Commuting in Birkenhead, a couple of years ago extreme close pass by boy and his mate in a knackered astra who then swung in tight and slammed on the brakes as the lights changed at the pedestrian crossing, I managed to break hard and fast enough that I just tapped his rear bumper with my front tyre as I slid to a halt, he then jumped out of the car screaming and swearing about how he was going to kill me for touching his car, I cycled off and he proceeded to get back in the car and chase me round the back streets with me jumping up and down kerbs, diving down back alleys etc, while he tried to run me over, absolutely bloody terrifying. went on for about good few minutes before I managed to loose him. Took a very long way round before going home in case he found me again, not often I’ve been that scared for my life.

Don’t they also have a design flaw where the back attaches, think it’s just screwed together, sit down too hard and the screw tears through and it’s virtually impossible to fix properly, not good if you have kids who tend to jump on furniture… I love the look of them but as others have said they aren’t actually that great as chairs. There also been some truly hideous colour/material combinations over the years…

Thanks Robbo for organising
I’m up for this again

ftp 252w weight 71kg

Looking forward to it.

Mark

ragwort is listed by defra as an injurious weed, if you have it on your land and it spreads to argrucltural land or if you allow it to grow on your own agricultural land, you can be prosecuted, it’s poisonous to horses and cattle.

how nice is ‘nice’ – doesn’t get much nicer than… https://bellerbyandco.com/

I’d be up for that, did Strathblane to North Berwick and back in a day last year and I’ve done the Strathblane to Helensburgh bit a few times, but I’ve never done the whole thing…

Can you take it apart so you can get access to the bottom of that yoke? If so I’d try to drive a tapered dowel into it to expand the yoke part against the outer tube, that would be a pretty invisible fix and you could drill it out easily enough later if you wanted too.

Hi, Does anyone have a postive grid spark amp, and is it any good? I’ve been playing for 6 months now, I’ve a yamaha pacifica and a little Vox Amplug, which works ok, but never sounds that good (it doesn’t have many settings and they seem a bit heavy handed), but I’d like to play around with the sound a bit more, to try and get what I’m playing to sound more like the original song I’m playing. I’d also like to play without headphones now and again. I’ve also seen reviews of the Yamaha THR and Boss Katanas but neither seem as versatile as the spark, though they do both seem to sound better (but cost nearly double the money for less features). I’m hoping it will be my only amp for a while, as I don’t have the room, and I’m not good enough yet to justify a load of kit. I’ve not really settled on the kind of stuff I’d like to play either, though I prefer rock/metal/pop/acoustic type stuff to classical/spanish, hence thinking I’m better off with a versatile amp rather than one that does one thing really well….

yeah, you’d need to be pretty careful about which way the wood was going to get fired when it finds a nail you missed at the very least…. scares the crap out of me

Cheap thicknesser will be fine for processing pallet wood, the finish isn’t as nice as a more expensive one but that’s not an issue with pallet wood, you won’t be making fine furniture anyway. The biggest issue is the pallets themselves. Miss even one nail in the wood when you strip them down and there’s a good chance you’ll either blunten the blade or worse take a chip out of it. Replacement thicknesser blades are never very cheap and you can’t sharpen very many chips out of them before you have to chuck them out. Unless you are pretty sure of the quality of the pallet wood I wouldn’t. Pallets get remade over and over and they end up with nails in all kind of places, it can take ages to strip them down as they use nails that aren’t designed to come out so they break off. Most people who use pallet wood either have a reliable quality source or they run them through big drum sanders, which are less fussy or they leave them the thickness they come and just cut them to length.

https://www.axminstertools.com/shokunin-japanese-ryoba-double-edged-saw-240mm-105005

English site for @willard ‘s saw I’ve got one, not quite as good for fine work as a decent tenon saw but probably my most used saw, easier to cut straight than a push saw, and finer than most push saws too.

It might take a little while, but I think it will make a difference, my understanding is the model tenancy agreement is used in court as a base when deciding if other agremements are fair, you have to justify where you’ve varied it, and if you can’t, the court rules based on the model not on the agreement you actually signed. It’s also the agreement that is used in cases where a tenant never signed one, or the old one expired.

