MrsBouy has a corker of a sore chesty cough and when she does cough it almost blows the doors off the room shes in.

Had similar for nearly 3 weeks, went on a night ride thinking it was gone and ended up with my riding buddy, who is a GP, insisting we go home the shortest possible route as he was concerned I’d expire on the trail!

Been 2 weeks since I stopped coughing and I’m still feeling slow and struggling to push the pedals!

Next ‘boys’ trip to Wales in early June

I find that you need to keep rotating the whole cassette (mine is a SRAM X1 XG-1180) until it feels like it’s engaged and then tighten it up, be careful using lots of force to tighten it because when you try and remove it the splines tend to break!

Not sure “just walk out” is a good plan, if your new employer knows you’re on 3 months notice won’t they think it’s odd if you are suddenly available? That’s also a certain way to get a very minimal reference, think 2 jobs ahead not the next one, and that would 100% burn your bridges. Finally would you be dropping your colleagues in it if you just walked out?

Politely ask for 4 or 6 weeks with a hand over plan as stated above, if they make you work 3 months then at least you’re shot of them after then.

@trailhound101 can you share which bearings you ended up ordering? I need to do my ROAM40 bearings and also have no accurate measuring device so I’m guessing if I just ordered the same part numbers as you did they would fit OK.

Better wheels for the 2016 Whyte T-130 Yari would be my choice

I guide/manage a 40 strong tech department and we do make cockups at times. We have a no blame policy as we find learning from getting something wrong is more valuable than throwing blame about. The last issue we had was a huge drain on resource, time and had a significant financial impact – my boss just asked me if it was now sorted, have we worked out how to avoid it again and have we communicated to everyone who would be impacted.

It’s the first company I’ve ever worked for where this has been the case rather than a manager covering themselves by assigning blame and for us it works really well. Our repeat errors have dropped to about 10% of what they were 12 months ago. When I joined 4 years ago we had a blame culture, my then boss and I decided to change that and over the last 12 months I think we achieved it, it sounds very new age but it really works for us.

I’ve got a Zero TR and it’s the best HT I’ve ridden by a large margin, it’s very similar in feel to my Whyte T-130 Works which I also rate very highly.

My mate has a Aeris and the backup from Bird has been top notch so that’s a huge plus for me and was very important in my decision to buy the Zero TR. HTH

My wife and I both turned 50 in Feb and March 2015 we treated ourselves, me to a 3.5K bike my wife to a family trip to Berlin. We put most of it on a 0% CC and it’s now paid off so that was an approximate £6k spend (I bought some nice jewelry and a few UK trips as it is a big birthday). Borrowing is OK if you’re sure you can pay it back without it stressing you out IMHO.

I’ve got a Bird Zero TR built up with 1 x 11, decent wheels and 130mm Revelations and it’s great fun, nearly as much as my T-130 Works.

It rides really well and has been used for XC/Trail/family riding and will be going to Swinley soon.

I think the quality must vary a lot as my Pikes have been excellent, my Rebas have been great and so far so good with my Revelations. I had all sorts of problems with my previous Fox forks so maybe it’s luck of the draw?

I have 2 and one’s started to make horrible noises. It’s reluctant to go down but oddly is OK when re-extending. My LBS sent it off to Fishers who’ve agreed to replace it with a new one, it’s just over a year old but they didn’t quibble at all.

@Rick OK I’m not used an E13 components before so are they a bit fragile?

@honourablegeorge yes 10% extra range for quite a bit of cash – I’m mostly struggling with the fact that 32/10 is quite low for a high gear, I could go to a 34T but then I compromise the low gear too much. Not sure if it’s worth the cost as is quite high to take a punt on.

Thanks for the replies.

I have a MaxxD that’s approaching 3 years old and I still get just over 2 hours on full, it’s been really reliable and excellent with my only gripe being that the optional (and expensive) remote control is a bit flaky.

