Atmosphere was really good, the whole town of Aberfoyle is out and the event practically takes over for the weekend. Most of the marshall points are out of the way, so they would be fine, but I wouldn’t want to marshall the Loch Venachar section, if it’s still in. It had been legally closed for the event, and even in the few minutes I was there they had to hold up the event because of 2 (seperate) incredibly aggressive (pushing marshalls, swearing etc) grumpy old men insisting they were riding it regardless, due to their “right to roam”. The marshalls handled it very well and they seemed to have good radio support, but it was sad to see and I wouldn’t have handled that sort of treatment as nicely if it had been me on the receiving end.

Me :) great event, shame it’s too far from home now

Surely nothing that involves drinking 4 bottles of wine can ever be classed as a bodge?

roasted Carrot Hummus, it’s amazing (and according to my Syrian friend an abomination) :)

The Contact lens cases you get with lens solution are excellent for lotions etc, and they won’t burst like a baggy can.

Not historical, just depressing, but for those who only know 1 illiterate person, and in the past at that, around 1/3 of current UK prisoners are illiterate.

Christ this place has become toxic, as far as I can see @TheArtistFormerlyKnownAsStr has said nothing offensive about Kae Tempest, didn’t seem to stop a bunch of you piling on, either for a bit of virtue signalling or just cos you are unpleasant tw**s, it doesn’t matter. Just wind your bloody necks in. You’re ruining this place.

Sorry slight thread hijack, I’d never heard of deadnaming before, now I’ve looked it up and have a (slight) understanding of why it might not be acceptable, how are you supposed to communicate to someone that the Kae Tempest you are talking about is the same artist they enjoyed listening too when they were called Kate Tempest and not another artists with a coincidentally similar name? Or are we supposed to assess the merits of Kae Tempest on their own, and not connect the 2 oevres at all?

I’ve got a feeling the ‘like for like’ bit is the real story here. I live in a street that’s mixed private ownership and social (housing association) housing, the private houses are all well insulated, built to a higher standard, and on mains gas. The social housing isn’t on mains gas (despite being literally next door to me) and didn’t even have double glazing till last year. The housing association has spent the absolute minimum on them in the (20? years) they have had them, it will cost them a lot of money to bring them up to a reasonable standard. They wouldn’t be allowed to build new houses that poor anymore. Yhey must be absolutely wetting themselves over the idea they could flog them off at around the current ‘minimum 3 bed house in a nice area’ prices (which lets face it, is what they are going to go for one way or another, with current demand being what it is. And then have the government give them a similarly sized new house built to modern standards in return. I’ve a feeling this is a way of upgrading social housing stock at no cost to the housing associations, not a scheme to help long term housing association tenants got onto the property ladder at all.

Would make an excellent reference flat surface, if someone needs one, toughened safety glass is very, very flat or you can glue wet and dry sandpaper to it to make a poor mans diamond stone sharpener, though they may be a bit big for that. :)

How is that good news or a reason not to feel guilty about using your car? Seems like the complete opposite to me. If you’d taken the train, you would have reduced CO2 emitted by 121 g/km and improved the CO2 per passenger of the trains…..

I hit an escaped dog in my car, writing it off and killing the dog many years ago (pitch black I didn’t see it at all until it was far too late), the owners house insurance advised/guided him to say that the dog was secure in the garden and ‘someone’ must have let it out….. So owner can’t be proved to be negligent, my car insurance stopped investigating and I lost my no claims. The house was literally miles from any other house, so the odds of a random stranger happening to walk by and open the gate were pretty low you would think…..

I wet moulded one out of 1.5mm veg tan, it was an experiment in wet moulding really, but it works ok, I don’t think you’d want to go any thicker

Software engineer and AWS architect/support for the research and statistics department at Liverpool Football Club…. we decide who to buy, who to sell, and analyse football matches in ridiculous detail :)

Similar to what others have said, but, learn to ride the learning curve. Every skill/sport has a learning curve and there comes a point where it takes more and more time and effort to make smaller and smaller gains, if you want to be the best at one thing, you have to embrace that and spend more time than anyone else improving that skill, but that comes at a cost, and the cost is that you’ll have no time for anything else, you have to sacrifice learning other skills, sacrifice time with your family, sacrifice your career.

The alternative is competance at many things, become a jack of all trades, it takes much less time to be competant at something than it does to be a master, but you can manage many things, you have to stop comparing yourself to the rest of the world and learn to be happy with what you can do. We all know the response you get from a non cyclist when you tell them you cycled 50 miles, do that for a lot of stuff, and screw what Nino Schurter thinks of your XC abilities. It’s better for your mental health, it’s better for your comfidence and you get to be a more useful human being come the apocolypse :)

My Wife bought our 2 cats a horse, I mean the thing is rude, only interested in food and permanently lame, so I can’t think why else she got it 🙂

Thanks everyone, youwould think I’d have learnt by now to stop worrying about what other people think and just do what I want, but I guess everyone needs a reminder every now and then. It’s good to know it’s not as weird as I thought to not know any songs. Have been thinking an acoustic might be a good second guitar to have lying around, I’ve tried my wifes old classical but the neck feels about a foot wide.

