gusamc – you said:

Harris and Lewis, E of Tarbert loop

Where is that? I'm heading up that way at Easter.

Solution seeks problem.

I bought some very expensive and shiny aluminium jockey wheels. I think they were something like £9 each (but this was before Quantitative Easing, when £9 was actually worth something).

They'd seized solid within 2 weeks of fairly gently but slightly damp riding. Shortly after this I switched pretty much to full-time single-speeding.

West coast, islands are – fab – but a long way, I've done it in a week and to be honest I was pissed off driving … and moving….

I live in Cambridge. We went to Harris and Lewis for about 5 years on the trot. Takes 2 days but well worth it. Sorry: gratuitous picture:

The children started getting tired of going so far North, so we tried Ireland (you need to like caravans a lot) and Wales (brilliant but wet). Back to Harris in Easter.

I've never had a problem with the classifieds, and my last buy circa £100 was peachy.

I recently bought a saddle off here. The photo I saw did not give a good impression of it – it was much nicer in real life….

Harris, preferably the western side, is brilliant. Amazing beaches, nice little hills to take the kids up and down, and not too many midges. Very remote but absolutely unforgettable.

The lobster and chips at the Anchorage is not to be missed.

Yes, Hope cross.

I guess if the landowner is happy with it, then it's fairy enough.

Do you actually need to wear a jacket? If it's raining heavily then yes, but otherwise, just get on without one. If you're cold, just turnaround your attitude and cycle harder.

and will-of-f… there's load of free apps on the app store so what's the problem?

Those free apps only get to be in the app store if Apple approve of them. They can turn around any time they like and throw them off, and probably remove them remotely from your machine.

Welcome to 1984.

THERE IS NO INEVITABLITY ABOUT INCREASE ENERGY OR ELECTRICTY USAGE.

We've got a rising population in this country (for whatever reason). So that alone will make it hard to avoid increased energy usage.

Goat's brains.

Had some in Greece a long time ago.

Tastes pretty much how you'd expect brains to taste.

I want one of these for Christmas:

http://www.nextenergynews.com/news1/next-energy-news-toshiba-micro-nuclear-12.17b.html

I used to work for an ADSL chip vendor. When we were testing bitrates we were always very picky about the cables we used to connect the ADSL router to the jack socket.

Those were the days!

So long as you've got all those geary bits stuck to your bike, you won't know what it's actually like. Your bike will be heavier and slower, and at the back of your mind will be the thought that, if push came to shove, you could always just change gear.

So you'll have all the worst bits of a single speed and none of the best bits. I think it would just be unpleasant.

Might reduce the rate the the ADSL line will be able to run at. Depends on how far you are from the head-end DSLAM, how you're wired up internally, and a host of other factors you have no real control over.

Suck it and see. Get a mighty long mains extension lead and compare the bitrates you get.

Apparently there's quite a lot of research going on into portable EMP (electromagnetic pulse) devices – like the one they used in the Matrix towards the end.

Obviously it would be very handy to be able to disable a car being driven by bomb-laden fanatics without actually killing them, in case in turned out they were just kids messing about.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/01/20/cig_lighter_emp_gun_its_baack/

So, nothing to worry about. But probably worth lining all your walls with chicken wire. And you ought to protect your brain from damage – just make a hat out of something metallic, like tin foil. Works for me.

1/8" KMC chains, at £8 each.

Ben Haywards, on Trumpington Street?

I went there last year on an SS, 32:18. You'll be fine.

The pilchardstore site seems to be down right now….

lexiekay – could I get details as well please. Thanks.
Email in profile.

Thanks. Some good suggestions there. I think we'll be trying to find somewhere in the Bideford/North Dartmoor/Bude area.

I had the exact same problem until a week ago, with some Shimano Alivio cheap-as-chips cranks.

To confirm it, I attached a cable tie to the frame so I could measure by eye the variation in the length of the spider's tabs as it rotated. They were all spot on.

I then measured the distance of the holes in the tabs to the ends, and that varied by about 0.8mm. That was enough to cause the same huge variation in chain tension you are seeing – and have the chain fall off regularly.

Replaced with Deore LX and it's now completely fine.

Perhaps a bit too soon to say, but I have a DMR SS hub that I bought from here about 5 months ago. So far it's been fine; never even notice it.

Vote for politicians who cycle to work.

It's just a lot more fun.

While you're riding, you don't waste precious brainpower worrying about which gear you're in. Instead you can use that extra brain power to think about how much you're enjoying the ride.

When you get home there's just a whole load less cleaning to be done. You can either spend that extra time with your adoring family, or, more sensibly, by making your rides that bit longer.

And finally you end up spending a fortune on shiny SS kit spending a lot less money on drive train components.

Nothing 🙁

What's the X-ray dose you get from these things?

Have you measured your inside leg length as well? That may also help you decide.

See table at bottom of this page:

http://www.on-one-shop.co.uk/?page_id=590

Chicken if you think the world was created.
Egg if evolution did it.

Four bridges, Brandon country park:

If it's not too late, can you put my name down as well. Thanks. Email in profile.

Just back from a ride round the Black(*) run at Thetford in the dark and the rain with a different, older son, and another friend.

I can't believe that motox can possibly be cool. Riding around on bikes, just the three of us in the quiet of the forest, a thin drizzle seeping through the trees, the noise of my freewheel quietly ticking away, the rhythmic scratching from the disc brakes, and the occasional owl hoot – how can thrashing around with a noisy smelly lump of steel strapped to you possibly compare?

Now. Just need to convince son number 2 of this….

(*) "Black" refers to the colour of your bike and clothes at the finish, not how hard it is to ride.

OK, well I've just ordered a new Deore LX HTII. The SLX ones look really nice, but I think would look absurd on a cheap and cheerful steel single speed.

I'll have to save up for a proper BB, as past experience with the HTII BB's hasn't been great.

Any seagulls?

None of these things work as cold feet is just bad circulation. You'll get cold feet whatever. You can help it out a bit, don't do your shoes up too tight, especially around your ankles, wear socks that don't have compression elastic on them, two thin pairs are better than one thick and so on.

+1

I used to get cold feet whenever I did my shoes up nice and tight.

> ask Charlie – super helpful
+1

Well, according to Wikipedia, an insecticide-treated mosquito net costs around $6.

For every 1000 children supplied with these, about 5.5 lives per year can be saved.

So that $130M would seem to be able to save about 100,000 lives.

Chelmer cycles were very helpful in fixing my bike (stem bolt stripped) with a very effective bodge twenty minutes before the start of the last-but-one Thetford Winter Series, in the pouring rain. Not even charged 🙂

http://www.chelmercycles.co.uk/