Problem solved:
Slider – for dropper posts

I use knee high waterproof socks then slide my knee pads over the top.

^ This.

I’ve managed in the past to move the lever slightly and have this problem. The cause was that the back of the button was bottoming out on the brake lever clamp before it got to full travel.

I’d look at the angle of the bars and the position and angle of the brake levers. Specifically, make sure that the bars aren’t rolled back too much and that the brake levers aren’t too far out on the bars, there should be a good gap between grips and brake levers for almost everyone. Both of these things will tend to force your wrists into an un-natural position, putting pressure on the wrong part of your hand and tending to push your elbows in and down which hinders your riding in general.

The clip is there to give the footnut something to tighten against, when you tighten the nut up you are pinching the bottom of the leg between the clip and the nut so that it can be both pushed and pulled. It’s effectively a removable shoulder on the rod so that, as above, the rod doesn’t just come all the way out of the leg.

Edit: you can’t do without it but you should be able to get one or something else that works somehow.

Sometimes it just comes down to deliberately setting the mech a little squint or gently bending the cage in one spot to get rid of the last little bit of rub but the cable clamping, shift mode and height of the mech are worth playing with.

releasing becomes automatic after a while, no different to using a flat, getting the bugger back in on steep choppy stuff however………

This ^
I have no problems dabbing instinctively but in the very conditions where you least want to be skating about on the pedals not clipped in, it can be tricky to get them back sometimes, or at least, it requires some concentration that I don’t want to spare. My total 26 years of MTBing are pretty evenly split between clips and flats, so I can ride both to a high standard but I tend to ride one for a number of years then swap for a number of years. The last 3 years have been on flats and I’m not currently feeling any need to change.

Yeah, we’ve considered a screen for special circumstances in the car like long journeys with only the driver. It’s not fully off the table but we’ll try other things first.
As to why, I’ve asked and she said “Me just wanted to be naughty” and then wouldn’t talk about it any more. So I guess boredom may be part of it.

Yeah, we make sure the straps are right up on her shoulders and pulled properly tight so I don’t think it’s that, she’s just good at escaping and thinks it’s fun.
I’m extremely reluctant to give her a screen to distract her but I do see your point. So far, she gets basically zero screen time which we are happy about and it’d be a shame to start her on that sooner than we have to to solve this issue. Usually in the car she has some toys to play with / books to look at and we talk to her, sing with her etc.

It’s our approach too and I think it does work well. We just haven’t managed to make it work for this particular situation yet!

If you just sit there in the car, she’ll soon get fed up. If she screams the place down, get out and sit on the verge.

Fair enough!

Google “houdini straps”. Sorted.

Yeah, that’s probably the next thing to try but there seems to be a concern over the potential for the buckle of the houdini strap to do damage although I struggle to see how when she is rear-facing.

With similar safety issues … but she understands making everyone she loves sad and she understands missing out on fun things.

Good advice, thanks.

At some point you’ll be going to something that she understands is important to her, such as a birthday party or whatever. Tell her that if she does it on the way then you turn around and go home, impressing the main aspect on her (safety) again. Then follow that through when she does it, so that there’s a definite consequence.

That might indeed work, I’d just rather stop it sooner rather than later.

She’s not an unruly kid at all to be fair, she just has a wee mischievous streak. Pull over and wait might work but then she’s tried to refuse being put in the car to come home from the middle of nowhere due to complaints of having a numb bum from a long journey up to that point and will insist that she’d rather just stay where she was than go home for tea, so I’m unsure on the motivational factor of “we won’t continue until you are safely strapped in”

There’s been no hint of wanting to turn round, she’s plenty verbal enough to articulate it if she wanted that plus she’s been forward facing once and asked to be turned back…
On the asking or telling not to, no, that does nothing, she just smiles, after all, what trouble if really coming to a 2 year old in that situation? She doesn’t comprehend the idea of being horribly injured in a car crash when she’s never had worse that a wee cut on her finger.
We could try pulling over and just talking her through it though. Typically she usually pulls this stunt on the dual carriageway so far though!
Thanks for the input so far, much appreciated.

