mugsys_m8, you forget how I just don’t get that people can ignore the elephant in the room and how most people seem to be so strung up about how much money they have and can show.

and you forgot how I don’t understand why you wash the car at weekends.

…but I love you and can’t wait to see you 😉

I’m building my own wheels. i’ve been researching components to build touring wheels and I think they should be black for that particular bike.

I’m going for Deore hubs with rigida sputnik rim and DT competion spokes.

from what I could read, that’ll do a nice pair of strong wheels.

mugsys_m8 can’t think of anything he does…. well he pretends to be his stuffed monkey (which he keeps in his undy drawer) and talks from the stuffed monkey’s point of view.

I’ve threatened if with ‘oxfam’ or ‘rags’ but the look of hurt on his face everytime….

It might be that building the jig was more fun than building wheels will be….

It was easy to make, especially with mdf which is easy to work with

People defining themselves by which supermarket they shop at ? come on people!!!!!

Drarsewank : please tell me you’re not for real

I expect 29ers to be impossible to find in Europe, but road wheels? do you think?

is it a good idea to be touring with 26′ ? I’ll have to try my mtb wheels on the roadrat to see how it looks/feel.
i’m quite a small and light person so it might work.

I live in the french alps but it’s not a great touring destination when you’re carrying at least a child and full paniers.
I’ll be carrying probably front paniers and child at the back or rear panier and child on a trailgator or charriot – depends if i pick the short staw and carry my 40 pounds son or if i’m lucky and carry his 20 pounds little sister.

we went touring in croatia with just one child but hte roads there are gravel roads so you need sturdy wheels. then this summer we went to Britanny with 2kids. it worked well but again it’s all flat overthere.

we’re thinking of denmark next year.

I think it’s important that I pick sizes which are easy to find.

thanks for the comments. keep them coming….

The other day there was a guy on the radio saying that when something happens to the guy in the peleton who ‘initiate’ the pile up, there’s a scream or a shout or something like that that the riders senses/hear which makes them be careful and the pileups are smaller.
Nowadays at least half the peloton has at anyone time, a directeur sportif who shouts stuff in the ear piece, so they don’t get the warning and hence the huge pileups.

He’s in Africa at the moment, learning french with the mauritanians

Marry an english bloke. That’s what i did.

absolutely go for it. osteopathy has nothing to do with some dark science or some bullshit. It's not wether you believe in it or not. It's about wether the osteophat can help you or not for this particular problem.

I go regularly due to a twisted pelvis following a bad fall on my bike just after having given birth and it's amazing. I know a lot of people who have taken their babies after the birth. It always helps.

However, don't go to the first one you find on the yellow pages, they are not all worth the same. Enquire, and go to someone reputable.

Do women all love diamonds?
Is it a bit presumptious to assume that's what they'll want or am I just abnormal?

When we decided to get married, i told him not to even think about it, it would be a complete waste of cash. however, a pair of hope brakes would be nice…

singlespeed

I've got the POWER dvd from Wiggle it's made by cycle ops I think.
It's brilliant. love it to do hard interval. it's got 8 different sessions. move a session up every 1 or 2 week and you can even tailor your own sessions. it's made by an american guy and his accent and the music is bizarrely not annoying and very addictive.
It takes you on the track and on the road to chase other riders.

It makes turbo training super enjoyable, very hard and satisfying adn bloody efficient for improving your strength and I find your ability to have bursts of power when needed in a ride.

Muddydwarf, you sound lonely and at the end of your wits. It shouldn't carry on like this.
You need to look after yourself. start by taking things step by step adn have small goals.
you're just going through a bad patch, just need to work out steps to start going up and up. in the long run you'll be stronger.
If you have such dark thoughts and feel powerless, seek help.
Seeking help is a very positive and very strong thing to do, it means that you're giving yourself the means to be better adn to sort out your 'problems'.
this post sounds a bit random, but I can't read what you've said and do nothing. you sound like you're trying to reach out for help adn I feel quite powerless.
chin up and help yourself. start looking for little positive things and don't dwell on teh negatives things. these don't do anything for you.
remember it's just a bad patch adn you'll come out of it better and stronger.

Yellow pages ??????

patched mine with a bit of gaffer tape years ago and it's still not leaking

MTFU and get a doctors' appointment ffs

Give yourself a benchmark date, like for example, say that you stick at it and give it your best for a year and review the situation then.

If you know you have a get out in a year's time and your 'job' in the mean time is to give it all without thinking about going back, i bet you that you'll enjoy it a lot and when you re-assess the situation in 12 months time, the answer might be very different.

We've just had our 12 months celebration and the conclusion was that it's still hard in many ways but we've come a long way since last october. I still think sometimes that maybe we've made a mistake, especially job-wise for me, but deep down it's the best thing we've done and I could never go back to the Uk.

I almost crashed my car into Jeremy Iron's when I was driving down a track near his castle in Ireland to have a look.

