That fox in playground children kept in story is just crazy. Those kids'll grow up terrified of their own shadows – ah, but at least that way they will only rarely go outside, so won't be out committing crime / protesting about anything / trespassing in the countryside et cetera, and on the rare occasion they do actually venture outside, it'll only be to a shopping centre or a supermarket, where they will be under constant surveillance from a stream of the 100 million CCTV cameras in the UK, (another conspiracy angle).

It's a constant marvel to me; how, as a species we ever survived the pleistocene, when there were any number of truly apex predators out there. (Which is to say massive, powerful, almost fantastical creatures trivially capable of eviscerating creatures like … ooh, woolly rhino and mammoth, let alone our pathetically frail little monkey bodies.

Magnificent animals like the American Lion, and the Short-Faced Bears to be going on with. It goes without saying that we played a highly significant part in their extinction (along with a potentially incalculable number of other species in the last 12 thousand years).

Note to self – Don't reply to OT posts … :roll:

Nah, it'll never work … :wink:

That took all of about 15 minutes to build. I could only use the F&F (and headset) as the rest of the stuff was pretty weak/awful. The only unusual component requirement was that it needed deep-drop calipers – as this bike originally had 27 1/4 steel rims, which were replaced by 700c's.

It's a 1980's Raleigh Eclipse in '18-23' (just a basic cro-mo tubeset), so it was pretty much entry-level in it's day. I've had it ages, I think a paid a tenner for it.

Built for commuting / nipping into town on, so it's supposed to look a bit thrown together (to deter a second look). Can be a bit harsh on worn out surfaces tho', and get scarily wobbly on fast downhills, (a combination of the frame and slightly dodgy wheel choice).

I've been riding SS for a good while now, and when I go back to riding my geared MTB I can't seem to find the right gear, it just doesn't feel right. I've gone back to rigid forks on my SS MTB too, having suspension on there didn't feel right either.

The hardest thing I'd found about singlespeeding, is that it kinda makes your other, geared bikes feel redundant, and a bit unloved … :(

Growing a beard isn't hard tho'.

They are the work of the devil.

That road leads to who only knows where – you'll be wanting gears, and carbon stuff next, and before you'll know it, you'll be shaving, and sitting down to go down hills.

:wink:

Dunno, It's a long way to go, it's not like just springing a 126 backend out to 130 (which works fine to get a modern hub in an 'older' frame).

It's not so much a tubing / welding integrity issue, although that will come into it, but the chances of doing it without a jig, and keeping things straight / consistently spaced don't appear to be on your side …

Assuming there is one, any minimal difference in tube length, (down from that on the 135's) should get eaten by the decent length dropouts they have tho'.

I run 34:20 (on a 26"), in hilly ole' Devonshire, and I find it's a decent compromise if you are riding hills and off-road. For a direct comparison – my road only SS's are 42:18's.

You spin out in no time, it'll feel dog-slow on the flat and you'll coast downhill – (but it'll be a good aerobic workout). :wink:

In practical terms, I use that bike for shopping too, and when it's fully loaded I cannot carry it up the steps to my front door, it's too heavy, but, I can still ride it up pretty much anything.

Kinda annoyed that I just clipped the tip of her ear out of the frame, but you have to take what you can with these little monkeys, as they are rarely still, unless they are asleep in a box or in the washing, (but that makes for a rubbish shot as it just looks like someone has just dumped a cat in a box/pile of washing as they don't do 'cute' sleeping)… :?

Mice, birds, frogs, tofu, most olives (but not the small green Lebanese olives, or those in too much oil/brine – he prefers the big Kalamata's, and is ok about most marinade too), rice-flour pastry, freshly baked unleaven spelt bread, sunflower seeds, seaweed & tamari rice crackers, home-made tomato sauce (but only with garlic) …

Thanks for the beard endorsements.

:-)

+1 Tinystreaker – That was pretty impressively seamless video work.

