Great day out, 102km here as well. For a reliability ride, I saw a lot of unreliable bikes (punctures etc) – maybe that’s the point. I reckon full suss bikes are the most reliable, then hardtails, then cross bikes last. Having said that, a cross bike was probably the bike of choice (my full suss was a bit too much for the trails/roads). The course was well marshalled, well signed, and a real change from previous years – excellent choice of routes. Whoever threw in the Snows Hill climb at 80km needs to be forced to ride it 10 times without a break :)

if you can get to St Davids, then have a half day coasteering or surfing or climbing with TYF. Great fun for kids and adults alike.

Superfli,
just do it. Are you not keen riding it on your own due to confidence or loneliness? Challenge yourself, believe that you can do it, and do it. Fitness only makes it easier……

@large418 – Have you completed the SDW one way in a day?

No, never ridden any of it, just doing the thinking bit at the moment. Did the TransCambrian Way in a day last year in about 13 hours, carrying full overnight kit (and rode back the next day). That was hard but not impossible.

If I did go for a double attempt, it wouldn’t be with a time limit, just non stop (I am not under any delusion that I could do it in 18 hours! Probably more than 24 hours).

Everyone should have a goal – just considering mine for this year…..

The cost of forks especially seems to have skyrocketed over the years. I bought (expensive at the time) Pace RC39 for £400 – they lasted a few years, but then the DT Swiss equivalent was over £700 for basically the same fork. Fox are the same, and Rockshox too. The people setting the price points (manufacturers or importers) are charging what they know people will pay, but I do believe that many (including me) are now lowering their sights to good 2nd had parts (bought a pair of 2 year old, but unmarked Fox F100’s for less than £200 off here – they’re over £500 new!) For me it’s easy: if enough people stop buying new, prices will have to come down (or 2nd hand prices go up, which I hope won’t happen).

Trouble with you lot is that none of you are competitive. You can only become a better rider by trying to beat all around you, and it is important that if one rider is better than another, then the better rider tells everyone, and treats the worse rider with contempt. This is, after all, a competitive society.

Oh, and a good lap time for the 45 miles of Afan trails is around 2 hours 32 mins. If you haven’t got near that you’re a no hoper.

Apart from a few Merida type marathons, I never raced, and thought I’d have a go at the Friday Night Summer Series a couple of years ago. Lined up all nervous on the start line, looking at all the other super fit riders on their £4k hardtails, and thought “WTF am I doing here?”. Ended up coming 3rd in the vets. Did the whole series and came 2nd overall vet – pretty chuffed with that. Then missed a year, and have just done the Thetford series – again, thought I would be way out of my depth, but ended up coming 3rd vet overall. Not bad on my £150 ebay find (Stumpy hardtail) Have to say though, the fast boys are just amazingly fast, but I haven’t been lapped yet!

I find the race atmosphere really friendly, and although there is the odd tit who gets a bit stroppy (not with me yet), I find the races great fun (apart from the breathing out of ones a7se bit – that’s not much fun). The pre race nerves are always fun to watch, and then the “after you, no, after you” politeness some riders offer is great.

Haven’t tried road racing – it looks too blimmin dangerous to me.

Trousers or clean towel is not good. I normally leave towel and trousers at work, but when they go home for a wash, it’s really bad to forget them the next day. Drying yourself with someone else’s (not so clean) towel and smelling of them all day is not pleasant.

Or shoes. Spending the day in cycling shoes is not clever, especially when everyone can hear you coming (tap dancer style) (haven’t done this yet, but there’s plenty of years of commuting to go!

You did the right thing. Trouble is, in the eyes of the law, the kid had not actually nicked anything, so had not broken the law – he was only looking suspicious. If you had educated him, you would be guilty of assault or worse.

Now, if he actually nicked your wheel, then reasonable force could have been used, but only to restrain him, not educate him.

Oh, how I sometimes wish the law would step to one side for some good old fashioned punishment – that may stop kids getting into worse trouble later in life….

Doggy Style (also the name of a pooch pampering business in Coventry, so you could get away with it if you’re a way away)

I’ll check the wear blocks. Pretty sure they’re not past them though.

