Who ever directs us in anyway, surely we are all responsible for our own actions unless we’ve been physically coerced or threatened with violence. PC Harwood is responsible for his own actions, he wasn’t bullied into hitting anyone with a baton. What anyone else has said to him is a separate subject.
He’s supposed to be a policeman, not some kind of nazi stormtrooper.
He killed Ian Tomlinson. I can believe he didn’t mean to, but his actions ultimately did.
How much respect can people be expected to have for the police if they can seemingly get away with murder?

So, for religion I can put Jedi, for nationality I can put Space Traveller for that is a way I would describe it* – I don’t feel like an Irish Traveller and for job I can put Jedi (I worked on Star Wars Episode 1 so it’s not completely unrelated).
I might even invite a Jedi to visit for the night. If he doesn’t show up after I’ve gone to all the trouble of filling in the form, is that my fault?

* I don’t travel through anything else, except water I suppose when swimming

I have about eight pairs of bib-shorts from a variety of manufacturers.
What is without doubt true is that the Gore pair I have are the shortest in the leg.
Don’t know if this holds true for the latest models, I think I’ve had the Gore pair about three years but it is what I would recommend you are after if so. I would try before you buy though. Every manufacturer I have has a different cut and some very different sizing from others.
XL in Briko about the same as medium in Lusso.

Look 986 Carbon HT – mtb racing
Orange ST4 – general mtbing
Maxilight 120 – Bad weather mtb
Raleigh Titanium mtb – (~18 years old) general pottering
Time Edge – road summer bike
Raleigh 753 – road winter bike (raced on 20 years ago)
Track bike – velodrome use only
Paul Donohue 853 track bike – sits on turbo trainer only now.

I use all of them throughout the year for there specified purpose.

After the Vietnam war the communist Khmer Rouge lifted there heads up and looked around. They were penniless and in a country bombed to sh1t. What they saw was something worse. Cambodia. The people there had been subjected to the tyranny of a marxist dictator and were being murdered in their millions.
So they did what no other civilised wealthy nation could be bothered to do. They went into Cambodia, defeated Pol Pot and his troops driving them back into impenetrable jungle.
How did Mrs Thatcher react to this defeat of the most evil man alive during my life time?
Well, she assisted her pal Ronnie Reagan in fighting the commies. They funded and gave arms to Pol Pot.
She gave arms to Pol Pot.
Mrs Thatcher gave arms to Pol Pot.
Luckily, mainly for the survivors of Pol Pot’s purges it was to no avail. The communist Vietnamese kept him in place then once everything was under control, left.

Now, my grandfather and my great grandfather were miners in South Yorkshire and Derbyshire and I grew up through the devastation caused but there are some things that should not be forgotten and forgiven.
Perhaps some of the Thatcher apologists on here can explain her rational here to me.

But when she does finally pass away of natural causes after a long life, I shall pause, take time out to remember 4 million that didn’t.
Then I shall party like a b@st@rd.
All are welcome to join me, those who normally occupy the expensive seats can even come along and rattle your jewellery in time to the music and dancing. I will even buy a drink in the name of inclusion.

Very unlikely.
My sister lives in Sheffield and for my nephew’s birthday I wanted to buy him a bike. I couldn’t pay for the bike over the phone using a credit card, then have my sister collect it.
It would have to be posted to my credit card address in London.

The way round it might be for it be undelivered to your house, you then ring the delivery people and using reference on the missed delivery card ask for item to be redilivered to your work address as you won’t ever be at home during delivery hours.
Some delivery companies will do this.

J E James sometimes use Royal Mail (better for me but not you in this circumstance). Last delivery from them though was by Home. A pain for me to collect but might(?) re-deliver to your work. Might.

10:48, 29th in the vets losing a place in MV on the last descent as I had to stop to pee. My bladder was about to burst and one more bump would have caused it – next year I'm considering a tubeless bladder or nappies. Did I say next year?

