Compare my mere gear.

with a picture of a meerkat below it.

nice pics,plow. what camera was used?

never taken any drugs on the bike but scoffing a battered mars bar from maxs turkish carryout in the eastgate after a ride up the mast aint any better!

..all topped off by a race up stephens brae with no warm up to finish it off (or finish all three of us off)

i missed this. might try and watch it tomorrow night.

It sounds like a trip most folk didnt enjoy.would it be worth detouring a bit or doing something else in the area thats going to be better..

something that you wouldnt moan about.. like what 13th did last month up north! there must be something.

i would make sure i had a nice new allen key for the grub screw in the hub. dont faff around with a multi tool or a worn out ball end key. give it a good clean out before fitting the allen key as well. i had a mare with a slightly damaged grub screw.i also left it to drain overnight then sucked the remaining fluid out.

* edit.. this overnight pause was bang on in the middle of following the manual. and why not eh?

^ agrees with that first part.i wont get into the other part of it.never tried both convex/concave back to back so i wont bother! :O)

with racing bmx as a kid and using flat pedals for about the first 22 years of biking i remember riding on the arches of my feet.

having moved onto spds from that point onwards and then using both flat pedals and spds up until this day.. i have found that i now race on flats using the ball of the foot at a bmx track.I start off placing the foot over the axle on the gate definately with the ball over the axle.if a foot comes off then it would probably get throw back on closer to the arch but with what im aware of.. nowhere near bang on over the arch like when i was a kid.

i like the feel of first straight sprints on the ball of the foot over the axle on flat pedals. it feels like you can wrap the foot at the lowest point of the stroke to aid the upstroke.this feels crap when you try it on the arches.. probably because the amount of movement between the ankles pivot point(?!) to the axle under the arch.. in comparison to the ankle pivot point to the ball of the foot is quite a diffrence in such a short distance.

try this: place yer index finger across the arch of the foot and move the ankle up and down thru its limits..

now try it with the finger over the ball of the foot and work the ankle. see how much more scope you have?

you were given ankles.. use them!

how can you push through at the bottom of the pedal stroke on a platform pedal? on any pedal for that matter! clipped in, you would be pulling at the bottom.
so how can this design make it a more efficient pedal? its late and i am too tired to look further than my nose right now so feel free to make me look stupid here..

someone i was speaking to earlier asked if it was in the google adverts. I thought "ahh, well i suppose theres all sorts of ads in that column" but i also thought that its still on the stw webpage.

I also thought what uk based shops might think after they have placed their ads themselves.. only to find ads right next to their own offering the same stuff but cheaper inc postage from the states. I tried picturing it from the other side,like a uk based shop putting a web ad on the homepage of the biggest american mountain biking website offering stuff posted to the u.s. that works out for less.

as for the u.k. distributors,what is your view on it?

elite protect cream.
groin and top of inner thighs area.i dont get sore after a few hours on the bike using it.not that i get rubbed red raw or anything but from the start of the ride you feel comfortable and move easier without any discomfort once you get going.

if you had the time, and if it were possible.. could you fit the old rings onto the new setup to see if it rules out the new chainline etc?

so you now have middleburn rings? which rings were on it before?

you deffo have the cable fitted around the pinch bolt exactly where it should be and not wrapped UNDER any "knuckles" that are on the arm of the mech by any chance? had a bike on friday with the cable fitted around the pinch bolt correctly but not over the knuckle (from the factory) and there was no way it would set up correctly if left like that. worth a check.

eminem had shoes on that he had to keep clean. it wasnt that he just didnt want to get muddy feet or walk 40ft to the stage..hence the bags over his feet.there was more to it than that.

Paul, when you forget the camera you always run the risk of missing stuff. It always happens! you have no excuses either. you have a good happysnappy?

http://www.pimpmyride.com/

hey.. i can make you a pair of boots better than 32s out of old milk cartons!

Its funny when folk come to the shop and they tell you they just bought this and that for the bike.. and you point out on the shelf that the same item is actually cheaper in the shop than online. The look on their faces is class. especially when you tell them you would have also fitted it for free.

another thing.. dont get carried away with these big online stores showing the percentage of what you are saving over the rrp.

