Finished Exploding Kittens last night. Watched it with the whole family, with the boys occasionally crying laughing. It was very, very good.

I’ve had a couple of Mondys. You have to think more about how you ride them, tbh. I kept forgetting and wondered why my newest one felt so dead. I slid the saddle right forwards which forced me to be right forwards and it absolutely came alive. Worth trying that first!

Good luck opening a bottle now. :(

Eragon, Septimus Heap, Quarkbeast.

Yes. Which dropper? That’s where the arguments start.

That LWB is going to lose a lot of folk their licence.

Serious answer is tell them to get the bus into Ferney and pick them up there. Saves you the expensive gamble of doing something wrong in Switzerland.

Carrefour Ferney Voltaire car park. You go in and do your shopping, grab a coffee and croissant, and hopefully by the time you’re done your passengers have walked the few hundred metres from the terminal.

Hey! I turn the start stop off every time! But I’m in the second category. It’s so slow as to be dangerous, and sometimes cuts in when you’re rolling up to a give way. It also coasts rather than engine brakes, which is horrible. I get better mpg – and cleaner wheels – with it off.

I reluctantly started playing it in one of the ‘surprise’ lockdowns we had, whenever that was. Tail end of 2021, maybe? It got the whole family out in the fresh air, which was justification enough. There’s lots of different ways to play it, and we’ve learned stuff about our locality and further afield we would never have learned had it not been for reading the blurb on Pokéstops. I really enjoy it, it’s a little bit of escapism which is something we could all do with, right?

@5lab – definitely true about the peage bipper vending machines. I almost bought one from one back in the corona times, then decided against it as the world was still in so much flux.

Yeah. Pay at pump’s increasingly common as well. Only once have I had my card held hostage before I could fuel up, heading north through Lille.

Agree with Alpin about the route, btw.

Currently sitting on the sofa in the conservatory, blanket round me, sipping a coffee, listening to the pitter-patter of the rain and thinking about soup. It’s a perfect, cosy, mid-October kind of day.

Shame it’s mid-July.

Take your V5 with you, and stop at the first TÜV place you see in Germany. They’ll do you an Umweltplakette there and then. Typically 5-8€, depending on stuff. Dekra do them as well, but they’re 14€ there for some reason. Do your Critair thing now, and print out your receipt. Leave it on the dash if you have to park in a French city.

You can buy a toll tag in some service areas – sometimes from a vending machine, sometimes from the APPR/ARREA kiosk. They are absolutely worth getting, especially the ones that do Italy and Spain as well, as Italian toll areas can be a proper clusterfornication.

You’ll need a vignette for Austria and Switzerland if you plan to go through them. You can do that online these days, which sucks because I like stickers! I avoid Switzerland in its entirety – their vignette is 40€ and even 1kmh over the limit is a fine of about a quarter million francs and it’s easier for me mentally to just not go there.

Priority from the right has been covered, but it’s common in Belgium and NL as well. Less so in Germany.

Use Waze or Flitsmeister – they’re not just for warning you of speed traps, they’re great for hazard notifications as well.

You’ve got a ‘free’ threshold in France as well – 5 or 10% above the autoroute limit is ignored, then 10 to 20% above is 90€, or 45€ if you pay quickly. This is useful because France is huge. I’m on NL plates, though. So I do actually get fined by post. With ‘rosbief’ plates YMMV…

Yes, and like @crazy-legs I have specific mugs for specific times of the day. Big glass IKEA mug for my morning litre of tea, Porsche 2.7RS mug for afternoon tea or occasional late morning coffee – it’s perfect for this as it’s got a green band on the inside so I can always get the aeropress coffee to milk ratio bang on – and a big Starbucks mug liberated from some Starbucks somewhere for my evening tea. I used to have a few of them, as I figured I’d paid for them anyway from my share of their tax avoidance.

Got backup mugs for the evening times, but couldn’t drink evening tea out of the morning mug or vise versa, so always have to make sure the dishwasher goes on every evening.

No idea if this’ll work. But it’s the ghost of Emmeline Pankhurst and the ghost of a WW2 serviceman talking about voting. And it’s excellent.

Do it. Better to regret the things you did than the things you didn’t.

Depends on the level of damage, age of car, all that good shit. If you notify your insurance about it they’ll put your premium up, because they’re bastards.

If it has to be a 29er, then I’m surprised no-one’s recommended the On-One Scandal yet? But it sounds to me like you need to drop a wheel size. 27½” wheeled bikes consistently feel more fun for me.

London fight seeing ride

Ahhhh, nice!

