Z1ppy – but that time spent walking the dog is an investment and will pay you back in added years to your life……maybe.

Seriously, my parents, although not old at 65ish, have 2 dogs (and always have). one of their main pass times is therefore walking the dogs and they are both in very good health and very fit.

I think that owning a dog and obviously being committed to walking it properly twice a day is one of the best things that your average lazy chubby person could do to improve their health. You might not want to go out for a walk in the pissing rain after a long day at work but dogface is going to be there irritating the hell out of you until you go and do it and once out you’ll never regret it.

I have a (black) lab/Collie cross who costs next to nothing to run. Obviously when he was a pup he had all his jabs etc but apart from that its a big sack of food which seems to last for a few months. I reckon he eats about £150 – £200 worth of food a year, plus £40 odd for worming stuff. Much cheaper than the kids (and nicer to stroke).

Ours is a very good dog though, unlike one of his friends – BumFunBarney – who is a chocolate lab, still has his nuts and so will try and commit atrocious sexual acts with any other dog (Male, female, big or small) that he can smell within a mile radius. BFB also like to eat stuff, like a kids dummy, or my 2 gloves, which dislodged the dummy and perforated his intestine. He is also massive and strong, its very entertaining watching him in the park…….probably not so much for his owners.

Hire a bike from Free Motion. They are somewhere in Playa del Ingles, I got a road bike from them – Cannondale super 6 and rode it up the mountain – it was very good (and hot).

OP: My wife is from las Palmas so have been to the capital loads. Las Cateras is a nice beach, 6km long and not touristy as it is really set up for the locals. If you want really quite and unspoilt then head up into the mountains, but you will be isolated from stuff to do and it takes a surprising amount of time to drive down the twisty roads. Mogan is nice as is Agaete in the NW, but Agaete is very quite (apart from the ferry to Tenerrife).

Maspolomas (lots of pigeons is the translation) is developed but the lighthouse end (faro) is nice. Playa Del Ingles (Beach of the English) is pretty much how you would expect it to be given its name!

Seem to have acquired loads of tools for biking and DIY and materials over the years so it needed to be sorted out if I was to fit a respectful number of bikes in the garage

I built myself a 3m long work bench with a shelf running underneath. the Floor below and the shelf hold about 12 plastic boxes with different things in them. these are where the DIY tools and stuff live. This gets them out of the way meaning the work benchtop is free for bike tools and bits.

I have a 5 draw Halfords chest which holds all bike tools, but they are shared with a smaller plastic toolbox which goes with me on trips away. I also have a kind of metal filing cabinet from ikea which has 8 shallow draws – this holds all the important bike bits that I never use but can’t get rid of.

In reality quite a lot of the tools live on the workbench top so that I can spend 20 minutes looking for the right allen key.

Was a bit worried on relying on a borrowed GPS for upcoming Euro road trip, I will now be installing NavFree or similar on the Nexus 7 and gaffer taping it to the dash.

Rothan with brake here, its just coming to the end of the 4 years use by 2 boys. When they started on it they never used the brake but didn’t go too fast. When they get more confident I think its good to get them used to the brake as they can get up to some pretty fast speeds.

Yesterday we were all out on the bikes, I was riding on the road next to our 3 year old (him on the pavement) who had decided to go out on the balance bike, going downhill we were easily doing over 10mph. Doesn’t sound too fast but the little wheels start to get a bit of a speed wobble on at that point. I was glad to be able to shout for him to use the brake and him to know how to use it (I thought it was all going to end pretty badly but it was fine).

Also once they get a peddle bike they just jump on and go, it’s good for them to have learnt how to use a brake before that first time with peddles.

Thanks, the boys are 3 and 5, but both will be biking in Spain and are very good at hurting themselves

Got plastic ones of these and they just pop out when leave red with a screwdriver.

Although its probably not perfect as it sets ridged I’ve glued my 5 your old’s school shoes back together with Araldite – it was all I had. It’s lasted 3 weeks so only 2 to go until they break up and he grows 3 sizes over summer.

Pretty much all my crashes are silly:

Slipped on a tree root, which pointed my bike off a small (2m) cliff. I broke my wrist.

Didn’t put front wheel in properly, pulled wheel up over a rut, wheel fell off and rolled down the hill. I went down hard on my shoulder and broke my collarbone.

both within the last 3 years. When younger:

Over bars at as the lights went green – I stamped on my SPD, foot slipped off, toes hit the floor and heal was still on the peddle. The bike stopped dead.

Trying to ride with left hand on right grip and right hand on left grip – don’t try it.

