I’ll use a month’s credit with my larger suppliers for the consumables that I can reasonably predict selling (cables, chains, tyres etc) but the more specialist or niche suppliers that I might use on an occasional basis I’ll mainly pay proforma to keep the month end bills as even as I can.

The smaller a business is the more ‘hand to mouth’ the finances are and the more it hurts when you cock up and end up with stock that no-one wants.

(TSY) Indeed Druidh… the money shouldn’t be an issue though, I’d hope that the biking industry still allows for shops to get credit terms from the distributors.

But money is a very big issue for smaller LBSs. Working off ever increasing ammounts of credit from your suppliers is what Woolworths did.

This morning I had a phone call asking if I stocked GoPro cameras. The caller was not rude but obviously frustrated that he had money to spend but no-one locally with the right product to part him from it. I had to explain to him that round here he was very much a rarity and if I chose to stock GoPro I’d probably still have most of that stock in a year’s time and struggle to get back what I paid for it.

What about those of us who are young and mostly ride dh/fr/bmx for the fun bits, but also ride road bikes?

You sound very well qualified to do well in XC. The opposition won’t be much cop.

but it wasn’t until the guys in the 70’s started riding modified bikes downhill, did mountain biking start going places

They were American and don’t know how to ride in mud. Danny Hart proved that.

Think of the ‘You’re not real cyclists until you’ve coughed up a lung on Buttertubs’ brigade, me included, as just some old duffer at the bar gently taking the piss.

Ye gods, I’m not alone then.

It’s another example of the ‘playstation generation’. The younger riders will be into the downhill and freeride as they’ve all spent too long on the sofa and don’t have it in their legs for more than a quick spin up to a jump or two. They just don’t have the power or stamina to learn the joy of drifting the back end accelerating out of loose corners repeatedly. Go to any XC meet and see how well subscribed the oldies classes are.

Flatish, tight, wooded singletrack (like Thetford or most of the Gorrick courses) equals 70-80% funtime with a bit of riding along on link sections. With big hills even the fittest riders are going to be spending at least twice as long climbing as desceding hence only 20-30% funtime. QED

My neighbours feckless child was shooting pellets into my garden, aiming at my cat. Caught him doing it once. Haven’t found any pellets in my garden since.

Have your neighbours found their child yet? And is that why you call yourself ‘Lifer’?

XT cassettes are still available in 11-34. Will 2 teeth off the lowest gear really make that much difference?

I did the really wet one a couple of years ago. The mud there is even stickier than Mayhem mud. Even pushing the bike I was having to stop every 20 paces to pull handfulls of mud off the bike to allow the wheels to turn. Would be a good course in the dry but either way, hard work on a singlespeed due to some sharp climbs.

Not sure if it was overtraining but by the end of last summer a combination of a very busy six months in my shop and riding 3 times a week on average left me feeling completely burnt out with whole days passing in which I never felt as though I was more than 50% awake.

EDIT: I probably ended up drinking a bit more than was good for me then as I found that alcohol numbed the feeling of tiredness.

Running my shop (Perfect Balance Cycles) takes up a lot of my life but it keeps me sane — most of the time.

Looks like a cracking day out. Has anyone else spotted the giant face laying sideways in the cliff side at 4:30?

As there’s only ten and a half stone of me I can get away with ‘half fat’ 2.35 tyres on sand on my Surly 1×1. Does that make my bike ‘semi-skimmed’?

pebblebeach – Member
Does look like the start of porn movie though. (not that I watch them of course)

You bother to watch the start?

Seriously though. What if she had succeeded in pushing him off his bike and he’d landed head first?

A month ago when the trails were dry I was loving my 29er hard-tail.
Now the trails are wet and sloppy I’m loving my rigid Surly with big fat tyres.
Next month I’m hoping for a couple of days in Glentress to love my full susser.
If the sun comes out in the summer I’ll love riding my road bike down to the beach for a swim.

Not sure if all that proves anything, but I’m happy.

Gamut chain rollers are noisy as standard. A piece of roadie inner tube glued on to the roller makes it silent.

Do it on a singlespeed and retain a feeling of smugness and superiority throughout the trip. Even when you’re a couple of miles behind the others.

The days I walk to work are the best. Riding through the school run chaos after escorting my son to school is never fun. After my son changes school this summer I can see myself walking more often. When I walk it’s not unusual to meet half a dozen friends/acquaintances/customers on the way.

Good quality stems are getting harder to find for 25.4. Which is a pain.

DMR 9 Speed Cassete Hub. Middling weight, run on two cartridge bearings which are easy and cheap to replace. Spare freehubs have gone up this year to £29.99 but overall still good value in my opinion. Black or red available.

Hully Gully is brill. You can easily ride back up the chicken run that bypasses it (looking out for anyone coming down) and do it again and again and again and again……..

