Our Isla bikes Rohan cost £120 new 2.5 years ago. Number 1 son used it a sh!te load for 2 years, number 2 son has used it a sh!te load for 0.5 years (and I expect him to use it for 1.5 more years). So its cost me £30 a year of usage time…….who gives a f*** about the resale vale, £30 is nothing to pay considering the fun we’ve all had out of it. I’m going to keep it forever.

1 year ago I bought a Cnoc16 for #1’s third birthday. that cost me just over £200 (or 4 nights on the piss). Its been so well used (arguably because of the quality and ease of riding etc etc) that I consider that a very worthwhile investment in our families well being. I don’t care about the resale value of our Isla bikes I care about the fun we’ve had out of them as a family. Maybe we’d have got the same amount of fun out of a cheaper bike, I don’t care we’ve had so much fun out of the ones we’ve got.

I think that the best thing about a balance bike is that little kids can go much faster than on a normal bike with stabilizers. This means they can keep up, enjoy it more so want to do it more. Our 26 month old loves his balance bike, he loves it as he can go faster than his walking mum and dad and keep his 4 (just) year old brother in sight who is on a pedal bike. He can do about 5 to 6 km on it and get up steeper hills than his brother on peddles.

The 4 year old was exactly the same, he progressed to a pedal bike on his third birthday and rode it straight away. Isla bikes are the best things we have bought for our kids, so worth it.

Rear hanger might be slightly bent, I had this recently and it only threw the large cogs out of alignment.

Alternatively small miss adjustments in cable tension tend to be amplified in the big cogs, could try adjusting cable tension via barrel adjusters.

Any idea if the old heart rate straps work with the 500. Trying to work out which bundle to get. Thanks

2 and 4 here, 4 year old seems a bit better now – or maybe he just copes with it better. 2 year old is hopefully just at the end of about an 8 month period of constant colds (many of which he passed to us). Think I have not had a cold for at least 2.5 weeks which seems a very long time at the moment.

Two solo rides ending in broken bones for me, separated by a year.

First one – April 2010, riding from Keswick up and around the routes in Whinlatter. I was feeling great, had ridden up the bridleway, round the blue and started on the north red. Did the first bit of climbing singletrack (with the steep drop to the right). then you get to a short bit of fire road followed by more singletrack climbing, the first bit of which is pretty narrow with a bit of a vertical drop to the right. I’m thinking about the difficult root between two trees just round the corner when the front wheel slips on a wet root and is pointed over the edge of a 2m drop. I go over the bars and break my wrist. No phone reception so back on the bike and ride down to the car park with wrist in an innertube sling. Get reception at car park so phone my Dad (fortunately they are staying with us so my wife does not need to load 1 year old into the car). I was very cold in that car park!

Second time, a year or so later, I decide to grab a quick local ride on a Sunday morning. I wan tot use the hardtail, which has not been used for a while and I’m in a rush as I need to get back to help out with kids. The now 2 year old is in the garage ‘helping’ to fix my bike (picking up lump hammers and swinging it around) so I’m not fully concentrating. Once the bike is sorted I head out, half a mile later my SPD falls off the spindle on the road. no bother I scoot home and put another pair of peddles on. Set off again, this time with a slightly different route, head off down the first (very tame) bridleway, lift the front wheel over a small water rut and watch in amazement as my front wheel falls out and rolls down the hill. This all happens in slow mo, the forks hit the ground followed by my shoulder, which makes a nice crunching sound. I get up, collarbone is crunching and obviously broken and I’m very confused why my wheel has fallen off. Put the wheel back in a freewheel home to be helped out of several layers of painfully tight lycra and go to hospital.

Turns out that in my rush to sort the bike and lack of attention due to hammer swinging toddler I did the QR up on top of the safety tabs on the fork. So a small impact sent the axle into the proper place and the QR was now loose. Now worry about all downhills on the road bike (is hte QR done up) but not on the maxel equipped MTB.

I’ve been wondering about Gore softshells recently as the zip on my 5 year old phantom is starting to break.

I love the phantom (old next to skin one), I generally run quite hot and find it perfect when worn on its own in temps from about 0 to 10 deg. So what new gore softshell best matches the old phantom?

Sorry for the hijack.

3.5 and 1.5 yr old boys here; the youngest seems to have have had a constant trail of snot coming out of his nose since the start of September. It alright though as he knows the best way to clean it off – ON MY CLEAN CLOTHES!

We also just finished 4 weeks worth of chicken pox……bet we get the puking and pooing over Chistmas.

My 8 month old thread revived!

