Sorry forgot that, currently got a 70mm- been tempted to go a touch shorter so a 60-70mm.

Shit, was I right?

One with ET in the Basket

Cafal is steeper to climb and being newer the descents are narrower – the mud thing some many people talk about really was just when it was brand new and not really bedded in – like the Blade at Afan I think they bowed to pressure and opened it too early, and on really wet days after a wet couple of weeks and hundreds of super keen riders tore it up.

Twrch is great, it really wants warp speed at all times, especially the last run into the car park – one tip is the attack the final bit from the end of the last bit (I forget the names) they’re separated by a fire road but in 10 years I’ve never seen a vehicle on it – sometimes walkers but you see them a mile off – straight down the narrow bit to the road (there’s a kink but it’s easy to jump) two quick cranks over the fire road – breath in between the sides of the little wooden cattle grid and ‘have at it’ – makes it easier to jump the first two woops and makes the funny sort of half-berm into the main on the on the first turn make sense.

I’m not sure I follow, the Police seize a bike (or anything else) they believe to be stolen, but unless they can work out who it was stolen from how do they prove it’s stolen?

I’d bet it if you asked 100 people in the street you have a 100% inverse correlation between who they’d pick and who’ll they’ll vote for next year.

For me it’s Thatcher, I see the legacy of her failings every day even now 25 years later, the huge swathes of multi-generational unemployment a few miles from my door, the every increasing energy costs, the housing market that servers her generation and none other – she sold the family silver for short term gain – Sid might have made a few quid on British Gas, but it’s his kids who are paying the bills now and his parents who have to decide if they want to eat or turn on the heating this week.

Blair, who was, far, far from perfect – but his greatest failing of course was going to war – but let’s not forget they the government as a whole voted for it and whilst he’s a pariah because we lost 179 of ‘our boys’ in Iraq, Maggie was loved for losing 258 in the Falklands.

I bought 2 about 5-6 years ago from a pop-up sample sale shop they had in Cardiff – I’ve used them every winter since including wearing the long sleeve one 6 days a week when I worked in a freezing cold office – they both still look like new which would be remarkable in itself but considering they’re ‘seconds’, ‘samples’ or whatever it’s amazing.

I’ll buy some more when they finally die.

LBS saved me the hassle of coming up with an excuse tonight, they want a week to fix my wheel (downside of following the one bike to rule them all method)

Was going to go to the gym but its mind numbing

On of my pet peeves is when people decide they own the bit of highway outside their house.

I got into a blazing row with one of the residents opposite our office last summer – I’d parked, carefully and close to the kerb, making sure not to block anyone’s drive (despite their various modifications to their drives to make the entrances wider without actually widening their drives, only to be confronted by some fat old **** from 3 doors up squaring up to me about this ‘private road’ which is anything but – ‘private’ as in they’d rather no one else use it, public is in when there’s something wrong with it they’d like the local council to fix it.

Now they’ve managed to have their street declared “for access only” which is some vague declaration – it was designed to stop quiet residential roads becoming busy commuter roads, I suppose they’re “special” and the people who live in the parallel road aren’t but that’s an aside no one of authority will go on record to say whether you can park there or not, and anyway this road is a complete dead-end doesn’t lead anywhere – but it seems if you moan enough you can enjoy all the benefits of having your house on a public highway and all the benefits of having a private road. Arsehole, I hope enjoys all the junk mail.

Is this one of those London Centric things all Londoners expect the rest of the world to get?

Anyway, Elephant and Castle (stick it up your arsehole)

I’ve clearly been doing this wrong for years – I just chuck it in the machine with some Surf (the wife’s choice, she like the Ylang Ylang so good they named it twice one).

Admittedly our machine does have a “sports intensive” setting, but the pic next to it is of someone’s gym stuff so I’m not sure it was designed to shift blood, sweat, tears, mud, grit and sheep shit – but it does an decent job of it.

If you compare what Honda spent developing the Jazz compared to what say Ferrari spent developing their latest mid-engined wonder wagon you could argue the Honda is far more super ;)

rebel12 – Member

Would far rather have THIS than a Ferrari or any other Supercar, Ferrari performance with room for 2-3 bikes in the back. In fact I’d rather have one of these over almost any other car. Absolute bargain too, and £14k buys you a good one.

