We have the same sized bikes:

You can’t fit a XL 29er with both wheels off side-ways across the boot – I’ve had to take the forks off to do that when taking a shiteload of stuff to Spain.

You can fit a 16inch 26er with wheels off though
You can get a 20inch full bike in side ways
You’d have to take a wheel off the 24inch bike to get it in side ways

We have 2 cushions on our bed, I have no idea why we have them even though we argue about why we have them every night when I throw them on the floor……..

Yes – I took an internal door to the tip last month in the back of an SMAX. All seats down and I might have pushed the passenger seat forwards a bit but it was easy to get in.

My Wife is from GC, but from the capital (Las Palmas), which is where we stay. Its a city, with a big port, shops bars and restaurants etc as any other city. But it does have a good beach (Las Cantaras) and good parks to take the kids to. It works for us and we are off again at Easter. I’ll be talking the road bike again – the road biking is from Las Palmas is good once you are out of town. some of the villages and sights towards the top of the mountain are pretty spectacular, its a great way to see the island and you get plenty of climbing practice. The south is better for road biking as its so easy to get out of town, there are some big climbs and it can be very hot in summer.

I’m sure there is some great MTBing (15 odd blokes on nice bikes burst out of the tress as I rode past on the road bike in Firgas) but finding the tracks would be hard, the limited time I have makes the road bike an easier option.

My brother has my dogs sister, she would stay for a weekend and it was only at 4pm on Sunday that they would calm down a bit, they did that for at least a year maybe more. They are 9 now and don’t play fight anymore. They loved it!

Good stuff!

Have similar with our 5 year old, crying in plays etc but this year he’s volunteer end for a speaking part, they always surprise you

We are in the fortunate position of living about a 5 minute walk from school, its then a 10 minute walk (2min cycle) from school to my work. the school is at the end of a cul de sac so we only have to cross one road on the way. opposite out house is a pub (across the only road that needs crossing) with a big car park that any parents are allowed to park in. The village is about 1.5 miles across at its widest and it takes 45 minutes to walk a circuit of (I do it evey morning with the dog) therefore the maximum walk to school would be 25 minutes. BUT there are 2 other primay schools in the village so i reckon the maximum walk for 80% of attendees is 15 minutes from their home (or 5 minutes from the pub car park)

What pisses me of is that the cul de sac to school could be car free and kids could ride bikes, scooter and run to school with no worries…..does this happen? Does it heck.

only 4 cars park in the pub car park, everyone else gets as close as possible, I see people (who live a 2 minute walk from me) driving to school at 8.30 to get a good parking place!!! its all a bit mental.

People have a perceived lack of time and think the car is faster. I walk the kids up to school with my bike and ride form school to work. Several others work in the same place but drive. I get there earlier if I’m on the bike and about 2 minutes later if walking.

its all because people are really, really, really lazy.

maybe cars should be engineered so that there is a massive cost loading for the first 1-2 miles of any journey. So if you do 1-2 miles it costs you the same as 50 miles……..

Tandem x satellites? A constellation of 2 one follows the other…..

I went in July with work, there are 2 hills pretty much in the city centre, we were staying near to them so went up for a walk at the weekend – it was full of people on bikes (nice bikes too). It seems people ride up the road and then ride the tracks down, some trail centre type way marked stuff too. Some looked fairly technical.

Then noticed this shop one day http://www.macris.cl/%5B/url%5D which is near the hills and looks to have a load of good stuff in – the might be able to point you in the right direction.

We were there in ski season and there were companies who would drive you up tot eh mountains (not far maybe an hour) and collect you at the end of the day, maybe thats possible with bikes too?

I’m off again at the start of November for a couple of weeks but going into the field so won’t have time for biking.

Like

I’ve entered your mum and single track world leagues.

don’t know, there are few of you with a ’90’s open mouth pose (you might have just been breathing

Shame the rider spoils the setting eh Jim!

I’m thinking of getting one of my on one of the turns on stage 2 its an impressive setting and will probably make me look as good as I’m ever going to look on a bike.