Great event and I got better and quicker at descending the gravelly fireroads but lost all my speed EVERY time at the 90° bends at the bottom of them then would have to start crawling up the following ascent.

Shred, we can't wipe out midges, they're the only thing that pollinate cocoa. No midges, no chocolate. Although, admittedly there aren't too many cocoa plantations in Northumberland,

Rockshox Recon 351 Air 140mm
£350

Rockshox Recon 351 coil 85-130mm
£290

I have eight different pairs of bib shorts, would buy Lusso ones next from the ones I have. Lusso shorts on me feel as good as much more expensive shorts I have, (that said I haven't tried Altura).

I have a very bony ass and a firm Selle Italia SLR saddle.

I had this problem two weeks ago then at Selkirk event it fell off and wouldn't fix back on.
After buying a new XT chainset I then discovered I'd got too many spacers in bottom bracket. BB is 73mm, not 68mm as I read on detail.
Not had problem before on other bikes with Race Face chainset so this was my solution to same thing.

Lots of carrier bags or a few bin liners always come in handy.
Keeps dry stuff dry and smelly stuff contained (recycle bags are semi-transparent so you can see what's in them).
On stage races I tend to wear my better shorts first then work down to my worst ones last.
This helps prevent saddle soreness rather than later trying to cure it.
Assos creme is a genuine wonder in this department too. I've not tried others but one tub does last years, especially as I don't otherwise use it that often.
On one of the wet years in TransWales I bought a cheap multi-pack of socks and threw the soaking, stinky, filthy, worn pair out every day.
Flip flops, Crocs or similar are good for the showers.
A variety of energy bars so you don't get sick of your favourites and never want to use them again.
A newspaper so you can put it in wet shoes overnight if necessary.
I also use a sleeping bag liner to save me washing my sleeping bag.

I know this is a bit obvious and basic but have you tried a different quick release? Hope q/r don't have the best record.
It's one of the reasons I'll switch to 15mm bolt throughs on mtb in future.

A day without fusion is like a day without sunshine.

Barium: What you do with dead chemists.

"Today, everybody remembers Galileo. How many can name the bishops and professors who refused to look through his telescope?" – James Hogan, Mind Matters

Cav crash

the wheel does indeed spring back into shape. I wonder if they'll use it!
about the 51 second mark.

This was the following day:
skids are at kids

I have a pair of odi ruffian that I used for maybe 500 miles.
Ruffian lock on grips
They're not comfortable after a few hours and seeing as I usually ride enduro events I haven't used them for two years and have no intention of ever doing so again.
They're yours if you want them. Slightly used but in need of a good home.
paul at facer dot plus dot com

If I want to purchase further amounts (in increments of 10%), is it possible to remortage for say 70% of the property if my income increases and the mortgage people allow me to borrow more?

I can buy upwards to 100% of my property, but once I own over 50% I am responsible for such things as building insurance, at the moment I'm not.

I bought 44% of a new build shared ownership two bedroom flat six years ago.
The build quality isn't brilliant and the architecture of the building was obviously copied from somewhere else and plotted to fit. There are no windows on my south west wall and as a result my living room gets about four hours of direct sunlight a year.
I'm on the third floor and the water pressure at night isn't strong enough to have a shower with. This is a problem as I do shift work.
I might have to put a water tank in.

If I could do it again I would probably try to get shared ownership of an older property.

I got a shared ownership mortgage with Lambeth Building Society. This was bought out by Portman which was then taken over by Nationwide. Each time this happened I did receive a cheque. £600 first time, £180 the second. When my mortgage term finishes again I will apply to another smaller building society. Not all building societies offer shared ownership deals and I could only get a fixed rate one, i.e. not one which was linked to the interest rate.

There is a clause in the contract about renting out but three of the flats in the block are now sub-let.
A fourth, which was repossesed by the bank, still sits locked up a year later.
The rent I pay on to the housing association went up by £100 after one year. From £217 in the first year to £360 now, six years later.

