Hi I ride a T-130 Works my mate has the Aeris with a very similar spec, both ride really well. We do local riding around Winchester for which both are a bit overkill but on a recent trip to Afan and BPW they both shone. I’ve had zero problems with my whyte my mate’s had 2 issues with his Aeris BUT Bird sorted them while we waited as he is often near Bracknell and was able to pop in.

I’ve now got a Bird Zero TR hardtail and that’s also excellent but I don’t think that helps :-)

I doubt you can get the Aeris on 0% ?

+1

Halfords/Bikehut citrus degreaser, works fine, smells orangey.

My wife is retraining as a German teacher via Teach Direct and it’s very very hard work in the first year. The school my wife is working in is excellent with a really good SLT BUT they have very high expectations so coupled with the workload at school, marking, course work and the seemingly unending pile of self-assesssed paperwork that needs doing it’s not any easy choice.

I work a 50 – 70 hour week (including being on call) with a good salary so picking up the additional ‘stuff; around the house and extra childcare commitments has been tough so depending on your circumstances it can have a big impact.

Also the money is frankly rubbish if you look at a true hourly rate!

My wife is however loving the teaching bit so hopefully after the course is done it’ll settle down into a busy but fulfilling role which is more than be said of her previous role at our local county council!

Strange how different perceptions can be. I’ve twice contacted them once for warranty once when I lost the mounting screw and both times they responded quickly and fixed the problems for free.

I guess if they could always give everyone the experience I’ve had they’d sell even more.

We did Berlin last year for my wife’s big birthday, was really good but quite expensive as we did just about everything you could in 5 days!

This:

I do avoid some routes when the weather has been bad. Partially to not chew them up but mainly because it’s not enjoyable to ride.

I live near Winchester and the horses do way more damage than we do as MTBers. there are a few bridleways we use all year around because they cope with the horse and bike traffic well, there’s a few we avoid because the bridleways get widened and destroyed because they are so near various stables.

To be fair I’ve only had a bad exchange with a horse rider once in the last 5 years or so and that was when the rider insisted that we were on a footpath! She couldn’t understand the main flaw in her argument of “you can’t ride bikes on this track” :-)

I run Hope Tech 3 levers on both bikes, X2 (dual piston) on my HT and E4 (quad piston) calipers on the FS.

Did Afan, the Wall, and BPW this weekend on the FS and at no time did I feel the need for better brakes and most importantly (for me) did I at any time feel like they’d let me down. Good to have confidence when trying a BPW red/black for the first time!

I think most of the brakes are now very similar in performance but it’s mostly down to budget and preference. I’ve had the X2s on 3 bikes now over 5 years and done very minimal maintenance so for the cost that seems reasonable.

Agree on the colours as I always just go with black!

This:

I suspect the default answer is a bird zero TR @ £999

I’ve just built up a frame with a Revelation, Reverb, Renthal Carbon Bars, SRAM ROAM 40 wheels and X1 gears and it’s a fantastic ride.

Both of my current bikes, a Whyte T-130 Works and my 2 rides old Bird Zero TR. The geometry on both is very similar and I’m running the same wheels, cranks, brakes post, bars and stems so no big surprise they both feel similar.

From the first 100 metres or so both just felt right and both seem to want to go fast!

Stopped commuting after I was hit whilst riding along a cycle path on the pavement, the car that I hit turned across me leaving me no-where to go. My current office is situated such that I can’t find a safe route in, it’s probably the last 3 -4 miles of a 14 mile route that is a mix of busy cycle paths, busy roads and a stretch that’s often dangerous in a car!

I miss the extra training, I would ride the long ~33 mile route back, but the above incident left me with a broken hand, a knackered knee that required surgery , 2 bulged discs in my neck a a C5 fracture so it doesn’t seem worth it.

I now MTB more and run a couple of times a week on safer routes.

This:

Brilliant isn’t it, brings out the big kid in me.

Did 19 miles last night, 4 middle aged men trying hard to make crunching sounds by riding through every frozen puddle we could find. Amazingly good fun despite the -7C low, not factoring in wind chill, and the painful toes as they warmed up in the pub!

@bigdaddy it’s Eastleigh near Southampton it’s an old golf course which has two small rivers either side of it and has been wet for many years before Parkrun started.

