Another vote for 2x whatever.

I run 2×9 with 11-34 at the rear and 26/38 up front. Covers everything I need to ride. Since you’ve got an extra cog at the back you’ll be fine.

I prefer the simplicity of as few chainrings as possible.

We stayed here[/url] as they do lettings for a few days if you don’t want the usual 7.

Smaller but you could take 2. Room to park, close enough to town and we carefully popped our bikes in the house. They didn’t even complain about the entire mug of tea I kicked over the lounge carpet!

Not directly related but I had my 3G screen replaced by a local shop in Edinburgh. I think it might have been £60 or so. Reasonable job although dust did seem to build up behind it after a while.

If you are confident you can buy kits yourself. I didn’t trust my butter fingers so paid someone else to do it.

I overheard a chap after a race yesterday explaining that because he had a 29er, for each pedal stroke he was turning a larger wheel so the tyre was going a bigger distance and hence he would be going a good bit further, so would be 200m further up the track per mile.

I restrained myself from butting in to explain that all things being equal (i.e. same gear) he must be putting in more effort to turn that wheel. Sure, there might be an advantage in rolling over stuff on bumpy fireroads for example, but clearly some people think that bigger wheels suddenly make you go 10% further for your effort. Great marketing brainwash there.

Personally I intend to do some timed laps on a demo bike on a regular loop. If there is a genuine difference in times then I might consider a 29er in a couple of years when the current XC race bike is due a change.

Another off road duathlon for me today – there is a nice wee series at Glentress which keeps me fit over the winter. Long race today so 13km bike followed by 10km run at Glentress. Although I don’t hugely enjoy running, it is good to mix it up a bit over winter, and as noted above, you tend to get a good relaxed crowd for these things.

I’ve had Nobby Nics and Racing Ralphs on some Crossrides with the Joe’s NoFlats rim strips. Can be a bit fiddly to inflate, but not too bad if the tyres has been installed with a tube for a while before hand.

Once inflated they sealed well for a good number of months.

Thanks for that – will make sure I ride the black in the next few weeks. Might have avoided it otherwise given the grim description on the 7stanes website.

Whoever you buy it from, it comes through Upgrades I believe.

I got one of the very first ones through The Bike Chain, who will be able to order it for you – worth giving them a buzz. Although they won’t have any stock, it will arrive in the same time as it would arrive from any other dealer. Dom was very kind in helping get me pretty much the first one to leave the company – worth sending him a tweet if you use twitter.

I believe that there is no stock until March as mentioned above, and even the prototype lying around at Kinesis was sold to Chipps in that lovely green colour.

I haven’t taken any pics recently, but here is an early shot of it to whet your appetite:-

[/url]
Kinesis Crosslight Pro6[/url] by pixelmix[/url], on Flickr

Ride on flashing lights ONLY, and you get what you deserve !.

:roll:

Aye, right, so using flashing lights because they increase your chance of being seen amongst other lights means you deservse to be knocked off.

As above, if a driver can’t judge the distance because the light is flashing, they shouldn’t be pulling out – they shouldn’t just assume it will be far away/travelling slowly.

Anyway, nothing in the OP suggests that he only had one flashing light on. I ride with one light ‘on’ and one flashing for this very reason though.

Perhaps the government should spend their time looking at why some people drink so much, rather than increasing the cost of living for everyone.

Putting the price of alcohol up will do nothing to curb binge drinking.

This. But that would be too much like hard work. A knee jerk reaction like minimum pricing is far easier. Governments need to realise that taxation and/or fiddling with pricing isn’t the only answer to every problem.

Sounds interesting. I’d probably not use it (other than maybe once or twice to see what the fuss is about), but then I’m not a downhill rider.

I can see a day ticket being appealing to downhill riders who otherwise have to push up at Innerleithen or are restricted to uplift days.

Re who to design it, here is another suggestionfor someone who might be able to provide some thoughts.

Not running your Crests tubeless?

A few squirts of sealant will weigh less than the 300g you have down for tubes. You don’t need a rubber rim strip with Crests, just the yellow tape (which weighs naff all) 80ml of juice per wheel.

Edit:- you can also shave a few grams from your 1kg tyre estimate. Even a sensible tyre like a Racing Ralph (i.e not too narrow or paper thing) will weight less than 500g an end at 2.1″

Flat pedals see a bit odd on a lightweight XC bike. A set of Eggbeaters will save a bit of weight over the flat pedals.

Personally I would ride em until they need replaced (assumning the weight isn’t ridiculous) or keep them as a spare set with some mud tyres or something on. You are unlikely to get a decent amount for them on ebay as people tend to look for Hope Hoops etc rather than OEM wheels and 2nd hand prices will no doubt reflect that.

