Another vote for Cane Creek – had an s3 on my old Chameleon that was used in all weathers for years & still had the original bearings when I sold it with the frame, only ever got the occasional wipe down & a dab of grease (usually when servicing the forks). Also have a couple of the 40 models on road bikes – again never need touching & those could be picked up new for £20-ish on ebay, all 1 1/8 BTW but I’d buy a tapered one on the strength of the others.

J

I’ve a pair of the Rapha ones Haze – got ’em in the sale a while back with 60% off or something, they’re good – lovely leather palms, very comfy & warm down to -2 ish (too warm for me above ~6 degrees though) – been caught in a few downpours & they’ve stayed dry though I reckon a sustained monsoon would get in eventually. Not sure i’d pay full whack, but for the £40 or whatever I paid they’re great (and they match the burnt orange hardshell jacket perfectly /tart)

At the other end of the £ scale I’ve also got a pair of the Bontrager RXL waterproof softshell ones – picked up for about £20 (still some around on ebay & on-line) & granted they’re a bit bulkier / gauntlet like but they loosen up after a while and have proved a bit of a bargain, think they do a lobster-stylee pair too if that sounds appealing.

The Rapha ones are very nice & highly functional but the Bonty ones are pretty much unbeatable for the price you can find them – I’d pick those to go sledging in, if that’s any sort of indication.

j

Left-field choice, but I picked up one of these for £800 a few weeks ago, down from £1300 then ctw discount on top of that – can’t really go wrong at that price & first few rides have been encouraging, the 2.8″ tyres provide an amazing amount of grip & comfort.

atlaz – Member
Kopi in Singapore has butter in it. It’s an acquired taste which I don’t particularly wish to acquire. One cup a year is about my limit, usually as the memory fades a little.

What you need is more of the stuff

I had a look at the website – buzzword bingo ahoy! It also made me think of that moustachio-ed Mexican dude that invented the new wheel & frame standards for some strange reason…

I used to love the old Zorlac decks – never had one – but the one I always wish I still had was the Santa Cruz Natas with the panther on (mine was kinda blue-ish stain):

Found some old Venture trucks with old slimeballs on a year or two ago in a box of old crap & stuck them on a nice retro mahogany effort like this:

was having a great time zipping round the kitchen on it until the missus caught me – I then re-purposed it as an attractive plant stand & put a big cactus on it, howver she kiboshed that idea too claiming a big spiky cactus balanced on a skateboard in the kitchen is not very “child friendly” :lol:

Quick bump for this thread which I just came across whilst looking for sizing info on these – they’re down to £15 now :wink:

I like a proper strong olde fashioned breakfast tea – any brand really, however Dilmah do a really good one that has that has quite a distinct flavour, goes well with a couple of sugars & milk /heathen (teathen?)

Come to think of it – can any of you tea snobs tell me what that distinct “breakfast tea” flavour that comes through is? Is it from a particular type of tea that’s in the mix?

Remember doing a tour of a tea plantation place in Sri Lanka & being told that the tea that goes into tea bags is just the broken leaves from same production as the £££ large leaf fancy teas, just depends on the blend as to what goes where – there’s not a big crop of shit tea that goes straight into the bags, although some are shit.

j

I can’t believe it’s gone 6 pages & no-one’s mentioned the plane hitting the Pentagon and not a single of the 500000 security cameras in the area seen it happen :wink:

My 2 year fixed with HSBC at 1.89 ends 1st December. Usually do this online, but actually going into the local HSBC on Friday as they called at the right moment. Probably go 2 year fixed, which will be cheaper than what I am on now.

But then you’ll be re-mortgaging right in the (brown) eye of the brexshit storm when rates will be at 40% and we’ll all be fighting to the death over the last tub of hummus in Waitrose :o

Edit – i’m in a similar boat, 10 years left & took a 5 year fixed – will be making overpayments instead of committing to larger payments/shorter term in the hope that there won’t be much left after the end of the fixed term.

J

When my old fixed rate expired years ago I migrated onto the providers standard variable rate (base + 2%) just as the rates dropped, which was a stroke of luck – been on that up until recently as a couple of 5yr fixed rate deals appeared which worked out £20 per month cheaper, since the hinting that the rates might go up began, i’ve seen a few lenders adjust their rates accordingly.

