Does this need to be done on on “when needed” basis or do you it every time said garments are washed?

I do a combination. Dirty kit gets washed immediately (or fairly soon) after use on a sports cycle (20 minutes or something). Then when stuff gets stinky, i do a bigger load of sports kit, and anything even remotely whiffy gets vinegared. My stuff, kids stuff.

Forget about it.

When i get these they send me a link to the parcel/package/letter details too, usually a photo.

Plus your feet sweat. More than you think.

I’ve worn winterboots once when it was a bit warmer than i expected, drained a cup full of water out of them after my ride…

What do you recommend for truly dry feet?

Not going out when it’s wet.
Or waterproof boots, trousers, gaiters and riding very gently (so you don’t get a sweat on).

I bought the cheapest one i could some time in the late 90’s. It’s got about 1 cm of slop and the fittings at both end aren’t square to each other.

It’s been through 3 house moves in the bottom of a box of tools, probably 500 straightened hangers and still works perfectly. Accurate enough to set up SRAM and Shimano 10, 11 and 12 speed perfectly and (recently) Campagnolo Ekar.

A stick with a derailleur bolt on the end would also work perfectly.

Maybe the ideal set-up is a big bike brand sponsor like Spesh or Trek who see the value in him winning XC on their bike, and also sponsor a World Tour team that he can do the Classics and stage hunting you mention for.

You mean like MvdP and Canyon. It was a major part of his early road contracts. Not sure how connected it is now he’s fully established as someone who can pretty much guarantee a result whenever he pins a number on.

For avoidance of doubt @mark already invoked his name yesterday so if he does turn up we have something we can legitimately blame the management for.

I had some fairly robust “discussion” with him on another forum about 15 years ago. From the looks of his responses i would have guessed he was about 15 minutes away from a full on heart attack. Looks like my guess wasn’t that accurate.

Edit, it was nearer 20 years ago. 2005/6 ish.

an unpowered splashdown, and recovery with a boat.

AFAIK that was a major cost with the SRBs, dropping a red hot rocket full of all sorts of corroding materials, electronics, hydraulics etc from several miles up into a huge salty sea, letting it sink and then recover, requires a *massive* clean up and refurbishment.

Not that the SpaceX refurbs are cheap. Just bugger all thermal shock and salt damage to deal with.

How stable is the vans feed?
I know my caravan 12v power supply wasn’t stable enough for the 4G wifi dongle thing i had. Added a regulator and all was good.

It worked fine on the 240v sockets, but didn’t want to block one of them permanently (as the van only has 3).

Short of adopting a much more upright position, has anyone experienced something similar and found a good solution?

Single vision lenses and bigger font on your GPS?

The area of focus is too small

Don’t know what lenses you bought and what price they were but the more you spend the larger the areas can be.

My first ones were the basic cheapies and were pretty marginal, but i was mostly working from home, so one monitor, not much driving, really became obvious when i went back to work, three monitors.
Now have the better lenses and can give both monitors (and colleagues) side eye without them going out of focus.

Audax?

I guy i used to race with years ago switched to that after a bout of post viral fatigue, 4 or 5 years unable to recover from any sort of elevated effort sort of rules out anything that’s full on. So now he does Audaxes, up to and including PBP and LEL (and some others). Audaxes just left him a little jaded for a few days to a week rather than in bed for a week plus that a mid level XC MTB race did.
Haven’t seen him for 20 years though, so no idea what he’s doing now!

My housemates and i had an unheated place in the first year, the fire was condemned two days after we moved in and the hot water heater was an un-insulated 25 litre electric heater. Cost about 3 quid to heat up and cooled to ambient in about an hour.

The toilet used to freeze (early morning pee to defrost), the curtains froze to the windows when the condensation got bad (the curtains also used to waft around in the wind when it blew in the right direction). I suspect that the water pipes were on the brink of bursting for the entire time we were there.
I moved out in February, got a student railcard and commuted from home until the second year. Then got my own place. The other two guys moved out a couple of weeks after me.

