if the bitex are nearly as good then I would do anything to avoid hope…

Better I’d say. Didn’t get Bitex hubs to save money. Hope are obnoxiously loud, with crap bearings and a poorly sealed freehub that lets water in, which rusts through the pawl springs and strands the rider out in the boondocks. *puts on flame suit and heads for the exit*

I don’t know what you’re doing with your cleats but I find that they last years of use. ie 10k miles +

Depends. Mileage, mud and grit, not everyone’s feet stay straight through a pedal revolution. When I was singlespeeding I could wear out Shimano cleats in a couple of months. You can imagine that wasn’t doing any good for my knees either.

Up, unless it looks completely out of place for the setting, like halfway down the Champery DH track or similar.

Been looking at Time pedals for a while. Not going to lie, this puts me off a bit. I don’t associate Sram with quality. I guess they won’t mess up Time pedal design immediately but still. Had everything from the diabolical Juicy brakes mentioned above to multiple carbon handlebars that aren’t straight. Be interesting to see if prices go up, Time ain’t cheap now.

Bitex seem good to me. Hadn’t heard of them until my wheelbuilder recommended them. Nice sound, not too loud, plenty of engagement points, no slipping, still running smooth, strip of steel to stop the cassette digging in. In fact I’m having another built up now.

Rode through earlier and saw three cars, but it wasn’t peak time. The ruts at the entrance to Walking Bottom have been fixed. Unfortunately, doing it in the middle of winter means it’s now a similar consistency to cow slurry.

Yes I’ve had that with a GX level chain. 3 or 4 cracks at around 1200 miles. Never had it with any other chain.

Had a delivery from Bikester via UPS a couple of weeks ago. No sign of any extra charges. Took a couple of days longer than usual. Someone opened the commercial invoice for a look. But Bikester website says VAT already included and the invoice says delivery duty paid.

Mudguards. Carefully selected and positioned so they actually work. I see a lot of riders whose mudgurards don’t. Also those who would rather look like a coal miner than besmirch their bike’s appearance with mudguards. Bizarre. Although it turns out with a wider downtube than tyre and barely any fork clearance my gravel bike only needs a rear one.

Gaiters. Trousers if cold/wet enough, which should overlap boots. Long socks.

I find more mud and slop sits in between finned brake pads grinding away than normal ones, so ditch them.

If you’ve got several bikes, pick one to use through winter rather than trashing the whole fleet.

Fenwicks suspension lube. Amazing what can be brought back to life with that stuff. Creaking brake levers, stuck cables.

Make sure feet are warm at the start of the ride.

Me holding the wheel plus tyre upright stopping it from turning and another bloke with a long wrench and about 3ft of scaffold pole for leverage. Didn’t budge easily.

I’d like to give one a go, but was hoping Maxxis might bring back the lighter non EXO 29 option. Suited my purposes quite well. 994g is a fair chunk. Wonder if it rolls any better. After intensive Garmin studying I concluded the old one knocked 3-4mph off cruising speed, not that any mud tyre is great for rolling resistance.

As you get older your arches tend to flatten making your feet longer IIRC

I have gone up a size and a half since my 30s

Bloody hope not! I’m already wearing the biggest size available quite often.

Been a while since I’ve read a book, so can’t remember many bad ones, but…

Shadowmancer by G P Taylor. Think it was a bestseller at the time but I found it boring and just didn’t get it.

Anything by Terry Pratchett, Dan Brown or Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell.

Sometimes struts for another vehicle will be compatible. Couldn’t find any for my car but turned out Merc ML ones fitted and work great.

I can feel the difference between offsets. Currently got a selection from 42-51. It’s not a big deal and can happily use either, but prefer shorter. Wants to go in a straight line more, less of a floppy/wandery steering feel, find I have to make less steering adjustments mid corner. Slightly better traction. I’d say the slacker the bike and shorter the stem the more benefit from shorter offset.

If you’d have asked me 10 years ago I’d have said the opposite. Back then it was all about making 29er steering as light and quick as a 26. Longer offset did that and also restored some stability lost due to steep head angles and shorter front centres. Not to mention reducing toe overlap, anyone remember that?

Just had a delivery from Bikester via UPS. No sign of any extra charges yet. Took a couple of days longer than usual. Someone has opened the commercial invoice for a look. But Bikester website says VAT already included and the invoice says delivery duty paid.

Also returned something to Bike24. Took a few days longer than usual and they wanted a CN23 customs form, but it got there. Most difficult bit was finding out what needed filling in on the form.

Bike companies have to take into consideration riders at the upper end of sizing as well. The XL Spectral has a 490mm seat tube. That’s actually one of the shorter seat tubes I’ve had and would comfortably fit a 200mm dropper at my saddle height. I suppose it could be a little bit shorter but there are riders taller than me with higher saddles that might then find a problem getting minimum insertion. Marin, for example, have gone too short for some. Ideally, offer more sizes, but very few brands do that. Do I want to ride something so low it looks like a trials bike? Could look almost as silly as the days of riding a barn gate. Do I need a 200mm dropper that’s more likely to go wrong? Very rarely.

Kinked seat tubes are annoying. Makes it harder to tell what the angle really is at a particular saddle height. I imagine it’s to do with pivot placement on the Canyon. Can’t think it’s for tyre clearance under compression as the chainstays aren’t exactly short and the seat tube angle is fairly steep. Orbea partially solved the pivot thing by adding another tube for it on the Occam.

Very badly written. Would have thought the warning is actually to careless dog owners. Seems to be a few too many dog owners around who ‘apparently’ have no idea how their dog will react to people on bikes.

Any idea what 2022 models are going to bring that I may miss out on ?

