cyclistm – Member

I wish my shed was big enough for 4 sets of lights.

Shed envy 😛

Mind you I turned it into a MDF dust bowl yesterday, which was nice :roll:.

SD. In the scheme of things, the electrics I’ve roughed out for the shed will be superior to our house. And that’s a house that has two separate socket circuits per room. I might even get the house CU replaced for one with RCBOs.

Teaandtoast

Quite agree with your point of view. I’m roughing out the shopping list, which I’ll verify again with people in the know, before 1st fixing stuff. By that I’m talking about laying the cables but NOT connecting anything up.

After which I’ll get someone who does this for a living to properly OK it all.

Oh and I’ve had someone confirm junction boxes are the way to go with the actual wiring as opposed to trying to cram everything into tiny surface boxes.

Finally, I’m going to Visio diagram all of this for my own peace of mind.

Saladdodger

I’m aware this is a reportable job and that I’m not a sparks.

Much as I’d love to have someone come in and do the whole job in one go, this needs to be done in phases. I very much doubt I’ll get any interest from someone to pop in for an hour here and there as that’s not an efficient way to run a business.

Not including the updating at the house end, I have a shopping list of at least £600 of items to buy, and the small matter of digging a 40m trench to bury the 4mm 3 core swa that will go to the shed.

Can’t help on the specific requirement but I found Toolchestdirect[/url]to be very well priced when I splashed on a load of Mak 18v kit.

Oh and what about a 18v Festool?

colournoise – Member

Not that obscure Harry.

We’ve gone totally off topic but props for posting a snap of the God Mccoy 8)

All good comments on here so I’ll just ask:

1) Are you shooting in RAW, in if not, why not?

2) Did you take some close ups of the actual weave? – Folk appreciate such things and you can get all arty with the diagonals etc.

PeterPoddy – Member

m1kea – That’s not fitting in a Camelbak is it?

Camelbak? No, but I’ll be humping this & more next weekend, which is why I’ve finally got round to completing my wannabe action man webbing collection 🙄 – http://products.lowepro.com/product/S-F-Shoulder-Harness,2028,32.htm

Back on topic,

Radio triggers & full manual on the camera and flash guns = more than enough scope with lighting in pretty much any situation. Plus you can use any old kit, which is how I resurrected my old EZ flashes.

Two years ago I shot a hill climb time trial with OCF and a 300mm lens. Twas a very bright sunny day and I was a reasonable distance from the riders. I know from experience that the IR offering would not have worked at all, plus you only get one chance at getting the riders in a TT.

Anyone want to buy a Canon ST-E2? 😉

Clumpy you say?

That’s clumpy, but was a good test for some ‘upwards’ flashing 😉

Oops, forgot to add you can see the ‘full size’ versions here

http://www.pbase.com/m1ke_a/a_closer_view

Now need to work out why Photochop does some random masking with the focus stacks

Ron Paulk’s ultimate work bench is excellent.

Don’t bother with Canon’s infra red system.

I’ve had a ST-E2 for over 5 years and whilst it works inside / short range line of sight, it’s pants compared to the cheapy radio triggers I brought on ebay.

They’ve meant I can use my old Canon EZ speedlites, and IIRC 5 receivers and 2 transmitters were about £70!

PocketWizards are the top end solution if you have the pennies.

njee20
A friend uses an ice cream tub attached to the handle of a pitchfork – puts bottles at arm height so you can ride through and grab one.

There was a pitchfork + drinks at the start of the Army are you tough enough enduro so I presume this must be the same chap?

What’s wrong with Camelbaks? If it’s muddy I’d much rather have a clean mouthpiece over a mud splatted bottle.

On the subject of planning, I understand there is a 2.5m height limit before consent is required.

There’s also a limit on how close you can be to neighbour boundaries which IIRC is 2m

I was working at a LBS back then.

Slept through the storm and then walked down the road to where every window in the shop had been blown in. Managed to sweep the worst of the glass up by midday, when the owners finally managed to get there.

I still reckon the heavy rain the week before was a factor in the trees being uprooted. Vividly remember watching some bloke trying to drive a Opel Monza through a f. off big flood. He failed and when we waded out to give him a hand, we found the car was filled to the head rests with water 😆

footflaps

Yep, tell me about it – I filled four 8 yard skips to the brim (and beyond) clearing out the plot – spent £600 on skips alone…

Lol Yeah I thought I could clear a load of crap out of the loft when the first one arrived. Fat chance.

Oh and don’t under estimate the amount of physical effort this sort of thing needs.

We have a 50m run downhill to the bottom of the garden and had to barrow EVERYTHING to and fro. Pushing rubbish and soil up to those skips was ‘fun’ but not nearly as much hand barrowing 6 tonnes of gabion stone to build a retaining wall 🙁

I did this at the beginning of the year and I have to say £1K isn’t going to go anywhere.