Thanks all for the info, I want to use someone local really and am very adverse to high pressure sales so Dunster House sound like a no.

I get the “at your level you need to be at your desk” talk occasionally mostly when I’ve had time out of the office for medical appointments (I have had serious illness in the past and require regular checkups etc which the company knew about when I joined) even though I’ve opened up the office at 08:00 virtually every weekday for 4 years and I’m often locking it back up at 18:30.

I just normally remind my boss that I work smart and that if my teams can’t work without me for an hour or two then there’s bigger problems to solve than me not being at my desk! Obviously this only works because the teams I ‘manage’ are actually very easy to work with because they are all excellent at their jobs and deliver high quality output and hit > 95% of their deadlines.

@RichT Thanks I’ll give them a call

Am I the only person in the world who thinks LR Evokes are gopping? Especially in white

No I’m with you especially from behind. Apparently they are selling like hot cakes so

big, ugly, expensive, vulgar, branded.

they won’t be able to make them fast enough.

Seems to be about right :-)

We develop software in-house and are in theory agile but we are driven by our commercial teams which always makes being truly agile difficult.

The main issue I have with agile in our enviroment, after 4 years of trying to get our developers, testers and product teams to be more agile is that we have to deliver to a strict schedule which basically means we are nearer a waterfall process.

if you can start with a clean slate or have the full support of your SMT it can be made to work and work really well! Good luck.

I had an GT STS back in the day and whilst I liked the looks at the time it was christened ‘The Plastic Pig’ by my riding buddies of the time!

Not my bike but alomost identical to this:

+1 for the Bird Zero-TR I got one just before Christmas and it’s a superb bike, handles well, is stiff but comfortable and not too heavy. My old 456 was not bad in any way except for when a large lump of flint ripped the rear mech off and bent the dropout and hanger so badly it wasn’t repairable!

Had a great ride there on Dec 23rd, I’d never done the red before and it was a lot of fun doing it the first time at night!

Don’t have any pictures to hand but had one of the original Williams Clios which was a bonkers little car – probably one of the best cars I’ve ever owned from a fun/driving perspective. I also had an E30 M3 and an E36 M3, the E30 was sublime but the E36 was a better road car overall.

I now drive 2 x boring Fords but on the plus side they do transport bikes well!

Nothing yet but later or maybe tomorrow I need to rotate the bars on my HT forward a touch and slide the saddle back a touch. Non-fettling is swapping the non-tubeless (got a sidewall tear) rear for a new tire – not fettle more essential?

Learn to weight your bars rather than turn them.

is this the drop your elbow to turn thing that gets talked about on skills days?

It roll quickly but it’ll also likely puncture,w e did BPW in Jan and my ridding buddy turned up with near terminally work tyres, the rolle OK but he puncture on every run until we swapped them out for some tyres with tread!

Some of you might know Clive Powell of Elan Valley fame, he was once asked how to improve at climbing hills he answered with “climb hills more” which was made even more appropriate because (at the time) we were at the bottom of the hardest climb in the Elan Valley.

I think you had to be there or know Clive :-)

I’m incredibly right handed and also right footed EXCEPT for on a bike when I lead with my left foot, I was also running a Cannondale with the original Lefty fork so ended up with LeftyBoy.

Was very amused a while back when I was told my username was because I was a left wing whinger, but that’s just coincidence ;-)

Should probably change it to NotAsLeftyAsIWasAndNotABoyAnyMore but that seems a bit much :-)

Follow someone better than you but not so good they leave you for dead :-)

I was burgled many years ago and the guy who did it destroyed all my late wife’s ornaments, spray painted the walls, scratch all the doors of the kitchen units and cracked the bath and basin! The police knew who it was even before they matched his finger prints because he’d just come out of borstal at which time the burglary rate doubled!

I joked with the police that I’d like to do the same to his house but they told me that I’d only be improving it!