That wheelbarrow thing looks awesome. The neighbours probably already think I’m weird though walking out in shorts at 7.45am every day, so taking a wheelbarrow of water probably isn’t going to help me fit it.

Already rocking the singlespeed rigid bike for the commute to work for minimal maintenance, but I’ll still need to do a bit of washing every now and again when this nice cold spell ends and we return to soggy mud.

That was quite a rush of responses – thanks!

Given the costs of batteries etc mentioned, I’m wondering if I should just bite the bullet and get an 18V rechargeable power washer. That would at least save having to run the car engine to power the 12V socket in the car.

If I got a water butt, I could refill the power washer from that, and four refills of the power washer would hopefully then also be enough to wash the car periodically. If the water butt is getting used every other week, surely it isn’t going to get too horrible too quickly? That idea appeals as I have to go to the garage every morning to get the bike out for work, so taking one bucket of water every morning is no hassle and means I’d have a good amount of water there by the weekend when I need to wash bikes or car.

I’m not a serial bike washer, but I’d rather (i) avoid jet washes at trail centres and (ii) not have to put the bike away every time I need to head back into the house to get another bucket of water. Having done the latter in our previous top floor flat, it really makes bike and car washing much more of a chore than it needs to be.

Also, any experience of these (or similar)?

Couple of points of the top of my head:-

Make sure syncing of address book, calendar etc is SWITCHED OFF in the iPhone settings in iTunes – you don’t want to be syncing things through your computer if you have turned on iCloud syncing, as you’ll get everything duplicated.

In Address Book and calendar, make sure you hide the “On Your Mac” stuff, and only have the “iCloud” stuff visible, or you’ll see duplicates of everything all over the place. Do you use Mail on your mac too? You might wish to additionally tinker with settings there as notes etc go through your me.com mail account I believe.

It’s a bit fiddly initially, but generally no issues here. My Mac, iPhone 4S and the iCloud website are all happily talking to each other, with the minor exception that birthdays aren’t showing on the iCloud website, but I can live with that (they are still synced to my phone).

If you are struggling to get it set up, I found a quick google sorted most of my teething trouble.

I assume you have the most recent updates applied to your computer and iPhone?

Any specific issues? Which apps?

I wonder if anyone has had problems with these redesigned pedals?

My problems with needle bearings* relate to the new pedals, but I’ve not had any problems (yet) with the platform sliding off the spindle (which the new design is supposed to help).

* I appreciate that bearings are a replaceable item – my beef is that I didn’t expect them to fall apart so soon.

Go 135mm. You could always just use a disc hub now without a disc attached if you want to run cantis for the first year or two. In my opinion 135mm will become the standard for cross frames in the next few years since there are already a huge amount of compatible hubs available.

for those of you who have had the body fall off the axle:
– had they been serviced before?
– were there signs of play before it happened?
– any other signs that they didn’t feel right?

Just curious.

If there is a bit of play in the body on the axle, check that the bearing isn’t worn. Once the bearing gets worn, it can disintegrate and there will be nothing left to hold the axle in place.

I have a different problem with the needle bearings on my Eggbeater 3s – a needle seems to come loose and gets jammed, preventing the pedal from spinning properly. I’ve had this happen on two pairs now. I suspect that this is partly a lack of grease from the factory, so I’m now going to be filling them with lots grease and hoping they last a bit longer. To be fair to 2pure, they are good at sorting them out, but I shouldn’t have to get them to look at a 3 month old pair of pedals. I wonder if the Candy 2 or Eggbeater 2 (which don’t have the needle bearing) are going to be better for avoiding that specific problem.

Great pedals when they work, but do require a bit of TLC every now and again. 5 minutes with some grease, an allen key and a socket is all that is required though.

Judging from the house we just moved into, it is exceptionally difficult. Finish is shocking – gaps big enough to fit pencils down on all sides in the main bedroom, and I feel motion sick when I walk across the spare bedroom!

I had a look at sticking down the beading properly in the conservatory (it was just lying on top near the edge) but the gap down the side is bigger than the beading, so there is nothing to stick it to unless I fill the huge gap (might explain the huge number of pens we found down there).

Needless to say we’ll be redoing all of the laminate floors soon. I’m sure you’re much better at it than the previous owners of our house though…

As you would expect, crispy and icy today. Most mud on main routes is frozen, although Pistachio was still a bit mushy in places. Lots of smooth ice around to catch out the unwary.

I’ve not ridden the Pentlands for a while but I did notice a lot of frozen tyre tracks around (presumably laid down in recent damp weeks) – certainly more noticeable than frozen footprints for example.

Two lights on the back if you’re riding at night, if you only have one and it fails then it’s unlikley you would know.

