The witch hunt was inspired by our leaders to keep the people blaming the banks and keeping our leaders out of the dock. Its interesting how united the politicians make their flock feel after they have managed to focus the blame on a “common enemy” the banks. It all started with Mr Brown when questioned on the political expenses scandal, quickly turning the conversation to naughty bankers. The media were quick to oblige. The bankers were certainly not the only greedy boys. Just for one minute consider our whole country that was turned into a club of greedy property speculators, not only on a corporate level but an individual level too…but that’s just a small bit of the story!

Shimano also supply new chains with grease on. Most people remove it.

Agree with bop 700f! I don’t use grease on rear mech cables as it can attract dirt. I use full length outers and Tft2 spray oil that has Teflon in. If u use full length outers you can slacken the cable by tying the rear mech and flush the whole cable through with the tft2 spray oil. This means you hardly ever need to replace cable inners or outers!

New tyre! 100 psi can explode , bad to fall on roads too, ESP with cars around.

A full trophy cabinet!

Very Sad seeing this. If you look after forks it shouldn’t happen! After each ride wipe stanchions down and put a couple of drops of fork oil on the stanchion just above the seal. At the beginning of the next ride compress the forks and wipe the dirt ring that will have formed on the stanchions. Doing this every ride cleans the dust seals and stops muck getting in in the beginning. Forks last longer and servicing can be a bit less frequent. A few years ago Tim at T F T uned recommended the above to me. it works!

Would be good to have a “list of shame”? I have sold a number of bike bits over the years on here and only had good experiences so far and found the buyers to be decent fellow bikers. Maybe I’ve been lucky. In each case I have had a long chat with the buyer to make sure they are genuine mtb’ers and been happy to accept a cheque from them after.

Cheers. xdher You should enjoy. I have certainly added a few kilos with Traquair house hearty food plus a nice pint! Inners is great too. Last Nov we did Newcastleton then Inners followed by Glentress , and Aye forest on the way back! Great biking!

The Traquair Arms Hotel in Inners is superb! We eat there whenever we go up there and it is right near the trails. I find Innerleithen less busy and nicer to stay in than glentress. We normaly stay at the Glede Knowe guest house. It is very luxurious and better than many UK 4* hotels. Bill and Alison who run it are very very friendly and can’t do enough to help. There are lots of reviews on trip advisor!

Had a TOTAL NIGHTMARE with Virgin. I still feel angry! All happened a year ago & I posted on here. They sent flyers round promising “quick” connection. My next door neighbour uses them and I stupidly fell for their marketing as i wanted fast broadband and good service. The sad outcome was That our family had no phone or Internet for 3months(I. Finally gave up with them and went back to my old provider). Kids had to go to neighbours for Internet homework and we lost the phone number we had for over 10years. Virgin after getting me to sign up for their complete package including TV and mobiles didn’t mention that they wouldnt bother to connect me for months! After some time i got through to their “construction” guys who said they hadnt even scheduled the work needed outside my house with the local council! On the first day after signing when they were due to connect me, I took a day of work to supervise their installation. They did not turn up. I called them at midday and they said there were problems. That went on with various excuses for 3 months. I tried complaining to OFCOM but they couldn’t help as I hadn’t actually been billed for the line, although I was billed for the mobiles which were part of the “package”. I later found out the so and so’s had put my mobiles on a 2year contract! Virgin customer service was very poor and my complaint letters were just shunted around. A very bad experience! To be fair Virgin are the worst company I have ever had the misfortune to deal with.

Agree with Doug. The Std also comes without ISCG mounts but the e -13 and other chain devices have adaptors that are an easy fit. I think Cove are very wise not to do ISCG. If you hit the guide hard it just moves round a bitand helps absorb some impact. I have damaged other bikes with ISCG when hitting things much more as there is nothing to absorb impact. Re weight on g- spot, it’s a little bit burly but not silly, as with all bikes I think it depends what your mates ride. If they ride SC Bullits, Enduros,nomads and Hecklers ,5spots , Orange 5s etc you are fine but, it will be nasty if they are on XC race bikes!

Pleased u r enjoying it Gus. My friend certainly likes his! He did beat me uphill too, buts that’s cos he’s much fitter than me. He certainly enjoyed it at Glentress & Inners! A bargain for 300!

Interesting to hear Doug. I thought long about getting the G.Spot (best looking machine to me)but i went for the Nomad in the end really for its low weight and good pedalling. I use the STD for downhill and love the lazy low slack handling, but like you am also careful now, (i’m approaching my 1/2 century and want to keep riding). My Nomad came with coil shock option and thats great , but I think I would have had to order the G Spot with an air shock and that was my deciding factor(I’m old fashioned and like coil shocks). I agree on the old G. Spot it is a heavier bike and does suffer a bit from “bob” and also requires a fairly big spring weight due to its short shock length(my mate uses 600lb and he’s about 13st). The new G spot looks like a different animal. More exciting but obviously lots more cash than the special offers on the old model. And like you if I have to choose 1 bike for the alps its my AM bike the Nomad. Im not strong enough to pedal the STD uphill!

Hi Doug hope u r enjoying the STD I remember hearing from previous posts you ride it a lot. I bought my STD in 2007 too and am still loving riding it…awesome bike! The one bike I want to keep. There are not many Cove STDs around now it seems. My all mountain machine is now a Carbon Nomad..

