Find a local canoe club and sign her up. They’ll usually have a bunch of boats she can try out and work out what she likes, what kind of paddling she’s in to (whitewater, touring, sea kayaking, racing, canoe polo etc) and then you can look at a boat accordingly. Same with kit, they’ll be able to advise. Realistically a bounyancy aid and probably a helmet, but again, it’ll depend what type of paddling she likes best.

http://www.canoe-england.org.uk/findaclub.aspx should help!

What’s the deal if they get a puncture? Is it game over? Repair themselves ? Push to the pits?

Deal with it themselves is the normal way. Or, in a lot of cases, just withdraw since even if you’re very quick, that’s pretty much your race finished if you’re aiming for the podium.

One of my GF’s mates once asked if I ever fancied/did anything untoward with any of the young student ladies we got coming to the University canoe club I coach.

I pointed out that as a slightly overweight, bearded, ugly bloke in his 30s, if any attractive, nubile teenage girl were to proposition me, I’d probably be laughing so hard I’d be unable to accept.

In one of Boardman’s pieces the other day, he also reckoned the water acted as a lubricant on the debris and potentially made it easier for stuff to penetrate the tyre.

I’d assume pretty much everyone is using power meters, so maybe some feel the HRM isn’t necessary as well?

You’ll be fine. I’ve slept in my hammock (DD Camping double-layer) quite regularly, always slept well once I’d got a few basics sorted out.

Main thing to note is that a sleeping bag underneath you ends up compressed, so you’re more susceptible to the cold from underneath than if you were on the ground on a decent mat. Stick something like a foam mat underneath you in the hammock, sleep slightly diagonally on it (not straight down the centreline, helps you lie flatter), and you’ll be fine.

Oh yeah, are you taking a tarp for over the top if it rains?!

CountZero: Never managed to learn to play any of Kris’s stuff, but I do love Songs for a Hurricane – Waiting Under The Waves is a brilliant opener for an album.

Jesus Christ I might be right for once…

You don’t need a data signal to run GPS, z1ppy. A lot use A-GPS, where they use 3G to triangulate your position first and then the actual GPS to refine that (quicker than a GPS-only lock-on), but it’s not essential.

NavFree or Skobbler both work great on Android, and you can download the maps in advance over WiFi.

I tried OSMAnd on a Blackberry Playbook and it was rubbish, slow and glitchy – may work better on Android.

Steve Earle – Galway Girl

Saw Steve in Leeds a couple of years ago, just after Galway Girl had been used on a Magners/Bulmers advert. He played it beautifully, then added at the end “Just to let y’all know, even at my worst ebb as an alcoholic and junkie, not once did f—ing cider pass my lips…”

That last climb is pretty much the way the Grand Raid des Pyrenees Ultramarathon descends, it starts and finishes at Vielle-Aure.

Outside bet: Majka to gun up it for another stage win.

slowed versions of things like Pink Floyd’s ‘Wish You Were Here’

Jeez, how much slower can you make that song?! [/quote]

A bit!

Old Crow Medicine Show – Wagon Wheel
Jeffrey Foucault – Northbound 35
Redbird – You Are The Everything

Those are three of my favourites. That and slowed versions of things like Pink Floyd’s ‘Wish You Were Here’ (a la Sparklehorse’s version) often go down well.

As plug ugly as all the other Urge helmets I’ve ever seen, IMHO.

I’m a meat eater/omnivore, my other half is 99.5% veggie*, one of my sisters is vegan, the other one is pescetarian but allergic to dairy.

I definitely fart the most.

None of us (even the serious vegan) evangalise about our choice of diet. I may try and feed the girlfriend donner meat when she’s drunk occasionally, but that’s merely in jest, and it’s not hugely identifiable as meat.

*She has been known to eat burnt barbecue stuff when she’s drunk.

I think I don’t care that much. Meat is tasty, and farts are amusing.

“So forgive me if I’m being thicker than the offspring of a village idiot and a TV weather girl, but what was the point of that little exercise? ”

“Mr Flibble is very cross, you shouldn’t have run away from him. What are we going to do with them Mr Flibble?”

Mr Flibble ‘whispers’ into Rimmer’s ear.

“We can’t possibly do that! Who’d clear up the mess?”

Time trial support is what they’ve done it for…

…That and publicity, of course.

An old housemate was very into them, but I was never fussed. Got given a copy of their ‘Best of’ (Wave of Mutilation) and slowly getting into them.

I’m using Transfil Flying Snakes and they seem to work well for me.

1) Set the inside pad as close to the rotor as you can get without it scrubbing.
2) Set the outside pads as close as you want it for decent lever travel/feel
3) Adjust your lever-end barrel adjuster so there’s no slack whatsoever, and then about half a turn more.

That’s the system that’s worked for me on both Road and Mtn BB7s. You do get a better/less spongy feel to them with ‘compressionless housing’, they can be a bit soggy feeling without, but I’ve never had an issue with them not locking up.

Water boiling plus maybe a minute, Kryters.

Manitou Tower Pro. Love mine, various specs about but the best fork I’ve used in years (after RS Reba, Fox). Not tried the X-Fusions but love the Manitou.

Giant Hogweed? Phototoxic, can be quite nasty…

Edit: Beaten to it… Great minds etc etc…

Basically, boil the onion and potatoes slowly in oil, chuck some of the oil away, add a shedload of eggs beaten until they’re broken up but not whisked to fluffy, and cook very, very slowly.

I never manage to season mine right*, but I can get them fairly close these days.

*they never quite taste like the ones I had in Spain, but they’ll do for me.

I don’t think instant coffee is vile, I also don’t think it’s coffee. It’s a different drink that happens to share the same name and a similar colour.