From what I remember when I rode it, it’s mostly gently undulating stuff through the woods.

1987 VTZ250 here. New tyres in the last three thousand miles, hardly look worn and I’m beginning to suspect that they’ll outlast the cam chains.

Before the singlespeed my boy had a 21 speed bike for two years. We had big arguements trying to persuade him to change gear. I even changed the twist shifters for rapidfire pods to help him but still he refused. Left to his own devices he used two gears, one when he was seven and the next one up when he was eight.

It feels like these days on STW you have to ride a rigid flat pedal bike or you can’t learn to ride properly!

Nothing wrong with that viewpoint. Personally I got all that out of the way when I was five, but maybe there are a few late starters about here.

He had some old Manitous on there until a month ago. They had pretty much the same effect.

My 10 year-old’s bike:

I’ve managed 25mph (34:18 29er) in a road sprint to the pub, and once kept 20mph for a mile or so on a disused railway line when the rest of the gang on geared bikes thought they’d try to leave me behind after a beer stop. They failed.

Problem with boys pre-puberty is that they have no muscle in their legs

Tell that to my 10 and a half year old. He’s been singlespeeding (at his insistance) on 32:20 since his 9th birthday and has managed lower midfield results in the 10-12 age group at Gorrick race meets on that bike.

We even had a letter home from school to say that he’s overweight because they’d measured his height and weight but not taken into account the size of his legs.

Riding along a 1 foot wide or less trail is no issue normally.
Put that same trail on the edge of a large drop, or suspend it in the air with boards and its a different matter altogether.

It’s all about acceptable consequences of overdoing it. Riding 1 foot wide singletrack I’ll give it 100% every time and expect that every now and then I’ll have a wheel in the bushes. If I rode boardwalk like that I’d have put myself in a wheelchair years ago. I don’t like having to hold back and for that reason high boardwalks and trails with big drops to the side really don’t interest me.

Hadn’t thought of that, will try tomorrow. Thanks.

Just as long as it’s wide enough to get the screw holes in.

This is the hanger.

If you’re serious Zedsdead can you give me an approximate price?

Sorry, having problems with pictures today. I’d normally put them on Facebook and then link but Facebook is not letting me in.

I don’t think singlespeeding will be an attractive option to this customer and anyway we’d still need some way of mounting a tensioner although there’s the posibility of mounting one on the bottom bracket.

I can also see there being resistnce to the cost of a custom fabricated hanger.

There is a grey import XT223 available as well, never ridden one but Im sure someone on here has

They’re definitely a ‘small’ bike. Good off road and for pottering about at up to 50mph but little better than a 125 on A roads and lost under anyone 6ft+.

I think the OP is getting too hung up on the smugness inducement of 70mpg or more. A good new or recent 125 will cost £2500 or thereabouts and will depreciate significantly as the miles clock up. Spend £1200 wisely on a bigger bike and in a year or two’s time you’ll still have a £1200 bike. That’s got to be worth more than a few extra mpg. New bike sales are well down at the moment so good secondhand stock will hold it’s value well. That the mainstream motorbike magazines are regularly singing the praises of bikes from the last 10-15 years only reinforces my above opinion.

honda CB 500 Its the only answer

If you can find one for a reasonable price that’s not wrecked or been to the moon and back let me know. I’ve got money waiting.
You’ll get a far better bike for your money buying a good 600. All the 500 twins seem to be in demand as used bikes and are not available new any more. 400s and 250s haven’t been sold new in the UK in any significant numbers for many years now (apart from trail bikes) so are very scarce but hold their price due to the 33hp restricted licence market. Scooters over rough roads will be horrible due to their small wheels. Think trying to ride your favourite trails on a BMX.

Yes, it’s sounding like the Alfine/Surly build I mentioned above could be a good idea If I want the trip to properly feel like a holiday.

That sounds like a bit of a faff to me. I’d be having to mess about with chain lengths as well if I was going to make any meaningful difference to the gearing.

The bike I’m planning to take is an MTB running 26×1.75 Marathon Plus road tyres so is good for tow paths and most hard-packed surfaces. The 50:18 gearing is far more road biased.

Oh dear, there’s a challenge there Stoner, isn’t there. Just as I was plucking up courage to order a Surly Cross Check to house that Alfine hubbed 29er wheel I never seem to use.

I’ll be riding the singlespeed for the London to Brighton (road) Night Ride at the end of May and see how I feel about it after that. Nice pic.

Thanks for the info folks. Due to the time constraints and the distance I want to get in I’ll probably miss the GR routes in favour of quiet roads. My experience of GR routes in the north is that they aren’t the fastest way of getting where you want to go. Also, having read the comments about the size of the hills between Millau and the Med I’m now wondering how wise it would be to do the trip on my singlespeed commuter.