Its the lower part thats been resurfaced, maintenance work has been done to the top bit too (just filling in holes really), the rocky step is still there. The lower part was always pretty smooth and fast with a few loose corners and a few breaking bumps but nothing at all technical. When I was last there in April it was BMX track smooth, which made it ultra fast and had taken away all the puddles you used to get in the compressions in the woods.

I don’t think Whinlatter needs to be technical, there are plenty of technical options within a few miles of the place. For me it provides a great place for a quick early morning spin, where I don’t need to worry too much about hurting myself whilst on my own and where the challenge is doing bits of it/all of it without stopping as fast as I can.

I like Whinlatter, we often stay in Portinscale so I ride up the bridleway, from the valley bottom all they way up to the top of the North Loop its getting on for an hours climb, which is a good workout. I enjoy the North decent – not technically hard but interesting enough. Then up the South loop – no stopping and no dab challange straight into the re-surfaced downhill which is fast and great fun. Then the Blue then back down the bridleway.

It a 20mile route that take about 2.5 – 3 hours, I’m usually on my own so its nice to know that you’re not stuck on a fell somewhere if you come off (I did come off and broke a wrist on the North loop and walked to the car park to call for a pick up).

Its also a great place to take the kids – ours used to do the first blue section on balance bikes, then progressed to the first two blue sections on pedal bikes and now have a crack at the whole blue loop. Then they can go on the playground (which is brilliant) and have a cake in the cafe.

I might be a grumpy git but I don’t like the adverts during the matches. There are loads of them and they look pretty cool to an impressionable football obsessed 7 year old. When I was young betting happened in a funny looking shop full of the kind of blokes your mum told you not to take sweets from, now its made to look really cool and easy to access.

I broke my right one on Tuesday evening at the shoulder end, don’t think its too bad as it s not that painful at all. I can move the arm quite a lot and have been doing stupid things like playing footie with the kids, longish dog walks and only had a day off work to go to fracture clinic. Its not painful in bed but it did hurt this morning when my 5 year old threw me a balloon and I automatically raised both arms to catch it! This is all compared to the left side that I broke 4 years ago which hurt a lot and I did none of the above…….so they all vary..

Broke my collarbone on Tuesday in preperation….didn’t realise it was only 6 weeks away.

European space agency

I think you’ll have to get an early start, routes from the south basically go up the mountain and back again, once you get up high its obviously cooler and coming back down again is not an issue so you just need to make sure you do the climbing when its cool. You are going to be starting your rides by riding the old coastal road to Mogan or Maspolomas and then heading up.

There are several eastablished routes form the South so GPX etc. are easy to find, it was harder to find routes for the north so I found segments on strava and then looked at the leader board and found the rides of the leaders.

July = Hot, especially in the south, you will need to avoid lunchtime when going up the hill. My wife is from GC so I’ve been loads, but only biked there a couple of times. The first time I hired a bike from Freemotion, the second I took my own. My wife is from Las Palmas in the North so when I took my own I rode from there, when I hired from Freemotion it was from their Maspolomas branch (their main shop) and I rode in the south, in August – I had to stop to buy a bottle of ice cold water to pour on my head as it was so hot.

The road riding is great, the island is basically round with a big (2000m) mountain in the middle, rides are therefore generally uphill for the first half and then down again. It is really beautiful in the mountains, bits of the north look like the Alps.

Good sources of routes:

Bike Map

GC info

How did you get the bike so dirty riding 0.5m backwards?

Armadillo, was speaking to a guy the other day who is battling one at his house. Apparently they burrow along the foundations. He lives in south Carolina though…..

We went to camping LA siesta in palafrugell to the east of Gerona for a summer holiday 2 years ago. The campsite is run by a guy who loves his cycling so they do a guided mtb ride every other evening. Best thing is they have kids clubs at the same time so you can spend all day with the family, then in the evening send the kids to do whatever, wife can relax, and you get a decent 3hr ride in before coming back for a BBQ. We are going back this year

Clay will not be soft and malleable if it is dry. Clay is made up of very fine particles, so when dry and you crumble it it will look like dust. Take one of the lumps, stick it in water and it will look like wet clay

If you want to learn the basics of gis then go for the qgis, no point spending money on arc just to learn about gis.

If you have cad experience then maybe think about geological modelling, make 3d models of geological formations etc. Go and do some mapping, record the dips etc then make a model of what you think is going on.

