Go to TK Maxx, they often have mid-level stuff pretty cheap. Tefal is ok for non-stick, their coatings seem to last the longest.

Apologies, it did come across as more aggressive than funny, which was not what I had intended.

I just think that if you go to an area you should ride the best trails. In a way, going to the Lakes and spending your whole time at Whinlatter is, in some ways more justifiable (maybe can’t map read/navigate very well) than going to Dolgellau and not riding CyB or Penmachno because you don’t like “trail centres”. Either way you’ll be missing out on some of the best riding the area has to offer.

Presumably you’ll also need a route to Dolgellau that doesn’t involve *shudder* roads. You wouldn’t want to drive on stuff that’s been built for you to drive on, you’ll want to drive on the stuff that’s there anyway. You’ll also want to practice hunting and building shelters so you don’t have to rely on *shudder* shops, restaurants, hotels, B&Bs, tents, bivvy bags, stoves or knives, all of which have been made to be used for what they’re used for. Instead you’ll want to use something that was there anyway. I imagine you must be physically sick each time you use this forum to discuss mountain biking, when you’d much rather just be shouting at passing strangers?

More seriously, going on a mountain bike trip to Dolgellau and avoiding CyB, the Marin and Penmachno just because they’re signposted for mountain biking seems a bit self defeating. They are all great rides, and while CyB can be a bit busy at weekends, the only real difference between say Penmachno and some of the natural routes being suggested is that there are signs so you don’t have to stop and look at a map, and you might meet one or two other bikers. Maybe do one natural route and then try Penmachno? Or, if you’re with a big group then CyB is great, as it has so many routes you can split into smaller groups and do your own thing before all meeting up again.

Do Jews not like dogs? It’s a new one to me.

Neutering/spaying of animals (or humans!) is generally regarded as not allowed by Jewish law/tradition, although there has apparently been some debate recently about whether not doing it may be more cruel to the animals. That probably contributes to the lack of pets, if that really is the situation?

http://www.jpost.com/JewishWorld/Judaism/Article.aspx?id=142274

We should also remember that as a culture that regularly keeps dogs and cats as non-working pets we are almost certainly in the minority worldwide. They are, after all a fairly pointless and very expensive luxury. If you and your friends don’t keep pet dogs and you aren’t that used to seeing them then fear of them is pretty natural.

May be helpful for reducing the bill for the long-term unemployed, providing the houses are available for them to move into as circumstances change.

The problem is that the electorate think that welfare = scroungers (long term unemployed), when probably the majority who are on some form of welfare or benefit will be not be long term unemployed but low-income, disabled, key workers, or short term unemployed. However, because the electorate thinks welfare = scroungers, then conservative policy is set up to punish the minority of scroungers with no thought to what effect it has on other welfare claimants.

Just need to look at Cameron’s reluctance to apply any of these cuts to the elderly, even to the very richest, for example by applying this scheme to over 60s, or by means testing winter fuel allowance. Elderly people and the rich are his key electorate.

I use:

http://www.thinkbiologic.com/products/bike-mount-iphone-4

Comes with two different inserts so works with both the iPhone 4 and the 3GS, only had it a few months but it has survived a couple of OTB incidents as well as numerous rain showers, including being left out on a mountainside for 3 hours in freezing conditions and rain/snow/hail at 2700m.

If its one of the Wiggle ones (and I imagine its the same with most others), then the start is staggered over at least an hour or so, so there’s no peloton, just lots of small groups. Do it at your own pace, don’t be tempted to try and race people much faster than you, but if you do find a group that suits you then stick with it for a while, making sure you do you fair share on the front. Take a little food and energy drink for the start, but there are pretty good feed stations quite regularly. You probably paid about £25 so might as well get your money’s worth!

Not sure anything is wrong with the ad, looks like at least two things wrong with the bike though…

Was caught in a snowstorm in the south of France last week. Admittedly, it was at 2700m on Col de la Bonette!

You could do ferry to Dunkirk/Calais-Arras/Vimy-Lille-Gent-Bruges/Ostende ferry back?

Gent and Bruges are both meant to be nice, although are in Belgium. Lille is a nice city, worth a visit. If you cycles towards Arras/Cambrai you will be pretty close to the Vimy Ridge all the way so there are a lot of war graves and memorials, the Canadian memorial outside Arras is meant to be especially impressive.

I cycled Calais to Cambrai two weeks ago, and it was quite a nice route for most of the way, apart from a bit of a drag outside Cambrai. Also didn’t really see much of Cambrai itself as we were off early to Reims the next day, but it seemed a nice enough town.

If you assume that the bottle fills at a constant rate, and the temperature of water from the fountain rises at a constant rate, and disregard any temperature gains/losses to the bottle material and it’s surroundings, then I’m fairly sure it should be 9.5 degrees.

