spent a day there and a day in oporto in 2006 going to see celtic play benfica, albeit the cetic support was there so i didn’t get to see lisbon properly, and lets face it was a fitba trip ffs!:D but it’s one of the cities i would go back to no worries, seemed like a cracking city to me, oporto was a bit of a shithole.

damn, i thought i was onto something…

ye might well be! sounds a better solution that any of the leaders have been able to come up with!

dandelionandmurdoch – the whole history is messed up and the zionist plan should never have been implemented there, it has no basis in morality whatsoever, btw that’s a big massive distinction that has to be made, zionism and judaism are not one and the same. there are jews within israel and plenty outwith who also oppose zionist expansionism.

basically from my understanding (which i’ll admit is limited) the current chaos is becasue of the zionist idea of a jewish state in the holy land without limit (the idea dates from the late 1800’s if i remember right) which has been implemented over the last century at the expense of the native inhabitants, this continues to this day.

Now we have a situation today where one people is massively oppressed, in my mind any right thinking individual cannot condone this, we can’t change history, and i’m no fan of repatriation of the israeli peoples who moved there, but it’s well within the power of the world to turn round and say wait a minute this is not right, these people desire better…it’s apartheid pure and simple and worse than what we saw in south africa, the palestinian people need us to speak up or in 50 years times they will all be expelled to the refugee camps in the surrounding countries or worse..western governments are complict in this, that’s why we need to speak up.

tbf the ancient history of the region has no relevance today, it only confuses the discussion..

great show, i’ve never been tempted to go on any show in my life, but i’m bursting for a shot of the courses! :D

vrapan – fair enough, i just disagree with the summary and was also letting the OP know there’s more to it.

If the area that is currently known as Israel was ‘handed back’ to the Palestinians/Arabians, where would the Jewish people go?

imo it’s too late to hand back the land to anybody. there needs to be a solution where both peoples can live together with human rights and democratic representation for all.

maps and stuff show the region as three separate areas, israel, gaza and the west bank, that’s a fallacy, israel controls the destiny of all the land, and i reckon when a state contols the destiny of other lands it should be made to give those people with it it democratic representation within in it’s own government.

vrapan – quite a concise history, i think the whole thing needs a bit more reading than that you’ve glossed over a fair bit and all the ethnic cleansing in the formation of isreal(i’ll let the OP google nakba/irgun/balfour agreement etc etc to start there are articles that will explain the history far better than me on a single post ).

But anyhow, regarding the arguement of a right to return to the ancesteral home 2000 years later it’s ridiculous when you consider how many ancesters we have in that period, count them up, in 5 generations we all have 62 ancesters, go back further it increases exponentially..it’s an insane claim…and if it is to stand up, well i’m of to central europe to claim some nondescript bit of land that the celtic peoples used to live on 3000 years ago…

But anyhow that’s by the by and the current situation is that the israelis have complete control over the 2 palestinian enclaves and are continuing to grab all the resources and good land from them…it’s a slow ethnic cleansing i reckon and actually worse than apartiheid. it amazes me the world allows it to continue.

Mark Thomass latest show Extreme Rambling is worth seeing if you can, the extreme parts of the area are attracting people with the most extreme views it really doesnt help.

see that’s the thing, you come and bulldoze my house and build you own where it stood, just watch how extreme i get, extremism is relative and not as black and white as most people think it generally has a root cause.

On one side there is a vicious bunch of extremists who think the land belongs to them.

And vice versa.

mibbe so, but the facts on the ground there is only one side stealing the land while the other is slowly losing it piece by piece.

the isrealis/zionists have a policy of never ending expansionism, until that ends there will be no peace.

pure shit apparently! :lol:

Your “feeling” doesn’t stack up! check out the weight of Gee’s WC winning bike. he could have had it built up a good bit lighter if needed fairly easily!

purely guessing, never rode a DH bike in my life.

absoutely nothing today, lazy day, my excuse is erm i’ve a puncture to fix! will probably head out tomorrow morning somewhere mind, before heading to the pub to watch the h….erm rangers game.

having the skill to handle the lighter bike would make all the difference i’d imagine…lets put it this way i’ve a feeling 99% if not all of the top professional dher’s would choose the lighter biker if all else was equal.