Depends on your circumstances really, but I don’t know if the current 5yr fixed rates will get any cheaper anytime soon, the 10yr fixed rates are probably a bit cautious on the side of the lender. Some deals start you off on the variable rate with an option to buy back onto the fixed rate if you wanted to.

For food & drinks i’d stick with Finnieston – loads of choice depending on your tastebuds / wallet, Crabshakk is great for seafood, Ox & Finch and Alchemilla are worth a look if you fancy something a bit creative, 6 By Nico and Rioja are getting great reviews too although i’ve not been to either. Hunners of pubs along there too, if you’re a fan of white russians, go to Lebowski’s & see how far you get through their menu – they also do very good burgers if you fancy something like this:

(it’s a scotch pie in the middle)

First rule of driving – you can’t do anything about the drivers behind you.

Aye you can – the lightest of nudges on the brake pedal, just enough to make the lights come on but not slow you down, can cause someone that’s 3 feet away from your bumper shit themselves & drop their phone :D

Went to KL / Penang / Langkawi 2 years ago for 2 and a bit weeks – partially because Thailand was at least twice as expensive for flights – really enjoyed it all, would go back & try and get to Borneo too.

Got a cracking (literally) massage at the blind massage centre in KL- kinda charity run place that trains blind folk how to torture folk & get paid for it, check it out if you end up there – I could barely walk the rest of the day, must have been good.

Prior to that trip we’d been to Sri Lanka & both me and the wife liked Malaysia more I think, dunno why – just seemed a bit less likely to be involved in a terrible traffic accident for one :|

edit: forgot about the durians – they’re f**king honking, I refused to eat at the street food market the first night as I honestly thought there was raw sewage leaking from somewhere closeby :lol:

bit late to the party, but if anyone wants a laugh…

read the comments

:lol:

The prospect of paying off the mortgage early via larger repayments / regular overpayments & getting the burden off your shoulders does sound appealing to me, however at a push we could probably sell the wife’s rental house, empty savings account & cash in everything else and pay it off just now, so maybe we’re spreading the bets more than I/we realize.

Due to a couple of unfortunate events, resulting in my missus inheriting some money & a house (she rents that out & some goes towards overpayments) we managed to put down 40% as a deposit, mortgage was due to be paid off when we were 60, but should be done nearer 50 – 38 now. We took smaller repayments as the rate was good and we like buying pointless crap and going on holiday – although we’ll probably pay an additional 10% of the total on top of the every year in overpayments to get it paid sooner.

Re. overpayments – we both stick cash into the joint account every month which easily covers household bills etc, and agreed anything left over at the end of the month got fired into the mortgage – so I don’t ever think about it really, I still have “my” money and she has “hers”… last year we easily maxed out the 10% limit due to a small inheritance, but this year there’s a baby crawling around the place and the wife’s on mat. leave for a year so the end date might be put back a bit now :lol:

Haha – the legendary stonner kebab rears it’s meaty head :lol:

Sounds like the missus should spend months deciding on the perfect car in the perfect colour / upholstery combo for the dog & baby to tear up & befoul I should start looking for a new one sooner than later then – have already hinted that an enormous 300bhp awd Volvo estate is probably the safest option, because SAFETY 8)

Who said anything about perpetuity? That would be madness but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to get a couple of weeks car hire post settlement to give us time to find another car – I’m not taking the piss, we need a car to get the baby around in & I’ll need to hire one if they won’t give us one – it’s not like I’m claiming the glove box was full of Faberge eggs ffs. OR AM I? 8)

Cheers all – from being stung by a previous crash (not at fault) my missus insists on getting extra legal assistance etc. along with the insurance so it hopefully should be fairly straightforward – she spoke to our insurers yesterday & just waiting to hear back from them about a courtesy car, but just slightly worried that we’ll be left with no car after the settlement, because we will need to hire one – don’t fancy shelling out hundreds on car hire costs every week until we decide on another car so i’m wondering if we can claim hire costs back from the other party.