I wonder if anyone can help me with maybe some tips or resources to help me?

I’ve been learning guitar for about 18months now, I’ve a yamaha pacifica guitar and a Spark amp. and I’ve been working my way through the justin guitar book as well as picking up a few additional songs as I go along too, I’m now on the second book, but I still don’t know any complete songs, I tend to pick a song learn the interesting bits till I’m happy with them move on, but if you asked me to play any single sone start to finish I couldnt. I really dislike the sound of my own voice and am too embarassed to sing even when it’s just my wife in the house, so I haven’t doen any sinigng at all. So simple 4 chord repeating songs are just very boring (to play and listen too).

I’ve been practicing techniques, fingerstyle, barre chords scales etc as well as picking up songs that use them but I’m wondering where I’m going, it’s fun to find a song learn the bit that’s interesting and get it right but it feels kind of empty if someone says ‘play something’ and I haven’t really got anything.

So at the moment a practice session is probably a bit of chord change practice, major scale practice, and maybe power chords, barre chords and some fingerstyle. Then having a go at whatever songs are on my list of ones I want to learn. Currently :-
Lenny Kravitz – Fly away (with barre chords)
Plain White T’s – Hey there delilah (fingerstyle)
James Bay – Hold Back the river (fingerstyle)
Tracey Chapman – Fast car (fingerstyle)
Death Cab for Cutie – I will follow you into the Dark (barre chords and muting)

So I kind of feel I’ve put a lot of effort in to learning and I’m happy with the progress I’ve made, but there’s this horrible nagging feeling that it was a waste of time, It’s going nowhere and I’m a crap guitarist as I can’t even play one song after all this time.

Blundstones or RedBacks?

https://www.aussieboots.co.uk/

I think that’s the usual answer for easy to get on and off, hard wearing work’ish boots, I really like my redbacks

Panasonic consumer electronics used to have a musical only version of suicide is painless (Theme from Mash) on repeat. had to listen to it for 2 hours once, it wouldn’t have been painless but it would have been a blessed relief at the end of that :)

Had a week mountain biking there in 2014, beautiful place, didn’t see anything very gnar but loads of old skool xc rough tracks for miles up the mountains then down again. We had a guide which definitely helps, not sure how you’d get on trying to find stuff on your own, I don’t think thre was very much local mountain biking going on, so Strava etc may not help much.

More than one, hung over or sober, all memorable at moose coffee liverpool….

The number one reason I miss Liverpool

https://www.moosecoffee.co/

I get requests for both bikes and computers, I’m afraid even family get minimal help these days, after a couple of times, jokingly mentioning invoices usually stops it. I don’t mind helping people who actually want to learn but those who just want you to do it for them, are going to come back over and over for ever more. There is also a particular place in hell reserved for those people (usually work colleagues) who ask for help with their computer and imply that it’s beneath them, something only ‘geeks’ should do (obvious subtext is I’m a geek and beneath them). Those tw*ts can get in the sea.

Hi, I currently live there, it’s a lovely place, we’ve been here 3 years and have loved it, we’re very sad to leave, our house goes on the market probably friday….. PM me :)

I’ve had the feedback pro-elite for a few years, although the price put me off for ages, it’s probably the best money I’ve spent on workshop stuff. Really lovely piece of kit and the pro clamp is excellent, not sure now, but at the time it was a lot more stable and better built that the equivalent park version.

I did all mine a few years ago, there’s loads of tricks and tips to it, my dads a carpenter and he took me through the first one and I did the rest on my own. I just used some sharp chisels, a handplane, thin cardboard for packing and a little piece of wood the size of half a hinge , when you move to power tools that’s when you start needing jigs, also power tools tend to muck it up much quicker (possibly menaing the door is scrap) than hand tools. Most of the time is spent offering the door up marking your next cut then taking it down again to make the cut. Think it took around 2 hours per door in the end, only the first one was a little bit too narrow to latch properly, the rest were fine. I’d bet a pro with a full set of tools will still take 30 minutes a door. If you have a tracksaw I’d use that instead of a power planer, it’s only going to be any use for initial trimming to size anyway, you’ll be finessing it by hand anyway.

Me too please….

Disastrous race for me, wasn’t feeling great at the start, I’ve had bit of a cold the last few days so wasn’t expecting much, then as soon as we turned right onto the course out of the gates, my avatar swung to to the left out of the group and sat there on the other side of the road and out of any draft, immediately dropped and lost 2-3 seconds on the bunch, a massive effort for a minute or so to catch back on, then just as I started making my way through the bunch it did the same again, another massive effort and I got back on again just in time for the first climb :(, just couldn’t hold on at that point, really tried to keep, for the climb but was just losing more and more power losing more places and time think I was about 45 seconds off the lead group by the time I got to the top, carried on for a bit but was struggling to stay in groups as they caught and was feeling totally done in. Think I made it just past half way before throwing my toys and stepping off the bike. Hopefully next week will be better.

