Prototype 9 – 36 tooth Cassette Gearing

That article suggest that you can’t get 10t sprockets at present without a new hub design (e.g. the new Hope one as mentioned above). 10t singlespeed sprockets are available, although I wonder if they would shift up to the next sprocket adequately.

Ouch mine is 41p a mile just in fuel!

8O

New album ‘Valhalla Dancehall’ is awesome too!

Is it out yet / can you listen online anywhere yet? It wasn’t on Spotify when I checked the other day.

Great band as you say, and consistently produce good albums. I really enjoyed them live a few years back.

Someone posted a thread yesterday about a £49.99 GSP tracker (tiny little white thing) from Maplin that allows you to see your route on your PC when you got home. Is that the kind of thing you mean?

Edt:- searchy searchy

I now run the 24/36 x 11/32

I reckon this would be almost the ideal gearing for me if I was to go 2×9 on my Anthem. I’m not sure that 36/11 is a high enough gear for the odd firetrack descent though (I do a bit of XC racing, and although I know I could spin faster on these sections, it is quite nice to just gently turn the pedals in a big gear sometimes).

I’m wondering if it might be possible to swap the 11t sprocket on an XT 11-32 for a 10t sprocket to give a slightly larger top gear. Anyone tried that?

The alternative would be 38t chainring, but that sounds like a big jump for the front mech to smoothly cope with, and clearance would probably become a bit tight if I upped the inner ring to 26t.

2×9 is sounding more appealing than 2×10 since I would just be replacing bits when they wear out anyway.

eye deer

Likewise, I was quite suprised that 2011 XT is 3×10. Does anyone really need 30 gears?

but cant with the weather at the moment.

I’m not normally a runner, but I have been running this winter as I’ve entered a few offroad duathlons to keep me fit for riding in 2011. I live in Edinburgh but I’ve managed to run once a week all winter so far. When it is white and snowy out, the snow is sufficiently grippy to allow you to run (IMO), although it is a little bit harder work if it gets deep. Compacted paths are normally fine. The only condition which I wouldn’t run is polished ice, but when the offroad paths get to that stage, the pavements are normally sufficiently clear.

Whenever I have run in the gym in the past, I get bored pretty quickly, but running outside forces you to keep going (if you have a route planned out which you stick to).

Tangent over. Sorry – I can’t answer your original question!

Check the alignment of everything (including the tensioner), then check if again.

Loose chainring bolts are also a possibility, or a chainring which isn’t straight? Is the lockring on the spacers set tightened up enough?

Clutches at straws a bit here!

7 would be too many.

Here’s a few pictures to kick off.

The dome on the roof of the Reichstag was impressive at night, and the Holocaust Memorial is worth a wander through. You’ll probably want to wander past the Brandenburg Gate and Checkpoint Charlie too. There is quite an intersting musical instrument museum we ended up in too, if that floats your boat.

I’m sponsored by Haribo and Mrs PixelMix’s Bakery.

I’m also fuelled by both of my sponsors.

Would you not be better with a slim roof box and the bike alongside?

If you can live without Steel, a Kinesis Decade Tripster would be lighter and cheaper than most of the above.

I like the idea of building one up for commuting and the odd 3 days tour (it has rack mounts and disc brakes) and racing CX in the winter (lightish frame). By the time I get round to doing it, I suspect there will be many more disc equipped CX frames around.

I presume they are 2010 models (I don’t think the name/specs match up with the 2011 tyre brochure thing). Not a con though, since they still seem cheaper than other places are doing the 2010 models.

For what it is worth, I have an email this morning from the friendly chaps at On-One (we were exchanging emails to get an order sorted which I couldn’t process the normal way online) saying that my order will be “fulfilled later this week once the tyres are booked in”.

That could be taken to mean that the tyres have arrived and just need to be “booked in”. Read into that what you will. HTH.

Oh, we were talking about chocolate chute earlier- the bottom of it is a huge block of ice like a little glacier, cunningly hidden under snow, and generally pretty alarming and non-fun. So watch that one. It’s ice from the last lot of snow I think.

I spotted that patch of ice on chocolate chute on Saturday morning. It is just visible where the snow has slid off of it a bit, so thankfully I saw it in time to keep the bike upright.

WoL was hard work at 10am on Saturday, since the snow hadn’t been compacted by footfall, but did have some foot prints in it. I had to seek out the virgin stuff at the side as it was much easier to keep momentum on the singlespeed. The path was much more rideable 4 hours later on the way back towards town as it had been compacted a bit. I suspect it will be a slushy icefest now though.

True, but then if you can hold a football world cup in Qatar in winter!

If you are confused by those road signs you shouldn’t be driving. Shows how much the people in the article know about the highway code!

+1

The two signs highlighted above have been around for decades and are common – there is no reason not to understand them.

I doubt riders or teams will want 4 or 5 hours in the saddle followed by a couple of hours of sitting still in a cramped plane

True. There are plane or train transfers quite often, even within France though. A rest day for transfer would be possible too. This is all a bit of a pipedream at this stage anyway. It remains to be seen how the tour riders would cope with the heady mix of potholes and tram lines here. Would be nice if it happened though – the council might even resurface a road or two. :D

Prologue in Scotland, plane to france for 1st stage I would of thought.

Prologue and first stage would be nice, and then they could transfer for the second stage. Worked fine for London (although admittedly Kent is a lot closer to France).