Still, it is cheaper than the mortgage on a two bedroom flat and with the money saved I buy a new bike each year and go on a cycling holiday which was the original intention, although on an index linked mortgage I would now be saving even more.
I didn't have any money though for the first couple of years as moving in and just having to buy so much stuff seemed to swamp it all.
Also I had to buy my parking space. £5,000. Yes, five grand but I put that on the mortgage.

Basically, I would recommend it. If I could afford to move, I would seriously think about renting out this place and getting a full mortgage on the new one.

Whereabouts is the place?

I use pea protein. It doesn't make me f@rt, let alone do ones that stink to high heaven.
I mix 25g in a blender with 1/2 pint (soya) milk, 43g of plain Torq, a banana, teaspoon of peanut butter, teaspoon of barley malt, six almonds and either a teaspoon of cocoa powder and/or a mango or a kiwi or some vanilla essence.
There seems to be an unwritten rule about no more than 25g of concentrated protein at one go and to sip rather than glug.
Why 25g protein then 43g carbo powder? Well those are my scoop sizes and the fitness guides from Matt in Singletrack suggests 2:1 ratio carb to protein.
I only have it after a ride, swim, fitness session or whatever.

How old is your son?
I did it when I was 15 with some friends in twelve days, staying in Youth Hostels. It wasn't a holiday. We were either cycling or eating everyday, all day. Mind you we had terrible weather too, including headwinds all the way to JO'G. The second worst day was the shortest day – the flat plains through Cheshire were just into a gail at about 10mph flat out. The worst day was riding for 100 miles in snow and hail in Scotland in July. I bought some thick ladies tights from a Boots we went past as I only had shorts with me.
But thirty years later I'm still cycling so it must have had some sort of positive effect on me. I don't think it was the tights, I've only ever bought bib ones since.

Lance rides 175 cranks and he's about 5'8" or shorter so short cranks for shorter people might be a bit of a myth.
If you're used to 172.5 I would recommend the 170 Stronglights. They're a good chainset anyway.
But what bottom bracket are you using?
Make sure it will all marry up. Ofmega had their own square taper measurement. Otherwise Japanese and European standards only varied by about 1.5mm for chain line.

Also make sure you get chainring to match your chain and sprocket.
Or vice versa, that chain and sprocket match pitch of chainring.
Remember track/pista chain width is different, 1/8" rather than standard 3/32".

43 – film industry electrician

1.If you've got the offer use it, they might take it away otherwise and others might not be able to gain advantage from it then.
Halfords at least put money back into cycling, sponsoring a road team and a few xc people.

2. what sort of riding do you do and do you have any desire to try other things?
e.g. they do the Carrera Titan Carbon for £1000
Carrera Titan Carbon
I'm sure you could find something there just as an alternative bike – bigger, faster, winter, summer, race etc option
3. It gets great reviews as a road bike and if you think you'll use it, even occaisionally then it's a good choice.
4. We're not your mum, although admittedly it's not permission you want. Just get something a bit different to what you would normally get.

If you're a member of British Cycling you get 10-20% off at Halfords although I don't know if would work in conjunction with your voucher.

Last week I too bought some Sennheiser CX300 IIs, but £30 from Richer Sounds.
I use them with my new Nokia 5800 XpressMusic phone. Brilliant sound, although I've nothing previous to compare with except hi-fi.
I use the small ear buds, just didn't get on at all with earphones that came with phone.

Carrier bags over your socks.
This is what I always used to do on Polaris events in the evenings as we all wandered around in wet shoes.
If you're bothered about style then you can look around for appropriate colour (and size) bags. You will need spare shoes at work unless you're happy like that all day (on wet days).

