… it’s to make you miserable.

Road riding makes you miserable: if it didn’t do that, we wouldn’t bother doing it.

I haven’t a clue what you are all talking about.

Oakleys: great. They make everything in the world look wonderful and pristine – I call it Oakley-vision.

One problem though.

After purchasing 6 pairs over the years and variously (1) losing them in the sea, (2) breaking the arms off, (3) snapping the lenses in two. I decided that perhaps sunglasses at £100 a pop are really not the best thing for me.

Sunglasses will just get trashed – and all too soon, despite trying to treat them so, so carefuly – you’ll eventually ‘just put them in a soft pocket for a few minutes’ and forget that they are there. With my my last pair, a week after I had bought them I they were resting on top of my head for a few moments as I looked over a suspension walking bridge – I scratched the iridium on the steel cable above my head and had to live with that for a few years, until they eventually snapped in two.

Oh the happy joy of Oakley ownership..

Enjoy..

Ha Ha! How long is this thread gonna get? (And how many bikes have some people had!) This is surely the ultimate ME TOO thread..

Well, here we go:

1990 – some cheap mild steel ‘Halfords special’ type-thing with a plastic rear wheel ‘disc’ that was my friend’s originally, but it fell off my dad’s roof rack on the M3 at 70 mph. My dad replaced it with a new bike, and I got the Halfords special. Used for my first forays into the wilds of Surrey

1991 – some cheap-as Townsend – made with Reynolds 501 – woo – it had aluminium rims! Did my first races on this bike, and spent hours of my life cursing its retchedly poor specification and build quality as it greadually fell to bits and I tried to put it back together

1993 – Marin Eldridge Grade – the sweetest cro-mo hardtail ever! Had rapidfire plus shifters and it actually worked and everything. Did more races and started finishing top 3

1994 – Canondale M100 – I decided to upgrade to aluminium as by this point my biking had become *serious*. I did loadsa racing and hours of painful training on this pig-of-a-bike. Rigid as, with a disgusting pant-job and useless ‘Canondale Original Design Aplications’ (CODA) components, which just fell to bits. It got stolen in 1997, much to my eventual apparent benefit. I’ve loathed all Canondales ever since.

1998 – Giant MCM Team carbon monocoque (1997) purchased on a whim whilst blearingly hungover one day because I liked the colours – but probably the best decision I ever made. It had done a season as one of the Giant pro-team’s race bikes. Lovely bike, soooo, soooo light and my first bike with actual front suspension! I still own it and ride it to this day, and enjoy every moment. I’ve upgraded most of the bits on it now so that it is a thing of ultra-light retro beauty

2006 – Klein Attitude (2001) frame built up gradually over a summer with old spares and bits off eBay. Intended as a winter bike to stop the Giant from dying. Totally love it though. Beautiful paint-job and a lot of fun. Feels a bit more robust than the ol’ carbon Giant. Currently riding (and racing) it here in Tasmania.

…still haven’t made the leap to full-sus yet.

I destinctly remember that afternoon.. I’d just returned from a MTB club ride at Motosport in Cranleigh, Surrey.

..Settled down to watch the F1 as usual, and then everything just became a bit surreal.. Sad day.

Oh dear.. Unfortunately for you, it appears most people would probably rather die than be seen recommending messenger bags on STW – how to lose all cred in an instant.

I, for the other hand, don’t care – so I’ll recommend one. North Face do a spectacularly gorgeous bag, which comes in a mega-hardcore-waterproof version too.. (it looks great in red if you can find one)

see: http://www.asos.com/The-North-Face/The-North-Face-Base-Camp-Messenger-Bag/Prod/pgeproduct.aspx?iid=385244

for some ideas..

…If you do get a chance to scan the manual that’d be most appreciated too!

email: alan.jones@imperial.ac.uk

cheers saladdoger! That’s exactly the sort of information I was looking for!

I had a feeling I’d seen something like that about on t’ net somewhere, sometime.. I shall disassemble my forks with a little more confidence now!

saladdodger –
you could try a canoe trip to NZ

Someone already tried..http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/last-scenes/2007/02/25/1172338469233.html

Erm.. yes Dr_A, fair point, but I’m living in Aus, and seeing a GP costs money. My next follow-up appointment is not now for 3 weeks. I thought I’d ask around here in the meantime, not for any specialist medical advice – as such – but more for any potential forum members’ personal experiences of using this drug and how or if it ever affected their cycling..

