It disgusts me how little worth is placed on people with mental illness and it’s yet another time bomb for the future.

Short term targets. Or, how long til’ the next election?

My Dad pushed and pushed for help for an old acquaintance of his. After weeks of BS he ended up driving this poor chap to the nearest psychiatric ward and demanding to have him put into treatment there and then for his own safety. They refused as there was no GP referral.. Two weeks later he got stabbed after being how he was in front of the wrong people.

There are so many procedures barriers to overcome that anyone of sound mind struggles to get anywhere with it let alone a solitary sort with the very problems that they’re asking for help for.

Sorry for rant..

Don’t be. A thread about road maintenance on a cycling forum may not be the ideal place but let loose man. It’s a fupping travesty in a country that makes such a big deal of its human rights, equality etc.

Just drive on roads near where local councilors live, they always seem to be pretty good..

B

My dad hardly ever indicates and it really gets to me. I indicate everywhere where it’s appropriate (no, not around tight corners like a worrying amount of people do). Doing it automatically means I don’t have to think to do it and weigh up whether it’s worth doing or not. It means I can concentrate on everything else that little bit more.

Riemann P20 here.

The way I sweat gives it a good test and I haven’t burned since using it.

I haven’t noticed any staining to be honest.

Id just give the dvla what they want

A pound of flesh in my experience..

+1 on not letting anyone (else) know atm.

Doing the same back to her is “lowering yourself to her level” etc. but if she’s as highly strung as it sounds then I doubt she could contain herself and your suspicions could be confirmed either way.

Letting it lie is certainly the less stressful and easier-to-move-on-from approach though.

What service were you testing Rob?

Even before everyone was paranoid about pedos

The daily mail has a lot to answer for

It may have got worse but I can’t remember a time when the actual risk to children in day to day life wasn’t blown out of all proportion.

Does anyone remember Brass Eye? That was parodying the medias coverage of the issue nearly 20 years ago.

I’m used to my ancient Hope C2s so I get the desire for modulation and feel. The four pot XTs are very good to be fair but then they’re not a Shimano design..

I never liked my friends HFX9s because they were so on/off. He loved them but thought my Hopes were “squishy”. I’m sure either one of could have got used to the others brakes but it would’ve taken time.

It sounds like these brakes of hers are pretty new, are they worth enough to sell on and fund another set?

I can understand their approach, I like to do the same when working on my cars. But having sheared a glow plug before and otherwise generally struggled with them I would be wary if changing them for the sake of it.

Live testing with a DC clamp ammeter on the individual wire to each plug to see what power it’s drawing is an option.

Otherwise a simple resistance test from the positive contact of the plug to earth with a multimeter is the way to begin. Make sure the glow plug being tested is isolated from the loom so that you’re definitely testing just the plug. Open circuit is obviously a failure, what the normal resistance is for your ones I don’t know tbh. But as it’s virtually inconceivable that all have failed a bad one will stick out.

If they all appear to be good then test for continuity from their contacts on the loom back to the relay socket. Once you know the loom is good the relay can be tested by checking for voltage at the plugs when they’re switched on.

This is all very generalised advice. The garage undoubtedly have more experience with Renault Trafics than I do but that is how I approach such problems as a home bodger mechanic. It may be that the hassle of just getting to the plugs is such that it’s the major part of the job and so it makes sense to do them all, I don’t know.

Replacing parts until the problem goes away is expensive and wasteful. Again, I’m not saying that’s what this garage would do, but it does happen.

If the quotes are dependent on it being a straightforward job then I’d ask to just pay for the labour involved when it’s done rather than a flat price which may well go up anyway.

I’ve never seen four plugs fail at the same time along with the relay. I would rather test each plug, the relay and the wiring loom individually before changing the whole set.

I’m not criticising the garage, I just don’t know how they confirmed your findings.

A different approach could be to move the levers in so that it’s possible only get one finger on them.