I lost about 5 inches (~9-10 months growth) to a bonfire back along, so I'm trying to recover that now. I have taken to trimming my 'stache back a bit tho', which I don't really like doing, but in the end it just goes everywhere, and makes it too difficult for some people to lip-read when I speak – and as I work quite a lot with elderly / disabled people, that was becoming quite a problem.

This danger panda thing is surprisingly difficult, given how easy it sounds.
I didn't realise how poor my (and your!) balance on a bike is. No wonder I stopped riding trials !

1992 MBK in some kinda Vitus tubing, and now geared on 50/34 f, and 12-30 r (!). MTB SPD's (M647's) Midge bars on a quill-to-aheadset hack, and bar-end shifters (which are great). Dura-Ace/Mavic wheelset, and a mix of Dura-Ace and Ultegra groupset throughout (which seems to annoy/puzzle some people in equal measure). It'll be getting cross-top levers next … :wink:

1980's Raleigh in "18-23" (which is a long established basic/functional cro-mo frame steel). Build as a SS, purely to ride into town and be able to be locked up for a bit without attracting attention from none o' them thieving types (hence the mismatched wheels, badly touched up paintwork, nasty bar-tape …). Home-made tensioner, old MTB cranks, (decent long-drop brakes tho', going from 27 x 1 1/4 to 700c), lovely ITM stem and ok bars. CX chainring. About 70 inches gearing I think.

I run a pair of A719's (36) on my Peregrine, and was so impressed that I've built the Pompino's wheelset up on A719's too.

Decent enough width (19mm) and the deep, square rim profile (as it's a braking surface) seems to settle the tyres nicely – (which is the same reason I use EX721's on my disk-braked MTB, not EX729's).

They are not light tho', and not especially quick to accelerate on, (and getting 32 hole black was a PITA), but I'd use them again for anything that needed to carry a load, or cope with hard work / riding about in the woods.

I use Gusset Slink chains on two of my SS's, (but still 3/32).

On my Surly ring'd Kona it's great, but on my ACS equipped Pompino it's horrible. They are both fitted exactly the same way around (which is to say 'properly'), and the tension / chainline is fine – but they still feel really different. (I suspect (as I've been typing this) that the ACS freewheel doesn't have the teeth length of the Surly, so lets the chain skip a little bit perhaps).

Not really helped you much tho' as replies go has it … :(

(I've ignored my other SS, as it's on an old, worn-out, unknown chain from about 100 years ago. (I suspect an old dead HG50 got thrown on there in a hurry).

It's completely horrible tho', so I'll watch this thread for a recommended replacement.)

:wink:

You want fear – try this failed attempt where I had to wrestle control back to avoid disaster.

:P

I dunno why that bike doesn't hold a decent line, it's about 10 foot long. It's a 1992 Kona with 29er P2's on it (and a 26 inch wheel), so it's not exactly got steep, nervous angles on it, quite the opposite in fact.

On Flickr I am a longer version of whom I am here … (linky[/url]), but I 'spect you have found me in the Panda pool by now (err, tho' that sounds a bit sordid).

Ha ha, thanks for the beard compliment.
;)

Well, I spent most of this afternoons ride trying to pull this off, and the best I managed was this rather poor showing. It's hard to work out on account of the gloom, but, scouts honour, I am actually riding the bike here.

It's ok until you try the looking up bit, then it all goes to pot.

Note that the beard has gone a bit swooshy here, it does that on the bike when it's this length – but I'll grow on past it (as long as I don't have any bonfire related 'incidents' when I'm clearing the garden, which is what accounted for months worth of growth about this time last year).

It looks a bit less odd in this shot (also from this afternoon).

EDIT: revised photo uploaded now, with the levels boosted way up past sensible.

I usually struggle at these, but I did manage to catch this rather relaxed danger-panda a month or so back – it's a bit more casual than you two up there tho' ^

I'm going out on a bike in a minute, so I'll give it proper go.

