I ask why the thermostat is on 30 when she wants the house at 20 – to make it warm up quicker apparently!!

“Why’s the oven on 9, you want 5 don’t you?”
“I’m going to turn it down when its got hot, silly”
(With a look suggesting she requires endless patience to live with such an idiot)

I think I’d join a club call The Gormless Mincers.
The jersey would be worth the membership on it’s own.

Count me in! I use to be a member of a skiing club called the No Control Ski Patrol, we had club jackets and everything. The moniteurs thought it was hilarious and let us to the front of all the lift queues.

You’d need some club rules though
1. All rides to start with at least 30 minutes of faffing about
2. All riders to forget at least one essential item of kit
3. Any rider completing 3 consecutive rides without a crash or mechanical to be ejected forthwith.

Club motto Steady on lad, it’s not a race you know

us that still wear camelbaks are basically emergency water bowsers and tool lenders for every damn idiot that’s come out with no kit

I share your bitterness :-) A social ride last night with two mates; one had forgotten his water bottle and one was “enjoying the freedom of riding without a rucksack”.
Guess who got thirsty and and guess who had a mechanical?

catching someone and hanging off their back wheel at a much slower speed than you are happy with

is one of the skills necessary for riding in mixed groups IMO. Maybe you should have a seeding run first so that lesser mortals have their lowly place in the pecking order made clear :-)
Seriously though, sounds like he was enthusiastic, not a bad thing surely?

prior to GA and a procedure next week

Bit of white coat syndrome? Mrs Rusty had this prior to a hip op. 2 hours explaining the operation in grisly detail then they took her blood pressure, which was fine for a steam engine, but a bit high for a human being. Sent her home with a BP machine and measured it over the next few days when it returned to normal.

My wife’s Soul (26″, extra small frame) with a 2×10 drivetrain is 12Kg

Sounds about right. Small 26″ MkI Soul with Reba 120, 2×10 XT, carbon bars and post, Mavic 717 on Hopes with Rubber Queen 2.4/2.2 comes in just on 26.5lbs (weighed on Feedback Sport digital scales)
With the big tyres on it feels bombproof, certainly more capable downhill than it’s rider :D

Nice thing about my scale is that geometry wise, especially with the 120 fork, its a modern trail bike.

I put some DT Swiss XMC 130 on my Scale as an experiment and was pleasantly surprised that it produced a comfortable downhill ride whilst still being whizzy uphill (albeit with a slight tendency to lift the front wheel when it’s really steep)
X0 1 x 10, carbon everything, 24 spoke Ryde wheels and Nobby Nic/Rocket Rons it comes in at 22lbs.
With rigid carbon forks, narrow scandium bars and silly 1.9 tyres it goes down to 19.5lbs, but is firmly in crack-addicted ferret territory as far as handling goes.

To be fair though, if you’re going to do a series then you’ll only do one.

True, you’d have to be pretty keen (or bonkers) to do both full series. I can imagine lots of riders doing individual rounds from both series in their area. Maybe even riders doing both ‘National Championships’. Who knows, you could even end up with both champions riding Neil’s race in September. Interesting times!

Looks like there’s two races on back-to-back weekends which could be an issue for riders…

Even more confusing if you combine the two 8O

!Round 1 12/13th March
*Round 1 19/20 March
*Round 2 23/24 April
!Round 2 30/31st April
!Round 3 7/8th May
*Round 3 28/29 May
!Round 4 11/12th June
*Round 4 25/26 June
*Round 5 23/24 July and National Championships
!Round 5 13/14th August and National Championships
*Round 6 24/25 September
*Round 7 22/23 October

* – ‘Marin Series’
! – ‘Cannondale Series’

I just looked up. Seems FC Scotland tread a finer line that FC England…

FC Wales (NRW) here, but just wanted to make sure that people didn’t get the idea that FC encourage people to wander into the forest and start fires! :-)

FC even encourage such play for children…
http://www.forestry.gov.uk/pdf/fce-rope-swings-dens-fires.pdf/$FILE/fce-rope-swings-dens-fires.pdf

Yes we’ve got a Forest School project near us who do all this sort of thing which I think is excellent

Forestry Commission are OK with fires

They are? I thought the opposite
Help prevent forest fires

Only use designated barbecue sites for cooking
Never start a campfire in the forest as they can get out of hand very quickly

it used to be normal to leave your baby in a pram outside while you went shopping.

Yes, hours as a baby spent in the pram on the front doorstep so mum could ‘get on with the housework’.

it was quite normal for even young kids to play out unsupervised all day and come back for dinner

Yes, climb over the back fence, cross the railway line and spend the day playing soldiers in the woods with an old air rifle. Probably considered a bit dangerous these days.

travel across the country, navigating public transport by himself at the age of 8

Not quite that extreme, but at 14 “Mum, me and Ian are going to the York cycle rally” (400 mile round trip by bike) didn’t raise an eyebrow

I do think we should all pay more attention to the quality and sustainability of the meat we eat and most people should eat less, better quality meat and be prepared to pay a decent amount per kg for this decent meat.

Can’t argue with that. Nothing winds me up quite as much as people who will moan on Facebook about animal welfare then buy a pack of cheap chicken from the supermarket that comes from Thailand or somewhere.

