45 miles or so, from the cottage we’d hired on South Uist, across the causeway onto Eriskay, ferry over to Barra, up to the north tip, run up Beinn Sgurabhal, bike back to the airport for tea, cake and watching a plane land on the beach, round the west coast to Castlebay for lunch, down to the south tip of Vatersay, back up to Castlebay and round the east coast into a **** headwind all the way back to the ferry, then back over Eriskay and the causeway back to the cottage.

The money for a straight 1-1/8th steerer, 9mm QR, 100mm Tower Pro fork, since the one I bought on fleabay was apparently “already sold but relisted automatically by mistake” – the Suntour’ll have to stay a while longer.
Aside from that, a new rear mech to replace the bent one I cannibalised off my full suss before I realised it was bent, a new saddle to replace the one that’s really, really uncomfortable, and a full geared drivetrain to replace the singlespeed one, sometime after winter.

Sorry to hear, Ton. As others said, it’s not a thing of age, though. 4 friends of mine have passed away in the past year, and I’m only 32. I couldn’t make any of the funerals, unfortunately.

Look up Yorwoods. They’re based up near Ripon but should be able to advise on a supplier near you, they have (or at least, had) a decent database of them. Failing that, South Yorkshire Forest at Sheffield might know.

About the solar dryer, don’t know of anyone running one in the area, the best forced drying I saw was someone over near South Cave who had wood stacked in an old rail tunnel – the through-breeze worked wonders. I guess it’s economies of scale though.

Inov8 Race Pro 22 might be a good bet, I love mine (though its sadly stolen predecessor, a Macpac Amp 25 was even better but much more expensive)

Used them for a kayak recently, but being heavy and plastic there wasn’t a lot of damage they could do..

Sainsbury’s meal deal: fancy cheese and ham butty, pineapple sticks and a bottle of pop, supplemented by cheese and onion crisps (added into the butty) and a lemon curd yoghurt. With a cuppa to wash it all down.

Everybody must get stoned…

I’m just chucking the cash together for a set of Towers, they seem to be getting good reviews. The bigger offset should help bridge the gap between the 45-46mm RS and others and the 51mm G2 a bit, since it’s a Trek I’m building.

I think they went off the boil in the past few years because of the owners and importers – I remember talking to TF about servicing my old Radium shock and being told that they couldn’t get hold of spare parts. That would have put a few previous owners off!

Apologies, Flash.

Cheers
Nobbs

I don’t access NHS.net outside of the office. I looked at syncing my phone, but decided nothing I do was actually important enough to require my attention outside office hours.

We’ve decided, as a group, to all keep a potato in our pocket.
…cause, well..you never know.

Pratchett fan by any chance Jamie?

OP: Fat 27.5 Rigid is the new black. Everybody’s doing it.

If the date works, might be tempted to join you for part of it – not fit enough for the full works I think! (and it’ll give me a chance to work out how the hell Boxelder knows me!)

Anything by Coldplay, Elton John, Tina Turner, Blur, Pulp, Oasis…

I only ever listen to my MP3 player or occasionally Bob Harris on Radio 2.

Start cheap and look at an upgradeable, maybe? Trek Marlin can be got for under £500, Evans had a couple of 15.5″ frames left when I last checked.

I overtook a old ST170 this morning. The driver took it really really badly weaving allover my rear.

+1.

The CRV-driving knobjockey in front of me this evening was in the same league. After being overtaken very nicely (even if i do say so myself) on a perfectly straight, completely clear bit of road, her proceeded to hammer it back past me on a dodgy bend, ram his overinflated ego-mobile into the gap between me and the car in front, then test me and the missus to a “how not to…” display of seemingly random braking, cornering like a moron (brake late and ram it over at the last second), and as a special test, a sample of various anti-overtaking tactics including, but not limited to, a) sitting at 30 while there was traffic coming the other way but gassing it up to 60 if the road was clear, and b) sitting at 40, vehicle placed across both lanes on a stretch where there’s a crawler lane of sorts (A660 between Otley and Pool Bank crossroads, for those that know the road).

They seemed to get very vexed when I didn’t play along.

“He vanished with a puff”
“They put the willies up each other”
“Haaayyy…”

And my personal favourite

“What daughter?”