Open Reach are duty bound to offer all addresses fibre by the end of March 2016 – frankly they’re never going to do it, but there is at least hope!

the end of March 2016 is frankly an outright falsification they can’t achieve it by then even if they wanted to!

In my village all but one cabinet has fibre the last cabinet (the one I’m connected to) isn’t commercially viable because when it was put in ~20 years ago they took the easy option and didn’t put it near a sufficient power supply.

Now OpenReach are saying they can’t afford to update it and the community should raise the money to do it! As a community we’ve declined OpenReach’s offer for us to pay for their poor planning but the battle is ongoing!

I ended up emailing their CEO and got referred to their ‘High Level Complaints Front Office’ team and I’ve had some sensible dialogue with them about the cabinet and for what’s it’s worth they’ve said “The current situation is that cabinet 8 is in our plans to be upgraded in the next financial year – 2016/2017.” So we MAY get fibre in that cabinet by April 2017 meaning it’s taken about 3 years to get them to agree to anything! t

I wouldn’t buy a house without decent broadband/fibre because it’s so much hassle to get OpenReach to do anything and by the time they do it’s out of date!

Slightly off topic but my local ParkRun is nearly always muddy, last week it was super sloppy mud and great fun to run through, this week it was frozen and even more fun to run through. A guy who runs most weeks commented on the fact that I just ploughed through the mud saying “you must be a mountain biker” which made me smile!

I fitted a steath reverb I’d taken off another bike about 4 months ago and despite it having being lying around for that long and having very little fluid left in it I just did a remote bleed and it seems to be working perfectly. I followed this Reverb remote bleed HTH

+1 for Yosemite, Joshua Tree and Hiking to the top of Half Dome

I also love Zion National Park particularly the Narrows but that’s way off track – relatively speaking.

-1 for Death Valley – a real non-event IMHO

I run 183s both ends on both bikes just because I like the consistency. My LBS provided floating disks when they swapped out the Guide RSs for E4s even though i’d not speced floaters, I have a floating disc on the front of both bikes and a normal disc on threar, all seems to work well.

Also 5′ 10″ and 13 stone (82.75K) and 183s are plenty for me and my mincy style of riding.

Have a Garmin one that came with my Edge bundle and a Polar H7 both have been faultless and are comfortable to wear all day.

My Whyte T-130 was hit side on by a car whilst it was on the tow bar mounted rack on my car, the insurers replaced it because the effect of a side load impact couldn’t be determined and they were worried that if I rode the bike and had an accident that the might up with a personal injury claim rather than just a bike replacement claim. A decent bike shop should be able to at least check the main alignment of the frame but I’d be getting an insurance replacement just for the piece of mind.

Hope your injuries heal up quickly!

Tech 3 E4’s would be my choice as that’s what I run on my Whyte T-130.

My last trip (family holiday) to Morzine involved me riding a hired hardtail with low end shimano disks on part of the portes du soleil route. I flashed past a few groups of guys wearing full downhill kit on decent bikes mostly because I wasn’t bothering to check each section (which their guide was doing) and partially because the disks had faded so much stopping was a bit of a challenge!

I turned down a job when I found out that it involved installing software from an encrypted CD-ROM into frontline battlefield systems in Iraq. At both the first and second interview there was the mention of travel to Germany for 1 week in every 4 with a very generous package.

Once I’d asked is there any other travel involved the visit Iraq once a month to deploy code was mentioned. I challenged this as this effectively meant 2 weeks a month in the UK 2 weeks away one in a hazardous environment. At this point the company involved told me it wasn’t dangerous but there was a daily allowance for being ‘in the field’, the details eventually emerged that the allowance was between £500 and £1,000 a day!

At that point I declined the offer. The company involved was small and had only every employed ex-services previously, they just couldn’t understand why I wasn’t keen on being ‘in the field’!

Hi OK I’m going to make an educated guess then that you’ll find that by week 3 or 4 a level of fatigue will set in and you’ll find riding at your normal level will be increasingly hard to achieve. I was advised when i had my treatments to listen to my body and remember that your body needs time to recover from the treatments.