I have some Elixir 5s on one bike (£135 for both ends from Merlin) which are okay, but they seem quite keen to rub, regardless of how much time I spend tweaking them.

I have XTs on my other bike, and thus far they seem fine (although admittedly only ridden 10 times so far). I had to move the caliper slightly the other day, but after about 20 seconds of tweaking, there was no rubbing at all.

Do you mean “3” the mobile provider, as opposed to 3G networks in general?

Top pull, bottom swing will definitely work (that is what I used), but I think you should be able to get top pull, top swing to work also (will just need to mount it at a different height).

In Scotland I think Relentless is the only 24 ?

24hrs of Exposure at Newcastleton too.

I’m wearing 3/4 tights with baggies on top this winter. Nice and toasty, and you get an extra layer to keep the spray off your tights. Slightly more socially acceptable too!

I was out in my waterproof riding trousers today, but only because the above combo was in the wash. I find trousers are too warm unless you are standing around a lot.

Thanks bigG – much appreciated. Probably not worth the drive then.

Seems you had psychic powers SbZ. Were you responsible for spreading chaos powder around Edinburgh airport today?

Just been on a speed awareness course and can concur with funkymonkey and hairychested. #
I also learnt (yesterday) that the national speed limit is 60mph (always thought it was 50mph), unless there is a central barrier between you and oncoming traffic, the NSL then becomes 70mph.

I used to think this was common knowledge, but then when I tootle past people on derestricted sections of dual carriageway, I think a lot of people still think it is 60mph, as the average speed of other drivers is generally slower than motorways etc.

At the other end of the spectrum, some drivers seem to think that an overtaking lane is a 70mph derestricted area. The A9 is a good example of this, as people fly up and down the overtaking lanes.

I bought mine stock, and still run it with 100mm Fox Forks. I’ve never tried 120mm forks in it, but it handles fine for me with 100mm forks. I’m sure Giant agree since that is how they designed it.

No reason why any 200 Pin SO DIMM DDR2700 333MHz chip won’t work in either, so you should be fine with those. I’m not sure why they have different part numbers – should be the same thing.

Looks a bit cobbled together in places, and the GUI isn’t very consistent with other OS X apps, but it would seem to have potential. Nice discounts on Aperture etc, which makes some apps impulse buys.

I am slightly concerned by the centralisation of things through the App Store. I suspect that websites like macupdate and versiontracker (for Mac anyway) will fall by the wayside. This is a worry as they would support apps which Apple might reject (based on their stringent policies for accepting / rejecting iPhone apps etc).

Lighter, and probably a bit easier to fit onto tight rims too I would imagine. I tend to ride folding tyres although it doesn’t make a massive difference.

I have a 2.1″ Nobby Nic on the front for XC riding (inc slow racing) and get on well with it. Not ridden a 2.25″, but I hear that they are at least as good. Not ridden the Advantage to compare.

Maybe landing from the west because of the wind direction? Normally it is nose to tail EasyJet over Cramond. That would put me off living in Cramond – I couldn’t be bothered replacing the missing roof tiles every week.

EDIT:- quick fingers Colin strikes again.

Just FYI, if anyone’s thinking ahead to 10.7 Lion, apparently there’ll be no Java support in it. That’ll matter a lot to some people (eg in the corporate world where an ugly Java application often stands in for a proper cross-platform solution…) in the same way that no Flash support on the iPhone/iPad matters to others.

My understanding (which may be wildly inaccurate) was that this just meant that Apple won’t be releasing their own Java updates (i.e. the way they do just now through the Software Update app), but that Java will still work as you can get the Java updates directly from other providers (just not tweaked by Apple)?

This is quite different from the lack of Flash support on iPhone/iPad as that is a closed system.

Edit:- Quote from Steve Jobs – “Sun (now Oracle) supplies Java for all other platforms. They have their own release schedules, which are almost always different than ours, so the Java we ship is always a version behind. This may not be the best way to do it.”

Yes and it works just fine

That’s good news. I think the idea (presumably in the licence) was that as 10.6 was a relatively minor upgrade from 10.5 you were supposed to have Leopard, and hence it was only £26 rather than the usual £78. Good to see they didn’t try to enforce that in the code.

and when asks for prev systems thing stick on my external hard drive with time capsule

That should work. I have a vague recollection that when I upgraded, the installer checks for an HD with Leopard (10.5 as you say) installed. This was a while ago though.

Works for me. It’s been out for a while, so the niggles shouldn’t be a problem. Lion available later this year I think?

But….. Snow Leopard discs seem to be labelled as an update from Leopard (i.e. you may need Leopard installed). Has anyone tried doing a fresh install on a brand new hard drive of just Snow Leopard?

Can’t comment on the new Hex or the Xen, but I have had a couple of the old Hexs (replaced the first one because I cracked it) and have been happy with it. I buy Hexs because of the price. I have a friend with one too, and he’s never complained.

Put it in a parent’s name and be a named driver? Might be worth going with a company that allows you to build up no claims when you are a second driver.

Obviously you need to be comfortable with putting someone else as the main insured party, or else you get into difficulty trying to explain to insurer why your Mum is the main insured, but never drives the car.

£5000 does sound a bit ridiculous though.

Sounds like the chainline isn’t straight (wheel not straight in dropouts / dropouts bent?), or the chain tension is too tight. This could put uneven pressure on the chainring.