Seems like its just a personal vendetta. Lance pissed someone off and now they’re after him.

Doesn’t hold up for me at all. Even if wrongdoing is widespread, it’s totally correct to go after the most significant perpetrators

It’s no different to any other such proceeding. Evidence and witnesses are presented, challenged, and the whole thing is decided on a defined balance

I don’t get this “he can’t prove a negative” defence. Read the charging letter… This is about so much more than just his own alleged doping. A dozen or more witnesses, testifying that there was a big conspiracy including riders persuaded/cajoled into doping. Are you seriously saying he shouldn’t need to respond to that because it’s hard to disprove?

3rd place = Raimondas Rumšas (police discovered corticoids, erythropoietin, testosterone, growth hormones and anabolic steroids in the car of his wife)

Belt and braces.

So the 2005 standings are:

1st – me
2nd – Cadel

Yes, jfletch. It’s yours. Although there were definitely mobiles in 1999, but we’ll let that go

You can’t have 2005. I won in 2005. 2004?

My IndyFab has never failed a drug test, Stoner.

Deus – it’s yours. Congratulations on your inspriational fight back from injury.

I’m trying to work out who won each of those seven tours, by discounting all the cheats and frauds. I think it might have been me.

He was quite good in Dodgeball for a non actor.

He’ll surely now be stripped of his Dodgeball cameo

STI100 gears, bio pace rings, the most astonishingly rigid hi tensile frame

Found this, which suggests you’re not alone

http://www.cyclingforums.com/t/169825/if-youve-never-seen-one-72-cm-bike

With regard to 26″ wheels, I think they’re just fine for a bike to chuck around fast woody singletrack, which is basically what I got the IF above built for. When I got that Surly it was about the only 29er around, and there were hardly any bits available. The IF was made before that. If I did it today it’d definitely be a 29er.

72?! Mine’s 63.5cm. I need to see pics. Badly.

MrTall – would love to see a photo of your Salsas

I would be cautious about assuming any 21″ frame is okay. I assumed I’d be okay on 21″ frames for years. I’m 6’7″ with a dramatically riduculous inside leg (37.1″). Riding bikes that were too small for me eventually knackered my knee, requiring an operation to remove quite a lot of meniscus. It’s never been quite right since. It’s certainly down to my particular “midget on stilts” proportions I realise, but he might be the same.

Trek and Specialized certainly do some honking great bikes. I had a 23″ Trek 4900 once. Massive but the right size for me. Just seen a 63cm Trek road bike on ebay – they certainly go big.

Also, Surly’s 22.5″ Karate Monkey fits me fine, and 29″ wheels look much more normal on a huge bike like that. Surly do a whole load of their bikes in big sizes:

26″ wheels look a bit sillier:

(and I say that as someone who was lucky enough, 13 years ago, to be able to buy a small terraced house in Reading with a salary under £20k and a deposit of about three and a half grand. It’s gone bonkers since then)

The fact that the best part of a generation is unable to buy a house is an obvious sign of massive overvaluation in the market. Housing is basically transferring a vast amount of wealth from the young to the baby boomer generation. Like all bubbles, it’ll collapse.

Other way round, actually 😀

Oh, I could just buy some of those bungs that narrow the drill hole, coudln’t I?

They seem to just be called Nanos now
http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/Mobile/MobileModels.aspx?ModelID=33288

WTB Nanoraptors. Light, good effective centre line, can be pumped to decent PSI, and predictable grip when you lean off it. My dry Chilterns tyre of choice, would be great for a long hardpack ride. Cons: thin sidewalls. I tend to put a bit of gaffer tape around my seatpost to reinforce any small cuts

I wave at other Mazda Bongo/Ford Freda owners when I’m driving. They wave at me too.
I say “hi” or “morning!” or whatever when I’m walking in the countryside
I nod in acknowledgement when I pass cyclists.

It’s all nice and costs nowt

It’s tough selling an Airborne. Sympathies.

Edit: Or breaking one?

Singlespeed… check
Rigid… check
29’er… check

It’s my nichemobile.

The Karate Monkey has a 17″ stay, which I think is based on the wheel being right up in the horizontal drop. Now in reality the wheel is going to be in the order of half an inch farther out. Karate Monkeys are definitely not barge-like, far from it.

These are dead easy to get hold of these days. Thank hipsters. I got a set from the bike shop in Friar Street in Reading that always has fixies in the window.

My iPhone GPS went doolally today. I’m not sure but I think it would probably have been the phone and not Strava (it also dropped off 3G for a while, until I put it into, and out of, flight mode). The result is some ludicrously straight lines on the south west corner of my ride, and no timings for sectors in that area: http://app.strava.com/rides/19232731

As a result it’s underreported by a couple of miles, and has clocked my max speed at almost 60mph. Which is obviously true, Grraaaaah!

Anyone had this before? Is it an iphone glitch?

Genuine question, but why would a 25mm tyre roll better than a 23mm?

Might as well flag it, but it’s a very short section

Enjoy!

(if the sheep poo stays in your tyres, rather than thrown into your face, then it’s all good :D)

You could even add 747s / A380s to that list

None of these are pretty. The green one’s okay, but, really, I’m unconvinced that 29″ bikes can be pretty, based on this evidence. This is a world which contains ferrari-red De Rosa road bikes from the 1970s. The bar is set high.

Plus, this is what a 29er should look like.

It’s not in their best interest to run an empty train, every empty seat is a lost sale; conversely, a train full to bursting means they can get away with charging more.

It’s in their interest to run a 20% full train at £100 a ticket rather than a full one at £20 a ticket, though. Less staffing, less cleaning, etc etc. Never mind the fact that the other 80% of people either can’t travel or clog up the roads.

First are stupidly expensive on the GW line though. Peak return from Reading to Bristol is an astonishing £122. It’s barely 75 miles! Unsuprisingly those trains run almost empty, while the M4 clogs

The S4C weather iPhone app seems pretty good. And I’m not even Welsh

I think you’ve pretty much answered your own question. I’ve used the same set of A319 on Deores for years and years without the slightest problem.

with more seats

Yep, that sounds like the exact trick First have pulled on the Great Western line. They went from relatively comfy old Intercity seats, to horrible plasticy things with substantially less legroom. I can’t even get my knees into the things.

First Group are horrible. Look forward to neat tricks like big trumpeted claims of increased capacity, when what has actually happened is that trains have been shortened by a carriage, and seat legroom massively reduced to cram in more people. Oh, and if you’re travelling late in the evening, then you’re clearly scum who should be squashed into the smallest train possible, even if the nearby national stadium has just discharged 90,000 people, a lot of whom plan to get home.

I have a Karate Monkey, old school version with more mounts than the current one. It’s my put-it-away-at-night-without-cleaning-it Chilterns mud singlespeed. It works great with a bigger gear and slicks, as a city commute bike. Not the most refined frame ever, but a really really good bike for riding.

6’7″ – custom 😀

I did the Evans ‘ride-it’ event around Reading a few months back, nothing too tricky, in fact 90% of it I could have riden on my Hybrid, however there were plenty of people on 6″ travel full-sussers with tonnes of armour…

Blimey, I love the trails round here but gnarrrrly they ain’t!