That sounds like the “old” G spot with pivot around the BB. They were being sold v. cheap on internet a while back. A friend bought an new frame for between £500-600 from CRC. Very good bike but Pikes too short for that. You are talking 150-160mm forks to do it justice. e.g Lyrics or Fox 36. My Mate likes his and he rode it well at Inners & GT etc on our trip last year and uses it on DH courses too. It climbs fine too, but certainly not a super light full susser, more of a all round/light freeride model that can take a beating. Its nice and slack and definitely has a “fun on the way down” bias rather than being a fast climber. He uses FOX 36s on his.

Just been out to Swinley on my Alpine today, rode with Ed who was on his SS Alpine. Their bikes are darnn good and don’t need changing just to keep in with fashion. A ti alpine may be a nice luxury but the steel rides fine. I just think it depends what your mates are riding. If its super light bikes then maybe go for ti. However one of the big appeal factors for me in the steel alpine is its massive strength and reasonable price. Given all that , you can afford to do what you like on it.

I have and recommend a Schwinn Spinning Bike(mine is the IC Elite about £750)…solid unbreakable Gym quality. Its a simple solid steel gym spinning bike with no flimsy bits or cheapo electronics to break.

All I have upgraded are the pedals.

Combine it with a decent cooling fan for you, a heart monitor, and music and an indoor workout isn’t too bad.

As its a proper solid spinning bike (not some flimsy turbo contraption!) you can also do arm presses and move around as you pedal to get a better work-out.

I enjoyed it too! Well presented and made the science fun.

Cheers guys . Thanks for great feedback, as its a Wi fi only one I will check out the Three Mi Fi

Cheers HC thought as much and mc d has wi fi I hear…not keen on the burgers but I’ll have to try
their coffee!

Top gear always seems to have the same old theme which is getting very tired now IMHO. I didn’t find much either to be interesting or funny in this Christmas special. There are much better comedies…with its growing popularity the car component seems just incidental to the shows “personality display” where the presenters try to shock us with their childish boorishness. Anyway luckily there is normally plenty of better stuff on.

Agreed. Get well soon! And Well Done those bikers!

Don’t think I’ll be upgrading in a hurry to 10sp as for me it offers little if any improvement and just a narrower chain. I have 32 22 front with bash and 11 34 rear sprockets and suits me fine. If 9 speed stuff gets cheaper I’m stocking up too.

I like Movement Skis…used the Logic model for last 2yrs easy to ski but still can hold edge when needed….very light too. Im mainly doing guided off piste ..i had 11days in Dec with Wayne Watson(superb!) .. can’t wait till my next trip :)

There are no “best ones” but lots of quite good ones. It will be interesting to see if shimano update their DX flat pedals. For me these are classic (great bearings and easy service)but yes a bit fat plus you need to change the pins to longer ones (supplied). the DX bearings are good and can also tolerate muddy XC trail riding if looked after properly.
I also have Nuke Proof ones that are thin light and “modern”(similar to superstar i believe). If shimano were to build some high tech “saint” pedals with their best bearings i’m sure they would be a winner.

I’ve done that too ,as have most reverb users i have seen. It makes sense otherwise you would damage the remote lever when you turn the bike upside down to change wheels etc.

Met quite a few guys there who had done a few seasons i can understand how addictive it is! My guide Wayne has done 27 seasons there so he is great at finding the best snow in Val/Tignes…

I just got back from Val d’Isere on Saturday pm…last Friday there was so much snow nothing ran..its all going now!. I had two of the most amazing weeks off piste skiing( 11days with Wayne Watson). He does a daily diary which gives you a good idea of conditions. He has also got a few good pics of the action on his photo page. Please see
http://www.alpineexperience.com/waynes-daily-diary/

There is a good pic of me (Tim) up to my neck in it skiing down Solaise!

Bought some SCARPA Typhoon boots in Val d’Isere at the beginning of my trip… i’m pleased l did. Great boots . Quite light…

Coil for me every time.

Agree with messiah. If its a top end bike with top gear a ti spring compliments the bike. On its own a ti spring won’t do much to any bike, but it can complete a superb build looks bling and saves a bit more weight without any downside or breakage risk, unlike weight saving with other components.

January should be goood. I am told more snow is on the way too ! My guides’ website has a good daily report of skiing here which I find useful to keep in touch with local conditions…..pls see. http://www.alpineexperience.com/waynes-daily-diary/

I’m in Val d’Isere now. We have had a massive dump of snow in the last 3 days. in fact they say so far this season 50 per cent of last seasons fall has already arrived here! conditions are great and now most things including the Tignes links are open. Bon skiing all! We have been waste(and more) deep in powder…luckily I have 2 weeks of this… :-)

at hibike.com in Germany they are about EUR37.00 each!

My comments on Audi, BMW have nothing to do with jealousy. There are lots of other expensive cars which normally seem to be driven much more sensibly. I can’t remember seeing many Mercs/Jags tail gating on motorways.

Audi, BMW. I don’t like the way they are driven…quite often very aggressively turning ordinary roads into their “motorsport arenas” maybe these cars encourage this??

We are in North London and paying around 2k without the 3d plans for a similar size job, so it sounds good to me

My Nomad has Schwalbe Hans Dampf 2.35s good all round(thats what the name means!) and just the right volumes plus tough sidewalls and can be used tubeless(they are an “Evo” tube/no tube tyre)..

cashinyawallet is probably the biggest difference… :) at least for the sane amongst us

Sorry flow can tell you are a real serious guy and a true Fox fan and read all the tech stuff…cool ;)