It's worse for me:

'We're off for a ride now…'

er, that would be just me and the bike 😥

Phone (don't email) CRC and have a conversation with them. My long term experience of CRC is extremely positive in these situations. It won't matter that you aren't the original owner if the wheel is only 2 months old and the damage/failure isn't related to 'user error'.

Be sure to let us know how you get on.

Changed my grips to lock-ons yesterday for the first time. Hard to see why this isn't the best solution for grips. So easy.

And if you're gripping the end of the bars, surely it's time for some sort of bar-end on there? Even short ones make all the difference.

I'll act on your behalf. Send me the money and I'll make sure he gets it…

find it much easier to use than the Satmap

Despite the Gadget Show branding the Satmap 'The iPod of GPS', it is fairly complex.

One nice feature is the use of a night time red display that helps you retain night vision (it doesn't dazzle your eyes). A neat feature.

I'd go the phone route

It's tempting to just use the phone (and I've found it really useful on the odd occasion), but if you flatten the battery then you've lost your emergency contact and map resource.

Dedicated GPS have huge battery life, and much better GPS fixing abilities. The Satmap is famous for getting a strong fix in dense woodland and, if you're anywhere South of the Lowlands, you'll pick up the Euro GPS network for even greater accuracy.

Garmin have a touchscreen effort for £300ish that's quite compact. Good unit and very bike friendly (OS mapping too), but not quite as reliable GPS chip in forest as the Satmap. Not much in it though.

https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?cID=145&pID=63349

One other thing about Satmap. It's designed to be used wholly operable with winter gloves on (and it is). That's one of the reasons the MOD rejected touch screens for field equipment.

The trails may be designed as "bike specific" and that is their sole intended purpose. But, unless they are privately owned and run, private club / membership and on private land, walkers have as much legal right to access and use them as we have…

riiight…are you the Trail Taliban, or am I? I can't quite work it out.

But run 'em over anyway I say

…oh…er…sorry. Actually I'm the Trail Taliban. That was a give away, wasn't it?

I declare Jihad on all people using red routes as picknick areas!

Probably a Satmap with the bike adapter would fit the job. I've got one for hillwalking and keep it in the pack on big trips. Really helped me out when I needed it.

http://www.satmap.com/index.php

I mainly use a Garmin 305 bike computer, but not for navigation. It's purely a training system, and a bleedin' great one at that. you can set a time on a route, then re-ride it against yourself. The previous time appears as a black dot and your current time as a white one. Great stuff!

I could see they were damaged near the stem

I forgot about my carbon seatpost and bars. I take them very much for granted as 'part of the bike'.

That bar failure of yours would almost certainly be replicated in the same way by alloy bars I suspect.

I first noticed it doing 45mph+ down the Schiehallion descent

That's the stuff of nightmares! 😯

Nope. No no no. 😐

Hm…see the dog thread for an insight into the psychology of what constitutes a legitimate use of a bike-specific trail.

I'm constantly coming across riders (young and old) resting in the middle of the trail on bends, standing around jumps on red routes or pushing back up reds to do the jumps again. The truth is that many people are thoughtless (in a genuinely 'just not thinking' way), or alpha-male selfish or very inexperienced (see youtube for proof of this) or, and I'm loathed to use the term as a generalisation, just rather 'stupid'. Or all three of course.

That said, the vast majority of riders aren't like that. And we all have blonde moments, especially when exhausted. That's an easy trap to get caught in for many inexperienced riders at trail centres.

You have to factor all this in on a ride I'm afraid.

Judging by the pictures in the latest 'show us your ride' gallery, most people are buying cheap but well designed frames and highly customising them with niche parts. It's hard to get more 'hard core' than that. But then there's the spirit that emphasises riding over technology too. That's very STW.

To me, the real pleasure of MTB riding is highly solitary. It's fun to ride with a group, but setting yourself alone in a huge landscape, with just you and the next hill to climb, the next river to ford or kilometres of empty forest to overcome…that's what I find between the covers of STW.

Don't worry, you get a 30 day money-back guarantee on wormy Apples 😉

Have to agree with Toasty there. My CAD rendering PC under Windows 7 is rock solid and entirely custom built. A comparable performance mac would be massively more expensive.

And there's an increasingly strong whiff of the 'weird cult' about Apple now. 'join us, join us…it just works, it just works …'

Sent from my iPhone

Be careful. Reports indicate that SS-Kampfgruppe 'Knaust' has moved into the area around Arnhem…

Maybe not 'nice', but 'loved'? Yes, loads of them on show.

