I have spent several weeks inland round the area of Ro? which is a village in in Northern Istria (the triangular peninsular). Sleepy, gorgeous limestone mountain scenery, caves, ancient villages, very friendly people, crystal clear rivers, no tourists. Hardly anywhere to camp. (A guy in Ro? rents out his back garden).

I dislike them because I can go round the whole shop and find scarcely anything I actually want to eat. Over packaged, chemical laden, tasteless, carbon intensive, expensive… I could stand on this soapbox for ages. Fortunately I don’t have to.

We eat organic with 90% bulk purchase of dry goods from Infinity foods wholesaler, Riverford for all our vegetables and fruit (or otherwise grown at home). Saves a load of dosh too. Not a lot left for Tesco (or any other supermarket) after that. Good thing I say.

I ride a Thorn frame with only 415mm stays (centre to centre). I have no problems riding straight up anything, need move foward sometimes, but that’s fairly normal practice.

Isn’t that just a case of the tail wagging the dog though? Their petroleum industry won’t refine fuel any better till it’s forced to.

My “other sport” involves a lot of stress on the neck…I find worn neck muscles, and trapped nerves in the neck will cause really bad pins and needles in the fingers for subsequent bike rides. It can go as bad as loosing all feeling in fingers and like you, riding with one hand etc.

.. Nonsense Uplink. That’s a very dated opinion. UK Met office charts these days can be remarkably good, and have improved enormously over the last 20 years. It’s easy to knock them. perhaps you have to have been a weather nut for a long time to have seen the very real improvements.

Last bank holiday weather was pretty much spot on the forecast for the whole weekend, and it had been looking that way from the beginning of the previous week. You must be prepared to ignore many (typical) radio headlines, and look through the dross at the real data.

http://meteonet.nl/aktueel/brackall.htm

http://theyr.tv/

http://www.xcweather.co.uk/

http://weathernews.co.uk/radar/

and forecast charts out to 10 days (getting quite unreliable):
http://www.ecmwf.int/products/forecasts/d/charts/medium/deterministic/msl_uv850_z500/

The plastics coating the inside of the tim may be just as bad for you long-term as the tin itself (were it left uncovered as was once the case -not now). So the emil is basically rubbish, but it’s always a good idea to not eat out of tins at all!

Bisphenol-A is a hormone disruptor and has been identified in tin can plastic linings. (But might equally be present in certain plastic tubs you use subsequently, your camelback, etc..)

My Raceface alu ring (38T on a Rohloff) has sent 5 chains to the recycle bin and is still going. Teeth getting fairly thin now but I expect to get some more from it yet.

The Thorn rings are reversible. (Raceface isn’t because of the machined in screw head detail. Might be worth considering. Dunno about the Surly. I’ll try one myself next time.

Just grow them in your ordinary compost heap. I had a wormery once, got fed up, and didn’t maintain it. After 18 months of neglect, the half dozen remaining live worms were thrown into my normal plastic compost bins.

Hey presto, now I have thousands of them munching away. Whenever I pull out a particularly wormy ball of compost from the door at the bottom, (You regularly get tennis-ball sized orgy-fests of solid “worm”!), I drop those bits back on the top, and use the rest of the compost as normal.

Running any heating system on all time always uses more energy than allowing the temperature to fluctuate by turning it off. Average temp is lower, so less wasted energy. – Why should there be any question at all?

“I don’t have any figures I can work out energy consumption with.”.. You do have an electricity meter, monitor that for a few weeks.

If you are “cooking” rice, you can save 100% energy by not cooking it at all!
Soak it in water for 2-3 days (change the water several times). Works for black wild rice, so I see no reason why not others. Add tasty dressing with lots of fresh herbs and good olive oil. Yum.

AAGH Pandemic.. No that’s not a good enough word any more…. Help! Media alert! We’ve run out of superlatives..

Shame the Avian flu was a media flop as well. Pandemic PANDEMIC PANDEMIC

Radio 4 was desparate to mutate it with Avian Flu (Nasty sniffle) this morning. Then we got the “Armageddon Virus”. ARMAGEDDON!

Split pins as used on LX? They are a very good solution. (Simple engineering is often the best solution). They have to be only “set” about 1-2mm, enough to prevent them falling out, and thereafter will spring into line when you remove them, and are very easy to re insert.

Re-use the same pin forever.

I installed a Charnwood Cove 1 two years ago.

It’s really good. Contemporary looks, no squirrels and stuff. It burns really cleanly. Never normally have to clean the glass. It has a flat top and also heats a kettle well. We have also cooked baked potatoes and made bread on it (using a dry fryer pan).

