SKS Chromoplastics for cheaps, Portland Design Works Full Metal Fenders for not so cheap. Gilles Berthoud or Velo Orange for retro.

Specialized SWAT bib shorts are designed to go under baggies and a MTB jersey, and have three back pockets like a road jersey.

Rapha do arm screens, and you can get 20% off at the moment with the code Hot20.

Buy a pair of Ortliebs and flog one?

If I do RL again I would jump the queue and start right at the beginning.

Being up the front can be slightly safer than mid pack with the weekend warriors, but there isn’t a huge amount in it. The front is all Cat 2/3 racers, and while most of them do know how to ride in a group, they’re going at pretty much race pace at very close quarters in much bigger groups than you’d get in a typical road race. Only takes one or two mistakes for some big consequences.

Arm warmers here too. Morvelo, Rapha, and I’m sure others, also make arm ‘screens’, like arm warmers but made of plain Lycra without the fleecy backing.

Minor injuries seems a bit extreme, my road rash treatment is as follows: soak in warm salty water, and scrub out any grit with a (fresh) kitchen scouring pad. Rinse, apply Savlon and gauze dressing, redress each day until the worst of the weeping has stopped (2-3 days normally). After that try and give it some air so a scab can form. Try to resist picking off scabs.

I think one of the biggest steps forward that could be made for cycling in this country would be to convince the general public that ‘cyclists’ aren’t some sort of uniform group who all know each other.

See a bad driver out on the road, “he/she’s an idiot”, see a bad cyclist “cyclists are idiots”.

What’s the name of that bothy bag Co. that pops up in the forum occasionally?

Lomo?

I have a Spa on my Brompton, bought for the same reason as you after the original saddle ruined several pairs of trousers in quick succession. It’s pretty stiff, not much sign of breaking in despair over a year of use, although admittedly it only sees about 5-10 miles a day. Haven’t worn out any trousers since I’ve had it, compared to a pair every 3 or 4 months with my old saddle.

I’d say time is more important than distance. If you’re going out and doing 100 miles in five hours, then race bike will be fine. If it’s going to take you all day then something more comfortable might be in order.

None of them really have collarbone protection, it’s not really a place that’s likely to take a direct impact. They normally break when you put your hands out to break your fall and the force gets transmitted up your arm, and there’s not much that body armour can do about that.

If it’s still a bit sensitive while healing you could maybe try taping some sort of high density foam over it, with a compressive base layer over the top?

I think you need a small head and a wide face to stand any chance. Unfortunately I seem to have fairly oval shaped head, so I always need an L or XL helmet for the length, which leaves me looking very mushroomy from in front.

I believe she spells it Soo, not Sue.

While I understand that ‘road traffic’ and ‘car related’ accidents are the leading cause of deaths by accidents, we do need to put that into context.

Worth pointing out I think that for children between 5-19, land transport accidents are not the leading cause of death ‘by accidents’, they are the leading cause of death full stop, in the UK transport accidents kill more children and teenagers than cancer or bronchitis.

Obviously these are not all kids on bikes or playing in the street, it wouldn’t surprise me much if the majority of the deaths were within cars. Either way it suggests that something is wrong with the way we use cars in our society.

As for the deaths caused by cars vs inactivity/obesity, when it comes to children it’s not even a contest. Children don’t really die of heart disease or diabetes, but lots of them are killed by cars. The question is whether someone who has an active lifestyle at an early age is more likely to keep it up into adulthood when those factors become much more of a risk.

The leading cause of death for 5-19 year olds in the UK is traffic accidents. It’s not that surprising that parents aren’t encouraging their kids to cycle.

The ones ive seen on ebay are no-branded versions of the superstar mount (which is never in stock). Its a single bolt but has a channel to hold it straight

Those should be fine. The one I got didn’t have a channel.

Tate Labs Barfly SLi is good. Still fairly spendy for what it is though.