Car is a 4 year old Skoda roomster scout, not anything too fancy but not that many of them around & we got a pretty good deal on ours when we bought it and the missus fancies another one.

j

Another vote for that Halifax card – get the bank’s £/Euro rate of the day on card purchases & great rates on cash withdrawals, then pay it off asap upon returning home before the interest charges start. Obviously for future reference like – i’ve always found those bright yellow “Money Shop” places have the best high st rates

I have the previous version of the Plug (Filter) & would have another in a heartbeat for commuting if mine gave up the ghost – great frames- contemplating taking mine the flat-bar route after accidentally acquiring a couple of “proper” road bikes since I bought it :D

Nice – well done for not being swayed into buying a $500 s/h bike on the basis it’s all you really need at the moment, there’s nothing that will inspire you to ride quite like having the bike you really want to ride. Re brakes – Ultegra 6800 calipers are fantastic & are plenty if you’re only ever riding in fair weather, a cheap set of training wheels can be had for pennies if you end up riding more in town or whatever.

If we all bought only the bikes we really needed, there would be a whole lot of wasted spare-room / loft / cupboard space in the world – yes I hide bikes in the loft so the missus only ever sees the number i’ve declared in circulation :wink:

That is their identity, culture and their tradition

Sure is

It’s legal in the ‘states you smash your testicles repeatedly with a lump hammer but I don’t see too many folk exercising that constitooshunal right…

Openly carrying a f**ckig assault rifle down the street is not to dissuade jihadis from bombing anyone or to protect themselves, it’s purely designed to be antagonistic.

maccruiskeen
Whaaaaaat! Rob spent ages painting that wall!

Last time I was in there I actually wondered how long that would have taken someone :lol:

Then a rather lovely nan bread roll & bacon appeared (like the ones in Dishoom in that there fancy London) and my attention turned to stuffing that into my face top-speed instead…

Recently I met a German doctor outside the cycling cafe in Chipping, he was sitting eating a plate of seven fried eggs.

Wouldn’t fancy cleaning his cage out :|

I remember a few years ago doing the pedal for Scotland Glasgow-Edinburgh ride at a time when I wasn’t riding much in the way of distance & they had loads of milk at all the stops – seemed slightly unusual at the time but it was cold & went down a treat, felt completely fine the next day – it was either that or all the Guinness I drank later that night…

What doesn’t help apparently was my cousin eating about 5 bananas in the space of a couple of hours & finishing the day wearing one sock due to “unforseen stomach problems” :lol:

Another vote for either Paesano for a pizza, or Finnieston – Alchemilla probably would be do-able for lunch, but Ox & Finch is always full, has anyone said Mother India yet?

I was sad to see Riverhill in town go – they stopped their Friday / Saturday night dinner menu after their head chef left – the one in Helensburgh is good though.

I’m starving now.

Hi all, been back & forth recently to consultant for a knee problem that’s been getting slowly worse over the years – basically several areas of full thickness articular cartilage loss – and trying to figure out what’s the best way forward to prevent any worsening of the deterioration & strengthen the surrounding muscles to take some of the strain off the joint.

Re. cartilage regrowth – this can apparently be done via micro abrasion of the affected bone surface & maybe also via loading exercises as mentioned above, both methods essentially irritatate the affected area which stimulates the body to produce new cartilage at the point of injury to protect the bone surface however it’s not articular cartilage that regrows ( the dense, firm stuff that was there originally ) but fibral cartilage which is a lot softer & more prone to further damage leaving you back where you started. The consultant offered me the micro abrasion treatment if I felt I really wanted to try it, but advised leaving it as a last resort as he felt at this stage it wouldn’t make a noticeable difference.

On the stem cell therapy – the consultant I spoke to said it had been available on the nhs at one point but they’ve stopped it as they felt it wasn’t offering enough vfm… so I don’t know if it actually worked at all or if it wasn’t offering enough of an improvement in patients to justify the cost of the treatment.

I’ve been sticking to the road bike & it’s been fine recently so I’ll persevere with that & hope for the best!

I’ve never gone for the Rapha shorts either – I know everyone raves about them but I still find it hard to justify £100+ on shorts even when they’re on sale, primarily because i’m mean & usually just go for the “best” least gaudy / highest discount option from Giordana or whoever – maybe one day… 8)

I have a few jerseys, the hardshell jacket which is amazing for winter but overkill above 5-7 degrees for me, wind jacket which is probably the most versatile thing ever, couple of pairs of gloves, all of it bought with probably 70% off (like most folk I know) & all of it worn very regularly commuting and on longer road rides and it has outlasted plenty of stuff from other “respectable” brands (that was probably just as expensive tbh) and still all looks pretty much new. It’s good stuff – I really don’t know where all the hate comes from – fair enough if it was crap, but it’s not – is it the marketing bollocks alone or something else? I mean, do people get annoyed by 7mesh stuff in the same way? :?

