I don’t normally mind mud and ride all year normally but I am getting bored of the stuff now, I am starting to skip rides as I cba to clean the bike and my gear for the umpteenth time partly because living in a flat makes it an absolute pain to wash the bike on return.

I’m also a little concerned about the state of some of the local routes as a good percentage of the ‘mtfu’ brigade seem to be taking ever larger diversions around puddles while the horsey lot seem keen to recreate scenes from the first world war.

Grim, if only because the judge appears to have waited until the TDF is on to order the arrest so as to maximise publicity. The drug enforcement authorities would probably have more credibility if they didn’t do things for maximum exposure during the tour. Not that I’m defending doping but I find it suspicious that the judge suddenly decided it was vital to make arrests after investigating for a year just like the timing of the Armstrong charges appears motivated by a desire to maximise publicity.

Buying a bike two ‘model years’ late – 2010 Marin full sus bought new late 2011 for £800 with a better spec than the £2400 2012 version

Another for the Topeak Alien – messed around with a couple of other multitools that rusted/rounded out but the alien has been great for the last three years

My BMX tickets arrived today, yay!

Fuji is doable – its a walk rather than a climb and its a popular visit, start early in the morning for the best view from the top. Early September isn’t prime walking season for it (July-August are the easiest period) but it shouldn’t be as busy which is nice.

I’d recommend a visit to the Sengakuji shrine if you have the time near Shinagawa station, its in a residential area and is a fantastic place – its the burial place of the 47 ronin and when I visited wasn’t busy with anyone other than a few older japanese visitors although surprisingly the monk in attendance spoke english and they had a english pamphlet as well.

If you’re a geek in addition to the necessary visit to akihabara head over to Odaiba to the Diver City Mall – they have a full size gundam guarding the gate 🙂

I really want to put a fairing on my MTB now

Start Fitness up in Newcastle had loads of womens Scott stuff in last year, the other half picked up some nice kit in the Start Cycling shop

http://www.startfitness.co.uk/default.asp?

it’s full of poseurs drinking coffees, counting how many people oogle their bikes after their tour on the Monte Brione or from Tenno castle.

and i don’t like the swear words on their t-shirt

Seemed pretty chilled when I wandered in, only an Italian roadie smoking a cigar and the owners mother and her friend enjoying a coffee, it was low season to be fair. I thought the swearing and suspect English on the shirts was funny in a childish way.

+1 on the cost of the cablecar out of Malcesine, shuttle runs on that will hurt your wallet very quickly

Gardabikeshop (in Rive del Garda) looked like they had some decent hire bikes in last year at least – prices were good (circa £25/day) for proper all mountain bikes in seemingly good condition – Cannondale Jekylls IIRC

Be sure to go to Meckis while you are there

Thanks for the replies – will give them a go

Another happy customer – they seem to be getting lots of bike stuff in at the moment

Had been looking at these but I’m a little confused by the posts above – how slippy are they when wet? Given about 90% of my rides seem to involve rain I don’t fancy swapping to something that is no fun in the damp.

Most of the stuff I’ve tried (including the chips) has worked really well and hasn’t been too faffy once I’ve understood what I’m doing.

Still would like to know why they couldn’t have leveled those trails with a mini digger with minimal environmental damage instead of ripping up hundreds of trees and bushes.

This is my biggest gripe, the trails were too obviously aggro for the location so its no surprise they knocked them down but a mini-digger would have caused little additional damage to the woods or to the forest floor.

WCA’s skills area was getting sessioned by some little kids when I rode past which was good to see.

Was up there last night on a rare visit to lordswood and rode along the digger tracks, sad seeing how much damage has been done including a massive sump developing where the digger has ripped up the ground to about 2ft deep on a downslope, not so much from an MTB point of view but more that its fairly wanton destruction in places which is going to render areas impassable to legitimate users as well as cyclists.

Tbh its been coming however as every visit in the last year I’ve noted more jumps/kickers/gnar features dug into the trails and some of the construction has been ludicrous for a ‘cheeky’ wood in an urban centre with heavy use by walkers. I can’t help but feel if the trails were a little more red-grade flowy and a little less black-grade jumpy the FC might not be pushed to act. In particular I think positioning jump exits across popular tracks/bridleways was taking the p**s.

Do like the FC sign however about alternatives – I was going to ride a local wood but instead I’ll drive to kent!

As above morvelo are good, bit pricy but nice shirts and they often do promotions at season end

Must admit I’ve had nothing but excellent service recently from evans – hope you get the pedals sorted out.

P20 or Nivea Invisible Protect 50 seem to work fine.

Skin-so-soft is pretty decent, seems to have kept most of the little swine off me recently

Really wanted to come but running a 10k tomorrow and would like to beat my personal best, maybe another time. Good luck with it!