Why is the day divided into 24 hours, and hours divided into 60 minutes? Why not 10 hours per day, and 100 minutes per hour (cos fingers and toes can be used then to count time). I never understood that one.

Mine is used more in winter than any other bike. Steadily trashing it though (steel Dawes Tekarra mtb with skinny slicks and full mudguards). My Cyclescheme Ribble Sportive is getting a few miles though (and will get ridden solid through the summer). 12 miles each way.

215/65 x 17 – Goodyear Wrangler for a Range Rover/Freelander/ Jeep Cherokee.

I care what tread other road users have on their cars as it might be my kids they take out. The tyres are Range Rover road tyres – that’s a 2.5 tonne car – they can do a lot of damage, and not normally to the occupants!

I put a cheap one on the rear and it was blimmin lethal. Only good for the turbo trainer I reckon. Not sure if I had the super cheap version though.

How about a music stand – adjustable height and has page holder etc. Can get them off ebay for a fiver or so.

bassspine – Member
the sooner we take the human out of driving the better. I want to get in the car, punch in the location I’m going to and let the robot drive

You can, it’s called a taxi. Might get into a spot of bother for punching in the location though!

How about temp teacher type roles? Stand ins for those on short or long term sick? I would assume that for those roles any employer is not looking for history or long term future type stuff – they would most likely want a willing person. For teaching, don’t the LEA keep a list of temping teachers or something like that?

Good luck though mate – keep your head up – I am sure Mrs Bullheart’s view of you will not be tainted by something as trivial as your employment record.

Tell the police you have seen a gang of youths hanging round your place, and you’re sure you saw one brandishing a handgun. Then sit back and watch the fun.

Find out who the kids are and where they live, and have a chat with their parents (you can interpret the word “Chat” however you like). Pre-emptive strike and nick their telly and leave it in your garage….

I’d love one of these Jags, it’d be so much better than the crappy people-carrier I’ve got – but only if I won it in a competition. I wouldn’t pay for it. It’s just too dull. 70k should bring a little style into my life, for 70k I want a pussy magnet, not a rep car like this one – however fast it may be.

Some people prefer the understated look, rather than the “look at me I have loads of dosh” look. It’s called taste.

You’ll be hard pushed to get a better car for effortless fast touring than a Jag XF, especially V8 SC – they are truly awesome. I am not quite sure why the references to a Mondeo – they have nothing in common with a Mondeo. Some truly jealous people around…..

Well helllloooooo. Short bald middle aged man here. Not fat though. Would like to meet young georgous sexy girl for fun and frolics….
Oops – do you mind if I have a wife?

Is it petrol or diesel? Assuming the floor mats are not holding the accel pedal down, and if there is a throttle cable, it is not sticky, then petrols will increase the revs with excess air, diesels with excess fuel. Both will have diagnostics available. Either way, as long as the speed increase is only in neutral, the amount of actual torque being produced will be quite small,

I think that the only people who would find such a joke racist/offensive are the people who have tried to modify the English language to remove other “offensive” phrases (man hole, blackboard, brain storm) in case they upset those in another social group. Utter twonks – I can almost guarantee that no black (or white) person would be offended by such a joke. However some PC nob end might be offended because they think they ought to be.

RKD – where’s the twisty downhill singletrack you mention – I know you’re local to Warwick and haven’t found any yet!

Cracking moon last night though!

You need 3 days minimum, unless you’re quite hard, in which case you have no excuses for not doing a 24 hour attempt.

Try and get your hands on a book by Tim Woodcock, which describes the route and gives a good breakdown of stopovers etc – there seems to be a few variations on the C2C route, but we did St Bees to Robin Hoods Bay, which is an interpretation of the Wainwright C2C walking route (at least I think it was Wainwright).

We did; St Bees to Eskdale (half day)
Eskdale to Kirkby Stephen (14 hour day)
K/Stephen to Osmotherley (9 hour day)
Osmo to R/Hoods Bay (9 hour day)

We carried a days gear and stopped in Youth Hostels, but had a set of parents on holiday in the Lakes to do the car ferrying (they drove our car from St Bees to R/Hoods bay and left the keys for us at the B&B).