British Beef, British Pork, British Chicken and British Welsh Lamb.

I have to draw a line somewhere :-)

many of them are fed on things like corn and soy that can be eaten by yoomans

That’s the American feed lot system. Round here (West Wales) it’s all grass fed (I can see a neighbour’s herd eating grass from my window right now). So if you want to save the world, insist on Welsh beef :D

Cow food != human food. Have you ever tried eating grass, hay or silage?

He still isn’t using a 46 x 11 for a good reason

Absolutely, he’d be crazy to use such a small sprocket on a track bike.
The point is that 46 x 11 isn’t some tiny gear that is useless on the flat, it’s actually pretty large. If you can spin 46 x 11 at 100rpm that gives you 25 miles in 45.52, only 9 seconds off comp record.

You could virtually spin that out on the flat.

46 x 11 = 109.9″
For the hour record Wiggins used 58 x 14 = 108.9″
Didn’t notice him having problems spinning out due to too low a gear :-)

Not in a film, but of a film – Barry Norman’s review of Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon
“Probably the best film about Barry Lyndon ever made”

I commute on it pretty much every day, and I’ve never had any problems.

Rusty junior commutes along that bit as well (Edgbaston & the Mailbox). Just been speaking to him after seeing this and he says its OK with loads of students and dog walkers rather than yoofs.

Interesting, always found the Fountaine great but have heard mixed reviews.

I stayed there and was very disappointed. The rooms were tiny, the ‘secure bike storage’ they promised was a wheel rack in the courtyard and I sent the same meal back twice. Chef seemed to have totally lost interest in anything to do with food. The beer and breakfast were great though.

Had a fantastic meal at Grassington House and the service was great.

If you want something a bit different you could try the Hark to Bounty at Slaidburn (not in the Dales but fairly near to Settle). Gastro pub rather than restaurant food, but the rooms are upstairs in the old assizes, a bit like staying in a 17th century prison. If you’ve got a partner who believes in ghosts this provides some excellent wind-up opportunities :-)

KL71s look awesome and stick like shit

Yes, got them on the Defender, in 265/75 for the ‘monster truck’ look. Surprisingly forgiving on tarmac for a mud tyre but definitely more at home off-road.

Interesting question what do you think?

Generally speaking, that if you’re born somewhere then it’s your country and you have the right to self determination.

Clearly not all colonisation can be reversed

So what are the criteria for deciding which colonisations can be reversed and which can’t? Is there some arbitrary cut-off date?

we can recognise their rights but we can also return it to the people we stole it from using military might.

Does that mean we can look forward to the English returning to Denmark and Germany and giving Lloegr back to the Welsh?

it’s a race not a procession

Or, as was explained to me rather bluntly as a youngster, “It’s a bike race lad, not a *ing Post Office queue”. At least in cross, if it all goes wrong you’ve generally got some nice soft mud to land on, instead of tarmac.

To an senior audience including 3 PhDs who just loved being treated like illiterate imbeciles.

Oh the irony. Congratulations. You have spotted the deliberate mistake inserted in order to maintain audience awareness :-)

If used correctly PPT can be great but it can also be torture.
Like the HR presentation we had this week where the presenter read out each slide, very, very slowly. To an senior audience including 3 PhDs who just loved being treated like illiterate imbeciles.

Ventoux not so hard…so my mate seems to think:

This guy[/url] seemed to make light work of of it.
Passed 14 riders on the ascent as well, who presumably died of shame on the spot

Forest of Bowland in Lancashire.

+millions. Roadie heaven. Being mobbed by curlews going over the Cross O Greet is one of my magic moments on a road bike.

It helps if you’ve got a workstand, but it’s not essential :D

Love the river crossing – hurl your bike as far as you can then jump in after it.

Harry, by the way, unable to obtain a bed that night, slept on a pile of gravel at the roadside

So an early gravel biker then? The old RSF geezers I’ve met were all seriously hard men, including the two I once encountered taking a tandem over the Lairig Ghru.

I think the CTC needs to do a Rapha-style black and white advertising campaign with photos of mud splattered manly men with 1000yard stares and quips like:

Gnarmac? Don’t be silly lad

New event in the Welsh League this year at the National Botanic Gardens, organised by Matt Page. Might make that my annual CX outing this year, should be less boring than the Carmarthen Showground course.

How about the fact that Matthew Paris was wasn’t able to register all of his pet llamas as Labour supporters – they all got didn’t get a vote.

Adjusted to match reality (they were rejected as they couldn’t be matched to the electoral roll)

No navigation required, just join the queue

Met Office comment http://blog.metoffice.gov.uk/2015/08/23/met-office-in-the-news-bbc-weather-contract/%5B/url%5D

Old fashioned CX machine rather than gnarmac (no disks)…

Off the beaten track on Grassington Moor

Old tin mines above Hebden

Boss Moor above Linton

Froome checking out the course earlier today

Might be pushing your budget slightly (no 10% off), and size medium only, but Pauls have the 2014 Scott Scale 720 for £1399 which is an excellent price
http://www.paulscycles.co.uk/m1b8s182p5505/SCOTT-SCALE-720-2014