Coldplay – Parachutes
Muse – Origin of Symmetry
The Strokes – Is This It?
Kings of Leon – Aha Shake Heartbreak
Fleet Foxes – Fleet Foxes
Grinderman – Grinderman
Goldfrapp – Black Cherry
CSS – CSS
Justice – Cross
The Libertines – The Libertines
Bon Iver – For Emma, Forever Ago
Daft Punk – Discovery
Dizzee Rascal – Boy In Da Corner
Jay Z – The Black Album
LCD Soundsystem – Sound of Silver
Sigur Ross – Takk
Damien Rice – O
Gorillaz – Demon Days
Etc.

Basically I can’t choose. “Since 2000” is almost the whole of my musical experience, there’s been a lot in that time.

On a more serious note, I do like the idea of something to provide secure bike parking in town centres or at railway stations, schools etc. that doesn’t require each cyclist to lug around several large locks.

Maybe some sort of stand to rest your handlebars on when you turn your bike upside down? It could stop you from getting your grips dirty, and stop the bike from tipping over while you work on it?

Kona’s 4 bar suspension system has never been that efficient, although I’m sure it probably works ok with modern platform shocks. It always seemed to be designed more to look like a FSR system than designed to work well, although that may have changed over the years, and the magic link seems interesting, although reviews are mixed. Their full suspension bikes have also always been quite heavy, and some of them have been extremely ugly, so they haven’t had a great press.

I’m not sure a Demo 8 or Shocker would make much difference, angles may be different, but I don’t think either of those are particularly renowned for their light-weight.

Back on point. Do we know if the radio message played has been cleaned up? It certainly didn’t come across as too garbled to me, situation and location given. Admittedly a poor mayday but still gave enough info to act on

It may have been cleaned up, I don’t know. However, try listening to the audio without looking at the words on the screen, and preferably without having heard the words before. It is almost completely indecipherable on the first listen, apart from a few words which can be made out.

I had the same experience, paid for next day delivery, but order wasn’t dispatched until the next day. Was obviously sent next day rather than first class, but arrived in exactly the same time that all my standard delivery orders have come in the last year or so, one day for dispatch and one day for delivery.

They should probably make next day orders a higher priority for picking/dispatch so that they are sent out on the same day. I just won’t bother with paying for next day again, two days for free delivery is still pretty good.

Unfortunately for some reason, some people continue to cling to the myths created by the authorities and parts of the media at the time, despite higher authorities, who have nothing to gain from doing so, now acknowledging them to be lies, and part of a huge cover up.

As ormondroyd says, the fans were not “arriving late”, the report deals with this. They had arrived long before the game, however the turnstiles were inadequate, and some of the crowd control measures that had been used outside, on the Leppings Lane to moderate the flow of people to the turnstiles the year before were removed, leading to much of the crowd arriving at the turnstiles at the same time, which actually slowed down ingress.

And before someone else who has no idea what they are talking about mentions ticketless fans, the report states that CCTV footage of the time shows that the number of fans at the ground was about the same as the number of tickets sold, and the that the stand was clearly under capacity at the time of the crush, the side pens were still almost empty as all the fans were directed into the central pen. No doubt there were one or two among the tens of thousands who tried to get in without tickets, as at any other football match, but this played no significant part in the tragedy.

Brave? Why is it brave? Surely it’s just wrong, as explained by the report released today?

Oh, and to continue the analogy, certain people in this thread are blaming fans for the crash because they climbed onto the coach, thinking it was safe.

Worth pointing out that a similar crush occurred in the 1981 FA semi-final, at the same end of the same ground. That wasn’t fatal because the pen was not divided up and people could spread out, the police also allowed the Spurs fans involved out onto the pitch in that instance. The stadium wasn’t used for FA cup semi-finals from 82-87 for that reason. Then in 1987 there was a bad crush involving Leeds fans, again in the Leppings Lane end at Hillsborough, in another FA cup semi final. Lessons were learned from this and the 1988 semi-final was policed well to avoid a crush. Unfortunately the commanding officer who had taken charge of the ’87 and ’88 finals was removed shortly before the 1989 semi-final, and the new officer completely changed the policing plans. The stadium also did not have a valid safety certificate.

I’d say blaming the police for a car crash in which they had no part is not really the right analogy. It’s more like blaming the police for a crash if they had organised a coach trip, open to the public, on a bus that they knew had dodgy brakes, and had then putting a learner driver in the driving seat, then that the driver had been talking on his mobile and not looking at the road.

If its just along the outside edge it might be because of varus in your feet, a cleat/in-shoe wedge may help.

Sorted:

am i going to have to google goodby horses or is someone going to tell me.

NSFW:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faZ8hJSX1Q4#t=02m16s

serious?!

Then he can sell you another in better times?

Also, its obvious, Stumpjumper isn’t worth anything, that leaves you the choice of two mountain bikes and only one road bike. Of the mountain bikes the Inbred, particularly as a singlespeed, is the least versatile. Anything you ride on it you could ride just as well on one of the Soul or PX Ti, but the same doesn’t apply the other way around.