The ol' girl.

Aw sweet…and they obviously still make SDP sandals too…

Reall like the red and white, and the bars make sense, but as an ex-Explosif owner, I know how good that bike will be.

The winter snow really knocked my riding on the head. Moving to a house with no real garden didn't help, and nor did an abundance of long but very dull moorland rides on my doorstep.

Moving to a house that can be reached via the Black route at Glentress has really put the lead back in my pencil. God it's hurt though. A near 6 month lay-off has given me a bit of a mountain to overcome…and that's without the real mountain to overcome in the back garden!

Funny though, I love uphill stuff, and coming back to hardcore riding again makes me want my old hardtail back instead of my admittedly fun full susser.

An old one but still good:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvDDDKnNhuE

😆

A lovely machine. Great colour.

I've always found On-One to be quite quirky. In a good way though. Obviously the vibe has changed since designer Brant left, but the product range seems to be exciting and inovative again after a bit of a pause. I'd love to get the new Carbon 456. It looks amazing and just the job for Black Route climbs. 😀

The Whippet looks really interesting too, though if I went for carbon again I'd want it over-built like the 456.

My ScandAL (like everyone else's) was very delayed at the product roll out, but I couldn't be happier with it. While I spend most of my time on the full susser due to the local terrain, when I do take the ScanAL out, it never fails to delight me. So lithe and compliant and blisteringly fast too. I'd race with it without a moments hesitation. It's a truly stunning bit of frame design and proof that Brant's design skills aren't hype.

Begs the question though: Why not look at Ragley Bikes and the Blue Pig and mmmBop? They're the modern successors to the 456 in my opinion.

I don't want to have to slow down for some poncy bike riding mincer who's obviously spent too much time on the internet and too little on the bike

just remember that life should be filled with joy not bile

😆

any gloves that fit well should stop you getting blisters!

That's my take on it. A good pair of gloves should prevent this problem. Get along to your LBS and try on a pair of Specialized gloves.

Used these for years (along with Spech BG gloves) and never had a problem:

http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/Models.aspx?ModelID=39256

I run SLX on the full susser and XT on the hardtail. SLX is excellent and very dependable (good brakes especially), but jump from the suss to the HT and the difference is like night and day in all respects.

Buy XT if you can afford it.

Yep, that was the same situation, only on an epic, John Wayne scale! To avoid confusion, I should stress that the cows weren't at the trail centre.

Trail centres Terrahawk ..not windswept desolate moorland

Quite. It's about dogs on the blue and red, not the canal path.

However, I recall being hemmed in by approx 130 highland cows on one ride last year…yeah well,you had to be there to see how it happened. Flow was FUBAR that day.

quite so. Here here. Live and let live. If there's a dog "in the way" why not just wait a minute?

Ah, dogs…the Nissan Micra of the trail centre 😉

Mangatank. That dog was not properly trained then

It was a very good natured dog to be fair. love dogs in fact, but I've also been bitten twice while riding (not trail centres) and only yesterday I was pursued by a lab at full pelt. you should have seen my flow then, I tell you 😉

conversate! As in ' let's conversate that with the public'

My dog hates Glentress, all those mincers get in the way of her flow.

okay okay okay, let me rephrase the word 'flow':

'While riding up a series of sharp hairpins towards the top of the trail, I found it slightly distracting to find a dog repeatedly scampering back and forth, in front and behind me (flow..there I said it again!)'

😯 Oh bleedin' norra!

*grits teeth* They are cute though

We're (mostly!) all getting faster and faster on our MTBs and we all like to ride singletrack. Surely there is an argument for at least some of it to be bikes only, is there not?

Quite, but as this thread has shown that opinion is clearly divided on that…

So much choice, but I loved my Kona Explosif. Lovely frame. Good steel frames are superb.

Tough titty really. I'm prepared to share and share alike. As always there's a time and place but generally I don't care.

🙂

Avoid evening rides 8pm onwards. That seems to be 'meal time'.

I recall being bitten by horse flies in the Pentland Hills last year. You could feel them 'bite' down :-(. By the ride's end I had blood running down my legs.

Cotic Soul? Blue Pig? Mmmbop? Good with that fork (perfect in fact). On-One Scandal still amazes me every time I drag it off the missus.

I was riding glentress the other week and had to stop my awsomeflow as some numpty had brought their kids to a trail centre!!

That's another topic! A few weeks ago I ran up behind a proud father filming his..five year old son (could have been younger) as he coached him down…Spooky Woods! I had a number of thoughts about that, but the main was 'I wish my dad had been like that'.