My wife has been asking this question too recently, thanks all. Saves me trying to figure it out meslef.

Hi Five GeeTee,
self mocking and refferential too.

I think DrDoolitle had a point several pages ago, MTBing is a sport, not a lifestyle.

Like motorcycling, MTBings core protagonists seem to be middle aged, middle class men who have the time and the disposable income to spend on a hobby which involves buying expensive things then dragging them through the mud and rocks until they break. Very little links them other than (from what this forum would seem to imply) having kids or a car.

Any attempt to be a skate, surf or BMX mag’ immediately makes your market much more niche, so whilst it fosters an heir of brotherhood it does ironically exclude a much greater proportion of a potential readership. STW tries to prevent this by (from what I can gather) letting a number of its readers write for it by publishing a great number of one of pieces that appear to be one offs on a specific subject (although I'm not sure how many times I can read about how falling off / dirt jumping/4X is more scary for middle aged men than teenagers). But does in turn shoot itself in the foot by therefore excluding that niche which are looking for bright colours and fast moving images.

MBR, I got fed up with the repetition – “Oh it’s the dirty dozen again!”, now here’s three months worth of articles all aimed at new riders.
That and the time time I sent in my idea for the “Top tips” style bit of the tech pages only to find my idea appear months later with the phrase “well this is the first time someone’s sent this in” but not naming me just someone with the same initials and first name. Grmp grmp grmp (Please don't sue me for slander though MBR).

All in all though, I can’t afford to buy any mags these days so I don’t really care.

Somewhere out there a headline writer has just reached Nirvana

@BANana- they are my new manager due to the absence of the whole tier that previously sat between me and them. They are not directly conncted to my line of work in any way. I think that is the crux, if they sat on the sidelines and watched for a bit to get a handle on the issues I address then I might welcome the input a little more.

Pick the right one at the right venue. I went to one at a s**** wine bar type place and it was full of estate agent types wide boys with slip on shoes (In November!) and lawyer type ladies all looking for a rich profesional with whome they could align schedules.

I thought I could clean up as a bit of handsome arty type (I worked in teh waterstone's next door at the time) a la Ally Mcbeal.
Suffice to say it didn't work as I planed.

No worries mate, it's a geeky minefield out there.

Math rock as a term comes from the nerdy time sigs used and the consequent jerky polyrythmic music that ensues. It mainly came out of the Chicago free jazz infl post harcore bands but you can see ellements of it in Firehose and the minutemen as well as parts of Sonic Youth, Buthole Surfers and 'June of 44'.

Weezer are Math Rock

😆

How any time sigs do Weezer manage to nudge in to their challenging edgy tunes then?

If you want Math stuff check out Sweep the leg Johnny or faraquet.

I'm off sick today and was feeling sorry for myself.

This has cheered me up a wholelot.

PMSL.

Ditto, anything on Fat, the quintesential pop punk label.

I spent my formative years going round the country in stinky vans as a hanger on of various bands that would have a ska break in the middle of most of their tunes and thought Nofx and the screeching weasles were the greatest bands ever.

Leatherface are worth a look.
I've still got a Vanilla Pod T soemwhere (what's wrong with them live BTW?)

If it's sharp fast andfearless it's a she.
If it's big hefty and getts through stuff with sheer aggresion and wilfull refusal to be bogged down it's a he.

If you're really that bothered by affection for inanimate objects, you're not busy enough.

We all love riding, I myself have posted at least two threads bemoaning lack of £s and understanding in my household.

It keeps me sane and gives me that brief thrill of danger that helps remind me there is more to life than middle management and life behind a desk for the sake of a three bed semi and a car loan.

however

riding a bicycle is a hobby, something which I fit in around my life alongside of competing priorities. My wife is 5 months gone and is the focus of all my attention, she is carrying my child and that's a damn sight more than a set of welded tubes or anyone one this forum is likely to do for me (no offers please 😉 ).
Having had a childhood where I infrequently saw my dad due to his combining a vocation and a job to the point where we never did anything togther and are now virtual strangers I know that a hobby is not a priority over a family. Do you really want to risk losing your wife and being seperated from your child because you had to go over the hills and far away on an inanimate object obsesivly?

Just try a bit of compromise, I'm assuming you're not aged eighty so I'm sure a period of reduced biking can be made up for in the future.

Basic formula that I know is aproximatley a week for every month you were together plus four weeks of initial gut wrenching solitude.

IYWMO. Don't throw yourself into another relationship, you need to take time out to b happy with who you are and where you are (take it from someone whos had to move out/start again twice over), then when you're a more rounded and self reliant package you can start to enter the market again. Anything else and you're a ticking emotional time bomb.

Liddle cycling glasses £3.50, can't work out how to change the lenses but the yellow suit me just fine.

Haven't we been here before?

