It took a few days to sort out the transfer of my mobile No with Giffgaff but everything seems fine so far. A few glitches (and the same prob o2 folk had with no service last month) but it seems a great deal. For £10 I rarely use up all the minutes etc and even if I did.. there’s still £10 to use on calls. A goodybag for £15 give 400 minutes and unlimited web compared to 02 with their £12.50 for 750? mins and only 500mb, its just not worth me paying for more minutes if I don’t use 250mins per month.

£10 goodybags are now getting paid monthly through the setting on their website. Like a contract but you can sign in and cancel it if you want to get out. I think they are stressing a bit with their deal to be honest. Some folk are taking advantage of the unlimited web for £10.. so it could change.

Sorry Rick,I never returned to this thread in time! Deathtrack is the coastal path from Elgol to Camasunary on Skye. Do it alone so you don’t have to witness yer mate/mates falling to their death. If you do it alone,nobody can witness your fall either so its the best option ;O)

If you do decide to push/ride the bike along it,beware of the cliff drop you come to. You won’t ride or walk over the edge as someone has now put a rope between the trees! The path veers to the right a little to get around it.

Countzero = Joe Driscoll ;o)

‘A good mix tape,is my idea of romance.. if she got no taste then we got no chance’

wow not cheap! I still have a few blank tdk’s wrapped in a box here.

I bought a cbr 125r to begin with and rode about at nights sorting out U turns etc for the big bike test. On my days off I would take it on longer trips.. it was slow but I learnt quite a bit on it. Happy I bought it as I remember going into a few corners a little quick and managed to sort it out quite easy with the weight of the thing,not to mention the speed that I was going (probably around 45mph)

I wouldn’t get sucked in by reading stuff on the internet. I went from around 12bhp to 140bhp and convinced myself that I would be fine. Half the folk on here and elsewhere raised their eyebrows and said I’b be dead. It all starts to get a bit scary before you even try out a bigger bike with all the negativity you’ll get on here and folk around you that don’t bike at all. You end up getting the idea that as soon as you get a hold of a throttle of a bike with that sort of power.. that you’ll instantly wheelie off the back of the bike before you make it to the first corner. With all the negativity it left me a nervous wreck about my first drive of the bike I went to look at.. a kwak zx9r. I said to the owner that I was a bit wary of it (because of all the shi&% I had read and believed in!) and expected it to wheelie down the road if I wasn’t careful with the throttle.

Well I set off from the guys house with that extra 100bhp+ and had the idea that the ride would be similar to descending a mountain in the alps on a 70’s steel road bike with a loose headset.. how wrong I was. No, how wrong all the naesayers were! The power was there (if and when you wanted it) and it was all so tame and easy to ride until you let it pick up and got heavy handed with the throttle. I think I believed that with a bike with such a high top speed and quick 0-60, I’d be off the back of it or tank slapping all over the place.

Like Capt Kronos said about having most of his stupidity out of his system.. this is the key.

Its like jumping on a downhill bike you’ve never ridden and trying to ride down fort william with 100% commitment. It’s not something anyone would do. Your brain tells you how hard or fast to go,it won’t let you go any further. When on a motorbike you will find you will take it a little more cautiously than on a pushbike as sliding out around a berm is something you get up and walk away from with very little damage to the bike. When on a public road with a bike costing thousands of pounds that can be instantly written off with a slide-out.. you tend to take corners well within the bike’s capabilities compared to an mtb! You won’t be pushing the ability of the tyres with the inside foot down to get an idea of how much you can push it. Exactly the same if you bought a powerful car. You don’t go out and rag it around corners on it’s first outing.. but driving it easy, it can easily be as safe as a low powered car.

How much did the retail for?

Sleeping out in the mountains of Torridon and watching satellites and shooting stars at 1.30am.. and lighthouse’s in the distance around Loch Torridon and over to Skye.

Ahhhh. So that’s why things were looking active last night. I bivi’d out in Coire Grannda and about 1.30am I unzipped to get fresh air and was amazed at the sky. The trails on some of the ‘shooting stars’ were fizzling out from tail to head so you could easily catch sight of them and watch them burn out. Really amazing to watch up there. At one point there were 3 satellites overhead. One straight from the west heading over me.. the one on the left was heading Achnashellach direction and the other one was heading Gairloch direction. Unreal! While I lost sight of the one on the right,another trail was burning through the sky. I actually filmed one satellite before it was dark. I didn’t know it would be possible to see three in the same area.

