To be fair to the OP I bought some brakes off him last week and what turned up was exactly what was in his pictures. Just saying like.

Do they? Damn, I’d forgotten that, thanks for the reminder. Could have spent an hour tomorrow waiting for my mate to turn up for our ride.

[Daily Mail mode on] “Megastorm showers country with immigrants” [Daily Mail mode off]

No, a proper Mail headline would have a question mark at the end, to cover the fact that it’s not true, as in “Megastorm to shower country with immigrants?”
And the Express would have “Did MI5 use Megastorm to kill Princess Di?”

Maybe this will be a dodgy one after all !

It will if you believe the papers (well the tabloids anyway)
Daily Mail – Hurtling across the Atlantic, the worst storm since 1987 is heading straight for Britain
Daily Express – MEGASTORM: Devastating 100mph winds to bring 48 hours of ‘utter hell’ THIS weekend
Daily Star – Killer Megastorm to batter Britain on Monday

Not just a storm, but a Killer Megastorm!

The first climb on the Raven can be a real pig when its wet, but you can always walk the worst bits. You will get wet and muddy (it’s been raining a lot here lately) but then that’s half the fun isn’t it?

you will feel pooped afterwards despite the naysayers on here doing it backwards, on a penny farthing, in the 18th century, with a pineapple shoved up their ars..

100 mile record on a penny farthing is 6:19:06 set in 1891. No mention of pineapples.

I don’t know anyone who does both

Italian BBs have a right hand thread on the drive side instead of the left hand thread on English BBs.

@cinnamon_girl And if they weren’t 3 bolt rotors I’d be on them like a shot (although I’ve already got a pair of Hopes, and have had all the jokes about their noise)

@cp Merlin certainly have a good rep when it comes to wheels. It’s just the combination of some of the lightest rims made on some of the heaviest hubs seems a bit weird.

Normally in threads like this njee20 comes along to point out some 1250gm wheels for only £2.50 … he said hopefully :-)

I’m still in the dark ages regarding tubes, so I don’t really care :-)
Also looking these from Merlin – ZTR Olympic on Shimano 525. A strange combination, but only £120.

Have a look at Mudtrek[/url]. Used to catering for parties (in both senses of the word), bike hire, guiding, and good food. Riding from the door ranging from easy forest roads to the Brechfa black. Although mud is generally included whether you like it or not :-)

Does it have to be 110 bcd? On One have the Sugino Messenger with 42T
http://www.on-one.co.uk/i/q/CSSGRD2M/sugino_rd2_messenger_chainset

EDIT: Sorry, just realized you said chainRING, not chainSET.

The drive side isn’t capped as such, but has a ‘fixed’ cup – there should be a flat on either side to remove it. They weren’t called fixed cups for nothing, and their removal from an old frame requires the strength of a gorilla and the patience of a saint. Bike shops used to use a fixed cup removal tool that clamps onto the cup so it can be turned (left hand thread)

Old Raleigh’s used to have non-standard BB threads as well – 26 TPI instead of 24 TPI.
As usual, Sheldon is the man with the info : sheldonbrown.com/raleigh26.html

Covering up ‘non-sponsor-correct’ branding according to Cycling News.

yak leather shoes with aluminium buckles evocative of old-fashioned toe-straps

Ok, I take it all back. Burn him.

But on the plus side …
Bike looks well set up (bars/levers/saddle not at odd angles)
Not wearing Sky replica kit
No visible paunch
Photo taken in countryside, not front garden

I’ll give him a pass on this one.

He’s the Bruce Forsyth of the cycling world. It’s quite surreal to hear him confidently asserting the exact opposite of what you can see on the screen with your own eyes, or completely ignoring the crucial attack of a race as it takes place.

I certainly couldn’t identify and remember the names of all those riders.

The numbers and team jerseys they wear give a bit of a clue.

Would be nice if the race came to more than Wiggins winning a 10 mile TT then sitting on Stannard’s wheel all the way to London. Still, that’s stage racing for you.

When I was a science mad young lad I got a Blue Peter badge for sending them the recipe for ANT.
I guess these days I’d get a visit from the anti-terrorist squad instead.

Stage finish at Llanfair PG next year? That would give the commentators something to get their teeth into!

lex – Member
I like this one

That’s more like it. If I ever do a video it will be called “Two old geezers and a dog pootle around the woods for a bit then go down the pub”.
Not sure of the music, maybe “Busy Doing Nothing” by Bing Crosby?

My riding partner is well into his 60s and still stupidly fast downhill. He’s been known to pass people on a descent with a cheery call of “Let me through please, I’m an OAP”

Mrs Rusty is dragging me up there for a weeks hill walking in October. Does this mean I will die, or be unable to buy a skinny latte with a vanilla shot, or both?