I predict a higher price, steeper seat tube angle and two bottle mounts.

Topeak XC11, no mud on my back and easy to swap between bikes.

Also just this week came my first Hermes parcel in over a year that hasn’t been slashed open with a knife to check if the contents were worth stealing. Something I’ve complained repeatedly to Hermes and retailers about but gotten nowhere.

Disgraceful company. Last problem I had took upwards of 60 emails, plus phone calls and that stupid Holly POS. None of which solved the issue so I had PayPal do that for them in the end. But some satisfaction from knowing all those emails cost them a lot more in customer service time than it would have to do what I was asking. They do reply on Resolver, or I used this address previously: myhermes@mailgb.custhelp.com

I found the race levers needed more regular bleeding to stop the bite point getting too close to the bars without ServoWave. A couple of people I ride with found the same. Bearing in mind that’s on top of Shimano brakes needing bleeding more often than other brands anyway. On the upside the race brakes are a lot lighter and the modulation is better.

Wouldn’t that mean you’re paying VAT twice, EU and UK?

Also, the suggestion that a large successful bike brand doesn’t know how to design bikes, but an internet forum does, is a bit odd.

It would be a mistake to think there aren’t people that know what they’re talking about on forums. I know for a fact designers (even for brands as big as Trek or Giant) trawl through forums and reviews looking for issues and things to improve. Bike brands don’t always get things right. The Procaliber is a good example of this. Clearly Emily was struggling to get the seat far enough forward (72.5 angle) and the bars low enough. Lo and behold the redesigned model after has a steeper seat tube angle and lower stack height.

Trying to get the bars as low as possible can be a symptom of a seat tube angle that’s too slack. Or more likely in the case of pros it puts the rider in a better position to get power down. I had a Syntace FlatForce stem recently and it really works.

So where’s the smooth ride coming from that Hardtail Party speaks of with this Ragley? Some kind of amazing butting internally? Weirdly soft aluminium? Or has he overstated the case? It looks outwardly like a fairly ordinary 6061 frame with big tubes, big welds, cross braces, straight seatstays and not particularly light.

The united federation of Planets have standards. We wouldn’t meet them.

And the capitol is Paris!

There’s a lot of camera lens distortion in that video, making her, the bike and the trees look stretched out in all directions. The wheels aren’t even round! In other photos it looks like a better fit than the Trek above, assuming that’s the final setup. Be interesting to see how she does, can’t help but think Canyon lost someone really outstanding in Pauline and gained…well recent results speak for themselves.

Soma are about as similar to On One as Salsa or Pipedream. But yeah that’s expensive, was less than half that before shipping when I tried to get one about three years ago. Otherwise the Pipedream looks good, if the sizing works for you.

Spot Brand recently brought out a rather nice carbon singlespeed, but it’s about the same price as the Pivot.

Bit more than your stated price range, but: https://swishcycles.co.uk/product/soma-juice/

When I was last looking for this sort of bike the Soma came out on top. In fact I bought one. Just a shame it had to be cancelled because the shop wanted more than the frame was worth to ship it from the US, and that was before customs. But if they’re available here that’s what I’d be after.

You guys are focusing on the looks. I’m more interested in being able to tune progression and anti squat by moving the main pivot up or down.

Hopefully a new Anthem and Blur for 2022 as well. Both looking a bit old now.

I used Bikestacja.pl for a pair of wheels last summer. I believe they’re linked to fitwheels.eu somehow? Except slightly cheaper. Both wheels still going strong, but if I’m being picky the rear wasn’t quite 100% true to begin with. Enough of a bargain that I wouldn’t complain.

In my experience overshoes just aren’t warm enough. Also found water would get in through the cleat slots. If walking or putting a foot down I found mud got squeezed in under the overshoes, making a real mess inside.

Hadn’t visited his website before. £253 for a BSA bottom bracket!!!

immoral for a business to exclude liability for their own negligence unless you pay them extra

Jokers eh!

Last time they lost something of mine showed just how useless they are. Phoned them next day, could tell them exactly what it was (distinctive expensive item had “come out of its packaging” so should be very obvious), knew the driver’s name, had only been through one depot which was the one I phoned. Could you please have a look? No, put a claim in sir!

In my experience if you have BB7s come on a bike, the basic cables they come with likely won’t be good enough. If there is stretch in the inner cable or compression of the outer when pulling the lever it won’t get near the potential braking force. Like a well bled hydraulic brake it should not feel spongy and there should be a defined bite point felt through the lever.

the inner adjuster gets clogged up and is a bastard to turn through the wheel unless I take the pads out and give them a damn good clean and a squirt of WD-40

The inner adjuster can be turned with a T25 torx if it’s tight by hand. Might be a stupid question but I hope you’re keeping the WD-40 well away from the pads and rotors?

Also happened to get a pair of discounted Fizik Artica X5. Comfortable, very nicely made, great to walk in with a proper rubber sole. The ankle is quite stiff but seems to be slowly breaking in. I had to stitch the tongue behind the zip in place because it just slid round to the side. Pair about 160g heavier than Northwaves. Not particularly stiff considering they’re apparently carbon reinforced. Zip leaks slightly but nothing that’s going to get feet wet. I expect problems with the zip in the long run. Slightly behind Specialized and Northwave for warmth. Cleat slot too far forward IMO.

Update: That didn’t take long, zip dead. Will be returning when I can work out how to fill in a customs form.

Surprised to read replies from people that haven’t actually used cable brakes. BB7s are very good when set up well. Only takes seconds to reach down and dial the pistons in for pad wear. The important thing is high quality sealed cables. Never felt they were short on power so might be related to pads or rotor size. I’d take them over anything sub Deore level hydraulic.