Track ends so no need for tensioner. Will use tugs for alignment. Yeah any 88 BCD ring for SS seems hard to source unless going Wolftooth at £80 a pop

I found a used 30T for £25 but not sure how much wear so looking at North Shore Billet options 50 quid.

You probably won’t do much better than the Decathlon Riverside.

Thing is I like touring (ride a retro handbuilt tourer) – and if it was me I’d have the Spa Flat Bar (Reynolds 725) with the V brakes.

Thanks perfect advice. It’s a goer! What sprockets for a Hope Pro 2 hub? Presuming something wide at the fitting point so it won’t chew…

I’d be looking at a lightly used Genesis Vagabond. The older Mjolnir cromo ones (non-725) pop up for about £5-600

Burly as, designed for drop bars and will take up to 29x 2.35/2.4 depending on gearing/chainline. I found it perfect on 2.1 Nanos running Deore 2×10

Check with Genesis for sizing as my M was a bit too small for medium me.

^ Sounds perfect if not pootling ;)

*1989 😎

If you choose well you can actually get a very nicely-riding bike, not too heavy, performs flawlessly yet can do all manner of tasks is swift and yet invisible to most bike thieves/opportunist scrotes. This old tourer is by far the best all-round urban/touring/country-lanes/commuting/shopping bike I’ve ever ridden/owned. Cost me £100 (including bars/Ergon bar-end upgrades) so if it got nicked I’d be very gutted yet not bigly out of pocket

Also – 7 speed or single speed = minimum maintenance IME. Horizontal dropouts worth looking for.

I use an old (circa 1889) British tourer for this (but I also use it for British touring!) it’s actually a really nice 531 super touring frame set and built with a nice Brooks saddle hidden underneath one of those Aardvark saddle covers. 32c tires do canal towpath unless really muddy. I look at it and call it a ‘grandad bike’ and I’m sure the scrotes/bike thieves also call it that . but if you fancy something more MTB then go for something like a retro bike/rigid mountain bike with decals removed/obscured. Oceans of choice there. I’m still tempted to bag an old mid-range 26er just to use for localish bikepacking/groceries/camping with trailer.

Don’t forget a rack or a basket for the groceries.

Also the Raleigh Pioneer or one of those Dawes hybrids that were around in the 90s

I use GP3s on the (flat bar) tourer and also the 29er in gravel mode. They are ace. I’d consider using other Ergon grips (minus bar-ends) in MTB mode. In fact I used GC1s on the loop bars and they were comfortable as, but they can be a bind climbing as yr hand is in a fixed position owing to the ‘wings’

white vinegar has no place on anything other than paint brushes.

I sprayed it on a carpet the other day to help get rid of the smell of spilt milk. Also put it in some honey mustard dressing* that I made last night. Any other any vinegar won’t cut it. These are the only applications for white vinegar (cleaning and dressings) AFAIK

*Three equal parts Dijon mustard, mayonnaise and honey. Add a little white vinegar, adding, stirring and tasting periodically until is vinegary and runny enough (whilst remaining sweet and honeyed)

Off topic, but multitool connected –

I’d like a tool that has:

good-ish pliers
small non-locking blade
bit driver
scissors would be nice

It’s supposedly trivially simple a process to make a Swisstool legal-carry

If I carried that and a few bits (screwdrivers, a couple of hex)

Fries – mayo
Chips – brown sauce

An important distinction well-made.

Although if actual chip-shop chips (or Chinese chips) then the answer is – Chinese curry sauce*

*Unless unavailable – then Irish curry sauce**

** Unless unavailable – then that browny-greeny-yellowy ‘circa 1989’ Classic British curry sauce which hides sultanas in its snotsome folds.

late to the party, but soy sauce.

This needs berating.

Cheese sandwiches – salad cream

Same.

I’ll go with cheese and salad sandwiches – salad cream. With salt, pepper and vinegar. And with the emphasis on plenty salad.

Cheese by itself calls instead for coleslaw or just onion. I do remember cheese and brown sauce (or ketchup!) sarnies. Often without cheese.

salad cream

The clue is in the name ;)

ketchup and mayo

+ hot sauce (basic ie Encona etc)

Mix equal amounts of all three with a half tsp of garlic granules.

Ready Brek w/salt and honey of late. Was going to add my normal crushed nuts but after reading that satirical Mash article I couldn’t live with the shame. Bah. I liked nuts.

My teenage libido.

My teenage lido

My teenage Ludo

Not sure if it’s courage or just self awareness and empathy.