Charnwood also do various add-ons. At a building show this year, I saw a little clamp-on water heater which fits round the flue. I was trying to persuade them also to make a little stove-top oven, and they were really listening. Nice company.

Watch out for the the cheapo unbranded stoves from places like Machine Mart. They will work, but less efficient and dirtier to burn, and you won’t be half as chuffed with the result!

Hi Dennis.

Sounds similar to what I get during winter. 0.75 by about 200 miles on KMCZ610. It slows down after the first bit, and I recon on getting the same distance again from 0.75 to 1.0. I don’t throw them out at 0.75, but keep them going and circulate them round. I normally just hang them all on a nail in the garage and re-fit the shortest every month.

After 1.0 for me it all start’s to feel a bit funny and coggy, with a sort of unpleasant vibration because the teeth fit too badly, despite the fact(in principle)one could keep on going. After four chains at 1.0, last winter I reversed my Rohloff sprocket anyway and started again with a new set. It was do it then or possibly not get the chance, because the teeth were getting a bit thin!

I use KMCZ610. I see KMC now do a chain they say is specifically for hub gears. I don’t know what would be difference from any other 3/32 chains.

“I commute all year round usually off road..
I reckon on 5 years with only the purchase of a chain”.

Well that GT85 must be magic stuff. 😯

I believe it’s called a “custom build” 😉

Shouldn’t we feel smug that unlike frustrated drivers, we can still bike off road just as fast and hard as we like?

Cars have got very boring. Ultimately that’s a good thing. RIP.

In France they have moving cut-out mannequins in some places, usually at roadworks. A human figure bobbing out from the bollards is quite effective at reminding drivers to keep it down.

Well I’ll differ, and it’s definitely not quick. (I don’t regard work canteen as adequate nutrition).

I make 2 big bowls of Bircher-type Museli which I mix up every morning. Rolled oats, millet flakes, oatbran, almonds, walnuts, raisins, flax seed, ground sesame, grated apple, chopped lemon peel, dried apricots, flax oil, mixed with water.

If I’m festive I get banana or fruit from the garden if I have it.

That and a flaggon of green tea. I don’t need to eat till 1PM.

Spuds went in on Wed.

Have been harvesting/thinning some lovely early lettuce (over wintered), My lamb’s lettuce has already grown big and gone to flower, I dug it all up, and I have about four days worth of monster salads to look forward to.

Garlic (last Autumn) and onions (last Autumn also) both looking good. My carrots (also over wintered since October) are nearly big enough to eat.

I only planted my tomatoes last weekend but they are growing up now on the windowsill.

– And at long last, herbs! The Lovage and Fennel is finally big enough to pull great clumps off. Yum.

“If someone’s beliefs don’t chime with yours (whatever they might be) but don’t harm you either ” ..

Ah, but we have to fund them as well! What of Radio 4’s outstandingly irritating Christianity dirge on Thought For The Day? – And last week we were also told of the £30M of taxpayers money spent on Hospital Chaplains.

If there were tax on the Church forcing them to fund a daily athiest BBC sermon and Humanist hospital psychiatrist, they might soon kick up a fuss!

Diving in here.. I 100% approve of Ecotricity and I buy my electricity from them.

So there.

There are also several really promising ways of storing energy which are up and coming, and there are much better ways than we have now of distributing it. I believe unless we ramp up production, and encourage much more investment, then none of this will get the backing it deserves either.

Have a DC7 and frankly unimpressed. Too blasted complicated with removable plumbing tubes and fittings all over. It’s now stuck together with gaffa-tape because half the clippy things have broken and seals failed.

Great pic deadlydarcy. I guess the back of that cold front which cleared your area and left us in the clag all day in the centre of UK. I’ve never seen anything as clear cut as that. Check out “cloud appreciation society” if you want to see more good stuff like that!

Yep,

I started with two walking sticks.

I’d say a corridor was a mistake, It sounds like it worked for TJ, but for me a big open piece of concrete was required. You need to be able to pedal the direction you fall. If there is a wall in the way, it might screw up the process (just my opinion TJ). Don’t try to learn on grass either, there is too much resistance.

So two walking sticks, then one, then none. In fact before you get to none, holding the two walking sticks straight out improves your upper body moment of inertia, and gives you more control of the all-important hip twist, even when the sticks are not on the ground.

It’s all in the hips and thighs. Learning to unicycle is an incredibly good work out, and you only learn to relax and take it easy when you get good enough that the corrections needed are small. The better you get, the less energy you ned to put into corrections and staying up.

When I learnt (about 20 years ago!) I likened it to learning to walk again. Once you get it, it’s almost impossible to understand how you couldn’t once do it. The order of learning was first get to go forwards, then backwards, then hovering. For me, about 20-30 hours effort over two weeks to go perhaps the first ten metres forwards in some sort of control, then learn to go backwards. Put them together, and learn to “hover” – Then you’ve pretty much got it!

