot above ground level while facing out over a sternum high barrier at the rest of the festival. A little unsettling, but do-able.

However, add to that a few young ladies outside who decided to ‘entertain the troops’ by ‘dancing’ and ‘expressing feelings toward one another’…

Important lesson from the vids; call 999, then when the paramedics arrive explain what you’re about to do.

Fitting a 24″ back wheel to my bike to make it a slack-half-cruiser-trail-center-jump-downhill-MX.

(Not done any measurements, might actually mean the frame or pedals drag on the floor or something.)

As long as valve/logo alignment is in order then everything else is fine

And the fence has been painted recently..? 🙂

Should the OP forbid them from paying anything out? Can you do that?

Alternatively he is a pretty decent chap that uses YouTube to highlight poor driving and cycling in an attempt to improve conditions on the roads for all and maybe even save some lives.

Oh, is THAT the idea.
Because he basically shouts out the plates of every vehicle he ever sees I assumed he was a car spotter.

I have got the cash sat in a bank account not earning much interest – may as well get a better return on the money.

As long as you’re happy that the money is coming from selling electricity to the national grid that it can’t use, for three times the going rate, and that cost goes straight onto everybody’s electricity bills.

And as rising energy costs hit the poorest the hardest this is basically a direct wealth transfer from the poor to the wealthy – inflating your bank account at the cost of society’s most vulnerable having to go without heat and light.

As long as you’re ok with that, go for it.

Used to see a lycra clad guy with those banana ended bars like they use in that french tour thing, filtered past traffic and slowed for nothing as though he had no choice but to pedal like crazy and deal with the consequences, squeezing between the queue of traffic and the oncoming traffic – and all this while staring down at his front wheel.

One day he as he neared some lights he nearly ran head on into a bus turning into the road he was on, and had a stand up screaming fit while drawing arcs with his hand to show the bus driver how he should’ve made a better job of the turn.

(I see dozens and dozens of bikes and hundreds of cars a day and generally nothing dramatic happens, day after day – plural of anecdote is not data, etc.)

If you want it, wear it.
Do you need it?
No, not until the moment you really really do.
As a piece of riding gear it makes an order of magnitude more sense than grown men squeezing into hot pants and tube tops to ride, but plenty do.

From our experience at Ride Sheffield I doubt any of the decisions made by the council really have mountain bikers in consideration at all. Works are generally driven by horse riders on bridleways. Unfortunately, the law doesn’t give us any rights in comparison to almost any other user. If the law was changed to more accurately represent the proportion of users on the trail (we’re now a pretty big lobby), that would be the only way I can see for us to be properly listened to. A long way off, though, I think. The kind of thing we’re up against:

I struggle to think of mountain bikers as disadvantaged. Whatever the letter of the law the fact is we get to ride all the byeways, bridleways, and footpaths, and the paths that don’t even officially exist, and then have a network of trail centres built specially for us that grant us privileged access, and then go onto private land and build our own trail centres usually without even dreaming of asking permission.

I think the fact of everything always going our way has created a sense among us that that is how it’s supposed to be, so on the vanishingly tiny rare occasions something isn’t exactly how we want (as an individual, we don’t even know what we want as a group) it’s somehow an outrage. Look at the fuss some kick up when the forestry damage a non-official cheeky trail in the course of simply doing their job.

Too much of a sense of entitlement growing among us, it’s revoltingly “ramblerish”.