This. I like one flashing and one ‘on’, on both ends of the bike.

Also remember that helmet lights often don’t make you visible due to the focused beam. I was pulled out on by a bus the other week whilst riding on a short section of road to get home, with just my helmet light turned down low and my small bar light on flashing (normal bar light not on this bike). I think the bus driver genuinely missed my little light and helmet light due to the car which was overtaking me at the time.

Is this in any way related to the ‘TJ goes into orbit’ tag that often appears on posts?

Fairy liquid on the rims. I struggled getting a pair of CX tyres on mine, but they slipped on easily with some washing up liquid on the tyres bead or rim edge.

All it needs is a thin spacer between the frame an bb cup.

Fair point. I’ve already got a slim one in there from new to take up the slack (although I’m told I shouldn’t need one on a CX frame), but I’ll maybe bung another slim one in and see if it will take up the slack and keep the BB going a while longer.

Assuming that isn’t an option (i.e I don’t have funds to swap out a perfectly good set of SRAM crankarms for some new Shimano ones), would you therefore suggest that a Hope or other BB is going to be better than another SRAM GXP?

2011 Stumpy? I rode one of those for 10 Under the Ben while my Anthem was being repaired. Did the job nicely – comfortable but light enough – I was quite impressed. If I ever need a 140mm bike to go with the XC hardtail, I’d certainly give it some thought – not flash, but a sensible bike for the money.

Hope you enjoy it.

If I had no bike at the moment, I’d certainly be test riding a 29er and comparing times and fun factor with a similar 26er before buying something.

Kinesis Crosslight Pro6 instead?

If you want a nice easy to ride and useable bike, I’d be tempted to go with a 11-28 or something for the rear.

12-25 would be fine for what you describe, but the 28 could be a useful bail out for muddy rides and steep sections.

It’s just fine with the right tyre choice.

I don’t mind a bit of slidey riding, but it’s a right pain getting to wherever you are going and being covered in mud solely because of that section! The rest of the WoL is reasonably dry at the moment.

Saw on the BBC website some lassie was attacked on the WoL path up near Colinton. Not good.

A bit worrying that one – in broad daylight too. I’m sure a lot of ladies and gents on here don’t think twice about the WoL at any time of day as it is generally pleasant and trouble free.

WOL at the tunnel has been scraped back to the solid base for about 20m eastwards from tunnel mouth and looks like it’s being re-surfaced. Ace news. Full speed exits are back ON.

Excellent news – was a bit interesting coming out of the tunnel at 20mph in slicks and sliding around in the mud. I don’t mind getting mucky but it is a useful commuting route if it could be a wee bit drier.

I tweeted the council about this the other day and they promised to look into it, but I’d be surprised if they started work that quickly. Any idea when this work was started?

My light is only 250 lumens, but I tend to angle it down a bit and turn it down on the road. One the rare occasion I’ve come out to a road section and forgotten to dip it, drivers have flashed their lights at me.

When off road, as it is helmet mounted, I tilt my head to the side slightly if there are cyclists coming towards me along dark canal paths etc.

The downside of these lights is that side visiblity is poor so I tend to make sure I have something on the bars too which is visible from the side.

Sounds like a good time to go 2×9! I go a 26t inner and at 38t middle ring from TA for less than £65.

+1 Albino – I like to park at Lee, ride up the first half of Lee, cut off round Crag, and then finish the lap of Lee on the way back. Just add in whichever bits of Lee you want to redo, or do two laps of Crag if you want to extend it.

Whilst that’s true, it’s not the case with Waterstone’s Waterstones, is it?

Businesses change their names all the time.

Agreed. I have no preference on the Waterstones thing – do what they like if they think it creates and stronger and simpler brand identity.

Legal documents, yes I can see your point there, but surely ambiguity in contracts is the bread and butter of legal fees ?

Ha ha, so cycnical for one so young Hels. As a drafter of property related legal documents, I consantly live in hope that none of my drafting will ever be tested in a court action!

Edit:- I wonder if this whole Edinburgh trams fiasco was caused by a misplaced apostrophe in the contract. :?

It’s all irrelevant since Waterstones will cease to exist in 10 years anyway, having been beaten into submission by Amazon.

I think we should just quietly let it die.

The apostrophe? Still needed IMHO – the meaning of sentences can be completely changed by a missing or misplaced apostrophes, which can be important for contracts etc. Just because people struggle with correct usage doesn’t mean we should give up!

I too have used gwizz recently. Easy and good value. UPS picked up my frame and sent it to Ireland for a very reasonable price (£25 ish I think).

You might want to have the mods remove the street name from this thread and just have LS13 instead – don’t want to advertise too much that there are bikes in a garage on your street.