I’d have been unable to do a dull day on the shop floor without them

– Freudian slip Druidh? 😆

Up to day 72; waiting for your saddle to disintegarate!

I have not for one second regretted buying a Cube GTC Agree; I loves it I do! 🙂

Weird I was just reading this: We rolled into Sebree where Nina was waiting for us. She had bad news that one of the two DC brothers had been hit by a deer and his bike was wrecked, their trip was over. Robbie’s crash description was very funny. His recollection of the nanosecond before impact was ‘wow, that’s a huge dog, I’d best get the dog spray’ . A second later the deer and he collided and all the gear, bike and rider were jettisoned in different directions. on mcmoonter’s blog

Nice one McM, we’re off in 3 days!

p.s. I was hoping to have a productive day in work today – I’ve already read Druidhs blog and now i’ve this to get through – bang goes that idea!

A couple of reports that the Fire 2 will be out early 2012 and will be the device they actually want to launch. This is allegedly a cheaper playbook.

The Kindle touch 3G has me more excited!

26h40 from placing order to delivery from Planet X via Royal Mail…

Tempting as it is Cheeky Monkey; i know the minute I sell them I’ll plan a trip somewhere I want to use them!

Happy Birthday dude, 30’s don’t seem much different to 20’s to me, except I have more bikes 😀

While there are a few useful people here:

Anyone know if I could put one of those bmx to euro BB converters in my Swift instead of the eccentric while I’m running it 1×9 with a 36 tooth cog?

frame wrap is simply Self Amalgamating Tape

I thought it might be but wasn’t 100% sure normal self amalgamating tape was as thick – noted for future 🙂

Love mine, seems to take tons of abuse. I bought both rockers when I got mine and still haven’t fitted the long one, other than to make sure I made cables long enough when I was building it up.

Cy probably new I was going to buy one when I handed his back to him after a demo with a huge grin across my face. I think I still finish pretty much every single ride on it with that same grin!

I have stolen some parts from it for my 29er to see if I can get the grin factor back on that, otherwise I think I might have to buy a Soul, or a Solaris…

Aouch!

That sucks – I had meant that I was going to email Aiden to see if he had a reserve list he would like to offer my place to. I never expected, or asked for, a refund and sold my place to dave360 off of here – for a discount as I figured if he hadn’t asked for it I wouldn’t have got anything.

I hope Aiden’s experience doesn’t put him, or others, off organising events in future. People willing to put their time and effort into organising events for us to ride in/at deserve support and appreciation, not abusive emails for the sake of a few quid!

Do people actually think that SSUK is some mega-corp with someone permanently poised at a keyboard?!

p.s. dave360 – if you’re reading this, I hope you enjoyed it and drank my share of the beer 🙂

The ‘loop’ side of sticky backed velcro works very well and muck washes out of it effortlesly and only a couple of quid for a metre of 2 to 3inch wide stuff.

I’ve also used frame wrap on another bike and while it’s good and still looks pretty new after a couple of years abuse, I think I’ll go with velcro in future. It is essentially a thick self amalging tape.

Try Frank Turner – Thatcher F***** the kids – great song writer.

Avril Lavigne – f*ck that

Given the choice i’m sure you would too 😆

the alternative to couplings, for getting it into a case smaller than a bike bag would be a full sus frame, maybe something that you could swap the parts from your Kinesis onto for the trip, but only a realistic option if the plan is to mountainbike from a base point rather than actually touring on it. The are the same issues of complexity and thigs to go wrong as a folder.

Off home to see if the beeb have it on iPlayer…

Personally I’d avoid a folding bike if you’re going to be doing serious miles on it there are just too many things that could go wrong.

Ben that used to post here once upon a time does S&S couplings if that helps; kinetics

I do like the Tranny, but you’re right, it isn’t cheap and I was told recently it’s very harsh ride.

freeload[/url] racks mean you don’t have to worry about a frame having mounts – they have at least one mail order dealer in Germany so you don’t have to get them from NZ.

Personally, I’d go for steel/ally mtb in a bag or if you have the time/money/inclination get s&s couplings put in (i think it has to be steel for these) to make it more packable and manageable. But do consider how much of a pain it will be dragging a bike in a bag around when you are not riding it and how small you can make teh bike bag when you are riding.

sorry about the epic post; bored at work!

I think they need to give you their details as they have to agree to gift aid it, as well as being UK tax payers, you can’t just decide thet they are all going to. At least that’s how I understand it.

EDIT – no idea what that^ is about either!

I haven’t thought about that part of our trip but you could check the ctc travel insurance. They cover bike stuff that others don’t. Very helpful over the phone if you don’t want to trawl through the t&cs.

my legs are a Bic-No-Go Zone

I’m getting Bic curious but I’m scared the wrath it may invoke!

Mustard is going to email you about this

I’m still holding out hope…

Nice one crashtestmonkey – I got my first proper road bike this year and love it. I Don’t really get the negatives you listed there, you obviously weren’t trying hard enough 🙂 I wish I’d got one years ago!

Colour scheme goes with the last line of your post too 😆

.

I’ve just built a light tourer/winter road bike and it’s got a compact on it.

I don’t use the smaller ring of the compact very much on my road bike so wanted to try a double and this seemed like the best/cheapest way to get one. I think I may curse the lack of granny when I’m touring and wish I’d bitten the bullet and just bought a triple too.

I can always pop the compact back on the road bike if I fell I’m going to need it.

Next year….maybe… 😈

Ladies? Any suggestions for a good saddle?

Only ask DGOAB if you want to buy her the most eye wateringly expensive first saddle, it does have a 30 day money back guarantee though 🙄

Hence the cow on a Coleman’s jar of mustard no?

FTFY 🙄 FFS

14/15 while bursting for a pee, just clicked the wrong letter in the third question. Took way too much time on the numerical codes too.

Sure you’re not interested in Gore?[/url](£16)- note it is not the full length version.

MrS – are you making sure the cranks stay on this year? 🙂

Snow Roads Audax next year? That should sort out some interesting max speeds!

The Singletrackworld Forums. To quote someone else – “like arguing with a load of angry strangers in a badly run bike shop”. However, there are also moments of pure gold.

pescetarianrevolutions: another interesting blog to fill your time.

🙂 I really should get some work done today…

pre-warming flask/travel mug with boiling water makes a huge difference in my experience; burnt my mouth in Dundee on coffee made in Edinburgh about 1 1/2hrs earlier and put in my crappy Aladin travel mug!

dgoab – he’s way ahead of you, check the links page!

I’d say Open Pros too, although I have A319s on my 29er. I think they are the same profile as their 29er rim (and cheaper) even though Macvic have different tyre recomendations for both. I’m sure Mavic just make up their tyre recomendations!

Edit: That’s the A319 I’m waffling about not the OP

29er and 35mm touring tyres – as everyone else has said; the road out is much harder, but the food at the Applecross in is worth it!

[edit] screw it I can never get images to link from picasa properly!

P.s. 13fm – I was over taking cars on the descent 😈

I thought you might find your flow after reading your piece on dgoab’s blog[/url] 😉

You really should use a picture of Scotland rather than Greece as your banner though 😆

Looks good!

If you’re mostly on road how about some 35ish mm touring/town tyres schwalbe marathon(?) are well regarded.

Hold firm young furry one.

I’m sure all will be well (I’ll stick with my original offer to go dutch if it does go pear shaped too). The whole point of these letter is to scare you in to paying.

There isn’t any cctv.