I had a mate who does this sort of thing clear my old plot and hand lay a new 5 X 4m concrete base.

Material and a week of his time was approx £900.
£300 on two skips – you’ll be amazed as to how much 5hite you can end up shifting and waste disposal is bludy expensive now.

I got a custom 4.8 X 3.6m shed from Passmores[/url] who were excellent and 1/2 the price of the cheapest local firm (£2.1K). Definitely recommend them, if for no other reason than two blokes erected this beasty in under 3 hours in the rain.

I have spent another £2K or so on further landscaping and what seemed like 5 sq miles of MDF and celotex insulation boards for the shed interior.

I did consider DIY the full build but if you’re anything like me, you’ll need to quadruple any time estimate you may have come up with.

This reminds me, I really must sort out my build snaps

mrjmt

Yeah sorry I meant mcbs for the individual breakers. Incidentally I’ve got some shed electrical work coming up so will probably upgrade the house consumer unit to split load and possibly RCBOs

Iron is no more than two years old. Never had a prob before and we replace them when the sole plate furrs up with scale.

Crikey

Ironing is very much on a need to wear basis on our household, and I didn’t have any work shirts. Oh and I’d much rather iron first thing in the morning over last thing at night, especially on a Sunday!

New iron shopping tomorrow it is then

Cheers Scott, that looks interesting.

The-milkybar-kid – Member

We won the 4 man with 18 laps 2 of us on 29ers 2 on 26″

You lot are anything but slackers!!

Bonkers speed and effort from you all 8)

Oh and I believe my SSP colleagues have now got their photos sorted from the weekend – http://gallery.sussexsportphotography.com/home.tlx?containerid=13171514125

Brought a new shed earlier in the year and needed?? 😉 some (more) power toolz to put in it.

Cue £1200ish on three Festool products and another £500ish on a new router and jigsaw.

In fact come to think of it, I’ve probably spunked more on power tools than anything else, proportionate to their use.

Jason

I thought that was a great event. How lucky were we with the weather? most of the heavy rain on Friday had soaked away by the time the race had started, and even the damp bits dried up as the race went on – well apart from the big pond/lake on the fireroad. Although it was a bit cold, my Garmin recorded the average temperature as 1.1 degrees for the 12 hours. I thought the mist added to the event, it started in the open bits and slowly found it’s way into the woodland.

The atmosphere on the course was really good. I can’t remember a race were fellow racers were so polite, and overtaking/being overtaken was always very easy. I actually started feeling a bit guilty at people stopping to let me past even before I caught them, I am not that quick! I seemed to go through phases of not seeing anyone, and then I would catch a train of riders.

Pleased to knock out 13 laps. 130miles vs 100miles completed last year.

Big props to you and all the other soloists 8)

Have to concur with everyone being very friendly with passing. I think I had just a couple of guys not say anything went they went past me.

D2D’s a bit of a funny for me as it comes straight after our summer hols which always involve two weeks of driving a sun lounger and drinking beer. I wonder how I’d get on if I actually rode a bike in the 2 – 3 weeks before the event.

We managed 12 laps as a pair and it was a darn site better than last year.

Had some FFS front wheel wash outs on my first two laps but fixed that with a Bonty Mud X wheel swap.

Definitely cold but after last year’s rainmudfest, we had more kit and shelter than you could shake a stick at.

According to my GPS (strava here) the lap was 9.9 miles. Managed one sub 50 minute lap and got passed by some real speed demons and saw plenty of sub 45 min laps on the rolling score board 8O.

Like Nathan I had two laps with big chunks of time on my own. As a roadie time trialler this wasn’t exactly a problem but was noticeable compared to 09 and 11.

Not been myself but some club mates run a cycling business in Southern Spain

http://www.vamoscycling.com/

superfli – Member

Holy shit, on a bog standard wheelchair! Amazing achievement 😯

+ 1 billion

I’m actually embarrassed to have not heard of this guy before

http://www.swasieturner.org/index.htm

jam bo
Would it mean dealing with miserable old men?

I’m only 44! 😛

All joking apart, Sportives are quite divisive in many cycling circles. Whilst they’re great for getting folk out on bikes, a lot of people don’t like them for the fact that companies just run them as a cash cow, and many entrants want everything handed to them on a plate.

I personally don’t do them as I’d rather give my money to a notable cause and/or local (cycling) organisations.

YMMV

[start sarcasm mode]
Any tips?