There are various generic copies on eBay too, although the design of one I bought left a lot to be desired. The arm attached to the bar clamp with a single bolt, so it would pivot about a bit and basically never pointed dead ahead. There seem to be some that wouldn’t have this problem, could be worth a try.

Adding gears is not just about increasing the range, it can be about reducing the gaps between ratios too. If neither of those matter to you in this scenario, then no, probably not much point upgrading. Don’t some downhillers use 1×7 because it’s lighter?

Never used either in the end, but was looking for similar and found Pente14 and Wow Custom who would both do small quantities without a serious price hike. There are also various Chinese manufacturers on Alibaba etc.

Nth Series road stuff is definitely on the Castelli/Sportful Italian sizing side.

The press were over that in no time and suddenly royal mail are interested in talking directly. Sad that it takes social media for problems too get looked into

I think that’s a bit unfair, Royal Mail replied before the Mail or Metro got involved, yet the recipient replies to both of them first. Could at least give them a chance to sort it out first.

I would be surprised if replacing the chain rings was really necessary, when I was wondering whether to replace mine recently general consensus seemed to be 15,000-25,000km on a set of chain rings, mine had only done about 8000km, looked a bit shark toothed, but I think that’s just tooth shaping to help shifting, so I just changed cassette and chain and it’s all working fine.

Might be worth trying just a new chain and cassette before you spend a load on new rings, unless you’ve been doing some mega mileage?

pleader, all original. didn’t check chain until too late so left it all to wear out at same rate…

Hasn’t your chain been slipping for ages then? I tend to wear my chain and cassettes out together, and change them when they start slipping after 2000-3000km, and I haven’t yet needed to replace chain rings on bikes that are on their third cassette. Can’t imagine there would be any chain left by the time it had worn out a set of chain rings.

Out of interest, do you know roughly how many cassettes you’ve got through on those chain rings?

Mostly countries whose economies were also built on imprudent levels of debt

But it was the levels of private and bank debt that caused the issue, it was nothing to do with public debt. Preventing that would have required banking/loan regulation, and the worry was that regulation in the UK would make us less competitive in a worldwide marketplace.

It was, and is, a global problem, and it’s not like the Conservatives supported regulation at the time or have solved the problem since, and neither has any other country, so it’s hardly as simple as a Labour only mismanagement issue

his management if the aftermath of the crises was a disaster

I’m not sure this is at all true. His actions are generally credited with helping the UK avoid Iceland level disaster, and he was pretty important in coordinating G20 and European wide interventions.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/feb/06/gordon-brown-save-world-uk

I know he was recast as the “incompetent buffoon” during his premiership and after the financial crisis, and certainly he clearly didn’t have the persona for leadership, but he does deserve some credit for a few other things. His interventions when the credit crunch hit are widely credited by most economic experts as preventing things from getting much worse much more quickly. He also kept us out of the Euro and was mostly successful as chancellor.

He failed to spot the financial crisis coming, and didn’t realise that the banking sector had become dangerously under regulated during the previous conservative government, but I’m not sure that any mainstream politician did, and I’m fairly sure that it wasn’t within any one country’s governments power to prevent it anyway.

Clearly flawed in many ways, but I do think he has more to him than the incompetent buffoon.

Get some noise cancelling earphones surgically implanted in your head so you can live entirely in your own bubble as though you are the only human being in the universe. Practice your tube travelling skills by putting your feet up on your furniture and dropping your trash on your carpet rather than in the nearby bin. If you are interested in art, get some good books so you can look at the paintings that you didn’t see in the gallery because 10 million other people were standing in front of you.

Or ignore all that ^ stuff and explore. London is one of the greenest cities in the world, 38.4% green public space, compared to say Paris, where it’s only 9.4%. Sure, if you go to the Southbank on a sunny Saturday there will be a lot of people around, but that means that there’s nearly always something going on there, from Christmas markets and foodie festivals to music or comedy. If you want something quieter you can still go and explore the remoter parts of Richmond Park, Hampstead Heath or Walthamstow Marshes. And if there are too many people at the Tate Modern or the Science Museum then try the White Cube or the Horniman Museum, or one of the thousands of independent galleries. If you like beer, don’t sit in a crowded central London pub, but go to Bermondsey and visit 5 or 6 microbreweries in one afternoon. If all the tourists at Borough Market get you down then head for Maltby Street or Brixton Village instead. That’s the great thing about London, there’s always another (often better) option to be explored, there’s something for nearly everyone if you look hard enough.