It’s a bit of a sticking plaster but I’ve just done this with my 4 pot XTs as I found I was automatically using two fingers which makes it easy to over-brake. I’ve only done a few rides with them so far and will probably move them back out again as I get used to them.

18 minutes since posting and no one has mentioned the Chelsea tractor parked in the the cycle lane?

Standards are slipping.

Ha! Police: “Here are your goods we recovered and here’s your parking fine”

I sometimes question why I have several bikes. I’ve got a 456 built up on the heavy side which is definitely the bike that’s most able to do-it-all, from Cardinham to Gawton. But I think I just enjoy something different, a bit of variety.

One of the herd is an old XC machine built by the illustrious and widely respected Dave Hinde (ahem), paper thin frame, SIDs and V brakes etc. It’s out of it’s depth for most of the type of riding I enjoy, but there’s plenty of fun to be had on the ragged edge with it on quite tame terrain. But I wouldn’t want that on every ride.

If any of my bikes were worth reasonable money I couldn’t justify keeping them but they’re not really.

So much arguing about the symptoms of the problem and not the cause..

As I see it the cause is a road user not sticking to the rules. I don’t like rules particularly, I don’t like authority either. But when we’re responsible for controlling a road vehicle we all have to abide by the same rules so that we know what we and everyone else should be doing.

Yes driving/riding etc. is give and take but making your own lane when one doesn’t exist is selfish and dangerous. Expecting some to make allowances so that others can do as they wish is completely at odds with the rules which, if abided by, keep things safe and in order. I bet those people who remonstrated with the lorry driver would use those same rules they had just flagrantly ignored PDQ to defend themselves if it suited.

The cyclist was in a left-turn-only lane. He then cut across a junction while undertaking the lorry and then tried to cut into the lane in which that lorry was already established without even looking. That cyclist was in the wrong the moment he chose the left-turn-only lane at the lights whilst intending to go straight on.

I really can’t see how any one rational could say that the lorry driver acted incorrectly. Yes if he’d seen the cyclist and realised that there was imminent danger then it would only be right that he took avoiding action regardless of who had broken what rules, but I don’t believe he did see him and that’s not his fault.

In the aftermath the cyclists wanted to be cut some slack because other people do it. Well as a driver, a cyclist and a pedestrian I would rather that lorry drivers were concentrating on driving properly rather than having to make allowances for self centred fools who think it’s their god given right to do as they please and break the rules with impunity.

I’m rather new to this pedaling uphill lark. I’ve ridden our self built local downhilly tracks flat out for all the years we’ve been building them. But doing miles around trail centres and moorland tracks on a lightweight bike is a very different thing for me and although I will attack a nice descent it’s never a record attempt scenario.

Reading all that actually inspired me go out and start up my open-piped V8, give it a few blips and laugh manically.

Jeebus! What happened to Dirt? They used to be alright.

I’ve got an early/mid nineties Marantz CD52 (Philips based) and it gives out a warm sound. That runs through a 70’s Marantz 2226B receiver (proper Marantz) and then some not-very-good Mission 704a speakers but overall the sound is rich and detailed, great for at home.

In the car I like a brighter, sharper sound for some reason.

My brother witnessed the end of the axle of his Hope Ti Glide being beaten with a hammer by a bike shop owner of many years to get the bearing out..

He learned to work on it himself after that.

I just serviced the cup and cones in the cheapy Diatech hubs of my long suffering Halo’s. Doing that regularly with a good bit of webbing grease has kept them in good shape.

I also clean my sealed hub and BB bearings out every now and again. Getting the grit and mud out and regreasing them does wonders for their lifespan.

That looks great, just because things have changed it doesn’t mean your bike has got worse.
I realised a while back that all my stuff is old fashioned (some of is just old, old). But I don’t care, I really don’t. I maintain it well so it works as well as it ever did and (as long as I don’t have a go on anything better) I’m quite happy.