FWIW, there is a noticeable difference in energy consumption and temperature in my current place, dependant on if it’s just me there, me and the kids, or me, the kids and my partner and their kid… Less energy (for heating), and warmer.
On the other hand, electricity for lights, computers, phone charging, music, hot water all goes through the roof!

In the example being discussed they were either not working (unlikely) or just doesn’t work as a solution as it doesn’t tell you if they’re crashed, or just in the DS’s car, riding back to the start off-course, etc.

This is why you have some sort of protocol.
Rider X hasn’t passed through checkpoint 3.

Check with Doctor, Sag Wagon, team DS, 2nd/3rd team car, commisaire, convoy radio. Escalate to the point at which you decide something untoward has happened, then work back from the last time they were seen. You can do the same with the spot tracker as well. But it’s an active system.

In 999/1000 cases you’ll find them while escalating. That 0.1% will be the unconscious rider in the ditch.

GPS trackers might be the solution, but most clubs CX and Cat4 road races struggle to break even or get enough volunteers to run them as it is, without adding a whole load more expensive tech and having to find people to admin it.

Unfortunately, the reality is that at the lower echelons of the sport you will have lower tech solutions, so rfid tags and mats. FWIW a lot of the racing round here now requires your own personal tag to race, might even be all racing by now.
And they aren’t that expensive either, i have 3 powered transponders for my RC cars (each with multiple numbers depending on what i’m doing/what class), they are about 50 quid each.

Is it fully snapping onto the tubeless ledge on the rim?
If not you might need more pressure, if it is, and then falling off, could you add a second run of tape to tighten it up?

I’ve currently got 591 and 598 and back in the day a handful of 532s with rags wrapped round the down tube (both v.light aluminium and CF).

I’ve never damaged a bike on a rack. (Even the thule Hangon i keep in the back of the car for emergencies!)

Spot trackers could work with a relatively straightforward changes, just a “lack of motion” timer on each and every riders tracker on the cloud side.
It’s already GPS enabled and carries it’s own data. Also, if you’re racing and back to a hotel/team bus every night, update frequency and accuracy can be wound up to the max (as you’ll be able to charge daily).
A relatively simple protocol once the tracker stops moving for X minutes can then be used.

I mean, the speculation that abounds once someone doing ultra endurance stops moving to sleep or use the loo… That turned up to 11 would be more than enough.

Obviously not at all levels of racing (they aren’t cheap, and need a contract) but in the higher echelons, definitely.

And FWIW some of the marathon events i’ve done use RFID chips and readers at multiple points on the course to check that you’ve passed through for timing and completion of the event, this could also be used (very coarse grain of course) to make sure everyone is still moving!

Have you ever tried it? It will go off if you hit a rocky section on a trail, On my 820 it’ll go off if I brake hard. I did a fairly tame gravel-adjacent ride around southern Manchester and the north Peaks and half way through had to switch it off because of the amount of times “it beeps at you” – perhaps 20 times on that ride alone

I used it exactly once, for about 20 minutes.
It triggered when i hit a catseye and rumble strip.

Hmm, I have less faith in bike fitters than I used to

I have almost none. Much like coaches, it’s become far too easy and unregulated to do a couple of basic online courses, get yourself set up and get a website/facebook page running. Couple of “glowing testimonies” from those with zero biomechanical quirks and then boom, it’s £120 for a 90 minute fitting. Or 50 quid for a months coaching plan, copy and pasted from an online resource with some random bits jiggled around.

Works better when warm, so I usually stick it on top of the radiator for 30mins before trying to use it.

I have an old partially broken hairdrier that i press into service if it’s being a pain. Which is infrequently!

I still use the Stans stuff, direct from TESA (4289 IIRC).

Have heard that the 3M equivalent is more flexible but i bought a massive roll of the TESA and i’m hoping that lasts me until Armageddon.