@ThePilot I believe some recent changes in law mean you have to accept tenants with pets now, or at least I suppose you can’t give that as a reason for not accepting a tenant :)

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-standard-tenancy-agreement-to-help-renters-with-well-behaved-pets

oh and you will get stung on vat and import duty from canada, they’re really hot on it. every time I’ve bought stuff from there I’ve been charged, puts me right off ordering form sparrows :)

I’ve been really pleased with my 4iii power meter, I looked at sending the existing arm off but in the end I found it cost me about 20 quid more to just buy a complete one, and that way I have a spare if the power meter needs to be sent back. I seem to remember the sending it off option looked a lot less attractive once you accounted for postage, than it at first appeared…

I enjoyed that one, got stuck in the second group after the split as I was a bit too far back when it happened and I don’t have the big numbers needed to keep up :). second group pace was ok at first, but seemed to be slowing, possibly as people were tiring possibly as the group was a little too big and it became clear we weren’t going to catch anyone ahead, the gaps started increasing at a fair rate too. So I decided I needed to split the group and put an effort in, unfortunately they stayed together and upped the work so instead of being a short effort for me it took about five minutes, and even then only managed to drop a couple off the back, did manage to get the group to increase the pace a little after that though. I tried again a few miles later but it was a bit half hearted and I knew I couldn’t sustain it for long anyway. I knew most of the people in the group where on worse handicaps than me, so position in the group didn’t matter that much just needed to improve my time as best I could, so after that I just kept going as hard as I could and accepted my fate at the hands of the sprinters :)

I used live on a farm just outside Wingate, tis a charming place, was a bit of an eye opener for a wide eyed suffolk boy seeing local teenagers racing horses bareback up and down the high street on a saturday morning :)

As a long time owner of a cat that knows when pills are mixed in food, and become a swirling maelstrom of teeth and claws the moment medication appears. I’d go with spot on wormer if possible or if it must be a pill, then 2 people, wrap cat in towel to control the limbs and one of these – https://www.animeddirect.co.uk/buster-pill-giver.html?gclid=CjwKCAjw9MuCBhBUEiwAbDZ-7sslt8J-Q5OVCIacyYV4Te6aZi6JQ5toUL32Vf503W1nXark6auAyhoCvDcQAvD_BwE To keep you as far away from the teeth as possible, our cat is highyl skilled at keeping pills in his mouth, then disposing of it the moment you turn your back and at one stage was actually swallowing the pill, then regurgitating it a few minutes later. At which point you give up.

They used to use us for targetting practice, when we did night rides round RAF Woodbridge, that was always fun, that and the stags in breeding season always kept those rides ‘interesting’ :)

I moved to scotland leaving all my friends and changing to working from home at the beginning of 2019. I started getting friendly with some people through cycling and kayaking clubs during 2019, but not close enough to feel I can contact any of them individually just for a chat. This was the 4th move in about 10 years. I’m left with no close friends outside my family. I was never that friendly with my work colleagues, they aren’t the easiest to get along with at the best of times but an odd meetup with them once a week used to make it ok. It’s not going well, minor misunderstandings and lack of tone in work chat regularly end up in bitterness and resentment, that isn’t getting resolved.

I havent seen my family in over a year now, and with Scottish lockdown rules there have only been a couple of weeks where visiting them down south was allowed, and circumstances meant I couldn’t make the trip at the time. I’m not lonely as such, my wife is great. It’s certainly not doing my mental health any good, motivation is increasingly hard to come by for work and weekends are getting harder to fill. I’m beginning to worry about my lack of friends though. The weather getting better and the days getting longer can’t come soon enough long rides in the hills are one thing that help.

Those results only look odd because you are assuming average power is the power that the rider held for the whole race, Aerodynamics law means that you need quadruple the power to go double the speed, so for 2 riders with the same average speed the rider that keeps it even the whole way will end up with a much better time than one with a really peaky output.
I outperformed by the numbers on the result sheet by quite some margin, but I’ve done a reasonable amount of TT’ing and my splits were within a few watts all the way with a steady and slight rise towards the finish.

I’ve got one can’t comment on the sage as I’ve never used one, but the iberital is a great grinder, loads of adjustment, indesctructable, does what it does very well, I’ve had mine 10 years and it gets used every day it’s never missed a beat. Only two things which may or may not matter to you, it’s noisy, like if you lived in a flat it’s make your neighbours hate you noisy. It’s also messy, it drops ground coffee and statically charged ground coffee at that, so it gets all over the grinder and on the worktop. I wipe up every time I use it. It’s also pretty big which has been a pain in some kitchens we’ve lived in.

You used to be able to get chainstay mounted ones, haven’t seen one in years mind you.

@slowpuncheur @mossimus I was definitely just hanging on too, that’s pretty much all I did all race, had a few goes off the front early in the race, but had nothing, I felt terrible practically the whole time. I was just desperately hanging on to whatever group I was in the whole way round. A shameful way to race, I hope I can do better next time. I deserved a worse result than I got this week.