Riding mate of mine has one, shat it’s gearbox 2 months after her bought it and cost him 3 grand to fix – perhaps they’re supercars after all ;)

ir_bandito – Member

Here’s a question, does anyone frequenting this forum own anything that could be honestly described as a “supercar”?

Oh lord no – In the dim and distant past (okay the early to mid 2000’s) I worked in asset finance and specialised in expensive cars for our region – yes some of the things Ferrari, Lambo and the rest squat out do end up in the garages of properly rich people and lottery winners but the vast majority of them end up with ‘merely’ wealthy people who obsess about the colour and the options and the point in it’s life cycle the mileage and the service history etc etc etc not because they’re ‘fussy’ about them per se, but because the money involved is stupid and buying the wrong one at the wrong time can cost you fortunes – when they get them they agonise over it’s care and well being, they’re terrified of actually using it because mileage kills the value, but it’s not nearly as expensive as servicing the things or heaven forbid putting tyres on them.

People day dream about racing “Builth to Machynlleth” or whatever but you simply can’t, you’ll be banned for life if you’re caught going alone at what they’re capable of, unless of course you find out you’re not as capable of what your Ferrabo is and you hit someone then you’ll go to prison.

Nor can you actually use them as a ‘car’ because the whole point of a car isn’t to leave home, drive about for a bit and drive home again – no usually you need to go somewhere and you can’t leave a supercar parked outside Aldi, not because someone might steal it or hurt it – even “nowadays” that’s a pretty rare thing – no it’s the fear of it that holds you back.

You might think “track day” and your insurance company will say “not on our policy” you’ll need to pay a lot more for that, and if you do you’ll be burning through tyres, clutches and depreciating it at such a horrible rate that the point of those non-road legal track day cars suddenly makes itself known.

The vast majority of my customers back then bought a 430, or a Gallardo or 911 GT2/3/RS or whatnot, spent 6 months not sleeping at night worrying about it and “got out of it” – they’d lose £20k – £40k in the process and in return got to spend the rest of their life telling people about the time they had a Ferrari.

The ones who kept them and changed them for another one a few years later fell into 2 groups, the ones who kept them in their garage and looked at them and did 2000 miles a year and the ones who spent the summer weekends cruising around at 20mph desperately trying to look nonchalant as they looked for people looking at them.

I got to drive quite a few, admittedly not very quickly or for long, they’re not as ‘otherworldly’ as you might think and ultimately it’s still only ‘driving’ which is pretty boring – honestly riding a MTB hard is twice as exciting as any supercar.

I’ve had that! I felt it mostly in my joints. Didn’t last more than a hour or two though.

Sorry I can’t help further, but rest assured I didn’t die.

Most of my friends and I have ditched the ‘stable’ in favour of a single bike.

I’ve got a Cove G-Spot, no it doesn’t climb like some carbon HT 29er wonder bike, and yes I got passed a few times by lads on V10’s and whatnot in the Alps, but the margins aren’t nearly as big as you might think and I don’t ride competitively anymore so I don’t really care if I’m a few seconds faster or slower up or down something.

In it’s element, which frankly covers 90% off all riding it’s seriously effective, but more importantly fun and personally I gain more performance from increased familiarity than I would with a couple of extra inches of travel or a couple of Kgs less weight.

Must have a performance level completely unusable on the road or by anyone not called Jenson Button, Lewis Hamilton etc unless they rely on computers to drive it for them and sold primarily to insecure Men to ‘impress’ others?

I’ve been dying to try it for ages – I was hoping to speak to the Yogie Sensei beforehand to see how I’d get on with some old injuries but she seems to disappear into a cloud of smoke at the end of each class in my local LC.

Current one.

Think the rear might be too stuff, sometimes feels like its catching on the small stuff.

Also lost my ‘funny bone’ – a real mess, what was left just compacted and refused to heal – original consultant wanted to fuse it but I refused but was told they’d never remove the plate.

Had a second opinion privately, he said it was likely that scar tissue and cartilage was holding it but didn’t xray – ultimately had it out 2.5 years after the crash but had to fight for it.

AFAIK the NHS will never remove metalwork unless there’s a pressing need to, they won’t risk the op or risk of infection for no gain.

Miserable, irrational, negative but worst of all lost much of her confidence – not physically, but messed up her risk/reward thought process – I don’t mean doing drops on her MTB or anything like that but in planning for the future in life in general – she seems
(un)happy to accept our lot in life at the moment and I never am.