Not MTB specific but one point could be that bringing urban fringe/extra-urban footpaths into shared use is a way to reduce traffic congestion for short runs to the shops/into town and encourage commuters – linking footpaths to bridleways expands the catchment for safe off-road cycling.

In terms of social inclusion it provides better links for children/teenagers and adults who cannot afford to/cannot drive a car by providing safe alternatives to riding on often busy roads – I’m thinking particularly of smaller towns/villages where you have to hack along a narrow road if you want to cycle or wait for the two buses a day. Not an MTB issue but grandma on her boneshaker is more likely to cycle over to the next village if she can go via footpath rather than play with the lorries.

Value of cycling to economy could be invoked – wider use of footpaths will likely lead to a larger cross section of society riding and greater sales of bikes, equally don’t want to oversell this as growth is also a threat to some user groups.

will think some more

Enjoyed it, some great bits but marred a little by the ‘loud music and riding’ styling. Also I hate to say this but some of the inspiring places they ride are looking a little dull due to overexposure – ‘isn’t that bit from Vast’ was my reaction to one section.

Fun though, found it less self-indulgent than Life Cycles which was great but had gratingly pretentious narration in places

Some great tips here. Just wondering if anyone has any advice on the best way to go about benefits or insurance fraud as well?

If you want some advice on straight-up theft to go with it then I’d suggest buying a powerlink from my LBS 🙂

Sadly Nick that is exactly my thinking when it comes to England, and the problem we may have in Wales is that most of the access discussions appear to be about intra-urban and commuter cycling or ‘family cycling’ activities in the countryside which doesn’t really help us.

Tbh I can’t see any chance of the Ramblers coming on-side with any liberalisation of current trail access, they already have what their membership wants for the most part so there is little incentive to compromise.

Open Access like Scotland on the other hand would be something we could work with them on although I don’t expect to see any progress on that in the near term.

A friend of mine has done it a couple of times without incident, he normally goes on a riding holiday, pre-orders the new bike so he can pick it up on arrival and flies out with a £50 beater in his bike bag, dumps the beater where it will get pinched and then rides the new bike for a couple of weeks before coming home. He has admitted some moral qualms but the cost saving is enormous on the boutique brands he favours.

Jealous – went to Swinley last weekend and had great fun even if i did fall off a little bit (have some interesting toptube shaped bruises on my thigh and about 10% of the skin missing from my right arm) due to a good sized piece of wood ending up jammed in the rear wheel while riding labyrinth. Really enjoyable weekend of riding.

applied for about 18 tickets first time round, got nothing, thought I had basketball tickets in second round then got email telling me they had messed up and I hadn’t been successful, got BMX tickets in the third round however so happy now. It has cost me two mornings off work and a lot of shouting at the god-awful website but I’m looking forward to it, there was an awful moment on friday morning where i had in my basket track tickets for one of the likely team GB medal heavy days and the system kicked me out while paying but still pretty happy with BMX.

I’ve got non-prescription but as brooess says the best thing is the generous service policy, they do look after their customers in my experience.

poor trolling effort, I’d go with something like ‘MTB for XC – daft’ next time as you can antagonise a wider pool of riders and may attract sympathetic trolling support from those who consider themselves at the more gnar end of the spectrum.

Thanks to rocketdog and asssavers – mine turned up last week and have been in use on two of the bikes, really neat idea and light enough to leave stuffed in bag just in case

Had forgotten this was on – just watched a bit of the last round, my word that course was awful, commentators sounded like they were apologising for it, La bresse looks better

Also asked in this thread:

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/poc-gear-why-so-expensive

Their marketing budget can’t be small either, can’t open a magazine without an advert appearing. Personally I’ll be avoiding their kit until they spend a little less on ‘R&D’ and a little more on sewing lessons.

Edit – beaten to it by Crashtestmonkey

I got some BMX finals tickets after being unsuccessful in the first two rounds, had the agony on friday morning of having track cycling tickets in my basket and being chucked out by the site while trying to pay, went for BMX over MTB because the other half really wants to go to the olympic park as well. Quite excited now.

May have to head off to tesco (something i avoid at all costs) – I find Halo really does work on stinky sports gear.

Used to DJ alternative/electronic nights at Uni, not my ‘DJ Name’ but used it as a username on Unreal Tournament and other such online fun and it stuck.

Feel sorry for Hamilton but McLaren claiming ‘force majeure’ when the issue was well within their control is lame, they didn’t have a leg to stand on

tempted to get one and attach it to my full suss, more travels more awesome right? 🙂

I do the Bristol one, straight up a massive hill and back down again. Not exactly a PB course, but is fun and well organised.

weirdly my PB is on the bristol parkrun, i run much better on hills than on the flat it appears, I’m a good hill climber on the bike too but indifferent on the flat.

Must… Resist…