Blame the politicians or the police?
I am a 42 year old male. I am from the north (Sheffield) originally and went to college in Newcastle but now live and work in London. I am a skilled manual worker and dress accordingly. I have been stopped by the police three times in the twenty years I have lived here.
One of my closest friends is also a 42 year old male from the north (Manchester) who went to university in Newcastle. He now works in academia for museums and galleries and dresses much smarter than me at all times. In the twenty years he has lived and worked in London he gets stopped by the police about once every three maybe four weeks. I know because I live nearest to him so he always comes to see me after to just find rationality and peace of mind.
On Tuesday he was walked out of WH Smiths in Waterloo by a group of transport police in front of a rush hour crowd. His crime was to have gone in with an orange bag. I’m being serious, they told him 90% of crime in Waterloo was commited by people with orange bags.
He had just bought a yogurt drink in Sainsburys across the road. They accused him of stealing a bottle of water before they looked in his orange bag.
Are the politicians to blame for this incident that delayed him from getting to work by 40 minutes as well as embarassing him and seemingly showing the general public who can’t be trusted.
Yes, there is one major diference between my friend and I.
Otherwise he is from a better family and looks much more respectable than I do.
Every three weeks I have to help him return to normal.
I do not blame the politicians.
I do know that the police are giving certan sections of society an attitude of
‘give a dog a bad name and he’ll live up to it.’
I blame the police. All of them. Especially you Munqe-chick, unless you do something personally to stop this sort of action. The rate my friend is stopped hasn’t changed since the Stephen Lawrence incedence.

As for the G20, I have attended a few marches in London. On the one time I saw ‘incitement of the mob’, as it were, it was being done by someone who was obviously a plainclothes policeman.
The actions of the police at the G20 were premeditated.
I can’t find the pictures of the guy hacking at the building but I remember thinking it looked like he was wearing a police issue balaclava. Perhaps it was you Munqe-chick.

There are lots of proper bike races every week in London, have you actually tried any to see how you cope against your average sportsman? That’s a good start.
How old are you? British cycling is just bringing through the 19-20 year olds for 2012 and 2016. If you are god enough they will find you.
Cat 3 is something to aim at for now though.

Good luck

jimbobrighton, He was indeed a world champion at the age of 21 when he rode for an American team (Motorola) which would have been naively unaware of exactly what drugs to actually take and Armstrong too arrogant to take any.
Long before he was diagnosed with cancer.

It’s a long way home for a young cyclists from Europe to America and nowhere to go if you do return.
Armstrong stayed and began learning how to win, his way. And in this he is a strong character. He doesn’t just want to win, he wants to beat everybody.
He was lucky in the the fact that many influential people in US cycling had belief in him and he got their support because they knew he was good enough.

I guess some of you want to believe he was guilty but outside of their acerbic section of the media many French cyclists think Armstrong was a genuine brilliant cyclist.
Look at how the media here treats celebrities that are ‘out of favour’ or something and that’s how Armstrong is treated by the gutter press there. Don’t forget he’s bigger than Beckham or suchlike.
Any negative story will get a journalist money. Dirt sells.
It is possible that Armstrong was clean. Feasibly he brushed boundaries, only insiders will know but everything else was measured to the nth degree.
And I for one believe the ice story, because that is how Lance will have bent the rules. Ingeniusly.

Perhaps Lance has a Bontrager Whizzinator.
High Times advice for an interview[/url]

Lance was and probably still is responsible for more high end bikes being sold in America than all other cyclists put together.
That’s a lot of money going into cycling. Money in cycling and awareness of cyclists, to me, is a good thing. Hence Lance is, in my onpinion, a good thing.
More money for more investment for better, more efficient products.
Cycling doesn’t need Lance, but it’s a lot more comfortable of with him.
I don’t believe he took drugs because I believe in innocent until proven guilty. And also I don’t think he needed them because he was so far ahead in training techniques & methods plus all other aspects. I don’t think many pros are even where he was ten years ago.
He has many people beaten psychologically before the start of a race.
But if he did take take drugs, then indirectly those drugs are responsible for bringing millions of dollars into my sport and I for one wouldn’t run off and join a monastry if that were true.
“Winners do do drugs!”
There’s do do in the middle of that phrase. :lol:
But perhaps some of you think to err is human, to forgive is not Company Policy.