Gis was used to make the digital maps, but is increasingly used to mash up data and produce products focused on and taylored to a user. The output of a mapping project is now an attributed 3d model

If you have arcmap download BGS.sigma mobile and map some rocks. Its a customised interface to arc which links to dedicated database forms to record everything in a structured and consistent manner

Both ours went from the balance bike to a cnoc 16, both when they were just over 3 (both quite tall for their age). It was a little big for a couple of months but that didn’t stop them, and they could just touch the floor. If he’s like mine, get the bigger one, they grow dead fast and theres a lot of difference in speed and ease of peddling between the 14 and 16

Oh yeah if you do DIY get an 18v impact driver – you’re looking at literally 1000’s of screws

Depends if you like doing it – DIY, if not pay someone to do it. I’ve just finished a big 30m2+ deck with some steps up to the garden, this took me about 5 12 hour days to do on my own. Most of that time was spent doing the steps and making the sub frames.

I’ve bought a fair amount and always been pleased with the prices, returns and all round service. Got quite a bit of known branded stuff, I think the only unknown brand (to me) was the 2117 softshell I got, which for £30 is ace – also fits me well as its long and thin. Last week I ordered some 3/4 shorts and a slack line for the kids birthday. Next day I noticed a previous email with a discount code I could have used – I emails them and they refunded me the saving I would have made.

Also for the record: I’m loosing! :(

Having just got off mine I’d say a following……so good it made the trails dry and the sky sunny. It made me smile too

It’ll be fine, 75miles is not that far and 1600m not too much climbing and Sunday weather looks OK up in scarbs, doing it with some friends too. Did it last year, after a very wet start it turned out OK, unlike one of the whittons we did when it didn’t rain at the start but then did for the rest of the 8-9hrs…….

Should be a good finish on the sea front with people banging the boards. Can go and get an ice cream and have a go on sega ralley or the penny pushers after too!

Thinking about the inheritance thing, maybe this will change for our children’s generation (I have 2 at 6 and 4 and I’m 39). People are having kids later and later so the kids should be younger when the parents die…..maybe

In the same position, probably worth sending it back but its a hassle to take the remote off etc…..

Long lead for recall training for the period of time that you are too scared to let it off the lead (for some people this lasts for the entire life of the dog so do the following).

Liver Cake Recipe[/url] – the most rancid smelling thing you can cook in a microwave, but dogs will do anything for a bit.

Go somewhere (tomorrow or the next day but very soon) which is a long way from roads and where you can see for quite a long way. The middle of a field or country park type place. Let the dog off the lead. Run away from it. When it comes running to you (it should because its young and it should feel safe with you) give it lots of fuss and a treat. Do it again, start doing it where there are things to hide behind like trees, get the whole family to do it. When you run off don’t shout its name.

This very quickly makes them realize that they need to keep an eye on you and know where you are, and look for you if they cannot see you. We did this with our dog and he’s really good at staying with me. My parents used to have a dog who would disappear down the Yorkshire coast cliffs for 30mins at a time, but my Mum would continuously call her – the dog knew where they were as she could hear my Mum so never bothered to go and look for them until she was ready.

Ruggised tablet running the BGS.SIGMAmobile tools in ArcMap? Saves the paper getting wet, feeds straight into the database, uses the correct styles etc: BGS

Otherwise rotoring is what I’ve used in the none digital past.

I finished sweet spot base 1 the other week – retested for the start of sweet spot base 2 mid vol. FTP went up by over 11%, during the 6 weeks of SS base 1 I’d dropped 6kg so was very happy. Did the first week of SS Base 2 mid vol and then did Kaweah on Saturday – 90 mins with 5×10 minute intervals at 95-99% FTP!! Jesus that was tough, first 3 were alright but the last 2 I was just holding on and didn’t do them justice.

Went straight out and took the kids to a roller disco – I skated too, who knew roller skating used so many muscles.

Keeler Needle in 30mins – looks tough too! I’m enjoying it..

1. put mixture in mouth
2. close lips
3. put empty tube to lips
4. expel mixture from mouth into empty tube
5. repeat
6. swallow any excess mixture
7. marvel at lack of washing up.