I’m in too please…

Money no object? An early Jaguar XKR, they aren’t that expensive, but it would be by the time I’ve spent an extra few grand on some wire wheels and written a blank cheque made out to retropower….

@darthpunk – probably not on what most people thought it would be spent on

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-52758683

That was tough, decided I would try to stay with the front group for as long as possible at all other costs today. It was a struggle and had to work hard as I was dropped off the back a few times in quick succession, right until the sprint at the end of the first lap, needless to say I had nothing to give, and despite my best efforts couldn’t quite make it back to the tail of the group.
At that point it was a fair few seconds back to the second group with Chipps and Robbo I think, so it wasn’t worth waiting. So I was stuck with a four lap solo between groups 1 and 2. My only company being CrazyHarry for a few seconds as he fell out of the fast group a little later than me, but he must have broken himself pretty badly as he was clearly struggling, think he got a second wind a few minutes later though. Pretty chuffed that I increased the gap between me and the second group, think it was about 40 seconds in the end, but unsurprisignly the gap between me and the first group just kept getting bigger and bigger, I think it was around a minute ten in the end. So pretty happy that I dug in and hung on, a good result for me I think though.

But the top 3 fastest times on Alpe D’Huez Strava in real life aren’t people I’ve ever heard of either…
https://www.strava.com/segments/652851

Maybe the way to be the fastest up any hill isn’t as part of a 3 week stage race, along with 200k of riding and 3 other big hills that day? Not that I necessarily believe the fastest time on Zwift are real, but there are plenty of amateurs that ARE faster than pro’s in real life given a suitable set of tightly defined parameters…

For myself I use a power meter, both outdoors and on zwift, and I’m pretty happy it’s showing me my real numbers, that is the point of them after all…

It’s the ones with are completely unaware of whats going on around them, that annoy me the most. Even if it is your right of way it doesn’t mean you no longer have to take care of your own welfare, it doesn’t mean everyone else is going to do it for you. It’s invariably the same ones that go mental at you when you finally creep past, for not having a bell, when you ‘ve been behind them for five minutes saying excuse me at an increasing volume, until you finally give up and just go round them.

willy waving? anyone who’s ridden with me lately knows that aint true, more like…I Could have been a contender

I was surprised at that time too, but I think small differences in average poer can have a big affect on times on hills. Coincidentally my best ride on Zwift ever, was in a race up the same hill, strava says my time was 19:06 that day. avg power of 311w and a W/Kg of 4.7. I was pretty fit at the time but it was one of those days where you just feel great. I get the impression that Connor has done very little training since stopping being a pro, and it’s a route that really doesn’t suit someone of his size. I also wonder if saying you’ve lost 19% fitness tells you very much. Everyone racing in a higher cat in zwift will be pretty fit, and the differences in fitness between riders are actually pretty small, it’s just improving your fitness by even a small margin gets harder and harder the fitter you get. So 19% loss in your numbers is probably going to take a massive amount of work to get back. I suspect in the series they are doing off the back of this he’ll make some reasonably rapid gains at first as he gets used to training again, but making back the last 10-15 of that loss will take months of work.

Agree with most of Halorics post but for Gods sake don’t learn R as a first language, written by non-programmers for non-programmers, and 99% of the libraries and code out there are appallingly bad. Learn something that will at least give you a clue about what decent programming involves first. Oh and be careful about saying you do ‘data science’, there’s a lot of guys doing that right now as it adds 20%+ to your salary, but there are a lot of bad developers (mostly statisticians with no real world dev experience) doing it and HR departments the world over are bound to catch on soon :)

@jimdubleyou *wavesback* you and me both :)

@robbo124biking my ftp is 258w and my weight 71.5kg after I did a ramp test a couple of weeks ago, I did post at the time but probably on the previous series thread, sadly no longer an A cat :)

Cheers

Mark

or you can weld it back together…..

Ooooh yes please I’m in too, new ftp 258w :( weight 71.2Kg.

Cheers robbo

I’d be up for that, I only said I wouldn’t do it was cos it’s my birthday :)

I thought that mobile canning (basically a canning factory on the back of a truck) was driving the move to tins instead of bottles, maybe that’s not true?

I really enjoyed that, despite misgivings after Tueday, I actually felt quite a bit better tonight, thankfully. Tried to keep a pattern of 30 seconds effort on the front followed by 2 minutes in the pack, which worked quite well for me, just enough rest to make the effort doable, hopefully that didn’t mess it up for anyone else on the team, We kept together pretty well I thought. I’ll be back again for next week, but I’m not doing christmas eve. Cheers guys and good work team.