If the peak doesn’t get in your way then don’t take it off.
It isn’t a fashion thing. When I say ‘visually’, I don’t mean how you look but what you can actually see.
I just found that when I was down on the drops I had to crane my neck to see under the peak for all round vision. Particularily into the distance.
There are no ‘drops’ on mtb bars so same positioning and neck stretching doesn’t occur.
I have also noticed that more (but not all) users of helmets with peaks get neck ache after longer road rides.
I did too until I took my peak off for road riding. Now I have splashed out and have two helmets.
It was cheaper than seeing a neck specialist.
If you watch some of the ‘classics’, then you will see many pros still wear a cap under their helmets to keep the crud out of their eyes. But they have a cap rather than a peak so that they can flip the peak to the ‘up’ position when they’re on the drops and want to be able to have a full field of vision.
Here’s an example of both:

Robbie McEwen (Katusha) in the Gent-Wevelgem escape. 8 April 2009

Those are track repairs, not roadworks, perhaps from where Sir Chris Hoy fell in the keirin. I’d need resurfacing if he hit me at that speed.

New Boardman carbon bike
It’s less than a grand and Halfords do put money into the GB team.
If you want to spend more money I would recommend a Giant up to the price you can afford, if you want less of a carbon footprint (i.e. something made in Europe at least) and non-rattly Shimano shifters (they all do eventually) then something from the Time range with Campagnolo.
Of course other brands are available.
Take the peak off your helmet when you ride on the road, it helps visually when you’re down on the bars and do not refer to it as the darkside. It is cycling just like mountain biking is.

Bruneep
What percentage of your life do you spend in bed and would you consider spending that percentage of your income on it?
I bought a memory foam mattress about a month ago. I just went out and did it without testing. Stupid maybe, but I really needed a new mattress and I’m very happy with it.
At first I thought it was like touching a dead animal because it was so different to old one, but now don’t think about it.
What I would say is, yes, if you can, try one out first, but spend as much as you can afford on one. It will still be less than a third of the income you earn whilst you own it.

Pullfaces – what the hell have you done to that poor Orange?

Zokes, what do you mean?
USE SUB fork on an Orange SUB 5 in SUBmarine grey.
Ok, I made the last bit up but there is a sub-standard rider and a bottle cage where the bottle cage holes are.
Or do you mean what have I done to it now. I bought a hard tail in 07 and gave the Orange frame away to a friend. Everything needed replacing. And by everything I mean everything except the headset. Some bits I’d had since February 2000, including carbon bars.
But the Orange was brilliant and if I had the budget and space I would buy another just to have one and of course ride.

Sorry. Out hunting in 07. I’m in the middle, no skirt.

On the bike in Poland in 06

Out hunting in 07. I’m in the middle, no skirt.

Does he know the old Swedish beard tradition?
Stag do beard in Sweden

Funkadelic
Standin on the Verge of Gettin it On

Is it purely for the track?
And if so what type? Indoor wooden or outdoor concrete.
I ride regularily on an outdoor track in season (not winter) and use 23c clinchers. I have used 22c tubs in the past.
Have also used both at Newport Velodrome.
I had Tufo sealant in the tubs but am about to try some Vittoria sealant in some road tubs I have. No problem with the Tufo sealant just the lbs had Vittoria in.
I have punctured clinchers on the track and seen many others have them and never seen a tyre roll off. I have seen a badly glued tub roll off on the road though.

If it’s your first track bike I would recommend 23c clinchers. No problems with fixing them if you puncture and more versatile if you want to use on the road or sell on.
If you expect to compete then you can move onto tubs and huge pressures but still have old wheels as spare.
48×15 gear for most track riding should suit you, although I need a 49×15 at least if I compete against the fast boys.

I’ve been expecting more Fulcrum MTB kit since their wheels came out.
An mtb carbon triple chainset with mtb version of Campagnolo bottom bracket as much as anything else. It would mean the ability to have a narrower q-factor (pedal stance width) and would be fine with a lot of hardtails with 68mm bottom brackets.
I’d buy one.
Then slowly but surely front mech, then rear mech…..