Dame Kelly Holmes gave me 5 when I started the great north run a few years back

Once I was having dinner in the same restaurant as Ricky (Rickayyyyy) from Eastenders

and

One of my exboyfriend's little sister use to take drumming lessons from the drummer of Deep purple (that one's a bit far fetched)

otherwise, I'm french so of course I know Eric Cantona

I got to work this morning and my boss was wearing an OL scarf and discussing last night's match which he went to see. this involved a lot of sticking his fingers up while saying Liverpool.

I work in Lyon and bizarely it seems more difficult to ignore football here than when I was in Sheffield. i guess Wednesday doesn't compare with OL!

yeah utter bull

if I have a group of friend for dinner with one veggie. I'll make a veggie meal.
crap attitude to make people feel like they're party poopper or to single them out.
and you can do great meals with no meat.

One of my friend was weighing her son every week and having panick attacks if he wasn't putting on weight at the same rate every week. Said boy was happy, smiley and healthy looking. NUTS!

I only weighed my son when he went to compulsory visits. Now, he's 1.5 year old and i have no idea how much he weighs. He was breastfed, never thought about quantities.

Absolutely no point in worrying as long as they look healthy and behave normally. They will go through phases and you won't know why.

With your kids, obviously you want to be on the ball if something is wrong but there's no point in making up problems.

Also, I'm not suggesting that you don't talk to the doctor or health visitor but without wanting to be disrespectful, i always found them utterly useless with their advice. To be blunt, I think they don't have a clue.

You won't use it if it's just to ride. better go outside.

however, used for structured training, they're fantastic.

We use ours with a dvd called POWER from a series by cycleops (wiggle) to do interval sessions. we have a projector at home, so seat on the bike with this giant screen in front of you and some nutter yelling at you to go harder harder. nuts but soooo effective.

I just can't seat on it and pedal with no plan. if I manage 30mins like that it's max. I used to read but you can't work out effectively if you're doing something else.

get the dvd and do the intervals. it's NUTS!!! but Brilliant.

2nd IanM

Hey congratulations!! another pregnant rider here.

I carried on normal mtb until 4 and a half months, doing my usual ride in the peak and some trailcenters red, and beating guys while telling them 'oh, i'm pregnant by the way'.
When my belly started to be a bit bumpy, I suddenly felt very protective and not confident anymore, so I stopped. I also found the short intensive burst of power to go uphill on technical trails, a bit too hard.
but I carried on road riding as normal until my bump was getting in the way, so about 6-7months. and carried on commuting to work everyday up to 2weeks before the birth, even racing other riders up the hill in Sheffield (can't shake off my competitiveness). It was on a mtb frame, so more upright and i could cycle with my big belly. I must have looked like a lunny with my knees appart to accommodate the bump.
Anyway, I cycled through my pregnancy. and also carried on trail running, swimming a bit (I hate it, so it was only when i didn't feel like anything else) and doing yoga once a week (i also went cross country skiing at 8 and half month and climbed tryfan at 7 months. had to be pushed a chimney by a friend while another was pulling me as my bumped was starting to really get in the way).

I was very strict on doing some form or other of exercise everyday. As a result I felt full of energy all my pregnancy adn recovered from the birth very quickly (as in a couple of days).

but you must always draw the line between forcing yourself to go out but not overdoing it when you need to rest. (and don't get your body temp rise too much, not out of breath, mind your heart beat, etc…). When it comes to falls and confidence, only you can decide.

enjoy it and only listen to yourself (don't listen to people telling you that 'you're pregnant therefore you must sit in a couch for 9 months)

Turbo trainer has it's own permanent place in the living room

Mr and me sometimes mess about on the back lawn on our bikes and sometimes I'll tour our land to see what's changed and say hello to the animals in the neighbouring fields.

I'm shamelessly showing off after having lived in a dolls house in the uk for too long

no need for water. 650-700g of sugar for 1kg of fruit. 1 sugar for 1 fruit will make it way too sweet. the above quantity is enough to make it set.
cook the raspberry gently until they become mush. add the sugar and cook more (on low heat).
put in jars.
(if you don't want the seeds then it's considerably more work as you have to seive out the seeds but keep the pulp which is what give the consistency to the jam and makes it set)

always had quick reply and excellent service

guilty of all. and more…

My friend has come back just at the same place where it was a couple of month ago.
I thought I'd go to the doctor straight away and she gave me an antibiotic cream. didn't do anything. she said that it works only if the skin is broken which it was at the beginning but healed pretty quickly and now I'm left with a hard lump which won't go down. it gets inflamed after a long ride but otherwise it's just there.
she also gave me a referal to a surgeon and said if it doesn't go away i'll have to get it carved out. ouch!
it looks like that's what's going to happen.

🙁

where's that? (and when)

I'm not in England and have no plans to go

just wondering… I used to work for MM until I moved back to France

mat

Who are you working for?

I used to love racing other cyclists up the hill in Sheffield, pass them with a cheery hello while flaunting my big 8months pregnant belly.

BD, just the thought of you having a 'bikini line'…grrrr

Couln't keep the husband out of it for long…

yes, mtb gearing for reasons stated above. it's not intended as a road bike though. I have another for that.

I might decide to put a bigger chain ring though. we'll see how it goes.
might put bigger tires too as the original idea was a bike to do a bit of everything, including farm tracks and the like