Fantastic. :)

Zappi’s Bike Cafe in Oxford. Cakes – and bikes. What’s not to like? :)

http://www.zappisbikecafe.co.uk/

Saw an old trail bike years ago with BAD80Y, and also heard of a vegtable wholesaler having POT80 on his Roller.

Think it’s a five mile track with a marked-off 200 metre “timing section”, the five miles is for them to get up to speed, cross the timing section, then slow down again at the end, I think. Don’t think they have to record a time over the whole five miles.

As I was refuting a clearly incorrect statement by someone, I’d say it was entirely “here”, but thanks for your opinion.

Hey, no sweat – the post you quoted said

If the story above is entirely true then the fault lies entirely with the driver

Which doesn’t specifically reference either the collision or the failure to exchange details, so I thought I’d mention them both, rather than assuming everyone knew which bit I was on about. :)

Ah ha – but as noted by the charming driver, it’s hard to track down the owner of a Johnny Foreign-registered vehicle. ;)

Seriously, what planet do you come from where driving into the back of stationary vehicles is ok?

I think that’s kind of neither here nor there, unless the driver braked in an unsafe manner (ie, emergency stopped when there was no emergency) – he stopped somewhere he shouldn’t have, the cyclist who rode into the back of him maybe had some observation issues.

The problem, I think, is that legally the driver had a responsibility to have given him his details. Morally, laughing at him and saying “you’ll never find me” is also not very nice.

Think I read that he’s missing Tuesday to change gear ratios, she gets a bit twitchy at a high cadence, apparantly.

It sounds like the driver is/was a bit of a cock, but I’m struggling to see how he is at fault for the collision.

I think that, if he’d given his details as required, you’d never have heard a thing about it. Laughing and saying “you’ll never find me” is just the tw$ttish icing on the social media cake of outrage.

Cool, ta – can’t remember who, but I read a piece by an auto journalist who did it a year or two back (with MotoGP’s Bradley Smith on his team), it sounded pretty tough. Still, if it was easy, it wouldn’t be any fun… :)

Rule 5.

Have they decided if his nomination is legal yet – seem to recall some realignment of the goalposts after his home nation and then his adopted home nation pulled their support?

He got nomincations from, like, Thailand and Malaysia, and backdated an amendment to allow a candidate to stand without nomination from his home federation as long as any two other federations nominate McQu – sorry, the candidate. The UCI were invited to ask CAS if technically that was a legal thing to do, and the UCI went…

Nah.

Only veto that matters is Di Montezelemo’s…

Some mates of mine have just come back from a 24 hour race around the Nordschleife…

Already on my list for next year – was it good, did they say? Think Silverstone has one this weekend, too? I’ve got a wedding, so can’t make it – me and my brother tried very, very hard to work out a way to do both…

Because they enjoy fishing.

I’d like to go back to the fondly-remembered days of the first Lottery draws – then immediately after that, I’d amuse myself by dabbling with pre-boom property. Ah, that would be fun.

Rod Stewart.

I think road and off-road are just different parts of the same thing, I wouldn’t be without either. Done my first 100 mile ride on the road yesterday and Strava puts my max speed at 48mph on the descent to Chipping Camden, that was fairly exciting.

Come on, help a brother out – I’d accept a drunken guess right now.

Kato – I’d love to be able to do 14mph

You can borrow my Vauxhall Corsa, it’ll do well over 14mph quite comfortably.

“Fear of consequence” – that adds an interesting side dish to the debate. If you could measure the comparative values, would you rather your child never ran into the road because he/she got a slap on the legs as a youngster when they once looked likely to, or rather they never ran into the road because they once did and got knocked down by a (hopefully) slow moving and attentive driver?

Shouldn’t she put it in her ear, if she’s got a wax build up?

As a not-entriely-unrelated aside, my bro just posted this on FB –
“Another one of those moments that makes me proud of my home town – tracksuited reprobate teaching his 2/3 year old son to lob two fingers at his (tracksuited) mate as he approaches. Now the kid is doing it to all passers by. Super. To be fair to mum though, she did threaten to ‘break his f****n neck’ if he did it again. So at least one of them is practising responsible parenting.”
You can make as much or as little of that as you please.