+1

Even a modicum of consideration for other more vulnerable road-user’s mortal safety is a step too far for many.

+1 @stgeorge has your back from Glos (that sounds exactly the way I ride from Quedgley><Malvern especially stopping at The Farmer’s Arms for a swifty 😎. It’s a nice route (outside of flood seasons)

Bookmarked, as I’ve been thinking about joining the dots further to-from Bristol. My idle thoughts in that direction to date have been along the canal towpath from Purton to Gloucester then as above. I’m thinking maybe Bristol – Purton would be mostly flat (but probably dirty) narrow lanes Cribbs Causeway – Easter Compton – Pilning – Ingst (fuzzy here) – Berkeley – Purton?

I remember getting excited about the very modest new Haro Mary 29er (single-speed) circa 2009.

I never got one but a decade later bought a Longitude – which is sort of the same thing except with track-ends and slackness

RSP

I had a couple of the cromo RSP/M-Trax bikes and rated them well.

The first was nicked (I actually saw the scrote taking it but pursuit was fruitless) and the second (after upgrading everything to XT) sold to an STWer IIRC. It sort of served as an all-purpose bike and I used/modded it for bike-packing before I’d even heard of bike packing and for ‘gravel’ before it even heard of ‘gravel’

I later ‘downgraded’ to another 90s Raleigh (an ‘Apex’ – made from Reynolds K2) which actually carried stuff better but wasn’t anywhere near as fast as the M-Trax when unloaded.

Weirdly, looking back if I had to choose from either of the Raleighs again I’d now go for the Apex, even (especially) with that dusky pink pearlescent finish! Sadly didn’t keep any pictures either before or after I’d Frankennmonstered it. Of course I threw the Flexstem straight in the bin.

Just found a pic of my last full susser which is going back some years:

What’s the point in that video?

Suppose as with all footage you can also take what you want from it? For me (just watched a few minutes) I didn’t read into it just really enjoyed the music, the sounds of the bike and the location. I didn’t occur to me to be sceptical of the motivations/hidden messages/vanity et cetera. Maybe I’m just blind when it comes to cycling – my brain is soothed ‘oooo, bike, nature, sounds’

For some reason and it made me want to go out on my old Audax/Tourer and ride Mortimer Forest-Wigmore-Rolls-Radnor in the sunshine soon again. Nowhere near as glamorous and always sweaty/horsefly-laden climbs – yet punctuated by glorious descents where I can just about outrun them!

For similar reasons the OP video reminded me of Rafael Rincón’s fixed-gear videos (Bogotá), which is nice :)

Some dark satire here interviewing NRA Convention attendees in Texas shortly afterwards:

@towzer

Although I never had an active/cycling family to share my adventures – I still do what I’ve done since a kid getting his first Raleigh, ie go out and explore from the door, throw in some road climbs, some rough stuff, coastal paths, fields, bridle-ways, towpaths, mountains, woodland trails, moorland, whatever comes my way. Stop to smell the wild garlic/pet the horses/marvel at tadpoles etc. And my bike is still rigid with cable brakes (but with bigger wheels these days).

In short – still like pushing self/single-speed up big hills just to see what’s over the other side. Essentially the same peanut butter sandwich wrapped in tin foil, same tap-water in a bottle. Also still have my first Nike ‘bum-bag’ – it’s just that the waist doesn’t match it’s 1990 counterpart

I blame crisps and beer/pub-stops. A welcome (if unwise) addition to my bikexplorating.

No need to revolutionise, just need to tweak the ratios from time to time…

@sharkbait –
That reminds me of the king of impromptu breakfast foods:

The cold morning-after Chinese takeaway spooned from foil trays and made into a sandwich.

ie chow-mein/noodles, golden curry sauce, any bits and bobs – all smoshed between thickly-buttered thick-sliced white bread.😋

It’s good with just a spoon and minus the sarnie. Has to be cold though

The overtaking of homo-sapiens by Artificial Intelligence shall be a trivially swift process.

Favourite:

– One thick slice of good rye sourdough bread. Toasted and buttered

Topped with

– 2 eggs. Soft-scrambled

– Pinch of salt and white pepper

– A small gloop of plain habanero hot sauce

– Bucket-sized mug of hot Earl Grey red bush tea, barista oat milk, spoon of honey.

Regular daily:

– Porridge, cooked with fresh crushed nuts, chopped apple or berries, honey, pinch salt.

shave using one of the sinks and no-one would notice or care.

I was under the impression that (face*)-shaving was one regular/common function for a sink? Why would anybody care about you shaving at a sink?