I use the Biologic one, can’t fault it, sturdy, waterproof, has stayed attached and undamaged in crashes and fixes to either bar or stem.

However, if you are planning to use the iPhone for navigation, then you are limited to about 4/5 hours before the battery goes, and direction finding when you aren’t moving isn’t great, do I’m planning on getting a “proper” GPS. If its navigation on shorter rides/strava on longer rides then it works great.

thorpy – Member
I just got a Garmin eTrex 30, pretty pleased with it. Works with heart rate and cadence sensors and you can load mapping for walking etc.
Came to around £150 on Go Outdoors price match.
HTH

Been looking at getting one of these recently. Where did you find it that cheap to price match?

Maybe you should be banned more often?

There’s also the railway at Blaenau Ffestiniog. A visit to Portmeirion?

This is quite interesting, no idea how up to date it is though:

http://www.torchythebatteryboy.com/p/bike-light-database.html

OP.. speak to your parents, you will find that it was normal back in the 60s/70s to SAVE MONEY to buy things, credit wasnt available and you could only borrow a max of 3 to 3.5times your income on a mortgage and that is what people did. Very little property ladder climbing the 80s had yet to come..
Me and the missis had our 1st child at 22/24yrs old at the time we had saved for a deposit 5% and borrowed the rest to buy a house that took around 1/3 of our income (this is normal) and has been for years.

Is this really serious? No-one thinks they should get a house without saving.

As for only being able to borrow 3 to 3.5 times your salary in the 1970s, you can only borrow 6 times now, however, in the 1970s, you only needed 3 times the average salary to buy the average house, now you need 10 times the average salary to buy the average house. In other words to afford an average house on an average salary these days, you would need a deposit of 4 times your annual salary, pre-tax, pre-rent, pre-bills, pre-everything. All of it for 4 years. Clearly that’s impossible in less than 8-10 years, and even then you’d have to be living with parents and paying no rent.

Mortgage inflation has far outstripped wage inflation in the past 40 years. Average salaries were around £2,000 a year in 1971, with the average house selling for £5,632: in essence, less than three times earnings. The average asking price for a home rose to £238,874 in May this year, according to Rightmove, while the average salary sits at about £25,000.

From The Guardian

Young people know they need to save to buy a house, however without help from parents/friends the Evening Standard worked out that average first time buyer in London will need to save for nearly 20 years for a deposit at current prices, and from the Guardian stuff I posted it looks like thats not much different across the country.

A lot of things are undoubtedly easier since the 1970s, but buying a house is not one of those things, and I cannot understand how anyone can’t see that, the facts are out there and are pretty obvious.

It is of course still possible for some people in some areas to get on the property ladder with a few years of frugality and saving, for others it is very hard and for some nigh on impossible. Obviously a lot of people don’t understand just how much harder it is for first time buyers now than it was 10, or even 5 years ago. I think there is a tendency to always think that you are the badly off one, which in this case equates to thinking that first time buyers now are just lazy or squandering money, if you managed to buy a house then they can. However it has got an awful lot harder since 2001, as this article explains:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/borrowing/mortgages/9481892/House-prices-rise-at-three-times-the-rate-of-wage-inflation.html

When it goes down, it’s also a problem?

If it was just the exams getting harder and the pass rate dropping, and everyone knew in advance, then that would be fine. The accusation is that the Gove moved the goalposts after the exams had been sat, which is totally different and completely out of order.

Right, I’m moving to Holland. They have mountains there right?

They might not have them now, but they could have them soon:

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-09/02/man-made-mountain

T.M. Lewin/Charles Tyrwhitt do relatively decent shirts in a good range of sizes. Worth a look in both of those. Thomas Pink can be ok if you find the right thing in a sale, but pretty pricey otherwise.

I tend to find very few other places have the different cuts and sleeve lengths I need to get a remotely good fit.

Actually not really. I bought a house in Leeds 2001 and sold a year later, made a modest amount, enought to manage to together a deposit on a flat in London, but the market had stagnated then, I had to save for my next house deposit.

You got on before 2008, which is when it became really really hard for first time buyers.

Prices now are broadly similar to what they were then, but mortgages are much harder to get. Leads to much longer trying to pay rent AND save a deposit, rather than just paying off a mortgage.

Try and get a demo of a Giant Anthem 29er in XL?

If nothing in standard sizes works, I guess you could get a ‘Forward Geometry’ Mondraker, and run it with a long seatpost and a normal stem.

I don’t mean now. I mean 5, 10, 20 whenever years. They all stil have to sell to someone!

No they don’t. Keeping adding properties, keep increasing rental income. Eventually pass it on to the children. Unless there is a serious downturn in the property market on the horizon, then selling property, if you can afford not to, is generally a bad idea.