Good out there innit.
I find the addition of brambles only adds to the sensation.

:-)

You'll find millions of bandana on ebay. I always wear one under my helmet in the summer (with sunblock on my ears) – or I'll use a basic welders cap like this.

Not quite the cachet of a cycling cap, and obviously you cant' wear it the other way around, to have the peak as a kinda havelock to protect your neck from the sun on huge, endless climbs like you can with a cycling cap, but they are lighter weight (and flash-retardant if you like ending the ride with a fire).

A buff'll be too much at this time of year – ideal late autumn / early spring tho' as you can tug it down over your ears for the descents.

Plus you can use them as friction shifters if *something* kills your indexing.

This has got me out of a pickle a few times in the past, even if it's only meant that I can ride off the dirt and onto the tarmac to try to sort the problem out, rather than walking out.

(I actually quite liking friction shifting …).

Hmm, ok, suggestions then …

HS33's +2 at each end, being as they are frankly, a bit odd, and a PITA to set up/keep on top of (ask me how I know). :?

Maybe a bonus point or two for stuff like:
Oddly mixed parts (ie 26" wheel on 29er forks kinda thing), or having a wheel built on a SS hub vs. converting a freehub, (using those lovely anodised spacers from VeloSolo (no connection, et cetera), plus other spacers are available).

@grum – Have you been taking pictures up the end of my road as well?

:wink:

Duncon Pitbull – now retired …
Posted as a little reminder of the happy times we had in the woods.

Kona Fire Mountain (frame anyway).
This get's ridden 10x more than anything else I own, actually that probably 10x more than everything else I own put together – single speed of course, and now sporting a 29er rigid fork (but [still] with a 26" wheel). There's almost nothing this bike has not done, and this will be the last bike I ever get rid of, even if it is horrible on steep, technical, sketchy downhills.

I'm just glad I can open the back door of the truck and throw a bike in with no hassles.

I'd always thought that them racks looked like trouble, and this month's review only served to deepen my feelings about them, I neither need, nor want a rack, in fact I dunno how I'd fit one on my bus, but I found an increasingly grotesque fascination in reading those reviews … each one seemingly becoming more horrid / annoying than the last.

Still, that's what you get for having a car I guess, rather than a van.

:wink:

Have a look over on SOTP.
We have quite a few people using 'pump hulls', and pretty successfully too.

Assuming they are both on the same subnet … are either / both machines running a firewall? You might need to write in a rule for the smb traffic (which you might have to do for ftp too).

As a quick solution, (although if you like a challenge, it's a total cop-out), would be to use a NAS of some sort, or an external drive.

In my experience …Filezilla is a pretty fine (Windows) FTP client (and separately, a pretty good server too if it comes to it).

All of my Hope mono levers do this a little bit – I almost can't see how they'd not, given their design (an' that's not a criticism, just an observation).

That said, mine make more of a background rattle, rather than an unpleasant one, so there may be more to it I guess. Have you ever crashed [on] that lever, maybe it's opened the mounting up a bit on the master cylinder?

I was reading that before popping in over here, and was a bit surprised by it.
(Not surprised that nature / exercise is good for you, surprised that the fact that it is seemed to be a surprise).

Subjective of course, but it seems kinda weird to see it laid out like that, but I guess there are plenty of people to whom this concept is [hitherto] utterly unknown?

:|

Glad he's back – they are a nightmare when they decide to do this.

It does settle down <i>eventually</i>, and this time of year is perfect for a young, fit male cat to be wandering about, neutered or otherwise. He'll have been asleep in the sun somewhere safe for most of his time out tho' – you know what they are like.

:wink:

My neighbours and I have a kinda conspiracy to limit the speed of 'new' drivers: It's odd how some people don't seem to be able to park very well at all outside their houses of an evening, or don't secure their garden timmings very well, so a stuff just seems to fall out of the boot on the way to the recycling centre and into the road – stranger still is why nobody picks it up for ages.