… as for pharmacists? They may be well versed in the ins and outs of pharmacology, including the more ‘typical’ side-effects of various drugs – for ‘typical’ (i.e. relatively inactive) people, but as for their insight on the possible side-effects of this drug on physiological performance? I’m rather doubtful.

I’m just wondering – for example – if I get a day when I feel dead and tired while cycling, is it possible that this is due to the drug, or will it be because I’m genuinely tired? Will such a side-effect last for as long as I keep taking this drug, or will it just be a temporary thing until my body gets used to it?

If anyone has any insight on this or any other aspect of using this type of drug I’d be grateful.

Totally in Hobart also, dude..!

Yesterday’s grey coldness just reduced me to despair. Went for a darkside ride around the Mountain late yesterday evening, over to Margate and back and it practically felt like I was cycling thru Antarctica! Just miserable!

Perhaps I’m being a little melodramatic..

..but I keep thinking ‘it’s only gonna get colder and darker here from now on’. I’ve got nothing to compare it to I suppose? (having never lived here over the winter before). So I guess I’ll just have to just suck it and see? Statisically the climate here looks better on paper, I guess? But with days getting longer and warmer over the other side of the world, the grass is starting to look greener on the other side (as always)! Still, I guess I’d be unemployed if I went home, which would suck ass.. 8O

Where d’you ride kiwij?

Has PeterP been taking mushrooms again? ;P

Bikey / Matt – by far the most sensible piece of advice I’ve read so far!

STW is surely NOT the place to come looking for compassion… Like, WTF were you thinking? Just a bunch of calous b’tards lurking about behind their keyboards here ;P

But, anyway dude.. sorry to hear about your kitten, that sux. The world is not a compassion-less place, it’s just that often the UK is an uptight, paranoid and scared place. All this fear prevents people from acessing their true compassionate inner natures. (Sorry to get all worthy and budhist-like on y’all).

I suspect that the poor unfortunate who originally hit the kitten was probably too scared / freaked out about what they’d done to stop and help, and the person driving *right* behind them might not have even seen said kitten, running over it in the process, leaving the person behind them with only a bit of a mess to stop for, which they probably didn’t think was worth it. By the time you get to the 20th person, it’s probably very unlikely that anyone was ever gonna stop.

To many people rushing this way and that – often with another person driving right up their ass. The world probably needs to slow down a tad.

(Stop this planet, I want to get off – as a certain sheep may have once said)

@ Clunker.. That Pace is absolutely gorgeous! I’ve wanted one of those since about ’93. Still haven’t got one, mind. Still hoping.. 8O

Re: This ‘rubbish’ retro riding position / setup thing – I’m not entirely sure what’s wrong with it really?

I ride with narrow bars, and an arse up, head down position, simply because I find it more comfortable – and it’s the same setup I learnt to ride with off road 19 years ago, when XC was all the rage. If you look at all the World Champ XC riders, you’ll see they have pretty much the same setup, and they don’t appear to be going too slowly..

IRC Mythos XC II’s 1.95 – pump ’em up to 60psi – fang-bloody-tastic on the road.. and great off road too!

… Shame they don’t make ’em anymore :?

Thought I’d join in this pointless converstion, because I’m bored and (like the rest of the posters appear to be) not currently getting any

CountZero – “Rainforests are not threatened by paper making, ‘cos they’re hardwoods, paper is made from softwood forests grown in northern Europe, so it’s a continuously sustainable process”

Erm, dude.. you have got that sooo wrong. Try examining the case of Tasmania (where I’m currently living). Rainforests – currently being chopped down to make paper. Exactly that. It’s a bit of an issue over here.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/conservation/3309242/Tasmania-wood-pulp-mill-approved.html

(Oh god help me.. I thought I’d succesfully completed the STW rehab programme months ago, but here I am back again contributing to utterly pointless “I say this”… “no I say that” arguments. Things must really have got bad)

ROTF Lol @ Richpips – “are you on mushrooms?”

…Priceless.

(all the same – sorry to hear about your loss of bike agent-thingy)

Witter.. witter.. witter.. freehub this, bearings that.

IMO the problem is that – for the original poster – the eventual price went over the *magic £50 mark*. The quote for £45’s not so bad to accept at the – hypothetical – outset, but when 50 notes (plus change) eventually have to be coughed up… it hurts.

Still, I wouldn’t say £22.50 to change a freehub is all that bad. It would take my cack-handed self around 1 hour to do, and then the cones would probably still be wobbly.

The end..?