Somewhere in that neck of the woods but I don’t know for sure. My mate knew where he was going and was driving. I figured that in some ways it was better I didn’t know where the bloke in question lived since I could never tell anyone and he wouldn’t have talked to me if I turned up on my own. He was friendly enough but it was clearly only because I was with someone to vouch for me.
My rough pub story is from a small ex-pit village outside Durham, going to see a mate of a mate. My mate was a good bloke but I knew that some of his acquaintances were not to be crossed (he had some *very* scary stories). The bloke we were going to see wasn’t in but his wife said he would be back soon so we went for a pint. The pub went a bit quiet as we walked in but we did the “look straight ahead, order pint, keep your head down” thing and successfully avoided trouble. It was only afterwards that the mate-of-a-mate said “you went in there? it’s a crack-and-smack dealers place. Shooters on the table…” 😯
hora – does this mean you’re getting on really well with road biking, or that you’re still spending more time changing bits of the bike than riding it?
Maybe change the tyres, crap tyres can be a bit scary. Change the saddle if it’s not comfortable. Then ride it until you feel you’ve earned something better.
the trailers are doing my nut in too. Every 30 minutes they’re shouting the names of bands like they’re reading out the phone book. Apparently all these bands are appearing “side by side” and not one after the other like at a normal festival 😕
The bint doing the trailers is not LaLa but she does have a rather wonderful accent…
is the catapult suggestion meaning a booby trap that launches the offending animal back out into the street? I doubt it would return 😈
EDIT:
Note for the hand-wringers before you start sharpening your pitchforks. I too have foxes in the garden. I just ignore them and I have no intention of harming them.
Aren’t all the roadies going for 25 (and even 28)mm tyres these days?
Yes. Someone did the research (think I saw it on RCUK) and found that up to a point wider tyres are quicker on the road, for the same reasons as on an MTB.
Actually, in today’s climate, I suspect making kids do PE in their keks is, perhaps less common than it once was.
I suspect referring to the lost property box of smelly cast-offs saved for those who forgot their kit as “the gippo box” is probably not the done thing either. Weren’t the old days great!
I’ve had good food in Holland. But that was in Leiden, eating with locals. I seem to recall in Amsterdam I was awfully hungry and not very discerning about the quality of the food <ahem>.
the best coaches usually weren’t naturals at whatever it is and had to work really hard and think about what they were doing. The really talented ones seem unable to understand why everyone else finds it so difficult.
I looked into all this a bit ago. Basically, you’re locked into the original shock. Specialized have chosen to use a non-standard shock and then don’t sell upgrades. Occasionally you hear stories of them being persuaded to sell a replacement but it seems to be the exception. It’s not even as if it’s the same non-standard on different models (enduro & stumpy). Various people have done complicated things to replace them (google will find you some threads on mtbr) but it all looks far more expensive and difficult than it should be.
Any chance that a major service from one of the shock fettling companies will fix it? Anything else is likely to be big bucks.
Wasn’t someone off here making the adapter for just this purpose.
Forget who it was now.
it was porter_jamie on the “things I made recently” thread but when I asked him (posted on here, direct email) I got no replies so I assume he didn’t go through with it and for some reason didn’t want to talk about it either
Do you need an easy recovery week? Longer term training programs include cycles at different levels (easy/hard sessions within the week, easy/hard weeks within the month etc). you can’t just keep upping the workload week in week out. By the end of an easy week you’ll be raring to go again.
It’s also amusing to watch JC “prod the dog” to see how far he can go with it before he gets bitten…
I assume this is some sort of figurative thing but JC getting bitten by a dog is something I’d happily watch again and again. I’m not one of the haters and I will be watching it, but a dog sinking its teeth into Clarkson’s leg would make fantastic telly. 👿
I don’t have any magic solution to offer (as demonstrated by my comments earlier on this thread!) just some sympathy. I can’t remember why you said you’re not using a bike at the moment but if that’s out I guess you’re going to need to look at getting lifts. I know that’s difficult.
Or what bearnecessities said about farm animals. There are plenty of sheep around. A particularly burly sheep might be of use. Or could a small flock carry a sedan chair?
A few comments from a clinical research perspective. There is a huge difference between findings in vitro (i.e. cancer cells in a test tube) and findings in vivo (i.e. patients). Sure, you start in the lab but it’s not real evidence for treating patients (unless part of a trial) until you have robust results in people. Even then you need a big enough population for the results to have any statistical validity. The studies in that summary linked above look to be either in vitro or very small groups. That’s not to say they’re bad studies, and that sort of work is an essential precursor to large-scale studies, but too many drugs have looked promising yet failed in later phases for it to be safe to assume anything. It all does look very promising, but it seems to still be at a relatively early stage. Let’s hope the knee-jerk “drugs are bad, m’kay” attitude doesn’t throw a spanner in the works.
when I was a kid we had two gerbils who didn’t have names. Or at least that’s what I thought. I learned later my dad referred to them as shit and shat because that’s all they seemed to do but he wasn’t allowed to say it in front of small children (and I don’t think we ever knew which was which anyway).
I have voted for all of them in the past from Lib Dem, Green, Labour, Tory to UKIP.
what criteria do you use to cast your vote when at different times you’ve voted for sandal-wearing guardianistas, tree-huggers, trade unionists, exploiters of the poor, and xenophobes? Do you just roll a dice? And who will be next to benefit from your well-chosen vote?
you might find you want to move a spacer from under the stem to over it if the front end feels too high and it’ll handle a touch slower but 20mm will be fine
handtec were best I found last year (I didn’t go for the bundle because I wanted the special Trek sensor that fits into the chainstay). I use an out-in-front bracket for avoiding that “Chris Froome looking at stems” position.
The dog was once stood there looking at us with her tail dangling against the fire, and for some reason didn’t connect the smell of smoke to her tail being where it was!!
I knew a cat who did that. They’re not as intelligent as they think they are.