I’m thinking of just taking my sleeping bag for inside a bivy tucked up next to a rock. Not much more. My primaloft jacket on my front wheel should make a fairly decent pillow! Hopefully I’ll find a nice spot overlooking Annat. I want to fish those lochs at the top of the descent before dark/crack of dawn to see what’s on offer.

Aye,no much wind over the next day too! Oh well,at least it’s going to be dry and warm.

I don’t use my phone as a phone that much but for texting and internet access it suits me fine. I now have it on auto top-up at £10 a month.

How have you found that bivy,Mr maker? I didn’t know what to expect price-wise. I was thinking they would start around 150 quid. Are you in the Area tomorrow? Not sure what I’m up to. I will give you a shout about the bivy if I decide to give it a go. I’ll give the thermarest a miss as I feel I might damage it!

I won a race once where chris hoys dad was calling out the names/doing prize presentation.. Only when the line that starts with ‘and in first place…’ was said,it didn’t end with my name on the end.

Much confusion,discussion and peeved off-ness. Not his fault.

I’m a big guy so struggled to keep the air in it after removal of the pump as the small leak when you remove it caused massive pressure loss.

The air is from (if the pump is working correctly) the barrel of the pump. When you refit the pump it will show approx 10psi lower on the gauge as it needs to refill the barrel. If you lose more,then yer pump is duff.

Single pivots feel sprightly on the climbs.. often making folk say they are really efficient.. and they are,but not when the going gets rough compared to some other designs.

If you think Ibis or Turner pay to use DW as the 2nd best option after single pivot.. like someone said earlier,you are smoking crack. 😆

To be honest,I can think of 30lb+ bikes with dw or maestro that I could nail technical climbs on far easier than my old heckler. Even the superlight would be left for dead regardless of the weight difference.

Single pivots feel sprightly on the climbs.. often making folk say they are really efficient.. and they are,but not when the going gets rough compared to some other designs.

If you think Ibis or Turner pay to use DW as the 2nd best option after single pivot.. like someone said earlier,you are smoking crack. 😆

I wouldn’t flush it. I would drain it,put new filter on along with oil. Also fuel and air filter and wait for the day when it dies.

This has come up before as I remember telling this story.

I was out on the mtb about 20 miles from home and had to have a dump. I rode up a track and had a search for some suitable erse scrubbage at the same time (no point dropping one THEN deciding to go drag it around the forest looking for something suitable)
Turns out I didn’t have much choice of vegetation so I settled for a nice big clump of moss if I remember right..

Anyways, I used the moss and relief kicked in.. but not for long. I had grabbed a handful of moss with ants and swiped my ring with it. The pain over the next ten minutes or so was one of the most excruciating pains I have ever felt. Be careful out there. Ants can bring tears to glass eyes.

Spin, sorry you are right! I was thinking the pic was from the top of coire lair. Rick,forget what I said about the view in druids pic.

If you head around to Grannda you will hike the bike up to see this:

[/url]
coulags zesty top of achnashellach descent pic 9[/url] by martinxyz[/url], on Flickr

Sorry for the confusion!

Finish off the last part without going down to the waterfall/extended route. Do the moaby rocky stuff straight down into Achnashellach as your first intro to Coulags! Aim to feed and hydrate for 6 hours.

Yes that’s the first loop we done of the area on bikes back in 2003. It’s always the one I choose to do as my favourite although the descent into Annat is a topper. Fit a good pair of tyres if you want to rag down towards Achnashellach on the return! Its fairly rough compared to the Annat descent in a different way (the rocks just after the wee loch at the top would no doubt shred some tyres compared to the Annat descent unless you take it easy)

From Bealach Ban towards Coire Grannda it will look like the track vanishes into nothing. Stop and have a close look up to your right and you will see the Mountain Druid has just posted a pic of over the top of the hairpins.If you look closely you will see the track winding up in the foreground.

Once past the small loch at the top,after 15 mins or so you can hang a left down Drochaid coire lair towards the waterfall if you want to extend it a bit,then head right to finish off on the coulin pass towards Acnashellach. It extends the loop but its not as technical as the descent straight down into Achnashellach.

I predict a 5 pager

The old one hanging up with bits of tape stuck on it means so much more than any replica.

Replica’s make you look. Then you move on.
Original’s make you stop and stare until your eyes drip tears from lack of blinking.

I remember racing in the Pentlands in the 90’s with a 22/34/48 setup and people were laughing at me before the race. The 22 was seen as a bairn’s gear. This bairn’s gear saw me ride past folk walking up the grassy slopes later in the race. Loved the 22t.