To be honest, as much as she’s dreading it returning to work will do her wonders, my Mate’s wife is a full-time housewife and the mundane, unimportant shit she stresses about… I’ve reached the conclusion everyone sets their own acceptable level of stress and if your life is limited to housework and daytime TV then you’ll focus all your stress at that – it’s better to have something actually difficult to stress about.

Petrol owners – how’s your MPG effected by having bikes on the roof.

I’ve got a Seat Exeo Diesel at the moment, there’s about 18 months left before I change it (company car) in that time I suspect the tax rules will change to make a petrol car a bit more of a good idea.

My Exeo does 50mpg+ on the motorway at 70 – but at 80 (I know shock horror, I speed) it drops to 40 – once on the way down to the Alps with 2 bikes on the roof at a constant 130kph (82ish) it was doing 34mpg! with diesel being 8% or so more expensive (in the UK anyway) which means (maths permitting) a Petrol doing 32mpg would be costing me the same – which reading above sounds pretty easy.

I don’t give two hoots about the vastly over-publicised ‘problems’ with diesels, that’s something private buyers worry about and frankly I ran a Diesel Passat from 3k miles to 153k miles and the only time it went wrong was a worn alternator.

Almost never, there are some great trails reasonably close to me but it means a 45 min ride though an area notorious for terrible drivers and a 30 ride back – bad as it might sound my time is precious and I’d rather have that hour and a quarter in the wood rather than trying to avoid being hit my some inpatient Boomer.

Given a second go at it I’d go second-hand, honestly about a year ago, I was flush faced and full of pride leading my pregnant wife into Mothercare to buy ‘the essentials’ 2 hours later I emerged broken an a grand lighter – clothes are pennies in comparison to the rest of it.

There’s the hundreds on a Pram you’ll use about twice.

Then you’ll want a crib to sleep in, oh and another one for the living room, “do they come with mattresses?” “oh no” that’ll be another £100 because I’m not sleeping on a super deluxe memory foam thing and letting my baby sleep on plastic crap – yes they do indeed make memory foam for babies – it’s pointless, but you’ll buy it anyway.

Then there’s the £100 Tommy Tippiee bottle making machine – if your not breast feeding you NEED one for those, honestly – best thing I ever bought – because if you follow current mid-wife guidelines for making up formula you’re looking at 45-60 min wait to make a bottle – that’s not happening at 3am.

Oh and muslins, buy a LOT of those, take a guess at how many you think you need, double that than buy some more.

Ah bawls…

Be careful where you buy them, a lot of the cheap unbranded ones are crap.

I use 7dayshop their own brand stuff is pretty good VFM.

Yes more is better, I can see no application where a class 10 card would be incompatible with a class 4 application.

In short there are 6 classes

Class 2, 4, 6, 10 the higher the class the faster the transfer rate the number reflecting the speed in MB/s so a 2 is 2MB/s and a 10 is 10MB/s – class 2 can’t store HD video either.

There are also 2 classes above this UHS1 which also has a transfer rate of 10MB/s – what makes this different to Class 10 I don’t know and UHS3 which has 30MB/s for 4k recording.

Love that trail, yeah it’s weathering in nicely – I’m starting to get stupid high on the berm/wall ride just after the wood thing.

Great for kids too.

You’re lucky you only made justifiable negative comments towards businesses/organisations – should you have made any remotely negative comment on the social media marketing outlet of a ‘celebrity’ you would have been declared an internet Troll and threatened with all manor of legal action or perhaps worse they’d go crying about nasty trolls to their fan base and had your inbox over-filling with death threats and incoherent ramblings about who poor little celebrity is the second-coming.

104Kgs (and dropping) running a Cove G-Spot without issues, I was recommended a Cove because they tend to run long shocks relative to their travel which means bigger riders are more in the middle of the ideal spring rate – or words to that effect, either way it lovely to ride fast and dirty.

I’ve been heavier and ridden the following FS:

2006 Enduro, 2007 A-Line, 2010 Spicy, 2011 Spicy, Cove Shocker all without any weight related issues – even though my 120Kgs (at worst) weight meant Lapierre wouldn’t honour any frame failure warranty claim.

Live in South Wales, so they’ve all been smashed and bashed all around the trail centres, Brecon etc – BPW, the Alps and Whistler.

