Here’s my youngest (2yrs 8mths) getting a bit “moto” the other week 😉

Sounds promising 🙂

Catch 22 £3.59: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Catch-22-ebook/dp/B0050OMJIW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1323951845&sr=8-1

My Partner’s a 1.9. It needs considerable notice to overtake anything, but bowls along happily once up to speed. And what’s the rush anyway? 😉 It’s not spectacularly economical, 40-45 overall average, although it’s mostly used on non-mpg-friendly journeys with traffic and corners and stuff. Upside of the prehistoric engine is epic simplicity, there’s not much to go wrong with it and it’s cheap to mend. Mine’s done 125,000 miles (new in 2001) and is mechanically fine. Driver’s seat’s gone a bit soggy, window winder a bit iffy, rear screen wash broken. That’s it.

Drive it and the petrol, see what you think. None of them are exactly racers…

Also brilliant if you’ve got kids, sliding doors and crowded car parks is a winning combination.

If the lights stayed on the alternator’s working. Worth checking the output of it (multimeter across battery with engine running) — mine had battery failure symptoms but it turned out that the voltage regulator in the alternator had packed up and the alt was putting out too much voltage, which cooked the battery.

I bought a couple of bits from them. One of them didn’t fit (nothing actually wrong with it). Sent an email quoting my order number, got a reply within minutes with a printable UPS label and a form. Print out, tick box on form that says, “Didn’t fit”, repackage item, stick label on front, phone UPS. Man came next day and took it away, money reappeared in account. I would unhesitatingly use them again 🙂

Not full-fingered, but we got a pair of mini track mitts at Decathlon last summer. Although come to think of it, they were for a five year old, so might be full-fingered on a smaller person 🙂

I can’t remember if mine’s a DW8 or an XUD, but it’s the NA diesel. I got a used alternator off ebay for it for about £25 I think. Bit of an arse to fit, it’s really close to the back of the radiator and getting the belt off and back on is a bit of a challenge. It’s a lot easier to get the alternator in and out if you take the oil filter off first 🙂

Mine also had a alternator belt tensioner pulley fail on a separate occasion. Driving it with effectively no alternator is OK but the steering gets pretty heavy 😉

Or she prefers singlespeed, or it’s lighter, or it fits better. Poor control of variables, scientific method FAIL 🙂

Also Mr Brennan appears to have had a haircut during the nine months since this thread started and now looks a lot smarter in his adverts.

🙂

I doubt I get all the names right on my own Christmas cards, I don’t expect perfection from anyone else. I frequently get the names of my own kids (and that of the cat) mixed up, despite them being of different genders. And one of them being a cat.

What Cougar says. TPS plus hanging up on the overseas ones.

Just pull them out and put them back in the other side. The hard part is finding enough hands.

You won’t find any decent photographer not using OCF, even on the brightest of days.

This is entirely untrue. Pros will use flash or not depending on circumstances/desired outcome/needs of client.

Say “no thanks” and shut the door, just like anyone else trying to sell stuff.

controlled clinical trials of appropriate statistical power would be necessary to determine if supplemental vitamin C boosts the immune system.

…would seem to be the key bit from that link.

Vaguely relatedly, I reckon I had 24 hour vomiting/norovirus/gastric flu type things maybe twice in the first 32 years of my life, and then kids came along and I’ve had it loads of times. Bah.

Good to get chickenpox out of the way early. As for the rest, there is no “normal”. Certainly wouldn’t worry about playgroups, exposure is good.

+1 for Ikea. Didn’t anticipate the full-depth thing and had to get a gas pipe moved, but other than that, great.

http://www.dpreview.com/articles/3215247995/mountain-bike-photography-technique

I’ve had three cars in eighteen years.

Skip the belt drive and open up your choices considerably.

(I put a question mark after that the first time, but on balance I decided it was better as a statement 😉 )

I’ve been using pinch of salt/blob of honey/glug of orange juice/water, seems to work. Takes a fair bit of shaking to dissolve the honey 🙂

I particularly like, ‘I’m not sure what risk a cyclist presents to a horse or cow. I certainly wouldn’t want to run into one, but I suspect it wouldn’t even notice if I did.’