Depending on if you having other treatment/surgery I’d say think about the long term, losing riding time now is rubbish but in the overall scheme it might be worth taking it easy to maximise your ability to ride for years to come.

i really hope that helps and good luck!

Yes had 6 weeks of radiotherapy when I was 29 so 21 years ago! My wife had radiotherapy a couple of years ago so if you are OK with telling me where on your body you’re having it I might be able to give you some real world experience.

Feel free to email me, address in my profile, if you’d prefer it to be less ‘public’.

HTH

Most recent build – completed yesterday – I forgot to add gear cable ferrules. I discovered this after getting my 1 x 11 perfectly setup, once I’d taken the inner out of the outer, added some ferrules and re-threaded the inner it was all out of adjustment even though I clamped the cable in the same place! I guess the ferrules add a fraction to the gear outer which was enough to make it take another 15 mins!

Probably worst ever build cockup was forgetting to order brake adaptors so had brakes and discs but not way of using either!

I ride solo on a Monday night and in a small, 3 – 5, group on a Wednesday night. Somewhere between 22 & 35 miles on a Monday and 18 – 25 on a Wednesday

I run a MaxxD on the bars and a Diablo on my helmet and they are nigh on perfect. I’ve got the remote cable for the MaxxD which is good (starting to ge ta bit unreliable as it’s been out in all weathers for the last 24 months) and a spare battery for the Diablo which gives me 2 hours on full.

Rode at Swinley on the 23rd Dec and didn’t feel the need for any more light, was able to ride as almost as fast as I normally would in the day.

HTH

Currently my HR is 86, I’ve just got in from a very muddy 2.5 hour ride where my max was 180. So after 30 mins I’m down to 86 in another 30 mins I’ll be down to my resting HR which is 44 (on average), I’m 50.

None of that helps you because this stuff is very personal, I’ve been ill recently so am not fit yet my resting HR implies I am, it is always below 50 no matter what my state of fitness is.

+1 Maxxis Minions

I clean my chain with a chain cleaner, loaded with a bio-degradable chain cleaner, then wash it off by putting into my bucket of soapy water, hang to dry for a bit (usually whilst I’m cleaning the rest of the bike) then spray with GT85 to disperse the water, finally lube with Finish Line Cross Country Wet Lubricant. I ddi try a dry lube this summer but my Sram X1 1 x 11 didin’t seem to run as well.

Just swapped my TPLinks for Netgear as the TPLinks were always in need of restarting sometimes more than twice a week!

Only issue with the Roams is the XD driver I’ve not really maintained mine (ROAM 40s) as I’m used to Hope hubs and the external bearing actually fell apart! It seemed really smooth for about 9 months and then over the course of 4 rides (2 weeks) it just died. Was a bugger to get a replacement for as well. I really like the wheels though and would have another set but look after the XD driver better and keep a spare. The Pike’s are a no-brainer they just palin work well, i’m sure the newer Foxes are as good/ maybe better but for you average good trail rider the Pikes are spot on, IMHO HTH

I did the red @ Swinley (as a night ride) on the 23rd of Dec and it was fine, my 1 x 11 seemed to work better than usual, but maybe that’s because I was concentrating on not hitting trees :-)

Mid-Wales at Easter for me, then Northumberland/Scotland/Lakes in the summer

Lost a few pounds ~3 over Christmas as I’m still suffering with a stomach bug, trousers should fit OK when I try them tomorrow I’ve a WFH day today :-)

WFH Tomorrow and back to the office on Tuesday. Been off since Christmas Eve but on call which was quietish so overall a good break.

Saw him twie in 2015 once he was excellent the other not so. Same story with Paloma Faith.

Is the ring over a year old? What sort of milage has it done? How old is the chain? Maybe it’s wear and tear and only apparent on the 42 as it’s the most extreme chain angle?

Just replacing my TP-Link powerlines with NETGEAR ones as the TP-Link ones need restarting (by powering off and on) at least once a week. According to the tech guys at work it’s a know issue with the TP-Links, they all use NETGEAR.

Slight bend in the gear hanger possibly?

This I’d say

When i watched the Hope video it looked like he used a fair bit of force but as ^ you don’t need to more than just tap them in especially on the outer as if you use to much force it binds!