I have a Magellan GPS route, but it is a strange format and doesn’t seem to import to anything else – email me if you want it.

It’s a great ride, but we missed some fantastic off road after Tan Hill, trying to make some time up after a bog walk up to Tan Hill.

I was going to petition for learners to drive older cars to understand the way a car handles better (as modern cars limits are found at so much higher speeds), but having seen that, I don’t think I will. The way doors fly open, windows come out, roofs get flattened, and the cars flip in the first place means I’ll be fitting a roll cage to my Mk1 Escort when I eventually get one.

Bullet with Butterfly wings by Smashing Pumpkins – enough aggression to really give it some without any screaming

Megavanmats for carpet. Sells all the glue as well. Look on brickyard.com for details of layouts etc

How could you not predict the reaction from the STW sanctimonious lot?

Chances are that our kids have more than we had, we had more than our parents, until you get back to the child who only had a groat, and wasn’t grateful for that either! WHen you were 10, how appreciative were you of the things you had?

The point I think is that there is so much more to buy now than there was 20 or 30 years ago – games consoles are now common, mobile phones are common, TV’s are common, but the type of entertainment has changed – it’s much more about technological entertainment now than ever before, and a lot of it is “normal”, so kids aren’t appreciative – it is all they have ever known.
You wait for the next generation – they’ll have far more than our kids.

Never got married. Been together 23 years, 3 kids of 21, 19 and 17. Kids don’t want us to marry, we’re not fussed, so why bother. What is driving your desire to get married?

2 fantastic rides this year – the TransCambrian Way in a day, bivvi out in Machynlleth then ride back the road way, and the Kielder100.

Looking forward to more in 2011

To get my iphone and daughters ipod to talk to the Livebox, I followed some instructions on the web (googled the problem). Press the pairing button, then type the security key in on the iphone, but each letter must be prefixed by the shift key (capslock doesn’t work) to make it a capital.

Make sure the Livebox pairing button is flashing when the syncing is happening.

After many frustrated attempts, the above worked first time on both our Apple products

Of course letting air out of the tyres will work with run flats – what you are doing is to get the tyre to mould to the ground rather than sit on top of it. (It worked with my Galaxy a couple of years ago)

I am not talking about letting all the air out, just down to 10psi so they are nice and soft.

Gritting should be banned. All roads should be left snow covered – it makes driving (the right car) so much more fun. Fiesta Econetic with skinny tyres anyone?

How I wish I still had my Escorts

That last pic makes me think of a smurf riding a bike!

Blimmin impressive though – I love the inventiveness that goes into home baked engineering. Head angle looks a bit steep, or are all track bikes like that?

How much is carbon fibre to buy in its raw state, and how much would have gone into a frame like that?

Have people never heard of letting air out of their tyres? If you get stuck, let the tyres down to fairly flat (10psi) – instant traction – even on RWD BMWs, Mercs, etc etc

Works on the driven wheels only though, so you do need to know which end is doing the work.

Apply what we know on bike tyres to your car!

You have to decide, but all correspondence must be in writing – if he has offered a solution verbally, get him to write it down, with dimensions etc etc.

If you reject the offer, what will you be sitting on in 3 months time?

It look almost sorted, but you have to decide whether you want to punish the shop (and have a right load of hassle with solicitors, courts etc) and return the lot (and have nothing to sit on for Christmas), or swap the bits that are wrong and everyone walks away partly satisfied. Get the shop to give you a timescale to swap the incorrect bits, and maybe use this as a decision maker – I think you said you ordered in June, so waiting 5 months for a replacement part would be unreasonable)

I would go for an easy life, and swap the bits that are wrong (and there is a risk that if you turn down this offer, a court could say you acted unreasonably). But then the vengeful bit of me would feel unsatisfied.

Fast forward 3 months and decide whether you want a sofa, or to still be wrangling….

Whatever you do, be aware that any court/solicitor will look at the situation with any emotion removed, so look beyond how you feel, and look to what is acceptable/reasonable