And if you want to get out, it’s about 20 minutes from Crystal Palace by road bike until you’re in country lanes, and another half an hour or so until you’re standing on the top of Ide Hill, looking out across the Weald of Kent.

Cycling in London is awesome. It’s by far the best way to get around 90% of the time.

Climbing walls, as well as the above there’s bouldering at the Arch in Bermondsey, which would be closer to you south of the river.

Cycling clubs: Brixton Cycles has a fairly large club and there’s also Dulwich Paragon, both are road/track biased but are large enough to have some mountain biking. Always loads of road groups going out to Kent from Crystal Palace, as well as a few CX type loops. MTB is more realistically a drive or train away at Swinley or Surrey Hills.

Area-wise, I personally prefer the Brixton/Peckham/Camberwell area to Clapham and Battersea. There seems to be a bit more going on than further west. Possibly slightly cheaper too, although there’s probably not too much in it anymore. Between there and Crystal Palace is probably where I’m going to be looking when I head back in June.

Spareroom is the main one really, it worked pretty well for me when I moved out of London and I managed to find a fellow cyclist. I’ll be using it again when I move back to London in June.

There are also a few ‘speed dating’ type events around that try to connect potential flat mates, I’ve never tried one but friends have been successful with them. I would think that you’d have to get pretty lucky to find a cyclist at one unless you can persuade Look Mum No Hands to start running them.

Sorry, I was making a more general point about the tendency in this country to view anything that might inconvenience drivers as a problem, while ignoring things like car accidents being the leading cause of death for 5-19 year olds in this country.

Slightly irrelevant, seeing as it’s never going to happen, but the best way I can think of preventing phone use while driving would be making cars that block out mobile signal with some sort of faraday cage, on a bus you could just do it round the drivers cabin, so the passengers could still use phones.

That would mean no phones for car passengers, or joggers, or people on the bus/train/tram/taxi? And it would bugger up everyone that uses a phone as a sat nav or as a cycle computer or a run recorder.

A bit of inconvenience that might well save lives.

I do sometimes wonder what we’d do if cars were invented today. You wouldn’t generally operate industrial machinery in a factory, or hold a loaded gun on a firing range while on the phone, or chatting to the guy next to you, or eating a sandwich, or fiddling with the radio, or doing your makeup, or trying to sort out the kids on the back seat, yet somehow it’s all fairly acceptable in cars, which kill far more people each year.

Research shows that taking a handsfree call is as bad as being over the drink drive limit, presumably texting is much worse because you’re not even looking at the road: http://www.brake.org.uk/rsw/15-facts-a-resources/facts/1131-distractionfacts

Quite a few places hire them out for triathlons, so you can sometimes find ex-rentals going pretty cheap. Worth a google maybe…

just look at the Daily Mail comment section.

That’s your problem, right there.

Flaperon for president!

Generally I’d expect the MTB to be a bit longer, but it varies.

He has a great record for overturning local borough councils planning permission refusals, approving 17 out of the 17 developments that he has called in. Most were refused for things like not providing enough affordable housing or being grossly over scaled, fortunately the poor multinational development companies can appeal to Boris when the nasty democratically elected borough council aren’t letting them make enough profit.

Otherwise, he has finally managed a couple of fairly decent bike lanes, and his buses, while expensive, are probably marginally better than the old ones. Oh, and he’s done a good job of taking credit for projects that weren’t his, like the hire bikes and the Olympics.

Is it down to Google’s intelligent stalking putting STW results higher up for me alone, or is this place just the answer to everything? Or is it just that 90% of the things I search for are bike related?