Couple of recent (wobbly) vids here…

jebus what the hell did they do to kelpies, last time i was up i cycled from croy and didn’t bother heading up to eas dubh i was knackered and had to cycle back(the tak ma doon is a killer!), looks like cv is completely blue now, took me a couple of goes to work up the bottle to head down the old kelpies as well. the new run way is better mind, i’m not a fan of table tops and much prefer the kerb style jumps the changed them to.

as for cv, it’s a decent wee blue run and imo it’s a total shame that it’s not getting developed any further into decent length red trails.

i thought it was quite funny the other week, i had my bike in at the lbs to get the wheels sorted, £40 + £5 tub off lub, the look of the guys face when i told him to keep the change was priceless, clearly not the type of thing he’s used to, but he did a good job and did it quick so i was happy enough to offer a tip!

not used mail in years but if i remember right, it’s to do with how you send it, if you drag the jpeg into the message body it will embed itself, but if you go file>attach(or whereever that is, canny mind) or drag it to the bar at the top specifically for attachments it should be available for normal download…anyhow don’t quote me, but its what i remember, it works that way on thunderbird and i think entourage aswell..

saw them at QM union in glasgow years ago, great gig..good band imo.

elaine – meths is fine, it takes all the grease and crapp off the rotors, don’t know about rust though.

dirty rotors i find, if i clean my rotors with mythilated spirits it tends to go away, something i really need to do actually, sound awful right now.

On a side note, cleary the ultimate choice in cycling footwear for 2011! works a treat!

Its the horizontal rain that pisses me off

Horizontal woud have been nice! This stuff goes up the way! 8O

I had a rather interesting cycling home there thru glasgow, the rain nearly took my face off, wind neary chucked me off about 3 times!!

If ever there was a good excuse to cycle on pavements this is it, great fun though! woud have been better if i had the wind at my back mind!

just deal with it really is about all you can do… i’m much the same these days, can’t run for toffee and contemplating starting up running to mixing it up from cycling it a bit, and i know when i do start it’ll hurt like hell, but i’ve been through this before…it goes away after 3 or 4 runs(games of fives) can be less depends how unfit/unused to running you are, start of with a week break and then gradually reduce that, you soon find it doesn’t hurt any more.

couple of times or three a year at best

An immoral bunch, on the whole…

I suppose that entirely depends on your definition of morality and whether you believe this covers it. i don’t personally.

I asked the question on another forum out of curiousity, non bike related forum…

I explained the situation then asked:

Would you send the spare frame back?

Result so far..

11 – yes, it’s the proper thing to do.

36 – mwhhhaaaa, get it punted!

Much more inline with what i’d expect from the general public!

any sram chain i’ve ever bought has had a powerlink in the box.

A lot of nonsense on this thread if you ask me..Either that or the world is a different place outside my circle of friends.

It’s a company that’s made a pigs ear of it and will be down couple of quid, they(merlin) should learn their lesson next time and not to be so stupid, if they even know about it. All this keek about morals is lunacy if you ask me, i’d bet despite what people say on here that if it happened to them a majority would keep it.

It’s a bit like the people on here who reckon they’ve never run a red light. Aye right!

personally i’d keep/punt it..

derailleur hangers are a pain in the arse, i’ve spent a few quid on them over the last few year, snapping them left right and centre, if they get bent these days i just tend to bend them back, just grab the derailler and bend it back into shape… i’ve tried taking it off and bending it back but it doesn’t seem to work as well as i say though..

works fine on my bike, but mind you i accept no responsibilty if they bends your frame in any way, don’t think it will mind but still.

how far would you cycle expect to cycle in one of these?

mabie is only 4 miles from the train station(dumfries)… drumlanrig(sanquhar) is 10miles, ae is 10mile(dumfries), kirroughtree(barhill) is 20miles, wolfrax(Dalwhinnie) is 7miles.

thisisnotaspoon

i could do that, but i’ll never get it to the standard of my bike shop with out a lot of time spent learning how to do it, and i don’t really think a bike shop charges much for the job so..

A spoke will be about 65p and a spoke key about £4.
Tape a pen to your frame to use as guide and take your time.

voodoo wizardry that caper!:D

i just got both my wheel tensioned and trued, spoke replaced on the front and front bearings done, £40. happy enough with that, bike feels alot better now!

forks are something i’d eventally like to replace, but could live with for a while, tbh the more i think about it, i like the idea of building up a bike myself, but when i get into it, you just know you are going to want other bits and pieces and it’ll cost a fortune, it does seem i’d be better of finding a new bike specced as close as possible to what i’m after, cheers all.

aye, the bits that wont fit is where it all gets a bit vague for me, i’m confident at figuring it out, just wondering if the cost/hassle are really worth it… don’t know, like i say just thinking about it, and curious to others peoples thoughts on the matter.

for the bearings in the hub, you use lithium grease, for the headset, i don’t know i’d guess the same?