Have they sorted out the bit(s) where it disappears between Banchory and Aboyne? Used to be you had to head up Scolty to Kinker, then it disappeared again in Kinker, reappeared in Dess, disappeared again, then sort of reappeared in a spiderwebby way in Aboyne. Agreed it’s lovely, though. Used to cycle commute to Aberdeen along it from Bunkry, and regularly do Dinnet to Ballater with a trailer on the back when the kids were much younger. 😀

Time traveller. Like it. 👍 My point that you should be voting for something rather than against it still stands. Playing whack a mole GTTO is equally time travelleresque given you’re playing that game with polling data.

I’m with @thegeneralist on this. You’re supposed to be voting for something, not the slightly less worse option. We know the tories are buggered at this election. If ever there was an election to vote with your actual convictions, then this is it.

Not a member of the cult of tubeless and detest squirmy tyres. Typically 50psi up front and 35-40 out back. 50psi both ends on the full susser.

’96 vans are weird – mine had bolt on wings but rear drums. Older style clocks as well, and a short nose. Had some newer style switches and stalks but still the ribbed B3 passat type pump primer.

We had one that we drove all over Europe. It was the 2.4 non turbo and it was slower than a week in the jail. Lots of good memories of the places we got to, but it was a horrible van to drive! It ended up going off to Africa. Riddled with rust. The sills were still fine, but everything else was getting frilly around the edges. Front panel and the front outriggers especially. And the sliding door rail.

Things that are essential? Captain’s chair for the driver. If it’s a Caravelle rather than a Transporter then there’s a higher chance of it having aircon, which is a proper ‘nice to have’.

Things that make a massive difference? Fresh engine mounts and gear linkage bushes. Swapping relay 19 for a 99 gets you a programmable wiper delay, and you’ll find a 99 relay in any post mk2 Golf in the scrappies.

Never started trying, more like. It’s why they’re losing membership in droves.

It does, if you consider how much they’ve betrayed their donors.

Just started Sweet Tooth. First episode felt pretty heavy going early on to the point where we almost gave up. Ten minutes from the end it lightened up. We’ll see how episode two goes…

When I was growing up chilli was a regular staple, but with baked beans. I’d probably hate it now, but loved it as a kid!

I’m an absolute carnivore, but if you can’t get a decent bit of stewing steak and let it just fall apart, then kidney beans, white beans, brown beans, and quinoa. Smoked paprika, cumin, oregano, beef stock, and chipotle to taste as well. Slow cook for as long as you can stand it, but at least four hours.

Oh, I just remembered! The valve core seizing to the stem due to moisture and galvanic corrosion! That’s a fun one that I’ve never experienced with Schräder valves, either!

Glad it’s not just me. I’ve had more success with them recently, but for YEARS it genuinely felt like every time I unscrewed the pump from the valve, the sodding valve core would come out with it. The other alternative was a loose pump and lose 75% of the pump stroke to ambient. Horrible things.

I still use tubes. Next puncture I get I’m running a 10mm drill bit through the valve hole.

I’m the exact opposite. Minimalism and flat surfaces with nothing on them are the preserve of airports and hotels. Books and CDs are stacked on shelves everywhere, piled up next to the bed, all sorts. Clutter in the kitchen or garage pisses me off more, but they’re working spaces rather than living spaces.

I’ve only ever done one, by phone, after I’d already filled in the leaver’s form. I could’ve been more diplomatic, but I was furious. We had our second on the way, and my other half was working a three day week. Childcare is expensive, and it made sense for me to drop a day. So I asked for a four day week. My boss’s reaction was, verbatim, ‘not a chance unless it pops out retarded’.

I mentioned this on the leaver’s form, and copied in my boss’s boss and his boss as well. I got an apology from HR, the two bosses above him, and three months later he was pushed out. A few months later I got invited back to my old job.

So depending on company culture, burning bridges might actually be heat-treating them.

Oh wow, I hated growing up in Taypsie but the band just seemed like a constant. And good. I don’t think my stepfather will ever tire of telling how they all stopped in unison when a learner in a Panda pulled out of Craig Road and sent him flying off his FZR…

https://www.contorion.at/p/hazet-adventskalender-santa-tools-2021-72864727

This wee set has saved my bacon more times than I would have imagined. Perfect bike building toolkit as well. The ratchet that holds the bits is such a good idea, rather than having to use a ¼” ratchet and an adaptor.

I’m guilty of this. Still save contacts to my SIM card, still have a 14 character limit, still have truncated surnames or ‘mob’ after the first name.

Not just me then! Not sure that’s made me feel better or worse, tbh.