I think historically a rider could get away with just being OK at descending but I doubt that’s true in the modern peloton

It unfortunately is, there are current professionals who i would not want to be descending near. Probably not as many as 25 odd years ago, but still too many.
Christ, 25 odd years ago i would occasionally end up with whole bikes i didn’t want to descend on… So making the bikes “better” at descending won’t work, making them worse for descending wouldn’t work particularly well either.

Is caffeine free tea any good? or I may as well drink dish water?

Variable. I tried cutting out caffeine as part of my sleep apnea journey, it made no difference, so i’m back on full fat tea now.
Twinings, Yorkshire and Pukka were the least bad.

Is it a partial year because you officially finished the friday before xmas (for example) not a full year? I know there was some dicking around with my pension (Aero company as well, funnily enough) because i left 3 months into their financial year. So there was all sorts of hand wringing from HR and the pension people, i suspect because most people never left the company, unless they died or retired. Deeply weird organisation.

I ended up getting a partial refund of that year IIRC. Though that pension, plus the roll up into the next company pension is only worth about 30-35 quid a month by the time i retire. And due to EU/Non-EU taxation shenanigans, i’ll only see 25 quid of it…

FWIW i have an 810 mm inseam. And a 710mm saddle height.
That’s got me round rather a lot of races on and off road. And several ten thousand plus mile seasons.

Even weirder, i’m now on 165mm cranks… with a 715mm saddle height.
Don’t forget your set back either, that can have an impact with things like hip angles and reach etc.

used to have a couple of 4 port wall plugs

Get some better ones?

I have a few floating round, ikea wall wart ones and some decent 6 port ones. Only thing i’m missing is a decent USB-C

I’ve heard horror stories of leaks caused by the roof bar mounts forcing the door seals open – is that rubbish?

I had some thule roof bars (almost) permanently on a golf derived car (Bora) for more than 5 years, door seals didn’t leak and weren’t damaged.
No marks or damage to the paint. (Car was mostly parked undercover, so no tree sap/birdshit/sun on the pads!)

I’ve had some rocking glasses since my 40th, birthday present from the then BiL, they are the go to. Also have a pair of posh Glencairn and a water jug to match. Then a load of double walled glasses from bodum in an assortment of sizes, the medium sized one is ideal for a nice whisky and a bit of ice.

I’m neither american, or a muppet. And don’t struggle to pick the rocking glasses up!

I just do a quick visual inspection and (usually) reuse. Some have been on and off half a dozen times. If they look scabby, they get replaced.

This is the same sort of person who burns their initials into organs, just because they could.

Another one with a god complex turning up wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest.

We’ll probably find out over the next few weeks that the surgeon has been sacked/dismissed/moved on from half a dozen hospitals over the last few years for “unusual” behaviour.
Then we’ll get the sob story about how the various employers should have done better and noticed the signs…

everyone else has fulfilled their contracted obligations to the customer.

Except the shop he actually had a purchase contract with…

and have been paid by Spesh to rebuild your broken wheel.

That’s a massive leap to make. With the vast majority of warranty claims, the shop has to absorb a lot of the costs. One of a myriad of reasons why mail order is cheaper and shops cost more.

Start playing music with a connected device, open wavelet.

I played around with Wavelet a little while ago when i was bluetoothing to stereo (x3), car (xlots), headphones (over ear), headphones (in ear), outdoor speakers (x2) etc. Now i only have a couple of sets of bluetooth headsets, everything else is WiFi and has it’s own built in EQ. So i didn’t install it on this phone.
It seems to still be around and popular though.

Edit:- Just installed it again and it seems to still work how i remember. Only tried two devices though.

Jesus, it’s almost like the dark ages in here.

I’d definitely say the shop is to blame

Which shop?
The mail order place that has left the OP in the lurch?
Or the local shop that will have to either absorb the cost of a wheel rebuild plus all the admin, or spend time claiming the cost back from specialized (and i bet it’s a flat rate, rather than an hourly) for someone who didn’t even buy the bike from them in the first place?