* Unless you meant…oh…(ew)

get an ebike

£5.00 Set of 7 Pure Cotton Face Cloths

£??? ebike

works a treat with one issue

‘Bazooka works a treat in butter-knife fight, albeit with one issue (risk of permanent self-deletion)’ 😄

I now leave a flannel in work, which is replaced every few days. Works just as well as as wet wipes.

Better, IME, as a flannel has a raised texture. Flannel can also be rinsed and re-applied as many times as you like until skin is squeaky fresh.

are used to stuff I use the stuff

(wallpaper) paste it! Looks great.

you need mumsnet 😉

+1 Dibond also (that’s just a brand name) – are used to stuff it’s generically named aluminium composite panel. I recycle the sheets from old signs, just cut it to size with a decent utility knife and lightly key the surface with a sander or sanding block before fixing anything to it. You can glue your own battens and mounts on the back of it with epoxy, just look online.

Travel Towel and sink, they need regular washing though.

+1

Be sure to wash the flannel very well after use then stash in a watertight/ziploc/vacuum/drybag etc

Hand-wash and wring out towel and flannel again at home. Hang to dry overnight in summer/tumble-dry in winter (or keep a second dry set on rotate)

When commuting I stash some Original Source Mint shower gel at work. Also made up a small spritzer spray bottle with tea tree oil and water. After wash and dry just spritz ye pitz and pat dry.

not savvy enough not to tweet/conduct interviews when drunk or stoned.

On the contrary surely? While (at least to cynical & skeptical old farts such as your’s truly) Musk’s (for instance) Joe Rogan appearances might come over as horribly calculated/self-conscious, the ‘jokes and tokes’ of the middle-aged mega/rich keen to project an ‘I’m not like the other billionaires – trust me’ image…

… to the YouTube/meme-media/me-me-me-me generation/demographic surely Musk’s ‘kool with the kidz’ projection is radical, and real, and just the sort of fresh waters they’re thirsty for?* Not like that stuffy, heavily-censored and fake old mainstream/old-guard politics rubbish? Add to a degree (even though it’s all fake/hustling to my mind) that last point is still a point.

I believe it’s known as “good optics“

Isnt he is just a thin skinned manchild who cant handle criticism and hence lashes out whenever anyone dares to challenge his pronouncements?

Possibly a large element of that – but I think he’s media savvy enough to turn it to his advantage. At least in the short term/ or while there’s still some gravy in this ‘culture war/antiwoke’ train.

It’s all a bit weird tbh, it does just make me think he’s a big troll looking forward to using his vast influence putting Trump back in power ;)

Once had a new pair of Schwalbe Big Bens I was trying to get onto rims which took me (with intervention/help from my father) a good two hours to get on and off again. I realised once they finally snapped into place that I never ever wanted to be in a position that would require I attempt remove them alone.

Long story short – these tyres bent, destroyed and snapped everything we had until I nipped to the LBS and bought some Pedros.

Recommend the yellow ones (easy to locate)

*oops

It’s not like he’s vapour where hasn’t been criticised for years and years is he just look at a way to silence/discredit critics

It’s not like his vapourware hasn’t been examined/criticised for years and years. Is he just looking at at a political way to silence/discredit critics? Or is this a career change to media/celeb/grifter?

He’s obviously invested in upsetting ‘Democrats’ across the pond. I found this, how do they say, ‘spicy take’ (?) on the Tubes:

What does all the (largely manufactured yet now became Frankenstein’s Monster) ‘culture war’ stuff have to do with selling beans or beer or vacuum cleaners or electric cars?

What’s Musk’s long game now he’s trading divisive politics? It’s not like he’s vapour where is hasn’t been criticised for years and years is he just look at a way to silence/discredit critics by labelling them all as ‘nasty butthurt liberals’ or somesuch?

Is climate change denial just around the corner for Musk? I always wondered how you could claim to be helping to tackle climate change while simultaneously funding engineers to find a way to ‘better’ existing airliner travel with rocket travel at x1000 (fossil fuel) emissions.

It feels somewhat like we are all being trolled by an ‘edgy’ teenaged billionaire internet troll?

If the French could only discover some way to print the Crown symbol dimensionally larger than our actual pint glasses upon which it’s printed – might we then re-join the EU as a final ‘Brexit upgrade’ ?

Oh Sees with support from Crack Cloud last week. Loud, hot and sweaty, totally rammed, crowd surfing occurring and beer was thrown. Was restorative to feel normal again :)