I have been using 1×9 11-32x33t for a while and recently went to 1×10 with a 11-36x32t and find myself spinning out easily on the flats with the 32t. I am crap at spinning but regardless of that problem.. I would benefit on rides with other folk pushing 42/32 10spd setup’s if I had a 34t on it. However,I am not strong these days so I choose to go for the 32t up front with the 11-36t to help me elsewhere on the rides around here. The shifting on one side only with no extra rings/front mech etc sways me towards this combo more than the 3×9 or 3×10 route regardless of sorting out the problem of keeping up on the flat tracks/faster descents. It’s not an issue if I’m not racing.

1×9 with 33t x 11-34t felt a good all rounder too but everyone’s different so it’s pretty meaningless to go spouting what is right or wrong unless we know power outputs etc. Having said all that,I do like the 3×10 on the 140mm travel bike. Jumping between 32 and 42 while roughly in the middle of the cassette is really nice.

Would never go back to 22/32/44. Not strong enough.

You need a cat woman. You freekin riddler!

I was told by my boss the other day that ‘when I get older I’ll appreciate music more.. and that I need to listen to live music’ or something along those lines. He thinks I listen to pop with bleeps in it or something.

I try to explain what Solid steel is but there would be no use playing it to him as the first hint of a scratch or hip hop track would mean the entire recording has a very poor playlist that couldn’t possibly have anything in it that he’d like. I have listened and recorded SS’s for over a decade now and always go back to the old one’s when I ride the bike.

Coldcut FTW!

Sorry,I misread the prob and replied first time around. Can’t add anything helpful. I do remember trying out a pair of dura ace wheels years ago and the first thing I found (riding up Blackfold near Inverness,if anyone knows the climb) was that I had to q/r the brakes as the flex was doing my head in. Luckily never bought them and went back to the dura ace hubs/open pro’s I built in the first place.

How can a vehicle be legal to drive if the driver can’t see someone straddling a motorcyclist/cyclist next to him?

Realman 😀

Haha. Motorcycle* / Cycle!!!

Edit: now got the chortles at the thought of someone straddling a power ranger motorcyclist in the side view mirror.

S&M dirtbike with the two extra bars welded on at the seat stays/top tube to make a short platform.

Haven’t seen another one since. I even know who has it and its apparently sitting in his loft… with a heap of other tasty bits on it I’d love to get back.

The brake is released I take it? Sometimes the feeling of the blocks touching each side of the rim while checking for hub play can feel a bit like hub play. Had a customer not so long ago that turned up worried about this and I quick released his brake to ‘tighten his hub’ ;O)

I drove em for twenty years, driving one through London is fookin scary…
I’m surprised there isn’t multiple deaths every day tbh…Cyclists need awareness training as much as hgv drivers IMO…

They do,but the real answer to this problem is the awareness of the drivers. It’s 2012.. why the hell is a lorry fitted with multiple mirrors that don’t do their job? How can a vehicle be legal to drive if the driver can’t see someone straddling a motorcyclist/cyclist next to him? In a car there’s going to be a blind spot but at least its still possible to see someone straddling a bike around 5ft off the ground.

Go Outdoor are doing an 800 bundle rrp of 450ish for around 320ish. (just dumped the brochure in the bin but check the website)

The neck is designed to be very flexible in many directions but the one that virtually always has terrible consequences is the direct from above impact. A neck brace will do sod all for that.

Without even looking into it, I would far rather have a neck brace filling out the space between my shoulders/collar bone area and the rim of the helmet if I were to have an impact from above. Its got to do more good than harm in that direction,surely?

This has got to stop. It’s getting Utterly

Utterly

Utterly..

::puts on best french accent::
Such a petty fellow..

I once dressed up as a woman and hit the local supermarket on a singles night. Some Oldgit was limping about in the dairy isle like he just trod in dogchite.. put me right off my stroke. Biscuit isle was a better bet.

Oh not another weekly road incident thread where the scenario gets analysed in more detail and from more angles than the ‘trial of the century’ with O.J freekin Simpson!

Get back to work,get out on yer bikes or hit another website before this turns into another 10 pager!

POSTED 13 HOURS AGO #

Switch.the.computer.off.

Would be going off-road myself! Traffic would do my head in.

Well this has been talked about before. I rode there years ago with danny mac and on the way up the climbs after the carpark we said hello to folk and realized from the off that folk weren’t saying anything back. We looked at each other and mentioned it as it seemed odd compared to what we were used to on trails or trail centres up north. Just never came across that in the past. I think I just put it down to it being so busy that everyone just gets fed up of saying hi to hundreds of folk they don’t even know.

I haven’t been back since.