I think Loddrik’s being spot on – I don’t fully agree with what he’s saying (as I’m on the other side of the smacking fence, so to speak), but I’m finding his posts far more urbanely-put than some of the sarcastic responses he’s received on this topic.

Super stupid. Level 3. :(

Ooo – just to add to the ineffectual parents thing, I’ve seen a couple of instances (once at a dentist, once on a boat ride) where the parents have tried (and failed) to control their children with “if you don’t behave, the dentist/boat captain will be really angry with you!!” Not advocating slapping in those instances, but there’s definitely folks out there who don’t know how to drive their kids.

I don’t remember ever actually being smacked as a child, but I’m sure it must have happened from time to time, as I know if I had been REALLY naughty, I would have had a slap around the back of the legs – and my parents were great, I remember them with nothng but love. I kind of see the point of view of people saying “if you smack, you’ve lost control/the argument”, but I also think, say I’d seen my own hypothetical child wanting to do something I knew was really dangerous, and I needed to head that behaviour off at the pass quicksharp, then I don’t see physical chastisement as an option to be avoided.

45 miles on the new road bike around the lanes I used to ride as a kid. Fantastic to be out on such a lovely evening, and interesting to revisit – the roads are not as long and hills not as big as I remember. :)

Here – there was a thread floating around on here recently from someone who’d been hit by a woman in a car, and she was demanding to take their damaged bike “because her insurance company wanted to value it”.

I wonder if her name was Leana Ryall…?

My only add to the excellent points already made is to stress leaving the bike at home if it’s icy – had a black ice off on a country lane last winter that made me think it just ain’t worth the risk. Gives you NO warning – all of a sudden, you are just on your @rse, no chance of a save. This was a quiet country road, but scary to think what could happen with traffic about.

+1 for Sabai Sabai. :D

Most reasonable people would accept that face covering in this instance is not a “free” choice…

I think that might be an assumption too far for me.

that and talking to people in any environment with background noise – I can’t pick out what they’re saying from the other noise.

I struggle with that! Hate a noisy pub, and I never go to clubs – just can’t hear what people are saying.

I thought it was you.

Inspirational. That’s what indomitable spirit means.

Gratz! :)

aracer –
Just so long as that doesn’t encourage drivers to think that it’s the cyclists who need training rather than them, and that such a campaign means the problem is solved and they don’t have to bother modifying their behaviour. Which would happen, wouldn’t it? Arguably such a campaign (if there was a formal one) could actually be counterproductive from a road safety perspective – these things just aren’t quite as simple as you think.

Well, I’m not proposing such a campaign – just saying I think it’s a bit short-sighted to say the blame for all cycle/vehicale incidents is entirely down to the driver, is all. The vast majority? Beyond a shadow of a doubt. But not all.

aracer – No I don’t get it either. I don’t get where anybody is suggesting that. What some people including me are suggesting is that resources are better spent on improving driver behaviour than cyclist behaviour as that’s where the road safety benefits are to be made – that’s not exactly the same thing is it?

No, I think that’s entirely fair enough. But I also think it’s wrong to suggest that all cyclists are entirely blameless, or that there’s no value to be had in encouraging safer and more responsbile riding.

I really don’t get this whole “car drivers are worse so don’t criticise cyclists” thing. There was an article on road.cc the other day, about Laura Trott saying it’s not always the car’s fault, and the comments give her a right roasting for essentially the same thing that KCR says, but for my money, the one thing does not excuse the other – most cycle/car interface-related road accidents may well be caused by the car driver, but that doesn’t mean cyclists then get free rein to ride how they want to.

Peas, sweetcorn, carrot, lettuce, mushrooms, cherry tomatoes, grapes, a wee dab of cheddar and a sliver of onion, all cut up small in a big tupaware box and given a vigorous rucksack shaking (not stirring) on the ride in. :)