If the sale doesn’t go through: I can’t compare with the 456 but haven’t regretted building a Blue Pig Mk3. In the past eight months it’s been to the alps, and up and down most of Calderdale in all weathers; feels like I can point it down just about anything without it getting twitchy.

Seems like it could get expensive quite quickly !

Quadcopters can be quite cheap to build, especially if you get bits from Hobbyking. If you’re handy enough to construct the drone, a decent transmitter is usually more expensive than the motors, electronics, rotors, chassis material and a few LiPOs.

Edit: giving them a stable camera platform free from vibration artefacts does get more expensive though, as does FPV hardware. But the most expensive stuff seems to be in your hands or on your head, generally.

Was discussing this elsewhere, and someone pointed out the cast have enough about them that, even if it’s terrible, it’ll probably still be fun to watch. Most of them were good 25 years ago, and David Lynch is still good now.

Hurley was a boring sh*te though. I really hope he’s been written out, but is referred to in increasingly ridiculous and unbelievable ways by the remaining characters.

Ace route Daz, thanks :)

It’s just a bit of fog.

That’s what privacy zones are for Daz. Pro tip for the super paranoid: Pick a postcode just down the road so if they compile all your rides they go to the wrong centre point :P

You’re most welcome! Meant to say, I second all of Spuds pub and cafe recommendations too.

@Retrodirect I’ve only sat on it rather than ridden it so far, but 760 feels good, and like I could have gone up to 780 comfortably. I’m 5′ 7.5″ and on a 16″ Blue Pig frame if that helps you decide.

I went from these (700mm, 30mm rise)
http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/crank-brothers-iodine-1-am-riser-handlebar/rp-prod85548
(The markings for brake/shifter alignment on one side of these don’t seem to match the other *sad trombone* :))

To these (762mm, 20mm rise)
http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/spank-spoon-riser-bar/rp-prod90469

http://www.wiggle.co.uk/lifeline-usb-led-single-beam-15-lumen-rear-light/

Got this as it was cheap, USB, is well designed enough to use with gloves on, and has no fitting that has to stay on the seatpost. Not as bright as some, but was riding with a mate who had one on alpine roads a month back, and it was plenty visible from a hundred metres or so back.

Best pub food in Nottingham: The Hand and Heart on Derby Road. The restaurant is in a cave, and you might have to book a table. Annie’s Burger Shack in the Lace Market is popular (I recommend the Lemmy: Jalapenos and JD mustard), so likewise you might need to book or have a long wait for a table.

Tilt (Pelham street) does good cocktails and has staff who give a sh*t. If you don’t want to drink, Lee Rosy’s (Broad Street) does a ton of different types of tea. Brewdog is just opposite. The Dragon (Smithy Row) and The Peacock (bottom of Mansfield Road) are both decent pubs. The Pticher and Piano (Lace Market) is a little w*nky but made from an enormous, beautiful old church. Right next door to Nottingham Contemporary too if art is your kind of thing.

(Um, yeah, Nottingham is mostly just for getting p*ssed and going to gigs).

Local bike shops: Freewheel shut down this year, Bunneys (near the station) were screaming down the stairs at their mechanic every time I went in, Rock’n’Roll bikes are decent and just a little further out than the ice arena.

@maccauk: I did exactly that, but with a van and all my stuff in boxes :)

Is there a formula to work out what’s width’s best, or is it all down to feel?

Doubt it. It’d come down to the combination of your arm length, shoulder width, stem length, stem angle, and frame geometry.

That combination of factors is the only thing protecting us all from “What bars for [BLANK]?” threads :)

I’m up for a bit* of climbing.

@Retrodirect Sounds like we’re in the same boat. If my bars arrive this week, I’ll let you know.

700mm on the HT, about to go up to 760 given the most comfortable position when climbing is with half of each palm off the end of the bars.

360mm bullhorns on the commuter :)

the rail network would look after itself

Pffffff :D

Built: one day.

Load of bits in a box ready to build: Four months.

You’d be fine with rim brakes. I did swap the Tektro pads that came on mine for Koolstop pads and holders though, and rate them.

Neverwet apparently scuffs off really easily. There are a lot of disappointed reviews out there from people who found it only lasted a for few minutes on anything they had to touch.

Oof :(

Glad you made it. Everyone I’ve spoken to says Val’s a weird resort. Overcrowded, harsh, and pistes colour coded to make it look like an easier place than it is.

Fingers crossed for ton.

I think it comes down somewhat to your drivetrain and local terrain too. I definitely used to feel the benefit of having a position where my wrists were rotated 90 degrees, it made it much easier to sprint up stuff, but I was on fairly crappy 3×8 and living somewhere with no hills over a few hundred feet. Now I’m near long, steep climbs with a recent 2×10 setup, I don’t often get a chance to sprint up anything and it’s easy to put myself in a spot where I have too much torque and not enough traction.

I don’t really understand the tribalism over bar ends/no bar ends. It seems like preaching the gospel of 26″ to people in Wisconsin or something.

barends are a 4th plane!

Non-Euclidean mountain biking? That’s some next-level gnar, that :)

Linking to this one because it’s fairly big:
http://giant.gfycat.com/GrimOpenDutchsmoushond.gif

I’ve seen two UK Sovs for sale on ebay so far this year, but it looks like five have been listed:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=evil+sovereign&_in_kw=1&_ex_kw=&_sacat=0&LH_Complete=1&_udlo=&_udhi=&_samilow=&_samihi=&_sadis=15&_stpos=&_sargn=-1%26saslc%3D1&_salic=3&_sanli=3&_sop=12&_dmd=1&_ipg=50
Looks like the small yellow frame didn’t sell, so maybe worth sending the seller a message. There was another completely built up that didn’t sell, but the guy took the listing down.