But anyway yes I remember John Stevenson getting married and the is Zack Wylde really Brant Richards disucsions.
Elevated stays and elastomers.
JMC and his bird Sophie being Team MBUK/la Salsa
Pace trying to make a full suss and the GT RTS blowing our minds
Paul Smith on the San Andreas making us all want to have a dart on the front AND back.

Changed my horrid flappy paddle XTs for SLX levers. Much more squidgy and soft with some play on before the disc engages. Still stop me though and I skid less.

I'm too busy due to family stuff and too skint to afford the add on that riding my bike entails – I haven't serviced my Fox forks in three years.

I ride maybe once every two months, but my riding is of the day long XC marathon type when I do.

The days of having a window where I could just nip out for a two hour hack are long gone.

I have two points of differing perspective here really.
1.

I'd met loads of people at the festival (who all thought i was the dog's bollocks

Plus1 to all them many who think this might just show the teensiest bit of evidence of being a wee friend of Charlie.

2. Sometimes people just don't like other people mate, and when going through life often a new 'serious' girlfriend may well curtail their man's former behaviour in an effort to get him to settle down.
– My best mate from the age of 21 to 24 was slowly pulled away from me by his new older girlfriend who's biological clock was clearly ticking. In hindsight I can see how a young man who's principal hobies at the time were drinking smoking and hanging out in lap dancing clubs might have been not the best person to have around (see numerous Romcoms for evidence).

Finally from a psychological perspective, an attrcative and possibly succesful woman who may have always got her own way as a result of her looks may be quite selfish and unreasonable as a result. I worked as a DJ for years and went all over the place on some big contracts, the supermodel lookalikes at the swanky media parties I got booked for were always the hardest b4ll crushers I ever met and you had to sell yourself to them to get a conversation (as a result I didn't bother).

Is it invalidated if I have put stickers on my helmet- I've got hi vis tape on mine.

RichCC, thank you.

Junkyard,

So if you came across a group of teenagers on BMXs riding spread out across the road would you opinion be the same or what about a load of tourists pootling along ignoring traffic and weaving accross the lanes?

Cyclists are cyclists team kit doesn't give them exception to break the law or be inconsiderate anymore that an MTBer wandering onto private land just because there are some nice trails on it.

To be honest I wasn't on my home from a ride I was taking the kids for a hike and my view is that of a dissenchanted keen cyclist there were plenty of people swearing and hooting who will probabaly be tarring all cyclists with the same brsuh now and that is my point. I just held back behind them and then drove past where it was safe.

I ride in large single file groups all the time, I'll happily ride alongside a car, be overtaken or have one cut in next to me.

It was on an uphill, but just after a downhill however that should make little difference. If you are riding on the road then ride safely. It's a no brainer.

I'm all for being patient and chuging behind them, I just would like to be met halfway by cyclists acting sensibly.

I don't want to cause a war here, I was just very suprised that a kitted out club would act this way although Hora's post has given me an insight into the fact that just cos someone has a bike that does not make them still a t0sser ( the club not Hora that is).

Guess I was a bit nieve.

Yeah that was them, Ashfield.

Thanks all.

Sorry for being a grump Flaperon. I just get peaved at trying to be an example of good practise on my own and then coming accross whole groups doing their best to give us a bad name.

Cheers NBT,

yes you are right if I was held up by a truck I wouldn't be on here complaining as a truck is a single unit and therefore by it's tangible nature has no option but to retain its three dimensional space. If it was two trucks side by side I'd be equally peaved.

Or are you one of those people that thinks it's acceptable to pass a bike on the road without overtaking properly, preferring instead to squeeze past in the 4 feet of space between them, the middle of the road, and oncoming cars?

No I am one of those people who doesn't drive up the wrong side of a narrow country road round bends and blind corners in the name of overtaking. I slow down behind them until it is safe to pass.

When the cause of the slow carriage is someone or a group of people causing an unnecsary obstruction then that's a pretty poor show in IMO.

Are you one of those people that put their foot down and overtakes whole groups of cars and comes round blind bends on the wrong side of the road? If so sorry as I'm one of thsoe annoying types that chugs along obeying the speed limit and looking for safe passing places. Sorry to have held you up.

😯 Yeah I know!

I couldn't belive it, all decked out in team colours with nice bikes and yet no basic grasp of road protocol, or the law for that matter.

As I said it's one thing on a quiet back road but when you're risking being on the UK travel news due to your stupidity it's quite another.

I wouldn't buy anything with moving parts from him after a headset and a BB both prety much failed out of the box.
Pads are good tho and I'm not sure how things like grips could fail

Yeah I'd thought the Peaks, don't really know the North end of it well though.

Suggestions of somewhere with parking that's easy for us to find from opposite directions?

Not to mention the regsiter of bike serial numbers held by dealers for their warranty records and the seperate databases held by the chiping companies.