My Mate is about the same weight as me (admittedly taller too) and ran a long list of SC, the only one that caused any problems was his Nomad (last of the Alu ones) the linkage would fail every 6 months or so.

The only bike I ever had any real issues with was a 2005 GT I-Drive from Halfords (so probably nearer 2003 in design) it would break every time I rode it.

A lot of the Pro based stuff we sell comes with both 8 and 7 rights and media – but I’ve never seen it on Home versions.

To do it legally you’ll need to buy a new OS and MS recently pulled all non-pro versions of Win7 so it’ll be expensive unless you can find old stock.

Personally, I’d stick with 8.1 just takes a bit of an open mind and some time – I couldn’t go back to Win 7 now, it’s toss IMO.

I’ve given up trying to understand the love affair some Americans have with Guns, I’ve tried to understand the logic – but really there isn’t any I can see, just deeply insecure people looking to feel powerful.

The stats don’t lie, 30k ish deaths a year in the US from Gun Violence, a country where an armed man can kill an unarmed man in the street and they need a lengthy court case to decide if it was okay because he was scared (or said he was) and still now they rely on 223 year old law to protect their right to carry about death devices – just in case we try to re-take the place.

“saddened” is probably more accurate.

One of my best, oldest friends has recently started ‘liking’ a lot of posts on FB from pages like “I’m Proud to be British” the stuff he likes is usually their “flags for orphans” type posts designed to suck in people – but a lot of their stuff is seriously Xenophobic and whatnot.

He also voted UKIP recently, we’re both adult enough to discuss it without it turning into an argument, but he thinks voting UKIP is some kind of nose thumb at the establishment – I tried to show that even if you set aside their far-right views a UKIP government would decimate working class people like us, but he doesn’t see it, as far as he’s concerned Labour and the Conservatives are “equally bad” – but I can’t draw him into exactly why.

I’m pretty sure the Crown just ties in with the King/Queen element of the naming.

I’ve taken the approach “if it seems to good to be true” basically that a £15 Conti is going to be the Far Eastern OE version that doesn’t come with grip as standard.

Always liked my RQ black Chilli tyres, but yes I ripped a couple – running High Rollers now, tonnes or grip but terrible rolling resistance in comparison – if there’s a tyre that rolls like a rubber queen and grips like a high roller I’d love to know what it’s called!

I’m waiting, partly because I’m old enough to remember both the original PS2 and PS3 releases (frankly my first games machine was a Commodore C64) and partly because they only *really* eclipse their forbearers a year or more into production and they’re bound to drop in price after Christmas.

Until I saw GTA V on PS4 I wasn’t remotely bothered.

I’m hoping to get a PS4 GTAV bundle for £300 or less next year.

It’s not a bad suggestion, but the original Wii was old fashioned when it was new and is largely obsolete now – it’s replacement is the Wii U which hadn’t proved popular and if you look back at the history of Consoles that often means a very short life-span so you might get a year out of a Wii, and not much longer out of a U.

Personally it would depend on budget, but I’d go for a PS4 or a Xbox One, yes they both cost a fortune – £350 or so – but the previous generation of PS3 and Xbox 360 first launched 8-9 years ago and games are still being released for both in the short-term, I suspect they’ll have a 10 year life-span before they’re completely obsolete.

You never know Jnr might be 14 before they start moaning about getting a new one ;)

My Lad is mad on Minecraft and has been for a while, it’s very creative and aside from launching a few low-rez arrows at Creepers it’s very kid friendly. (I don’t mind it either ;)

ton – Member

can I ask, why people presume that there will be no state pension in the future?
has this fact ever been published or stated anywhere.

The Tories have quietly tried to kill it off every time they’re in government – they’ve recently increased the age in which it’s payable – although it’s not been admitted it’s thought that auto-enrolment will one day replace it completely for people under a certain age – but it will never been taken away from people who are already claiming it or even are working now – it’s likely to ensure they’re not blown out of the water next election any party who stop it, will only do so to new people entering the workplace.

Tom_W1987 – Member

horrible childhood disease or topped yourself (most deaths under 30 are suicide) you’re likely to live to around 90.

15 years of which will be spent being kept alive in an old peoples home

Yeah, my Wife’s Gran has been in one for the last 4 years (although she was 90 before they wheeled her in) it costs her family £45k a year to keep her there! The local Council put up £100 ish a week towards it (which is the level they fund local authority places at) but they’ll want a % of her house for that when she dies.