I have a bunch of friends on GiffGaff and they all seem happy with it.

They did have a complete outage over several days a few years ago when flooding took out “the server”. I think they moved it off the floor onto an office chair after that :)

Good luck tomorrow Tony. Surgery gets better every year, they’re doing amazing things now.

vintagewino: Jammed the edge in which flipped me right over and after a tumble I was on my chest sliding even faster head first.

That was lucky :0

After a sunny week snowboarding in Val d’Isere, the weather got bad enough that more than half of the pistes were closed for blasting. Two experienced skiers in our group spotted a combination of open gondolas and chairs, and urged us into a final run of the holiday. Four of us went up, all keen.

At the top: whiteout, winds mostly against us, visibility sometimes dropping to less than a metre, struggling not to lose sight of each other let alone the poles, couldn’t hear each other shouting unless we were right beside each other, often losing sight of our own feet and having difficulty telling if we were moving or not. I was trying to stay calm but getting cold, very suddenly tired, and thinking we might not make it down, and later found out the other three were thinking exactly the same. I don’t know how long it took us to pick our way down, but it felt like we were in it for about an hour.

Memory of the fear is mostly eclipsed by the elation we felt at finally dropping out of the storm, and visibility expanding enough to go fast for the final thousand feet. When we got to the bottom we realised most our faces were covered in ice. The skiers looked shell-shocked, apologised, and said they were the worst conditions they’d ever seen.

It wasn’t the first whiteout I’d been in, and earlier that week I’d been through one by myself that felt more exhilarating and beautiful than scary. The relentless intensity of this one was terrifying though, and I think like some of the near-drowning stories above, that was partly because we were so close to civilisation but so suddenly cut off and helpless.

I had some on my last bike, which was 8 speed XC, and found them really handy. I’ve found the extra hand position nice on long commutes too.

Now I’m on a ten speed with much wider bars, they’re really not necessary though. The bars give me any leverage I need.

Brilliant, thanks so much. Looks like no. 15 will be perfect for us if the weather’s been decent.

We’ll steer clear of 20, none of us are up to that standard yet :)

We’re really close to Vénosc, and have our own transport. The others are much better at climbing/endurance than me, though I’m used to it, and am a faster descender than them.

I might not take them on such exposed routes, but would love to know about them.

Thanks everyone!

Looks like we might be better off sticking around Les Deux Alpes, as the Mega finish is 10 miles along the valley bottoms from where we’re staying. What’s transport like down there? I’ve only been to other bits of the alps before, snowboarding, and am used to free buses.

I have a scoop and a spoon. The Scoop has a more flexible base to make up for the thinner padding. I find them as comfortable as each other (same width and shape), but the scoop is way easier to clean, and I think due to the lack of stitching, it seems to wear through clothes much more slowly.

Triton usually sell them for under £32, so given the price difference I’d go for the scoop.

Oh, sorry. Completely missed your earlier post :D

I’ve had the same problem in the past week, so bought from somewhere else instead. Weirdly, the billing address is stuck as an old one I no longer have saved in my account there either.

Rutland Cycling are now doing the same deal, 699:
http://www.rutlandcycling.com/281113/products/giant-defy-1-compact-road-bike-2014-blue-black.aspx

Looks like they’re running out of the black faster than the blue. I went for a cheaper Saracen one from them in the end, but the Defy has a much nicer spec.

Thanks for the tip on Kool Stops, chakaping!

Definitely try tweaking your bike fit. I got lower back pain when I first started commuting, and the solution for me was tilting my saddle further forward. It seemed to change my spinal curvature significantly.

Are people kicking off here cos they don’t have the right mates or something..?

It seems that way.

Cliques are mostly imaginary, and that gives them an enormous amount of power in the minds of those who feel hard done by or excluded by them.

My job puts me in and out of various cliques of a fledgling scene, and I occasionally see people b*tching about it, or get passive aggressive emails about it for not selecting someone’s work for a show. There’s an enormous amount of suspicion and paranoia from people who want to be friends with the “important” people, and I’m sometimes perceived as one of those, sometimes not, which gets really weird and interesting. I’m mostly perceived as approachable, but if I don’t like someone’s work, then from that point it’s often “because I’m in the clique“.

I used to feel excluded from some of these cliques too, until I realised that they’re mostly imaginary, some of the people I thought were in them actually don’t get on with or hang out with each other, etc. There’s no committee voting on things. What looks like a clique from the outside is actually really loose knit and porous. I think most of us experience them at their worst in our teens, when kids actually commit to the idea and reinforce it with awful dissembling bullsh*t. Most adults don’t behave like that, but groups still happen as a natural part of socialisation. Clique is a label applied to that by people who feel like outsiders, for whatever reason, and usually based on evidence flimsier than an asymmetric thong. Seeing cliques is a flipside of the stupid tribal behaviour we all fall into sometimes.

I didn’t see it, but if Mark deleted an earlier and perfectly inoffensive thread, that’s bad forum etiquette, but still his prerogative since it’s his forum. It’s not a clique- or PR-driven conspiracy though, FFS.

Argh. Was thinking about it, but they put the price up to 799 today.

There is actually an interesting story behind stuff like that babygro, which mostly doesn’t exist but is only a buy button away from it:
http://dismagazine.com/dystopia/evolved-lifestyles/27226/spam-erican-apparel/