Group of us on bikes and my brother pulls out to overtake a mate but doesn’t look to see me behind him so we both go down.

Riding next to a friend and my OnZa bars end goes under his OnZa Ules grip at 20mph. He rode out of it I lost a lot of skin on my arm.

Riding too close to friend on overgrown single track, don’t see a hole, go over bars and smash in teeth, fortunately I had glue on braces at the time which the dentist says held my teeth in but they made a right mess of my lips. I wondered why people in cars were staring at me on the 10mile ride home.

That carbon one above is mine, the picture is in Hope before we did the triple 8 with Cavedale bolted on the end. It was great, I love it. I managed to climb far more than normal and had so much more confidence on the downhills.

As Mr snapper says there is probably not a great deal of difference bar the weight and I probably lost more than the difference following the curry the night before. But I had decided that I wanted a carbon bike, fortunately I managed to faff and procrastinate for long enough and time it perfectly that the Santa Cruz guys did the 2013 carbon frame for a very good price.

I live just south of Nottingham and have watched the thread with interest as I often ride the road bike round this way. Just got a new bike (took it to the peak on Sunday) and keen to ride a bit more local to home so I’ll come and join in if your nice to me. 7pm in Woodhouse Eaves car park right?

I’ve got my Dad’s old Stihl which he bought maybe 25 years ago. Not sure which model it is but its pretty big, the ‘blade’ must be 50 – 60cm long. its the kind of thing the council use. Its ace, starts no problem and makes cutting all our hawthorn hedges really easy – it will easily cut through branches about 2-3cm thick too. As far as I know its only ever need a new fuel pipe (the tube between the petrol tank and engine was leaking a bit).

So if you have loads of hedges I’d say get a decent one it’ll make things easier and last for years

Got my BumRush boys in the STW league, only a day left to get your teams in….

Did the Fred last year – I had fun but was very wet and cold at the second feed stop and had to walk Hardknott due to impending cramp (and knackeredness)

Doing it again this year I have ridden more in preparation and just ordered a cassette with a bigger big sprocket and a nice waterproof gore coat

same thing happened to me 2 years ago. mine was due to a helpful 2 year old helping in the garage while I was putting the bike together. I was concentrating on him swinging a hammer around more then putting the wheel in, so I did the qr up properly but the axel was in wonkey. the axel got knocked straight and so the qr was then loose. I only found this out as I wheelied over a ditch at 15 mph only to see the wheel roll off down the hill. got a broken collar bone and a fear of all kind of front end failures. the worse fear is on the road bike, I look down at the start of every downhill to check the qr keep thinking I should take the roady appart and check the steered etc. mtb is alright now as it has a maxel. I don’t have a solution but think its pretty unlikely to happen again

I prefer MX, the above tip of changing to Software rendering is a good one. there are a couple of files I’ve come across that MX won’t play but VLC will but VLC annoyingly drops audio for a split second every 20secs or so (on my Nexus 7 and on wife’s nexus 10).

Nice one I’ll download these later on and give them ago, normal openstreetmap is a bit difficult to see on the edge 800 screen.

are people ordering these by directly contacting LB or through ebay? I noticed on ebay that it difficult to specify exactly what you want – such as UD finish,

How log do they typically take to arrive?

Sprocker assume you were on the same demo as me, hope you enjoyed the beast. After riding the solo today I am going for the ltc

Looking at the pic is making my feet go funny. I have a load of screws and plates in my knee, its been there for 10.5 years. When I had it done they said something about maybe taking it out one day but I’ve never heard anything. I then ended up seeing the orthopaedic surgeon who did it when I broke my wrist a few years later and he didn’t really seem bothered that they were still in there.

Good day for me but I’m knackered now. Out at 6.30 for a 50 mile road ride, back in time to walk dog and youngest son (on his balance bike) to oldest sons football practise. Gammon egg and chips for lunch in pub beer garden, cut grass, chase kids and play fight in the ultimate fighting ring that is the trampoline then take dog again round the fields that have been too muddy for months. Yesterday was similar, we have hardly spent any time inside this weekend!

We rode over the Dodds to the top of Helvellyn last summer – it was ace, best ride I did last year. But it was super dry and had been for a while, it was also about 27deg on top of Helvellyn and I’d drunk 3lt of water by then.

If it had been wet the grassy climb would have been a soul destroying boggy slog though. So make sure its dry if you are going to go that way.