Fun is more important than fast anyway

Well, yes, but faster is funner :wink:

Which is part of what you get out of riding your bike. It’s subjective, isn’t it, and there’s no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’? I love my HT but then I don’t ride at trail centres much, but I do like riding down stairs and doing skids and wheelie

No, absolutely, there is no right or wrong and it’s all down to what you personally like and indeed that’s what the OP asked about.
I only ride at trail centres once a year at a guess, I always enjoy it but it’s a long trip when there’s great natural trails around where I live. I guess what I’m actually experiencing is that there is a quite a rise in the amount of rider built trails in the last few years and those are a great deal rougher and more technical than the predominantly walking trails that I rode 20 years ago when I was on a rigid bike. I’m in Scotland BTW, the walking trails were always fair game :-)

It’d be interesting to know how many FS riders have come into MTBing fresh from nappies, so to speak, and how many HT/rigid riders have grown up through BMX and therefore know how to ride a bike…

Well, personally I only rode BMX for a while during my uni years but I’ve been MTBing for something like 27 years so I rode fully rigid bikes for a lot of years before getting my first full FS. I know fine how to ride them and used to love riding a fully rigid bike (with the saddle all the way up) and just hopping over the rough stuff. However, trails have changed and got steeper and rougher and what you can do on a bike, or at least what you can ride at speed, has come on hugely since those days as suspension, tyres and geometry have improved and it would feel enormously limiting to go back.

Yup, me. Certainly where I ride I get fed up of hardtails within a pretty short time and go back to full suspension. I don’t personally find that getting bounced around makes a ride fun, I find that the feeling of flowing along really fast and being able to smoothly hold lines through corners peppered with rocks and roots is fun, so for me, a hardtail is just less fun. I don’t personally understand this notion that a bike that smooths the trail out too much is less fun, perhaps it’s just not smooth enough where I am for this to ever be an issue.
For what it’s worth, I get the impression that Steve Jones of Dirt magazine is pretty much anti hardtail too, or at least doesn’t see the point of them.

Another vote for Hope F20s for durability. Mine have been hard used and smacked very hard off rocks, ridden in horrible conditions, never serviced and after 2 years are smooth, free from play and have lost no pins.

^ This.
Specifically these for me:
http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/endura-fs260-pro-bib-knicker-ii-ss16/rp-prod80228

Less deadly pins = your foot slips off more, your shin suffers

This. Much like a blunt knife is more likely to hurt you, the safest thing is very grippy pedals and good shoes. If you do catch your shin it’ll hurt, but it’s much less likely.
If it’s just when crashing and pushing then a combination of riding better :wink: and paying more attention should see you right…

Hanging off back of bike does that, practice on pump track.

This. Prime suspect if you are nose diving is that you are hanging off the back as you take off. Stay upright above the pedals as the bike comes up the face of the jump.

saddle bag on a dropper is making my brain hurt

Why? A decent one like the Weecog doesn’t touch the sealing surface of the post. Mine does just touch the bottom of the forged seat clamp part of the post but with the post fully dropped it doesn’t touch the seal head on the stationary part of the post. Nothing is rubbing, it doesn’t rattle if it’s done up tight, works perfectly.

I’ll have to take your word for it but in their own pic it does

Fair enough. Having looked at mine, I’ll qualify my statement a little, I have a reverb and it does touch, but not the slider of the post, it only touches the cylindrical part of the post head, so not a part that passes through the seals.

If you don’t want to carry a pack in summer then where are you going to carry your water having filled the water bottle points with tools?

Very much this. It’s hard enough to find a 140 – 160mm bike with one bottle mount never mind two.

It’s a tool roll not a “dropper saddle bag”

How does one distinguish between the two? It IS a bag with a flap closure not just a roll but perhaps you mean that the single velcro strap makes it a roll rather than a bag. Either way I didn’t by any means find loads of people that do them.

That slider pack still looks like it’ll grind dirt and water into the dropper post.

I haven’t found that so far. It doesn’t rest against the post on mine anyway.