Now if these could all be merged and then someone would actually check it against found & seized bikes then we might get somewhere.

Yeah, but nonetheless it was the roids that made him invincible and gave him the hormone rush to turn mental for no reason.

He wouldn't have lost 18 months of his life to prison and ruined his life (not to mention lots of other people too) if it were not for taking the roids. He'd have just lost a few mates and got a bad hangover as any infraction would have been considrably smaller.

Either way I'd find it very hard to belive anyone could make a positive case for something that turns you into a slab of sinewey meat with a tiny winkie, psychosis aside.

The vodybull pushed him over the edge but the roids gave him the capability and the phychotic shut down.

I'm no chemist so I can't give you a full breakdown, but I imagine it is a bit like combining the equaly lethal potential energies of a chimp and a chainsaw.

As I said he was a mate and I'd known him for quite a few years with no evidence of total psychosis before and we'd all been out on the p155 a fair few times before then and no-one had needed facial reconstructive surgery after.

BD- no he wasn't a ginge 😉

Re his wife, she was also a door'person', looked a lot like Sonia warrior princess.

The upshot of it was I ended up a bit of a pawn in a war between tow biker gangs as he was connected to one and she another (she decided to switch allegiances after the divorce for protection)

Edit:- David R, he used to be a really good level headed friend, we had a few near the knuckle practical jokes but no more than any lads do really.

To list would take too long, suffice to say the majority of modern life as far as I can tell.

Biggest mystery to me is going on holiday- being somewhere with no mates far from home where I have to pay for everything.

Second biggest is the cinema, it's like TV except it costs a tenner to get in and they get stroppy about you taking your own food.

Yes there is a common relationship.

I was stabbed in the neck and my girlfriend had her nose and both cheek bones fractured by a doorman friend of mine at a party after the red mist descended following his abuse of steroids to bulk up having deliberately lost weight to gain sympathy in a messy divorce case involving (ironically) his wife assaulting him with a baseball bat.

He drank a whole bottle of vodka washed down with several red bulls and then literally pulled the place apart. It was like the police station scene in Terminator (not helped by the protagonist being clad in black jeans, boots and a leather jacket).

It took six cops in full PPE to "subdue" him which involved all standing on his limbs and taking it in turns to hit him about the head with their asps.

By the end of it there were eight people in hospital no doors left on the hinges and blood literally up the walls. I went in the next day to clear up and there were bloody handprints all over the windows where people had struggled to get them open to jump out and escape.

All this done by a man who I had been laughing and joking with minutes earlier.

Keep treading water mate, I feel dead guilty about complaining about my job when fundamentally I'm trying to make the world a better place (well my city anyway) and make double my sallary at my last job.

I'm still skint as I went from renting to owning and feel very frustarted at new managment systems and ConDem cuts, not to mention the lack of £s to spend on… well anything at all really.

However I intend to live a lot longer than my 31 years so far and as such know that this is just a blip and one day I'll look back and laugh.

That's what keeps me going. 🙂

Been wearing a pair for four years as my main riding shorts and just rotated the inners.

No problems whatsoever.

Did find them cut a bit odd for walking or running in at the gym, but that's not what CYCLING shorts are for after all.

I can't get the link to work but my in-laws insist I look like Orlando Bloom (yeah, right in as much as we both have heads)

Some football thugs did below "I am the one and only" at me on a train for some time once.

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Jonedwards,

possibly the truest thing I've read in years, my mindset to a frightening degree.

Nonetheless I know where my bread is buttered and if the bash is on works time I'd go and keep the mortgage in the black.

OK so you sit in an office and then have to spend an hour in walking distance getting free food in the company of people you would be sat next to eating your lunch anyway- what's the problem?

Look no-one like's being pushed around but let's have a bit of perspective please.

Five years ago I started a job in November and suddenly was issued with a three line whip that I had to get from Nottingham (my office) to Oxford (head office) for the "Christmas party" with no notice and no excuses – "well we've all got families, we've just got the good sense to work at head office in Oxford where we all happen to live".

The party was two hours of speaches with some cold sausage rolls and a p155ed admin telling me I looked like a tw4t. The MDs opening speach began with a positive alnology between his buisness model and Hitlers.

I belive the phrase is, That's life.

😆
Sartorial discussion between keyboard warriors on an MTB forum….

I might as well ask Dame Margot Fonteyne what her thoughts are on on the best method for remodeling a concrete drive.

As long as you don't use your wang bar… fnrrph 😆

More like those pompous goth bands from the '80s, but with added guitar w*nkery.

spot on, I think that deserves a pint mate. 😀

Re the seven string, yes I beleive it was an Ibenez Gem, twin humbuckers with a single coil in the middle- Designed by Steve Vai.

(slowly walks to the coat rack sellects anorak and walks out into the rain friendless and embarased)