I have an unhealthy hatred towards any one who is NOT a professional rider wearing Lycra

I know, I feel the same about people wearing Goretex who aren’t professional mountaineers. Bloody Chris Bonnington wannabees. Probably dreaming they’re climbing Everest when they’re just wandering about Snowdonia :D
Or maybe they’re wearing it because it’s suitable for the task in hand?
(Excluding the dick I saw wearing full Sky rainbow jersey kit. And no, it wasn’t Cav, unless he’s let himself go a bit)

I use one of these as a cafe lock Abus Combiflex Pro Cable Lock. Small, light and easy to use.

Mrs Rusty and I are off to England for the Bank Holiday weekend. We’ve booked somewhere to stay on the Wood Dene estate in Peckham, which sounds lovely. I’m told that it’s renowned for it’s shooting – I’ve always wanted to try a spot of grouse shooting so I’m hoping to bump into the Lord of the Manor and get an invite. Do you think I should pack my plus fours or is more casual dress acceptable?

I’m told there are some pretty gnarly trails though

Aren’t WC Road Race places allocated in a very daft points manner

Yes. Morocco, Algeria and Eritrea qualified due to points gained racing in the UCI Africa Tour, which was 16 races, 10 of them held in Morocco. Except for South Africa, who were second in the points in the Africa Tour but had to qualify on WT points and ended being allocated with 2 starting from 3. Perfectly simple.

That Werewolves drop is in another league to the rest of these.

God, it must be over 4 foot high! So Cannock really is a gnarly as they say?

Ah, those powerhouses of international cycling

But Morocco must be a top cycling nation. Otherwise how could you explain their rider allocation for the WC RR being the same as Germany (6 start from 9) and higher than Canada, Kazakhstan, Norway, Sweden and Russia (3 start from 5)? There surely can’t be any other reason can there?

I went out with a Merthyr girl once and she took me there to meet her folks, followed by a trip to the local Working Men’s club. It was like a scene from a western, where the stranger walks into a busy saloon and everything suddenly stops, leaving dead silence. I guess my lack of facial tatoos must have marked me out as different.
Once she’d explained that I was her boyfriend and she’d *ing kill anybody who gave me any trouble, things were fine.
I can’t see it making it into a Thompson’s Holidays brochure though.

Or as my grandfather, a hard-core Gog, used to put it, “South of Brecon there’s nothing but thieves and communists”

one of the most iconic sporting moments of the last few years was seeing Wiggins in Yellow pulling Cav in the Rainbow jersey up the Champs elysees

Indeed. Basically the highest point in British cycling ever, and you can see why Wiggins has got the ‘been there, done that’ feeling. It also makes it difficult for Froome. Not sure what he can do to top that, maybe win all 3 GTs in the same year while juggling chainsaws and balancing a grand piano on his head.

We went from a 2.0 NA Forester to a 2.5 turbo – huge difference in performance, like driving a sports car. Trying to persuade Mrs Rusty not to view tyres, brakes and clutches as consumables though – she drives it very hard.

Have a look at a Subaru Forester

We’re now on our second – great cars, happy on everything from autobahns to green lanes and tough with it. If you’ve got your own oil well, get the turbo XT version which will give an Evo a run for its money.

I’m a 38″ chest and usually take medium (Gore Path in medium is fine). I’ve got a featherlight velo in large and this is a comfortable fit (on top of lycra). Definitely not too big.

My GPS says

Black
11.47 miles
Total Ascent: 1760 ft
Max Elevation: 993 ft

Green and Blue
8.95 miles
Total Ascent: 1244 ft
Max Elevation: 791 ft

And the climbing on the black is much tougher – steep, rocky, muddy singletrack (one of the reasons it’s a black)

Doesn’t really matter, there’s a cafe called the shed doing really good burgers just up the trail from the black/blue/green car park though (Brechfa?), so worth planning arroud that for a lunch stop, but I can’t rememeber where on the trail the link between red and black is if you do them as a loop, so best to start in a way that drops you at the cafe halfway round.

To do the Shed for a lunch break (open Sat, Sun and bank holidays), start at Abergorlech. Do the red then before the final red descent back into Abergorlech turn right to pick up the black. After the 2nd log bridge on the black (with the log balance lead-in) the trail brings you up to a lane. Turn left here, rather than right, and follow the road down for about 200 metres and the Shed is on your left.
After your burger or whatever, retrace your tracks and continue up the track to the fire road. You can then turn left to do the final bit of the black down to the car park (or the green, which is even better IMO) or turn right then left to start the big climb on the black and work off your lunch. Follow the black round and it will deposit you just by the start of the final red descent again.

The blue/green is more climbing than the black

No way. Much more climbing on the black.

Synopsis – by looking at the Exif metadata in the image you can work out where I was when I took this picture

Avoid the need for expensive binoculars, simply stand closer to the object you wish to view.