/small bow 🙂

Me:
“Workmanlike” HT
Posh racy HT
FS
Singlespeed
Retro indulgence
Cruiser thing
CX
Road
Track
Hack

Wife:
MTB
Road
Hack

plus tandem and three kids’ bikes. Only two kids, though. Must be genetic 😉

Hm. Her inside leg was 11″ on the last thread about this 😉 Anyway. I’m sure potential purchasers would welcome the information next time the bike comes to hand. I’d certainly like to know, people are always asking about the Rothan so something a full inch or more lower would be good to know about.

forget “claims” it’s lower. (others are too)

They claim the seat doesn’t go as low as it actually does? They’ve missed a trick there.

Go on then, how much lower? I had to actually measure a Rothan (Islabikes gives a recommended minimum rider height but not a saddle height), got a minute to do the same to yours?

Have a quick search (it’s not difficult!) and I think you’ll find more than one suggestion (one of which from me) for balance bikes smaller than an islabikes Rothan

If your suggestion was the Amazon 10in wheeled one, then that claims 29cm lowest. Which is the same as a Rothan.

Although last time this came up no-one managed to suggest one that had a significantly lower minimum saddle height IIRC. It’s true that they’re not all the same size, though.

Shows the huge variation in sizes at that age, though. My lad’s two and a half and there’s about an inch of height left in his Rothan.

I must say I’m struggling to imagine anywhere in the UK that has no decent riding within a two-hour radius.

Um. If he’s too short for a balance bike he’s not going to be able to scoot a Hotrock. How short is he?

Ever seen a cyclist get taken out by a car?

Define “taken out”. I’ve seen cyclists get bumped by cars, I know people who’ve been doored, I’ve been over the bonnet of one myself. I’m not sure what relevance my personal experiences have, though 🙂

If you get smashed by an artic, then sure. What if you get knocked off by a car doing 20mph? The physics suggests that you’ll hit the ground hard and your head might well smack into the ground despite your best efforts. Hard, and fast.

Might. Might not. If it’s a glancing blow I might bail and hit the ground running. Or I might roll over the bonnet/roof and land in a heap the other side. Or I might indeed pile headfirst into the Tarmac without managing to get my arms there first. If it’s hard and fast enough it might envegetabilise me anyway. Who can say? I wear a helmet anyway, because like you say, they’re not that inconvenient and they might possibly help. I wouldn’t presume to tell everyone they must wear one, though. Although obviously I’m a raging hypocrite so my kids have to 😉

I think that wearing a helmet whilst road riding is more important because the higher speeds and liklihood of being hit by something you’re not expecting would be more likely to result in an uncontrolled flinging about rather than a controlled bail that you see coming.

I reckon the reverse. Off-road it’s you against the ground at relatively low speeds and a helmet has a fair chance of doing something useful. On the road it’s you against cars and trucks. If you get mashed by an artic doing 50mph then the presence or otherwise of a helmet is largely irrelevant.

I wear a helmet for all forms of cycling all the time, even though I’ve had far worse cracks to the head from sailing, mending the car and fitting kitchens. People can be daft 😉

1995 Kilauea (with a bit of a slack chain):

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And a similar vintage work in progress:

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which has accumulated a few more bits since that picture was taken but is nowhere near being an actual bicycle yet 🙂

not sure why folk are still banging on about Rothan’s being the smallest they’ve seen? they’re nowhere near as low as those ^^ or any other 10″ wheeled balance bike)

Amazon 10in balance bike Saddle height: approx. 29-35 cm

Rothan with saddle right down – 29cm. So every bit as low.

Can’t argue with the price of the Amazon one, mind.

[Edit: The Puky claims 29cm minimum too]

I’m just slapping myself on the forehead.

Well, I did that when you said “infinitesimally small”, so now we’re even 😉

My point (still) is that no one knows, or can know, what the figure is. it is unknowable, and may be very, very, very small.

And mine is that even if it’s very, very, very small there’s probably still something out there because of the vast number of planets. Worst case: it’s 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. I find that somewhat implausible.

I’m not arguing for certainty here (and I don’t think anyone else is either), just for the balance of probabilities.

What most of you seem to be concentrating on is the big number (of planets)

That’s because it’s kind of important.

I reckon most people would consider odds of, say, 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 to be “vanishingly small” but even that would give you 1,000 instances of extraterrestrial life in the observable universe. Obviously chances are they’d be too far away to ever contact, but that’s another issue 🙂

You are Erich von Daniken AICMFP.

It doesn’t matter.

I’m struggling to see how the fact that life has definitely arisen once in the universe (something that I hope everyone can agree on 😉 ) is inadmissible as evidence for life in the universe.

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