I’ve been putting together a mess around bike and realised it’s actually a bit anti-fashion (is that a thing?). It wasn’t meant to be, it’s just made from bits I had kicking about; tiny steel frame, 24″ QR wheels, 25.4mm bars with a massive rise, thick heavy pedals etc.

….

Keeping up with modern bikes on stuff like this is a sad and lonely pastime with only slowly shaking heads and looks of pity given, rather than the admiration I deserve godamnit!

Broke some fingers on the right hand punching the ground when a landing went wrong. Two of the upper joints clunk and riding a motorbike gets tricky when randomly I can’t let go of the twist grip..

Landed on my face once and although it improved my looks my jaw now dislocates every time I open it and if I ever knock it it flares right up so I can barely open my mouth.

Bashed my foot about really well and get occasional pain in the ball of the big toe on the right. Again, if I knock it, even quite gently, it hurts like hell for a fair while and I struggle to put weight on it while walking.

Bloody bikes..

I’m in the middle of a claim for an injury that kept me off work/bike/sex/you name it for over a year. My solicitor is dicking around giving me conflicting advice and is well on their way to being on the end of a law suit themselves. I have lost my job, a car and numerous financial opportunities. My only positive with the entire thing is that I’m healing up and that’s not exactly a bonus.

Yes it’s stressful but don’t get emotional about it. I know that sounds stupid and it sounds like I can’t care about anything but believe me I do. I do get angry and I do get stressed and shout and swear. But when you’re dealing with anyone involved in this matter whether you think they’re on your side or not you have to keep cool and treat it strictly as business. Solicitors and insurance adjusters must have a handy switch to disconnect their humanity (if they’re even human, unfortunately I think they are). To them it’s business and nothing more and please don’t think that an emotional person won’t be taken advantage of by them.

Record everything. Keep a diary. If you’re not familiar with legalese then get a law book and learn, the meanings of commonly used words can be quite different in a legal scenario. I hope you come out of it well.

RSF Suspension in Plymouth may well have a used one. I get that you want new but the reason I suggest them is that they wont dick about or sell you a worn out piece of tat.

I’ve got a Sunline V1 I bought used with no bolts. I was told the heads had rounded off and that they were alloy?! If true then they would be the only part I would worry about.

I cleaned & checked the threads in the stem then used 12.9 high tensile steel bolts and it’s just fine

Thank you all. Yeah good point on probably not needing the big ring, not yet anyway.

I’ve never actually broken or bent mtb cranks as such and I’ve used some really crap ones, albeit when I was lighter. It looks like the arm rode up over the axle splines so far on the Raceface ones so that the bolt, although done right up, was no longer holding the arm on tight.

My gut feeling was that LX, XT etc. should be more than enough, I’ll widen my search to include that sort of thing and the twin + bash setups.

I stashed some gala pie in my camelbak on my last ride. But then I also had my first broken set of cranks as well, maybe they’re connected..

Use those witnesses you mentioned asap. If you don’t have their details then chase the Police for them or as mentioned above set your representative the task. But DO NOT assume that solicitors actually go over case details as thoroughly as you might so if there’s something questionable then question it!

Also as mentioned above keep in mind the possibility that the driver committed a motoring offence. Again you may have to ask about this as Police don’t automatically take action unless they feel obliged to. A prosecution against the driver would certainly help prove your case not to mention help them take a bit more care on the road in future (that last bit’s probably wishful thinking).

They’re not designed for cycling at all but I get on well with British Army lightweight desert DPM shorts.

Very cool in the heat, tough, hard wearing and cheap. Bugger all padding however.

I want to check something out so can you answer a few questions for me.
You say the turtle story was on the 10, then the next day your regional news did the same story with a compleatly different take on it.
What’s your regional news programme?
I assume this is something that happened off the coast of the UK.
You reckon a couple of years ago, can you be more specific? It’ll just help me out if I can dig up anything

Thing is,what you describe just strikes me as so improbable I’d like to see for myself.