Kick ass is on at 9 on channel 5

Last couple of months have been rubbish for signal where I live, cuts out for hours then comes back for a few minutes then cuts out for a few hours. Didn’t used to be like this, so I phoned them, told them it was rubbish and I was leaving, they didn’t even try to make me stay and gave me a PAC and started the processes of getting an unlock code (I am just out of contract but been with them for 14 years).

Lots of people must be leaving as when requesting my unlock code I was told that due to the high volume of requests it would take a bit longer to come than normal!

will have to check about a cabin – I’d want one of those other wise the kids would be a nightmare!

I can see it being expensive so need to balance it up against driving through France and flying. I quite like the idea of a little cruse and having the car.

This happened to me last March, the boys were 1.75 and 3.75 years old.

Fortunately they were in nursery for 4 of the 8 days. I agree with things said above:

Plan and prepare meals so you can just cook pasta and put the sauce you made last night on, heat something up, make an omelette. Ours get hungry all of a sudden and if you can’t get them something quick then they drive you mad asking for bread, biscuits etc.

Activities:
Walk in woods
Bus ride into town/to a new park
go to park
Picnic – kids don’t care if its cold and muddy
Painting (proper messy painting)
make things – space ship is good, then paint it. Make masks
birthday list – get a catalogue (Argos etc) and get them to cut out what they want and stick it to a piece of paper
LEGO!!
Don’t feel guilty about sticking a DVD on especially in the late afternoon if you’ve been out
Bike rides
Scooter rides
Dressing up, face painting
Read books

You’ll be knackered but you’ll all love it, it really helps with bonding!

50 miles on the road in the pissing sideways rain for me. Felt good until the last 4 miles when had a horrible cross wind and strong rain. Good start to the year though

I’ve got 35inch inside leg and use campag roubaix 3\4 which I use nanoflex leg warmers with. This works well and you can wear the leg warmers with normal length shorts and the 3\4s on there own

Hmmm I have a 6 yr old phantom from wiggle with a broken zip might try and get it fixed. Was going to get the mother in law to fix a new zip in……

Ah – which Fusion are you talking about? What I have written above is for the Active Shell windstopper one – not the gore-tex one which will be water proof (confusingly they have similar names)

Water resistant not water proof. I use a fusion (probably a version 1) on most of my road rides with a merino base layer and jersey under – it works well. I wore it for the Fred Whitton this year and I was very wet after the 5 hours of pissing rain. If I know its going to rain or I’m setting off in the rain I’d ware a waterproof for all other (cold-ish) rides I’d wear the fusion.

Having said the above I can’t decide if the gore phantom I had before was a better winter jacket/top. I just used to wear that and it did the same job as a windproof and thermal top….

Love the arrangement of the laptop, kneeling carpet and dubious stain in failedengineers garage!

Glad my garage looks like most others – some attempts to organise it which has clearly gone to crap as time goes on.

Is it a good idea to apply tx direct to a gore windstopper active jacket (gore fusion). I don’t think it came with any DWR but it might make it more waterproof but might also knacker the breathability

Surprised your awake whippersnapper

4.30 – 6.20 get woken by those pesky kids
6.20 – 7.10 take dog too see his friends in park
7.10 – 7.30 shower dressed
7.30 – 7.45 make breakfast and lunch for me and wife
7.45 – 8.00 eat breakfast, watch pepper pig and stw
8.00 – 8.15 panic dress children and run round house looking for stuff
8.15 – 8.50 take no 2 son to nursery
8.50 – 9.00 take no 1 son to school
9.10 arrive at work

That’s right it takes 3 hours to get to work

Two of us ripped sidewalls on Crossmarks on the same lakes downhill. I also had a pinch flat on all 3 rides. Shame as I liked those, light and low rolling resistance but enough grip on rock.

Yep, washers were planned for the screws and a load of sealant to help glue it to the tiles behind.

Nothing to fix it to the brackets, but there are 2 holes closer to the front of each side in which I can fit a stabilising screw. So my plan at present is to fit as is, stabilise with 2 front screws, pack the rear (!) and put a load of silicone between basin and wall. We have 2 young boys so it’s stability will be tested!

Walls seem pretty vertical and corner is pretty much 90degs so it confuses me.

Timbuk 2 too. Had mine for 16 years, and still use it daily.

Two boys here 4 and 2 (years) they annoy the shit out of each other, makes me mental. It also makes me realize why my mum got stressed out with me and my brother (18 month difference) as we did exactly the same. They poke, punch, pull, pinch and anything else to get a reaction. They get told off they go on the naughty mat, it has an effect but only for a minute. They love each other and are best friends though which is nice.

4.5 hours on a Ryanair flight tomorrow………….