^ This +many. Not even the Starbucks Via instant. It’s slightly more like coffee, but it’s not quite there. It’s like the Bootleg Beatles or Bjorn Again: Close, but no cylindrical smoking thing.

Aeropress coffee is kind of half way between espresso and french press, but that’s a nice half way to be. It’s my ‘first thing in the morning’ brew, because it’s less faff than a moka pot and nicer/stronger than a cafetiere. Metal disc, upside-down brew, give the water half a minute to cool off and let it brew while I iron my shirt. Works well enough to get me out of the house in a fit state to avoid traffic.

Forgive the anthropomorphism hopefully you get what i mean

Well put, and yes, I get what you mean. It’s the anthropomorphism that riles me regularly (my missus does the humanising thing with her cats), and it seems to be a general trait of pet owners.

Non pet owners, it seems to me, like to forget that humans are animals too. Our emotions are not “special” or exclusive to our species.

In a way, they are, as is our ability to convey them, suppress them, and disguise them.

a learnt behaviour that earns the ‘creature’ a meal ticket.

Is that really so different to a human?[/quote]

Yes, because our learning doesn’t have to be experiental. It is, in early life, but we develop the ability to learn from others mistakes, and from theoretical, hypothetical mistakes. We don’t have to make them ourselves.

I think folk would if you did them the honour of stating your view more diplomatically and you sounded like you wanted to understand the difference between you and them

Fair point, Junkyard. Always difficult to discern in text, but point taken.

Imagine that you are responsible for “a creature” and that creature is incredibly loyal and loves you unconditionally. It is always excited to see you, will walk by your side for hours when you are in an active mood, and curl up beside you at the fire when you are not. It’s funny, intelligent, empathic and it shares your life for years, maybe decades if you’re lucky, always there for you. Always.

See, that’s where you’ve got me. No, I can’t understand the emotion in that, because I don’t relate the ‘creature’ with the qualities you embue it with. Pet owners, it seems to me, like to project human qualities and emotions onto their pets, and I don’t believe them to be true – love, loyalty, humour, empathy, even intelligence in the human sense of the term. The ‘creature’ is not, as far as I believe, capable of that level of emotional depth, and is acting on a basic equation: Learnt ‘good’ behaviour = food and comfort; Base ‘bad’ behaviour = a thwack across the nose with a newspaper. That’s not ‘love’ or ‘loyalty’ in the human sense, just a learnt behaviour that earns the ‘creature’ a meal ticket.

What, the Behemoth? Or the Leviathan? I wasn’t when I last checked…

Ironically, Cerberus[/quote]

If people want to get mushy over what I view to be, as I said earlier, a smelly, noisy, waste of money, more power to them.

Sounds like a child, no? [/quote]
Yeah. Don’t particularly like them, either :)

You’re histories greatest monster

What, the Behemoth? Or the Leviathan? I wasn’t when I last checked… :)

… doesn’t mean that it’s obligatory to read and comment on things that don’t interest you.

I think you get me wrong. It interests me that people get sentimental about animals, precisely because I don’t feel that way myself and I’d like to understand the rationale, even if I don’t wish to share it. I’m not attacking anyone else for their opinion, though apparently I’m under fire for expressing my own because I don’t agree with the majority.

As far as the original story goes, it’s a shame the dog died. I don’t understand why the send-off was so important, and the story didn’t bring me anywhere close to tears. That’s not a ‘negative’ statement, just an “I don’t understand, really”. If people want to get mushy over what I view to be, as I said earlier, a smelly, noisy, waste of money, more power to them. Be as effusive as you like, but do me the honour of letting me at least express my confusion.

I have been for some time, Jamie. But I’m okay with that :)

Why would anyone who hates dogs want to open a thread which contains that warning ?

Because it’s a public forum, we can read whatever we want to read and respond to whatever we want to respond to?

I understand the mentality that “anyone who disagrees with me/the majority must be called out as a troll” (thanks A_A), but that’s not what I’m aiming for, I genuinely don’t understand why people get so sentimental about animals, as I said earlier. I’m not saying people shouldn’t get sentimental about animals, hell, it’s up to them. I just don’t get it.

And I like that humans are can be very different from each other. It makes things much more interesting than if we were all the same.

You do realise that your fantasy world of dogs doesn’t relate to actual historical evidence dont’t you?

Doesn’t change the fact I don’t like them!

Dog and humans go back millennia, not liking dogs is literally inhuman.

No, not liking dogs is a case of ancestral memory back to the days when we built fires in cave entrances to stop the wolves stealing our children.

Not liking dogs is very weird indeed.

No it’s not, it’s a side-effect of growing up in a farming village and being bitten too many times by vicious barstewarding farm dogs, usually to the tune of an idiotic owner saying something inane like “Oh, don’t mind him/ he’s just a puppy/ he’s just playing/ he’d not harm a soul”

I do not wish harm on animals, but I genuinely don’t understand the sentimentality pet owners have for a walking, crapping, noisy, smelly waste of money.

Flat bar – probably.
MTB hubs – yes
160/180 discs – might be optimistic. 160, yes, as far as I know. 180, not sure the fork was designed for them that big. I’m running 140s front and rear on my (carbon forked) X and it’s more than enough for me.
Rack – sort of depends on the generation of the frame. The last iteration (v3) had rack eyelets. Not sure earlier ones did.

Size – I’m 5’9″ and comfortably ride a 54. You’ll probably be right on a 58.

Sure I read somewhere that ironically a few riders went down because they were just unfamiliar with the feel of fatter tyres at lower pressures

That was one of Talansky’s comments, I think. ‘Low pressure tyre squirm’ had him off at one point, he reckoned.