@J-R I don’t think it’s efficiency, I think the biggest difference is the obvious one – you’re 20cm taller than me, Xwift insider reckons that’s going to cost you about 20 watts at our usual race pace – https://zwiftinsider.com/speed-tests-height/ which is a pretty big difference, enough that if we produced exactly the same numbers and were the same height, you’d beat me pretty consistently I think.

I’ve signed up if that’s ok?, happy to ride in whatever team

I had no end of trouble getting a replacement derailleur hanger for my norco cross bike, Evans was hopeless, just endless excuses about new systems, shop staff tried but just weren’t allowed, also Evans seemingly deliberately don’t link manufacturer part no’s to their own so it was stupidly hard to work out what I needed even if I could get it elsewhere. In the end I got an email back from Norco, though it took them a while, they didn’t want to help and tried to refer me back to Evans. luckily they (accidentally?) gave me just enough information to be able to work out the correct part number myself.

I’ve never been that way, but Strava heatmaps shows the path from the back of BurnCrooks towards MountBlow and Dunbarton has been ridden, if it is where I think it is you’ll be pushing up the hill once you leave the path round Burncrooks reservoir as it’s pretty steep, and if the path isn’t surfaced the rest could well be a boggy mess this time of year. I might have a look in summer when it’s dry, as it could make a nice loop for me with the John Muir way to Helensburgh.

I had a mate who did the ‘hand cooked’ bit at Kettles chips, it just meant he had to stir the vat of immensely hot oil full of potato slices with a big stainless steel shovel instead of having a machine do it….

Me too please.

Massive thanks to @Robbo1234biking, one of the very few things that have got me through lockdown and given me something to look forward to.

Tough race tonight, a course that I knew might suit me as long as I could save enough energy to not blow up on the final climb, which I nearly failed to do. I knew I had to minimise any time differences, which meant staying in the first group if at all possible.

The alternative could mean being in the second group on the road but having to sit on the front of it for most of the race just to ensure the gap didn’t get too big. Had to fight to stay in the front group for the whole race and Savoyads surges nearly killed me, I can’t stay with him and it’s either a huge sprint to catch him or a really long more sustained effort, luckily the rest of the group were always also putting the work in to reel him back in. I really thought he’d done for me at the sprint though, a massive effort to get back to him, and I really thought I didn’t even have enough to fend of the second group come the volcano climb. Luckily there was a bit of let up for a few mins and I got my heart rate back under some kind of control. Come the volcano I just dug in, ignored the numbers and my legs and tried to hold on for as long as I could. Was very surpised to finish 3rd, I was honestly just hoping to stay ahead of the second group. A good race that one, and the one I think I fought hardest for. Anyway thanks again @Robbo1234biking looking forward to the next series already.

Bit of a tactical one for me tonight, as usual I wasn’t going to win, and with it being a fairly flat course there was a chance of a pretty big group finish with opportunities for those with big handicaps to make big gains. The opportunity for me was that if I could get in the front group and stay there, I could then put try to put as much time time into anyone in groups behind (with special attention to J-R as he’s just behind me on GC w handicap), I wouldn’t be racing against those in whatever group I was in only trying to make as much time as I could. So until we had a small lead group I put all my effort into catching every break and staying with the first 2 or 3 guys, staying off the front as much as I could and resting as much as I could elsewhere. Once we had a small group, I hung in for a few miles watching the gap to those behind grow, then hit the front at around 5 miles to go and pushed as hard as I could for the next 3 miles keeping the pace as high as I could, just making as much time as possible on those behind and ignoring the coming and goings of the rest of my group as they took turns, just ensuring the group pace was as high as I could. After that I just hung on as best I could for the twisty section and watched everyone in the lead group sprint past me at the end. :)

@robbo1234biking sorry to be a pain, but my ftp has gone up to 258w

I’ve got a camelbak repack, it’s great for shorter rides and making sure you only carry the minimal amount of kit, the more weight you put in it the more it bangs around which is really annoying, I wouldn’t take it on a jumpy ride though, it does this really irritating thing where you leave the ground then a fraction of a second later the bag start to come up, then you hit the ground then a fraction of a second later the bag comes down, and it just gets on your nerves, preferable to a big bag and a sweaty back on a suitable ride though. If I were to replace it I’d look at one of the ones with shoulder straps as that would probably stop the annoying bouncing up and down.

Leatherwork? it’s fairly cheap and easy to get started, there’s a lot of additional skills to learn depending on which direction you want to go if you like it and want to take it further, tooling, dyeing patternmaking etc, I made a load of bags and stuff and only slowed down once I had more bags than I knew what to do with. If you sell them or give them as gifts than thats less if a problem. There’s a guy called on DieselpunkRo on youtube who makes really excellent patterns to follow and does some excellent tutorials too, loads of people make stuff from his patterns and sell it for decent money – https://www.youtube.com/c/DieselpunkRo