I’ve also has exemplary warranty service from Specialized.
(I also had the worst bike i’ve ever owned from them.)

it works exactly the same every day, from a drivers perspective.

Brake blending, if the battery won’t take current, it uses the friction brakes. Consistency over all else.
Nerds agree.

That makes no sense at all, Mert.

It makes perfect sense, keep ramming/cycling energy into a battery from regen (which can *easily* hit the maximum charge rate of the battery) it heats up faster than you can cool it. That in turn restricts the power you can safely deliver from the battery (RMS battery limit is what the nerds call it). At some point the deliverable power hits a point that the manufacturer considers the lowest acceptable from a performance standpoint. Then it’ll start prioritising friction brakes and minimising the regen.
Some EV’s when you pop them into sport mode have no regen at all, 100% friction, to maximise the performance off the line.

It’s even an issue when rapid charging, if you stop charging while you’re actually at a 100+kW rate and have been for a while, then try to drive away immediately, the cars performance will be lacking.

Got a technical explanation with a link?

No.

The Model Y regen doesn’t post the numbers, you just get a green bar on the display. An icon comes up to tell me regen is limited/off and there is no one pedal braking

That’s pretty poor for a premium car to still be doing that. Especially as brake blending is so easy with the latest brake control systems. Consistency of behaviour is key for most customers.

On the long descents we did over the summer I recall noticing lack of one pedal braking at the start and then part way down and just assumed the car had a good reason. It may have been due to hitting 100% again after starting full but I can’t remember.

Could also have hit the operating limit of the battery, basically won’t take any more input without impacting on it’s ability to deliver output, even though it’s not full! Not a problem when charging, but a significant issue with excessive regen. Have managed to trigger that in a lot of EVs.

Been done for years, any car with battery heating and cooling.

Active precondtioning to optimise temperature before connection/charging hasn’t.
Actively diverting all/most charge power *specifically* to optimise the battery temperature for charging after connection also hasn’t.

Limited charging speed and in cell heating due to battery physics/chemistry and heating/cooling because the temperature is wrong are not the same thing.

For someone in the industry you post some strange stuff on this forum, Mert.

You mean, what actually happens rather than what you think happens?

You won’t. If they are explained by contamination, they remain confidential and are not released.

I used to get the reports (statistics and detailed) on a monthly basis, everything anonymized until there was a certain amount of evidence and a first (possibly second) hearing with the authorities. That was reports from from UKAD and BC.

Not sure how that’s supposed to work when it’s parked in a freezing public car park and the charge point is not far away.

That doesn’t sound very planned/programmed to me…

as the very first thing it does on a planned/programmed charge cycle

If you’d set navi to the nearest charge point, a newer car would probably have started heating the battery immediately.

Charge rate slowly increases as the battery is warmed up.

Some cars are starting to use the initial energy from charging to heat (or cool) the battery with (almost) zero charging being done, as the total time and amount of energy needed to hit target charge level is lower if you can get the battery to temp faster.

My Model Y won’t regen when it’s cold. It also stops regen on super long alpine descents.

Stops regen or stops the one pedal drive?
I know some models stop both! (Or used to, anyway!)

It’s a lazy design.

It’s also a simple, low cost and low weight way to improve multiple aspects of crash performance. Reduce NVH and improve ride and handling.

Charging today reminded me that the charge rate is temperature dependant. It’s best around 20-25°C ambient and slows above or below that. Leave the car out below freezing then try to charge it before driving anywhere and it’s really slow.

Except anything remotely smart or well designed will pre heat/cool the battery as the very first thing it does on a planned/programmed charge cycle. So unless the heating/cooling systems in the car hit their operating limits or you’re a “random charging user”, it shouldn’t make much difference.

I know it’s built into a lot of the navigation systems as well, so if the car gives you a charging location on a longer route, it’ll start preparing the car before you get there.