As near flight as you can get on the Upper Tees. Pilot – the late great Mute Parker.

Yup, weighs naff-all and takes up no space in my camelbak. Since it’d be a ride-ender, why not?

Yep, tomhoward’s got it, teaching of that ‘rule’ has been abandoned, since there’s more exceptions to it than there are adherences.

Any of the 3 Konas I’ve ridden. Just seemed too short and upright to me, obviously didn’t fit with my size and build.

You looked just like that when I met you pyro – but then it was last year (that’s got you thinking……….)

It has… Email me and tell me when/where! I’m hopeless at working stuff like that out… By the Keswick references I’m guessing Porage or something like that…

Not really of my youth (was only taken last year, and I’m 32), but I’d stay looking like this one:

As far as religion-based charities go, I think they’re grand. They helped a friend of mine out when things went south while he was in Oz a few years back, and from his comments they were helpful, professional and, as others have said, non judgemental at a time when he was both in a shitty situation and embarrassed as hell about it. While he’s not of any particular faith, he now volunteers with them over here to repay the kindness.

Once dropped one so bad, so horrendously stinking, that it cleared the vehicle I was in. Which was fun to watch, since it was a uni minibus and I was driving it at the time. I wouldn’t have pulled over normally, but I was laughing so hard…

For you, Hora

Tina Fey fighting ninjas with comedy fire:

(from cbheck.tumblr.com

Yup, ended up in a more-or-less “leave or be sacked” position, did the sensible thing for my future record, went straight to an agency I’d worked through in the past, was in a new job within a month.

Not something I’d like to do multiple times, there was a lot of bricking it going on, but it worked out. I did go into it with the mindset of “I am looking for something (anything!) that’ll pay the bills”, though. I jumped ship knowing full-well I just needed an income, and I could put my mind to anything in the short-term while I looked for something more permanent. As it is, I’m still in the same job, roughly, 3 years later, so I definitely fell on my feet.

Anything you can just rehydrate, really. When I’ve done MM’s, Polaris etc in the past we had 3 or 4 smaller ‘meals’ over the evening, so it was just a case of boiling water and not having to wash our pan out.

Basics like Smash, instant noodles, couscous and cuppa soups work well, especially if you’ve got a little bits of stuff to pep them up with – pepperami, Babybel or mini prepack cheeses, small tins of sardines etc have all made appearances in the past, as well as carrying the standard service-station sachets of salt, pepper, ketchup. If you’ve pack space, take one of the smaller Pot Noodle-type things and use the pot as your bowl for all courses, then bin afterwards. Instant just-add-water custard gives you a bit of dessert, if you carry dried fruit for the day you can lob that in it as well. I’ve seen people use things like MountainHouse dehydrated meals but they seem like a lot of cash for no extra benefit.

A favourite trick in the past as well, since a lot of people end up with salt cravings at the overnight, is to prep a packet of crisps beforehand and have them in a pocket for camp. Pin-prick a corner of the pack, gently squeeze the air out (and crush the crisps a bit), then tape over the pinhole. That one’s made a lot of people jealous/salivate at overnight camps over the years.

I like the Goons. Try this to cheer you up:

Chun Li FTWKnickers

FTFY

Done.

As, almost ironically, Bernard Manning put it, religious people are fair game, because it’s a choice. Sex, race, orientation, those are things you can’t choose, so they’re taboo. Religion is a choice, and therefore open to ridicule.

As someone more-or-less said above as well, there is no such thing as “the right not to be offended”

How do you wield a swan? They’d break your arm.

Carefully.

Is a Muslim too expensive to ship via royal mail now?

Yup, Better to use MyHermes, unless you think bringing a third religious preference into the mix would confuse things too much.

Non-tapered, and if I push ‘go’ on what I’m thinking of tomorrow, it’ll be dressed up in a set of Manitous – they’re closest to the G5 offset (48mm as opposed to 51mm G2 offset)

he lost my respect after hearing what he did as a thankyou to his team in the 09 tour’s final stage

Which was? Didn’t follow road cycling much at that point, what did he do?

(Edit:Ha! That makes three of us…)

Which one are you then?

One on our regular loop originally known as ‘Speeder Chase’ after the Star Wars scene, but now known as ‘Proper Bo’, because that’s what’s spraypainted on a tree at the start of it.