The rrp is often false.one big company quite often does this and i nearly sprayed the screen with coffee when i noticed the "50% saving over the rrp"

so do yer homework and find out how much you are really saving before hitting the buy button.

mountain biking on old style vans waffle soles can get a bit painful after a while so be aware. i can handle them around a bmx track but continuous riding down stuff on the mtb they just get unbearable. (ok ok, i was thinking of ben nevis descending for over an hour. maybe a bit over the top)
aim for a stiffer midsole.you will find vans with them.. but you might have to go feel around a bit in the shoe stores if you dont know the construction before you order.

Looks nice and functional. not so keen on the size of the headtube (compared to the sneeky pic of the black santa cruz further up the thread)

good old 1 1/8" non internal just looks right.It doesnt leave me asking whats wrong with a bike at a glance. int headtubes of today arent blending in as well.but if its functional.. then so be it.

Good stuff.Ive never seen the point across balnakeil bay from that area before.You can make out A`Chleit in front of the sand dunes in the pic.I tried zooming in from Balnakeil one day in winter at a 22ft swell hitting off the reefy/rocky section and couldnt believe the tubes that were peeling off it.

Standing at the head of the point of Balnakeil and looking over to where you took the picture from.. The swell hitting into the cliffs next to the stac Na Glas Leacan was spraying water as high as the cliff itself. going by the map, 100ft?

unreal place.

The view out to sea at kearvaig looks stunning. That pic is a good example of why i dont venture out of this country. when you stumble upon places like that next to yer hometown.. you know yer onto a good thing!

little wyvis is a good one.the last time i took a bike up wyvis i had a 19" lava dome with mag 20s and the track was nothing like it is now.must have been about 1994. the views to the dam were like a painting.

had a customer that owned one (not with bombers) and she was worried about it running out the shop as the wee bugger never came back.never does what its told.

nah, they dont. they usually ask for the name of the shop and get it sent out.

::goes to metcheck to see how the weathers doing:::

Its awful. I thought everyone on here would be slating it.

i`ll spend the money on bikes. i spend less than a quarter of my life in bed!

ayeee.. weight on that inside pedal all the way to the hossie lol.

::laughs with tony::

I didnt know who it was when i turned the tv over.. thought "radiohead" too and waited to find out who it was.. watched one more track and turned it over. ended up questioning if i liked what i was watching or was it just the same old thing repeated. couldnt and wouldnt get into them. Its been played at work for hours and nothing caught my ear.

so i suppose its a case of going back to stuff i listened to 15-20 years ago all over again. am i getting old? recommend me something ear catching. havent heard much over the years gone by since then.. so open to suggestions.

lol

Ive apparently got relatives buried in the graveyard near the bottom of the trail in pic 5/6. I think theres about 5 distant folk going back to the 1800s.My mother was brought up in a wee tin roof hoose in the distance in pic 5 also!

They have been fine over the past 30 years with freewheels so to rule them out in a first time bmx would maybe confuse a little.I use a white ind on the race bike.

theres only about 5 threads so be careful. i usually go to just under 40nm.

cool. i spent 1st of Jan a few years ago with a seal in the water at Sango. i nearly s*i* myself when it popped its head up and weighed me up.it was sussing me out from down below and cropping up diffrent places. i spent the day in the sun,and the only living thing i saw for the first part of new years day was this seal. nobody else around.

was planning applecross earlier but i decided to go to Ullapool instead. ive just had a look for that youtube clip but dont know which one it is.

might watch it on some iplayery thing later
its too sunny to sit in any longer!

thread bump! :D

epicyclo, i read "queensferry" to begin with!

Pike top caps catche the downtube.possibly only the u-turn side though.I fitted a spacer under the crown and seem to remember the bike feeling best at around 125-130mm.

a well centred ht2 alloy spacer can do the trick under the crown race if you cant get a hold of a +5mm race to fit your existing headset.theres more than enough of the correct diameter of steerer to hold the race even after fitting a 2.5mm spacer so dont worry about running out of the correct diameter for the race to bite on to.

A few from the Earba ride..

http://martin-james.fotopic.net/p16923790.html

http://martin-james.fotopic.net/p16923785.html