Yep that’s right

Local news would have been called Spotlight South West then I think.

It wasn’t a local event but there was a connection of some sort. I think it happened in the med. English was not the first language of the animal woman I mentioned earlier.

I said it was a few years ago but actually it can’t have been since 2009 cos I stopped watching TV then. Really, I don’t have the equipment to watch it even if I wanted to. So 2007 – 2009 I reckon.

It sounds improbable yeah. I can’t find anything on it but I’ll help you all I can to find out what you can, thanks for not instantly writing it off as my deluded conspiracy theory or something.

KCR linked to a similar news story above but that had to be later, maybe the Newquay connection’s the same though?

I knew it! It’s cut of of their collective jib that is at the root of my discontent.

Yeah I don’t know for sure where the inaccuracy stemmed from, that is a fair point. Eye witnesses would have been a good place to start for an accurate account though..

I used an unfortunate term with “deep water”. People come here in the summer for the beaches and no most of them arrive via the a30.
I’m not seeing conspiracy, martinhutch gives a better informed, more articulate explanation than I can of why such things happen just a few posts above. People deceive others for all sorts of reasons, the media are no different.

Hmm. Yes I see the reasons but if it’s necessary that examples like the one I gave happen then I say that something has to be fundamentally wrong.

I maintain the second story was blatant fabrication for sake of having a nice ending. But I won’t continue trying to convince anyone else of it, as you say without the footage to compare it’s just boils down to my opinion and understanding of it all.

When I was a teen I saw a ship, the Maria Asumpta, sink on the coast. That evening the local news said that rescue services arrived in minutes, yeah, about 90 minutes. It angered me at the time because I stood there helpless and watched people dying, unable to help and yet the public were being told that they were being rescued. I can understand why they said that, Cornwall depends on tourists and tourists depend on the sea here. Knowing they could be in trouble if they get in deep water would keep many away. But it wasn’t true. It was not the truth.

I don’t doubt your reasoning, but there appears no evidence that the story was made up or manipulated by the BBC. They might be guilty of being gullible, but probably no more than that.

The BBC went to the island this happened on and got a story about a turtle, the same turtle then stars in a very different story broadcast by, the BBC.

Same turtle, same news outlet, two different versions of events.. One or the other version had to have been manipulated, I really can’t see any other rational conclusion.

Although of course, that is only my opinion.

PS. As someone who has seen a human go though an outboard motor propeller I know that that turtle had not been there.

Yeah ok, I waded in there without the reasoning. The 10pm news article was pretty in depth. They spoke to a lady from a local (to the turtle) wildlife trust/organisation who said she had seen such injuries before and had gone “undercover” to investigate her hunch that it was fisherman causing them and concluded that she was right. She pointed out that it was inarguably an intentional injury by a controlling attacker due to the accuracy and lack of other injuries.

When the same source provides two conflicting versions of events then one has to be wrong and intent has be considered.

The local news story I recounted above was not a mistake, it was a blatant lie.

There’s a story the BBC blatantly changed to fit their programming that sticks in my mind from a few years back.

On the 10pm news was a story about some one who rescued a sea turtle who had had his eyes gouged out. Apparently some fisherman did this routinely to turtles that came up in the nets as revenge for them eating their fish and it was determined that this was what had happened to this one.

Local news the next night there was a lovely, heartwarming story at the end, you know the kind of crap. Well blow me, there’s the same turtle but now it was a courageous fisherman who had saved it after the silly thing got caught in his propeller and lost both it’s eyes but with no other head trauma…

I think it’s because the subject was relatively insignificant that it really bothered me. This was fabricating a story and glossing over brutality just to fill three minutes before the weather. At least if there was a sinister government influence I could see why they would buckle like a belt and report what they were told but this was purely optional.

I’m not pro Trump but I am anti BBC and the way they are bleating on they are only helping to convince people he is right about them.