(Attempt to) Smash every hill you can
Ignore all the road rules of the land
Curse out car drivers whilst doing the above
Suck every wheel you can
Comply with all those Velominati rules
Give a faceless company your money to ride on the Queen’s highways
Don’t put anything back in to the sport, like supporting a local bike club, volunteering etc
Ponder how Audax and reliability riders have managed to cope cycling without Sat Nav, sag wagons and full colour turn based navigation maps for the past oh forty years
[/end sarcasm mode] 😉

So muddy trails but hopefully no rain during the night (unlike last year).

Some random snaps from our recent Turkey trip.

Spot the HDR?
1

2

3

4

5

Original of this was 95 shots at 300mm. Got away with the less than scientific rotation of the camera to get to a 13800 X 5400 px master file.

6

You’ll see this little row boat in the up coming Bond Skyfall 8)

7

About 10 years ago I brought a load of 1/35th kits, p/e accessories etc to resurrect an old hobby. To this day they’re still not finished.

IIRC

Tiger 1 with interior
Leopard 2A5
Panther V G
Pvkfw IV

Sense a theme there? 😉

Never rated Gorillapods, especially with DLSR stuff.

I have a Manfrotto table top mini tripod in the camera bag which is great for flashes and would be more than up to the job of supporting a GoPro

YGM

molgrips
To be honest, it would be a lot easier for trucking companies to load stuff into a container on a lorry rather than into a lorry itself, wouldn’t it?

I’m not even going to pretend I know the full picture but I strongly suspect ease of loading odd shaped product and Just In Time deliveries would negate a lot the convenience of containers. – Aren’t containers primarily designed for ships and long distance transportation?

The company I boycotted last year was Amazon.

They plissed me about with a quite expensive order and couldn’t be bothered to offer any decent customer service.

And that’s after being a customer of theirs since 1998.

The current company at the top of our 5h’itlist is Monarch Airlines after bouncing us off a flight yesterday. Spent 9 hours waiting for the next available flight which was in to Birmingham, which is 150 miles away from us.

Quite impressed no one’s mentioned what flavour biscuits they want on this thread……….

Trying to move (more) haulage on to the railways would be great for uniform shipments (i.e containers) but how many of these do you actually see on the road compared to the overall volume of trucks?

I very much doubt the £250mill mentioned would even make a dent in the cost to upgrade rail freight heads to cater for all shapes and sizes of shipments.

Oh and as a Sussex southerner, the only time I use the ‘London’ M25 is when I’m going to A N Other part of the country, i.e pretty much all of it north of the M4 route.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/bike-blog/2012/oct/01/bike-blog-ridinghoods-rain

Hmm can I get one in time for Thetford D2D this weekend? 😆

GrahamS

We were in Oz just before they made helmets compulsory and I remember some of the debate about whether it would be a bad thing overall.

Glad others are in agreement with my view on wearing one.

One of my fave snaps from Sri Lanka is this fella we drove up behind during a rain storm

I was actually slightly surprised he didn’t have someone on the crossbar holding the umbrella!

Last year it drizzled / rained all night but wasn’t too muddy per se. That said we’d rather a dry ride this year!

To answer the OP’s Q my first event was in 09 was as a duo and we started on alternating single laps and then a block of two each.

Last year as a trio we did one lap each at a time. Our 3rd man is a strong rider but had no MTB race experience and struggled. Here’s my club write up – http://egcc.net/display-items.php?intItemID=715

Other tips?
It’s a laugh so don’t take it seriously. It’s character building if its raining!

We shall be packing multiple sets of clothing and I can’t recommend a decent sized tent/gazebo/canopy in order to sit in.

Try and get some shut eye if you can between laps.

DrP

Perhaps you want to join the SDDers – http://www.southdownsdouble.net/hof.html ? 😉

The bike route originally finished(started)on Paradise Drive. Was a bit disjointed considering the coastal path has always terminated in Dukes Drive.

Oh and don’t get any ideas of trying the Seven Sisters route. Not only is it footpath only, it’s a veritable rollercoaster of cliff like climbs and descents.

HK pricing will be noticeably cheaper than Europe.

I brought a Canon 300mm f4 lens back in 2007 for just over £600 and they were £800+ here in the UK then.

I don’t know if things have changed but you need to ask for a international warranty as opposed to a ‘local’ one.

As to the D600, it looks like a lot of pennies atm. As you already have Nikon glass, it’s not worth swapping systems imo.

mtbtomo – Member

Has done on both road and mtb stuff for me.

Likewise but I’ve only just gone 10spd on’t MTBs

Pickers – Member

If you’re commuting, leave spare, dry socks and shorts at work have access to server equipment that pumps out 50′ C air round the back in case you do get wet in the morning.

Putting wet cycling shorts back on to go home is just nasty.

Works for me 😉

Protecting yourself from the cold (top to bottom)

Head
Kidneys
Hands
Knees
Feet