Good work – go for it.
:-)

It's a bit of an odd combination maybe – but I'm running a 34 front and a 20 rear.
Both are Surly.

Nah, that :wink: one looks like you'd just remove the QR, leaving the tensioner in place.

It looks like a kinda similar enough idea to the DMR one (as fitted to my SS), and that works fine – It just drops out of the way when the QR is released (admittedly I know how the DMR one works, and I am [only] guessing that the Gusset one is similar).

Go on, you'll never look back.
You'll be fitting rigid forks next. :D

I know it's a different shape bike, but I ride my Peregrine on all kinds of surfaces on a set of Midge's. I use cross-top levers too, which give me options (and it's geared).

I've only ever found things difficult, when I've underbiked myself anyway – by which point the fact I'm on drops has become irrelevant – and 90% of the time I've put myself in that position is because I've had my road tyres on, and not *quite* stayed on the road. I can't recall slipping off the bars tho' …

If I could find a remote reservoir operated brake levers to fit drops, I'd had a set on my SS too.

Don't really know what XC is these days – but this is probably the most XC bike I've got.

It's up in the high 20lbs if it's an ounce tho' …

Ah, I forgot to mention this … http://www.badtattoos.com[/url%5D is always worth a look.

From experience …

#1. Don't rush into it. Think it through properly – if you have any doubt – wait…
#2. Talk to your tattooist about what you want – if you don't get a good feeling from it, find somewhere else. Don't use price as a factor. A decent job will cost what it costs. If you go in for work with the smell of drink on your breath – don't be surprised if you are asked to come back another day when you have not been drinking – I know artists that will not ink anyone who has been drinking (and rightly so I think).
#3. Get a decent nights sleep before hand, and take a couple of hours afterwards to enjoy the experience, go somewhere nice for lunch, sit in the sun (but cover that new tat up), don't rush at things …
#4. Take care of the healing, your tattoo will be happier for it – but don't get paranoid about it tho' – it's only a question of being sensible (I find that calandula ointment helps keep the skin soft (and hence not scabby), but without getting it too 'wet' and drawing the ink out of open pores, which I've heard some people experience with other 'well-known' topical ointments – your experience may differ).
#5. It's more 'uncomfortable' than painful – it does get a bit wearing come the end of a couple of hours tho' – especially on your elbows. Shorter sessions are often meditative – some bit's of your body are more uncomfortable than others – worse if you are a bit off-colour too.
#6. Look forward to the experience, and then enjoy the smugness.
#7. Expect to end up with more – so have that in mind when you think about the design …

ok, decided not to pursue the topic – I'll limit myself to bike related threads only.

Ok, slipped into Saturday now …

My '92 Kona Fire Mountain (which I've owned from new, way back from 1992).
This will be the very last bike that I ever get rid of.

I think they look great, and for me, pretty close to the ideal bicycle.
The only reason I don't have one, is that I've got a Peregrine (and have had for a while now too).

I use Shimano PDM647's on my road bike, (hmm and on my Peregrine), with Specalized MTB shoes, (as I like being able to walk around too). Very comfortable, easy set up and no problems at all – and I never use them on the MTB's …

Maybe not too clear in this shot from last Sunday tho'?

Not really keeping the purity of a road-bike setup I guess, but we crossed that line some time back (either at the point I installed the 12-30 rear cassette or put the Midge bars on).

Ha ha – I often have that kinda haircut too (and I'm going grey).

:D

Only sometimes tho' MrSmith.
:wink:

There's more under the strap.

Cane Creek Drop-Vlevers.

Mine pull up the BB7's on the Peregrine, and the BB7/Avid V on the Pompino (when it's on drops), and do so very well.

Incidental: I use an inline set of Cane Creek cross-top levers with/on both sets too, (for the choice – although if you need to haul up fast, the Drop-V's have 10x the power).