What have kids got now, wall to wall tv,obesity,fast food,no jobs, debt,single parent families,living on benefits for being without a job,probably a war with someone in the next few years,and massive unemployment.

ISTR growing up against a background of substantial unemployment, massive interest rates, copious industrial action, regular power cuts and the threat of nuclear armageddon. I’d say things aren’t so bad now 🙂

My only ‘fear’ is worrying about him getting up and going exploring/wandering around if I fall asleep.

Most tents have double zip pulls, just make sure they’re both at the top of the doors.

Had to rummage through photos to check — looks like youngest was camping at eight weeks, sleeping in a carrycot.

As Richie says, it’s where the Interbike demos take place. And no, crashing there’s not fun 😉 Good range of trails from very mellow to really quite sketchy. Take LOTS of water. And sunscreen.

The fall out continues from the Countryfile story then.

I don’t think it’s got anything to do with that. As 40mpg says, it comes up regularly — someone seems to raise bikes as an issue at every meeting of the CDA/NFA/Verderers and the Echo laps it up because it’s got pages to fill. All a bit tragic really.

http://www.bootlegcanyon.net/

Obree had to go to the tucked position because the UCI banned the Superman position. At any sort of speed on the flat nearly all your power is going into pushing air out of the way, every little helps 🙂

I’ve had two that have suffered wifi failures, except that they got gradually worse before stopping working altogether. Replaced by Apple with no fuss. But worth doing the reboot/reset/Airplane Mode stuff first, if only because they’ll ask you if you have 🙂

I can claim VAT back for some things, is this one of them?

AIUI if it’s over £2k, yes. I’m not an accountant, though 🙂

Future tend to write group tests ‘stand alone’ and only do comparative stuff at the beginning and end – I think it makes it easier for them to put stuff in multiple publications and online without having to re-edit them for context.

Mostly yes. Very occasionally WMB ones are done as one long narrative. If it happens to be one of those it’ll be a right ballache for someone…

Pulling one bike would mean the whole thing having to be re-written?

It would. I hope the freelance contributor (and it will be a freelance, they’re all done by freelancers) gets paid extra for having to rewrite it.

“reaching out”. No, what you’ve done there is “sent an email”.

…? Rhetorical questions.

We have a hookup but don’t use it for short stays for mostly the same reasons 🙂 Even Camping Gaz works out cheaper than a couple of quid a night for electricity.

Are you camping without a hook-up because the site doesn’t have them or because your van doesn’t have one? If the latter: http://www.gooutdoors.co.uk/mobile-mains-kit-p155317 🙂

560mm bars made me a tad nervous on tech & decents

Have you considered putting your brake levers somewhere you can reach them? 😉

That’s pretty much Santa Cruz’s take on it with Blur LT/Nomad etc. They still won’t do a carbon Chameleon, though 😉

Do it, it’s ace.

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Same concept as Isla bikes but far better VFM.

Would that be “same concept as” in the sense of “total antithesis of”? 🙂

On an Alpine descent maybe, in the UK probably reached on relatively few rides, and hardly ever braked from to a standstill.

I’ll give you the latter point, hence my other example:

Or to put it another way, in energy terms bringing the road bike from 40 to 30mph is about the same as bringing the MTB from 30mph to a standstill.

All I’m getting at is that brakes potentially have to work harder on road bikes because they typically go faster and because kinetic energy is proportional to the square of velocity which makes relative weights pretty much irrelevant.

Kinetic energy in an 80kg rider on a 7kg road bike doing 40mph (a fairly conservative speed on a road) = 14,000J.

Kinetic energy in an 80kg rider on a 12kg MTB doing 30mph (pretty brisk off-road) = 8,400J.

Or to put it another way, in energy terms bringing the road bike from 40 to 30mph is about the same as bringing the MTB from 30mph to a standstill.

Tiny rotors on road bikes? I think not 🙂

I buy a pair of 520s when I need a new pair of cleats 🙂

the 29×36 is not as small as the 22/34

Um, 29? 26 or 24 (or 22 if it’s a SRAM triple, although a 22/36 on a 26in wheel bike is low enough to demand an extremely competent inner ear 😉 ).

Anyway, none of these “too high” 2×10 low gears are taller than the 24/28 that used to be an adequately low gear. Maybe the hills have got steeper?

I’m as opposed to redundant neologisms as the next man, but “productionise” has its place — it’s the act of modifying the design of a prototype to render it suitable for production, so somewhat distinct from “produce” 🙂

The big manufacturers don’t seem to have picked up on this trend.

Specialized big enough?

😉

Oddly enough IME, it’s CAAD3 Cannondales which don’t seem to live up to the Crack’n’fail reputation.

I’ve got a 1992 3.0series in regular (if undemanding) use 🙂

For every example there is an equal and opposite counterexample 😉

I’ve seen loads of frames remain completely intact for years on end 🙂

I’d always sort of assumed that anything in one bit of Google was shared around all the other bits of Google already, so I don’t feel compelled to change my behaviour overmuch 🙂

It’s pretty easy if someone else cuts the glass to the right size 🙂

If you get given stuff to review then you don’t want to slate it otherwise you’ll never be given stuff again

If the stuff deserves a slating why would you want any more of it? 😉

I went to France last year in August, the ferry return price with car was £70 – campsites were far from extortionate.

Can’t seem to get DFDS down below £140 in August, seem to be able to manage £70 in term time though. And yes, campsites are relatively cheap, but still cheaper outside peak times (ie school holidays).

Surprising though it may seem, we’ve spent hours looking at ferry/camping prices. The holiday we’re planning to take (the same one as last year because we had a lovely time) costs considerably more starting the first week of the school holidays compared to the last week of term whichever route we take.

As grum says campsites, petrol, food are not seasonal. Indeed ferries are not massively more expensive in the holidays.

The ones I’m looking at are (as well as having gone up massively since last year). Most campsites are seasonal too.

My problem with this is the blanket nature of it. Taking a nipper out of reception for the last week of the summer term is clearly not the same as taking a 15 year old out for two weeks in the middle of a term.

And all the people comparing holidays to tellies and cars and stuff are mental, those things are the same price all year round.

I’ve been using one of these (modified with an MTB axle and some spacers) for years:

he is first a cyclist and second a journo

See also: Every cycling journalist I can think of.

I also believe that spds guarantee you a head first landing in an otb crash.

I’ve been OTB many, many times in the last 20 years of SPD use and have mostly landed on my feet 🙂

And I agree with all the people saying that there’s no issue getting out of SPDs but getting back in in a timely manner can be tricky.

I’m so SPD-conditioned I twist out of flats 😉

the new skate style SPD shoes

I’ve got some Vans SPD shoes somewhere that I got in about 1998 😉

Beds for four, travel seats for two, fail 🙂

If they can shift it quickly, they’d happily drop 50, 100, 200 quid on the commission rather than risk the unknown costs of keeping it sitting there.

True, dat.

The agent will go back and forth until one of you quits. The more it sells for the more he gets.