This is what you need:
http://www.weecog.co.uk/collections/slider
Holds a tube, a tool, a tyre lever and a couple of CO2 cartridges. Doesn’t rattle or fall off and allows the dropper to work without any problems. Seems well made too.

My first guess would be the chain is too tight.

My view is with a court order Apple, Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp etc should be obliged to hand over the data.

A large part of the point is that Apple don’t have the data and can’t access it and indeed the FBI aren’t asking them to. The FBI want Apple to alter the way that the phone’s security works to make it easier for the them (the FBI) to break into it themselves by guessing repeatedly at the unlock code.

Well, according to Parenting Science, “Infant-Directed Speech” (IDS) is good for a baby’s development.

That’s just doing this:

a 3rd way of normal talk in a baby pitch of tone – not my normal gruff grumpy one and without any effing/jeffing

Not the same as actual googoo gaga nonsense baby talk.

and an external caddy

If you have used Timemachine, why not just restore onto a blank drive with Timemachine and avoid the need for the caddy and cloning? It doesn’t need a drive with a viable system on it to boot into recovery mode and from there it can even access your back-up on a NAS drive.

Yes, I use Timemachne but that does’t bring over programs as well does it?

Yes, everything, at least on default settings. You put a blank drive in the machine, leave it to it and end up with an exact clone of the old HDD.

If you have a time machine backup of the old drive there’s no need to clone it onto the new one, you just put the new drive in, start the machine in recovery mode and point it to the back up then it does the rest.

Yup, I’ve got one of the ones without a strap round the post that’s designed specifically for a dropper post – the Slider. It’s great, secure, well made, holds a tube, 2 off co2 cartridges and a multi tool and doesn’t rattle. It’s a notch above any of the shop bought ones I’ve seen in terms of build quality too. Recommended.

If you want dry feet most mudguards aren’t the full answer as the spray still gets you when steering.

Mudguards can work fine for keeping your feet dry but the front needs to be long at the back and also be fitted with a mudflap so the the wheel is covered almost down to the ground. STATO’s bike looks like it’ll keep your feet dry.

Are you sure its not the chain slipping on the cassette?

+1

Another vote for the approach that if you aren’t actually racing, get a bike that flatters your strengths.

Most people coming from clips need to drop their saddle a little, the really high saddle that you can run when bolted to the bike isn’t desirable on flats.

Simpler than that, clipless pedals are thicker anyway and then you have a cleat between the pedal and your foot. Once these things are removed on thin flat pedals you’ll need your saddle lower just to compensate for the reduction in foot to pedal axle distance.

I will simply add that dogs are one thing but it’s exceedingly hard to get a cat to lose weight. They have an impressive ability to reduce their calorie output in-line with their reduced intake.

Oh and it’s got a vanilla RC coil shock with a Ti spring.

That’ll feel lovely I bet. I’ve had the air shock on my Enduro tuned to feel much more coil like and it’s a big improvement.
I reckon in many instances when folk compare air shocks to coil, and conclude they like coil better, they are actually comparing shocks set-up for pedalling (air) with those set-up for descending (coil) and preferring the descending biased set-up. You can have an air shock valved to feel that way too.

I like this thinking, don’t 100% agree but I do like it

I don’t 100% agree either, but it’s sometimes a good sanity check, i.e if you only need lightweight tyre casings, you don’t need a 160mm+ travel frame.

Just to say I’ve got a Turner RFX with 5″ and 6″ travel plates and I prefer it in 5″ guise – it’s more playful but still enough travel to soak up most of the hits. Its also rock solid and hasn’t needed so much as a bushing change since I’ve owned it.

Turners are the epitome of reliable robustness at the expense of the last word in lightness and would be well worth a look for the OP. As to the bike being nicer in the shorter travel setting, that’s often the case, or at least bikes often feel best set up quite progressive so they don’t use all the travel all the time. It’s probably fair to say though that an RFX set-up for 5″ not 6″ is still essentially a longish travel trail bike and probably, better suited to the OPs requirements than what he has.