It’s still relevant as I still can’t decide what I want. I know I want a 29er, don’t know if I want a hardtail or Full sus.

Hardtail leader is the new Titus (purley based on Hype and pics).
Full sus leader is Tallboy LT(c), based on Hype, pics and riding a friends alu one…..not sure I can justify spending that much though considering how much time I get to ride (2 young kids)

My 3 year old son in our Sainsburys local singing the rainbow song very loud:

Red and yellow and pink and blue, orange and purple and Poo Poo 😀

He even got a comment from a fellow shopper about how nice his singing was

I did mine in February this year, it was not overlapping but had a triangle shaped bit floating around. Doc’s didn’t seem worried, they had a look, put it in a sling and told me I could come back in 3 months if I wanted to. Same for the Physio.

Had horrible shooting pains in my fingers where I damaged the nerve – worst pain I’ve ever had (and that includes lots of breaks and several massive poos). That’s gone now thank god.

I made the mistake about 3.5 months after breaking it, when I had forgotten about it, of giving our son a shoulder ride. He wiggled around and something clicked and felt like it moved a bit but did not hurt. It still clicks and feels as though something is moving if i rotate the shoulder through 360. Anyone know what this might be – does it hurt if you break it again where it was broken?

solo I’ve cut beer down to just 2 on my day off. I think its the little cheats that stop more weight coming off, a bowl of porridge every now and then a bit of 70% dark chocolate. I think these have enough sugar in them to muck it all up. been doing the tabata training on a turbo that seems to be helping and I can easily fit it in around 2 young kids a dog and lots of healthy cooking.

Here’s my recipes, wife and I have been doing this for the last 6 weeks. Both lost most weight in the first week and now seem to have plateaued, we have been cheating a little (some porridge, and 2 pieces of dark chocolate after dinner) but weight loss had slowed before this. I lost 3kg in the first week and then only 1 more since. Have been active etc so bit confused why not loosing more. I think the main benefit has been not eating bread (gives me indigestion) and have cut down from 2 beers a night to 2 a week\1

Breakfast:

onions/spring onions, mushrooms, ham fried up with beans then tin of toms added in and allowed to thicken up. Serve with fried eggs.

Omelet – red onion thinly sliced and fried with mushrooms and chorizo. Add spinach then eggs.

Lunch/Dinner

Griddled chicken with a massive salad. Salad can include anything but typically is (well it was tonight) toms, spring onions, red/orange peppers, beetroot, radish, watercress, avocado, grated carrot, beans. Topped off with a dressing of 1/2 olive oil, 1/2 vinegar, and a big spoonful of wholegrain mustard.

Lentils: Chop and fry and onion, add chopped carrots (and swede if you want), and a bit of garlic, fry a bit then add some bacon or gammon. Fry a bit more then add 500 grams of brown or green lentils, 1.5lt of water and 2 bay leaves (you can also put in other things like cumin – that was nice). You then need to cook it for long enough to cook the lentils. We use a pressure cooker (good for cooking beans too) for 15 mins on setting number 1. I like this a lot and is easy to take to work.

Sausage, beans and leek casserole (had this last night and for todays lunch – it’s nice! BBC Good FOod

Chicken thighs roasted on a load of veg (raw beetroot is very nice when roasted) chop up some chorizo and scatter in with the veg – makes it nicer.

Fabada – spanish food with chorizo, black pudding, fabada beans: link

Chickpea flour pancakes – nice to dip in eggs, make then mixture the night before and cook them in the morning then use a a wrap for sandwiches (nice if you spear humus inside with the sandwich filling.

Made my own Humus – that was nice with a load of carrot, celery, peppers and cucumber to dip in it.

Cottage pie with parsnips and carrot on top

Chilli with extra beans

Thats it for now.

C9tln: After maybe 6 weeks I could move it through the whole range of motion with no pain. But it was a gradual process to get to that point – there many movements that I could do from 2 weeks which caused no pain. The motion that took the longest was raising arms out in front of me, once they got to horizontal it hurt.

I had some good training with lifting weights; a 10kg 1 year son old and 15kg 3 year old son who never stop moving require frequent picking up and throwing around. The oldest provided the ultimate test the other night with 20 mins of him climbing on my shoulders so he could jump off. After 2 weeks, while still in a sling I had 36 hours of looking after them on my own, including bathtime and getting them dressed – that hurt but forced me to move it

I broke mine 9 weeks ago (remember to put your front wheel in properly folks!). I was lucky as it just broke in the middle and did not displace. Had the arm in a sling for 3 weeks but took it off after that as I was getting loads of nerve pain in my hand (managed to damage the Brachial Plexus). The bone seemed to get better very quickly after that. Been riding the road bike since week 7, it would have been earlier but I had a nasty cold. Spent Easter in the Lakes and did some good rocky rides with no pain and just a bit of lost confidence.