The invasion of my home and the mindless damage just designed to pi** me off are hard to understand.

Really enjoyed our day riding the Wall and Penhydd on the last weekend of Jan, also really enjoyed BPW on the Sunday even if they are very different. Afan seemed much rockier in general and much more natural in feel, on the flip side the reds at BPW were challenging and fun with enough rocks to be interesting!

+1 @BoardinBob been struggling to find jeans that fit my thighs since I was about 15! Now 50 and buying jeans with a smaller waist than when I was 40 but still got an issue with not having ‘normal’ sized thighs!

@roverpig totally agree I was trying to sell some ROAM 40 wheels which retailed for £550 and were totally unused, after much to-ing and fro-ing someone told me that as they were second hand (true) I was expecting to get too much for them so he offered me £50! I have another set on my Whyte T-130 and they are actually very good robust but light wheels and I thought they would sell for about 50% ish.

In the end I decide to keep them and as I had a little windfall recently they are now on my new HT and I’m really happy I didn’t both to sell them.

Where was this photo taken – looks like a nice climb!

I’m 5′ 10″ an ride a 2015 T-130 Works with a 50mm stem and it fits me perfectly BUT I like a slightly more upright position due to my previously broken shoulders!

At 6′ I’d say a large was the way to go.

My Whyte T-130 Works was on the back of my car when someone ran into the back of me at a red light, despite only minor damage being apparent they paid me the full replacement value for a brand new bike. I guess it helped that Whyte said they wouldn’t warrant the frame as it had been in an accident.

I’d expect the insurance company to pay for a new bike to the same spec as your old one even if strictly they aren’t obliged in las to do so. To be fair the cost of replacing the bike will be minor compared to the potential costs of the personal injury payout on a broken back, my advice is don’t settle too soon as the true long term affects of the damage might take a while to manifest themselves.

My last (first) trip to BPW was also quite damp and I ran my Whyte T-130 Works with a DHF on the rear and a HR2 on the front which one of my riding buddies ridiculed me for. The thing is over the last 25+ years of riding off road I’ve often found running a back tyre on the front or vice versa sometimes works for me, I’m a great believer in trying stuff out and forming your own opinion.

Tyres are such a personal thing, I love the combo of a Ardent Race on the rear with a DHF on the front in the summer but oddly I also love the DHF on the rear with a Shorty on the front in winter.

The problem is modern tyres are excellent but expensive so trying out different combos starts to get expensive at £35 – £55 a tyre.

+1 this:

the thing with a longer bike is you can always pull the reach figure back with a shorter stem

I’ve just been diagnosed with a hiatus hernia but I don’t have any acid reflux (yet). My main issue is I can’t eat any quantity of food without being uncomfortably full, if I eat too much I get quite serve pain above my diaphram. Too much in this case was 2 x eggs scrambled on a single slice of toast, having eaten nothing else all day!

I’m awaiting the results of the biopsy I had taken a week ago to see if there’s anything else going on. Although hiatus hernias seem very common there seems to be no actual treatment it’s all just avoid whatever gives you acid reflux which doesn’t apply in my case!

I was relatively fit over the summer but since I’ve had the hiatus hernia my fitness has dropped as I’m finding it so hard to get enough fuel on board due to the above issues.

@Rosss Only done 3 rides totalling about 50 miles so far. Last night we did 20 miles, me coughing and spluttering with a heavy cold, and the ground was quite hard and unforgiving. The Zero TR felt great, the rear end is much less harsh than I was expecting for the type of frame it is. The geometry is very similar to my Whyte and it rides accordingly, I need to rotate the bars a touch and slide the saddle back about 5mm or so to get it ‘dialled’ in.

I’m heading up to Swinley next week for a night ride with the boys and I’m thinking of taking the Bird to see how it does. I’ll report back.

So far I’d say it’s comy for a 20 mile roughish ride and I’d guess it’ll be fine for longer rides.