He might have said “flee you fool” before that, I couldn’t quite make it out at first, so rewound it to try & make it out clearer – first time he (I think) said “hurry you forking idiot” as she’s trying to pull the bolt out of the dragon / Jaime’s eyeing her up while picking the spear out of some dead guy, then, as Jaime starts charging / she’s still standing with her back to the action he says “you fahking idiot”

Could be he’s only batting for team tits & wine, but his brother did save him being lynched after shooting his father with a crossbow mid-dump.

Just finally got round to watching it last night – cracker of an episode, one thing though – when Tyrion is saying “hurry up you facking idiot” etc. was it directed at her with the big lizard or that bloke that claps with one hand? I was wondering if he’s as loyal to blondie as he says he is – blood’s thicker than water & all that jazz – but mud’s thicker than blood as the great prophet Sly Stone says, so I dunno – probably one of those deliberately ambiguous scenes to get you thinking… or was it just me? :?

Wasn’t really too interested in the bars themselves, would have probably swapped them sooner than later either way, but they came with a groupset that was in great nick & already had shifters mounted & recently taped, would have used as a stop gap until the rest of the bike was completely sorted. Don’t really see a problem with sh carbon if you’re confident of the history, but it’s definitely better to err on the side of caution given the failure mode… saying that, alloy can go quite suddenly too if fatigued enough *goes off to find a solid steel butchers bike from the 40s on eBay*

Evening all, after the last email, I had a genuinely apologetic message back with a partial refund from the seller which will about cover a new set of (alloy) bars, so that’s fine by me, willing to accept he’d taken the shops word for it & not had a proper poke around himself – I now need suggestions on what to do with a condemned set of carbon road bars as the he accepted his lbs were apparently not a good judge of the structural integrity of used carbon bicycle components, anyone want to buy an artisan upcycled carbon bog roll holder? 8)

TBH They didn’t look terrible, but I thought straight away the clamp area looked crimped & it only took 20 seconds with a sanding pad to rub back the flaking lacquer – the opposite side had some flaking lacquer that was obviously just that. Have emailed him back politely say the groupset is spot on but the bars are a liability & I’d happily send them back so he doesn’t think I’m at it – can’t be arsed stripping the other bits off the frame again but don’t want to let it slide purely on principle.

Yeah that’s my opinion – emailed the guy back & he’s sticking to the “my lbs said it was just lacquer flaking” line after I emailed him those pics, adding if I wanted to just sent the whole lot back… the groupset is in great condition (and already on my bike) so I don’t really want to do that, but I’m also slightly miffed that someone would sell what looks like (fairly obviously) cracked bars and claim they were fine, as their lbs said so – as soon as I looked at the damaged area it looked rather suspect, someone who didn’t know better could end up in a pile by the side of the road… (road bars btw – sorry :oops: :wink: )

I’ll email them asking who their lbs is so I know to avoid them :lol:

Yeah I know – I’m not overly upset by my current face so would rather cut my losses & accept it in its’ present state :lol:

Suppose some pictures would help :wink:

I see quite a few folk out in kayaks down at Castle Semple Loch (Lochwinnoch), there’s a watersports centre with pontoons there, you could give them a bell & see what the deal is in case they have an event on as they do sailing / windsurfing etc. there too, but I’ve also seen folk bring their own & launch them from the grassy bank – always been meaning to pop round & hire one or a paddleboard for a couple of hours but never got round to it despite it being a 2 minute walk away :oops:

J

mrblobby
He looked to intentionally position his elbow to stop someone trying to push through the gap, but not to intentionally to shove someone into the barriers.

It’s a fine line between the two with half a dozen riders going balls out at 40mph shoulder to shoulder, that’s probably the best official explanation Sagan could hope for! :lol:

The overhead angle didn’t look good, from one of the other angles though Sagan’s body looked to be leaning away from Cavendish as though he tried to jump on the same wheel before seeing him late & protecting himself by sticking his elbow out – either way Sagan’s at fault for the crash, really messy sprint – at one point Greipel nearly lost his back wheel & people were weaving across each other all the way in.

Entertaining mind…