The nerve pain I hand in my hand was by far the worst pain I have experienced, including breaking my tibial plateau and other breaks

You can download google sketch up models that others have already made from google 3D warehouse. Get one of these, open in sketch up and make it the right size then put in Google Earth.

Now I like the look of that Tallboy LT a lot.

Wippersnapper you get the bandit and I’ll get the new Tallboy next year. Stops us having the same bike again and gives me a year to save up and sell stuff so I can afford it.

Supposed to be up there this weekend for my birthday (and I love the Borrowdale Bash) but now recovering from a broken collarbone, which I think I could probably ride with, but not fall off on.

Summers coming how about an outdoor toy, we got a rope swing for our son last summer (when he was 2) and tied it to a tree branch. Every time he goes outside he heads straight for it (or the sand/water pit.)

That’s a very nice looking bike (both of them)

Good comments and will fuel an evening of web surfing and further development of my ability to not hear what my wife is saying to me.

120mm is probably what I should be lokoing at.

Good vid that, I watched it with my 2.5 year old son at breakfast and it held his attention over the Zingzilla’s!!. It took me a while to convince him that your dog is called Franky and not Elmo (our dogs name).

Elmo loves going to the BMX track (when it’s cold and wet and not full of kids and after he’s had a dump) where he clears the jumps in a very impressive way – his stomach skims the tops. He likes a loop of Whinlatter too, but not too fast on the downs and just one 5-6 mile loop is enough for him. I want a camera to film him now.

Iceland water fall pic is great – I even pointed it out to the wife who is generally not bothered by such things. She was impressed.

You’re supposed to split it at a normal pin and then use the special pin to join it again. Not what you did, the chain will probably fail at the pin you have used. It will fail when you’re powering uphill, you will fly forwards and mash your bollocks or knee on the stem!

You could try some of that carbon assembly paste between the rotating bits. I had one of these years ago on a trek 8700 (stolen) and it was fine – I was more svelt then.

Go to go outdoors try on both and then ask if they will price match ,if they say no then you don’t have anything to feel guilty about.

Anyway I love Salomon shoes, I’ve had 11 and 11.5. I guess I’m normally an 11 or 46 in other shoes (such as Shimano, Spesh) but trials have shown that 11.5 (46 2/3)Salomon is perfect

I have a Garmin 305 ( the bike one) which i also use for running – stick it in my pocket. This has been great. But I’ve recently got a smartphone and this, for me, is better: it goes in an armband, it plays music and endomondo is great really easy to use and upload runs to the website (no faffing with USB cables). I don’t think it is quite as accurate though but I reckon it’s within 4-5% of the garmin.

Had 6 ridge tiles come off this morning, builder reckons about £140 to supply and fit new ones on Sunday…….seems alright to me

STR – would you mind passing that on to me too? (luke . bateson at googlemail . com)

I grew up in Ashover so have ridden in this area a lot but I was always a good boy. Now i’m older and live south of Nottingham I need a good route to make the trip to this area as the dark peak is the same driving time.

I enjoyed this one:

http://www.mountainbikerides.co.uk/routes/1-the-peak-district/12-eyam-a-bakewell.html

You could extend it buy parking at the garden centre in Chatsworth heading up the bridleway from Carlton lees, over carlton pastures down through manner wood and along the dismantled railway to bakewell. That would make it longer than 2-3 hours though!

So if you have wife and kids to escape from for a few hours it’s great!

Don’t do what I did once – a mile into the first climb on the north loop there is a bit where you leave a bit of single track go about 50 meters on a fire road before going back on single track. this next bit of single track doubles back on the fireroad and you end up on a narrow track with a drop onto the fireroad very close to you on the right hand side. There are a few rocks to get over and then a root. this root was very slippy so my front wheel slipped and pointed off the edge of the drop. Before I knew it I was going over the bars off a 2-3m high drop. I broke my wrist and had to ride home one handed. I still can’t bring myself to ride that bit even though I’ve done it loads of times in the past.

I like Whinlatter – very good for a 2-3 hour blast from Portinscale where we stay on holiday. I’m normally escaping from wife and kids so have to do a short route on my own. From Portinscale up the bridleway, round the 2 red loops and back down the bridleway is about 20miles.