Pretty dumb to blow £1.6M building a concrete edifice, and still leave behind an unfinished house which I’m sure his family wouldn’t live in anyway after he dies, (which might be soon the way he’s looking). It was so damn big, and the concept of “sustainability” was clearly unheard of.

All rather sad really, more so for his family who will doubtless have to pick up the pieces.

Tombthumb.. “You can get most bikes to stop in a couple of bike lengths, on 160s, from 30mph with correct technique”

Let’s see, 30MPH = 13.4 Metres per sec. Stopping in 2 bike lengths = 3 metres. Acceleration = 30Mps^2. That’s 3G. Disregarding the force equivalent to nearly quarter of a tonne pushing you off the front of the saddle, in terms of grip and balance, that’s the same as being able to track-stand facing nose down on a 71 degree slope without either slipping or falling over forwards.

So if you can stop like that, you have some amazing technique most of us lack. Let us in on it:)

.. Agreed, but I didn’t want to get too anatomical!

Best advice otherwise for giantjason is never buy a brand new saddle because you’ll probably end up putting it back on Ebay anyway..

Shouldn’t anyone replying usefully give their height, weight (or arse size?)

67kg 5’10”, Fizik Gobi, best I found after trying a few.

Watch the shape in cross section as well. Many have gone flat with gimicky slots, so as to sell more to folks who believe they are protecting their tackle, whilst actually causing arse boils and pressure points. (Hey, just my opinion)

I have no problems. I agree there is a little resistance in some of the lower gears, but my derralier bike could build up a scary amount of resistance with (typical for my bike) normally worn jockey wheels, and a (normally) very gritty chain. It depends on your usage. For me, I jump on an unwashed bike every morning and commute off-road. It’s a brilliant solution.

Artfularry, if you think it’s “damn hard work”, – then sell it. There are plenty of folks out there who disagree and will gladly pay good money for your hub!

Riding with others I have never felt I am loosing out. Perhaps if I was a racer I might be more concerned about the last few watts, but being able to chose the perfect gear instantly under any circumstances, and being able to change down any number of gears whilst climbing hard gives it all back (for me at least). I rode it up Ventoux last summer and chatted with a Belgian triathelete guy all the way up. I never felt at any disadvantage after 22KM in the lowest 4 gears. I believe It feels worse than it is because of the “cogging” vibration through the pedals in some of the lower gears.

I commute. It’s normally 90% off road, and this morning I started my “summer” route which is just two minutes longer and 100% off road. Right through sandy Surrey Heath with a 500ft descent Whoo… Stopped to watch the herons on the fishing lakes. (Smoke on the Water..), and scared a couple of deer. Lovely.

Problem is it’s only 10KM. I get to work and want to ride straight back!

Really? I already know much more than I did about them!

Near my work there has been a huge pile of dog turd bags collecting at the base of a tree for months. The other day there were half a dozen dog walkers with the usual crowd of about fifteen dogs all going ape. They were standing right next to this lot, chatting as if they had not a care.

I walked right through and got the camera out, snapped half a dozen shots.

One of them asked what I’d do with it, and I just said “get angry” or something similar.

Damit, a week later they were cleared up!

If only they’d have done the same with the rest hanging in every other tree nearby. I shot about thirty other pics of turd bags in trees on that same half hour walk. Not my favorite pastime but I was so angry..

We have to shame them into it.

Thanks Andywhit,
I don’t run tubeless but my wheelbarrow does! And I gave up trying to inflate the tyre last autumn.
New method to try and I’ve got loads of straps..

And re the Lidl shoes. I tried some last year. They were huge and sloppy, a really horrible fit for slim feet. I took them back to the shop. (8 year old beaten up Shimanos still have soles attached and are limping along).

Isn’t it interesting that as mad speculation about property price rises caused a good amount of this mess in the first place, a blip is being referred to as signs of “recovery”. Seems we’ll never learn.

We did the recovery over the last year didn’t we?

Try always spinning faster using lower gears? – Should reduce stresses on lower back. Also keep rucksack weight right down. A really heavy pack while riding does it for me.

.. And after all the replies, half the time someone says they will collect they don’t turn up!

The Wanted’s are a pain and clog up the bandwidth, especially if you switch on, on a saturday morning!

Use Outlook Rules to immediately dump anything with “freecycle” and “wanted” into the wastebin, that reduces the overhead dramatically.

Dump all “freecycle” and “offered” somewhere else to look at in one block.

Neither an Inbred or a Dialled Bike!