If I have friends to ride with then the Borrowdale bash is a great route – looks like a lot of road on the map but it’s worth it.

I thought ground source heat pumps were usually made by scraping off a load of mud – say over 6m deep then laying out a run of pipe through which a refrigerant liquid will run and be warmed up.

Not sure how it works with a vertical borehole? Vertical boreholes are usually for geothermal energy – i.e. extracting hot water from the ground. Is this what you are trying to do?

If so it depends on the geology (ability to hold water), the water table (level of water underground) and source and therefore temperature of that water as to it working.

I’m not sure why you are surprised at hitting solid rock at 100m depth? I’m not an expert but the depth of the superficial deposits (muddy stuff on top which is not quite rock) in this country is not too great. I’d have thought that at 100m depth you’d be in solid rock for 90% of the country.

More advice: Try not to drop a week old baby! You’re wife will be very annoyed but say she is not. Also you will feel a like a right idiot when you have to go to hospital to get the baby checked out.

So GrahamS you would rather see your baby starve and your wife get very depressed than give a baby a bottle?

I’d also be suspicious of someone who does not find an increase in arguments when deprived of sleep and given ‘advice’ by everyone you speak to………but maybe you’re the quite type who doesn’t like to argue (unlikely seeing as you post on here!)

Fair enough if your experiences are different – but I still think baby girls are ugly (you have girls don’t you?).

What I was trying to get across was that it’s not all rosy and a delightful experience – some of it is pretty stressful. But I think this is natural and in the end you’ll look back on it and be happy

2 boys here: 2.5 yrs and 6 months.

Watching them pop out is pretty special and made me cry the first time. Second time; been there and done it so just happy he came out looking as red and ugly as the first one. Overall they are ace and you’ll love them loads and worry about what their future brings and if they will be healthy etc.

Now for some truths:
**You will argue more than you have before – lack of sleep and a new responsibility do that.

**Sometimes you will resent the children for stopping you doing what you want to do – but looking back on it when they in bed you will think they are ace and the best things ever. Don’t beat yourself up if you feel like this it’s normal (I hope)

**They are pretty boring for the first few months and do little. Once they get to 4-5 months you can see their personality developing and then they start smiling and all is good.

**Women generally think they are ace, blokes (especially those with no kids) don’t and are not that bothered so try not to bore you mates with stories about how ace they are – your mates don’t really care.

**Babies are U.G.L.Y until they get to 6 months or so. This is even more true for baby girls – they look just like their dad’s. So if you meet people at NCT etc who have girls you’ll need to practice your lying or at least try not to recoil in shock the first time you see the baby girl.

**If you got to an NCT class in a posh area it will be mainly full of people who you are not interested in staying in contact with.

**You’re wife will get a bit mental and fixed on certain the things – she’ll need a certain pram and then realise in a few months that it was not really necessary. She will also be really worried about keeping things clean and not having second hand stuff etc. By 6/7 months the baby will be on the floor licking it and putting everything in sight in it’s mouth!

**Breastfeeding – yeah it’s the best but if you’re baby and wife are not getting on with it and the baby is loosing weight then tell her you are happy for the kid to have a bottle (if you are that is). This happened to us and my wife thought i would be annoyed if we gave him a bottle – baby lost weight and wife was very stressed and unhappy and we were getting no sleep. Started to feed both ways and it was all so much better

I hope all the people above working crazy hours are being paid overtime or have a nice fat salary. If not then really you’re in the wrong job or have the wrong employer. I really hate the one-upman-ship thing that starts to happen when people start working longer hours to prove how important they are. If you are having to work many hours to get the job done then your employer needs to employ more people (fair enough if you’re self employed) or you need to get better at time management.

To me the most important thing is time away from work, time with family and time doing things I like (fair enough if you really love work and don’t really like your family). I get paid for 37.5 hrs a week, some weeks I work more and stay away from home, but that adds up the flexi time so the next week I’ll have a bit of time off to make up. I don’t get paid a massive amount, I get my work done so it seems a good compromise to me

2012 XT are the best I’ve had out of Hope Mini, Hope Mono Mini and Formula k24…….by quite a way

Lab Collie cross – you’ll have the intelligence of a collie and the temperament of a lab. Elmo, my dog, is ace – comes running a biking with me, soft as shite and very cleaver and therefore trainable

Cute as a puppy:

handsome as a grown up:

Our 2.4 year old currently loves this:

Dig Dig Digging

It came from the charity shop for 50p, will go back if it survives. The charity shop seems to be a good place for books and jigsaws although I have no idea how people keep things in such good condition, maybe they don’t let there kids touch them.