I am pretty dire, I should probably do a course although I am picking stuff up slowly. I try not to feel bad about it, I’m self employed so fettling is not the most productive use of my time. It does feel nice to keep the bike in good nick though.

Just do it. The government will just have to try and waste three or four hundred quid less of your money next year.

I don’t know much about electric bikes but for some reason my dog has an aversion to both electric bikes and metal detectors. If they repel dog attack they could sell like hot cakes on STW.

bensales that is exactly what i was trying to say, but better.

Daves mum it sounds like they are trying to stiff you, or somebody in Accounts doesn’t know what they are on about. Mileage allowance is meant to represent a realistic cost for running your vehicle, fuel is a small percentage of that. All you are required to do is justify your mileage, the rest is their problem.

The trail itself is very like the Dalby sections about two thirds of the way round the red, where you have singletrack climbs and rougher descents with some berms thrown in. The big difference is that Glentress has much longer climbs and descents. The black there is my favourite trail centre so far.

I find reading a bit of Ranulph Fiennes or Joe Simpson usually inspires me to MTFU. That, and picking a day out that really inpires you to push yourself again.

All the scientific and diet stuff contributes to sorting your body out, but as crikey says, what sets people apart is their mental approach to a bit of suffering.

Dean Karnazes – “Somewhere along the line we seem to have confused happiness with comfort”

Sorry that last post sounds a bit strange. A good friend and I who lived in the Alps for a while are both now married and expecting daughters. We were discussing the fact that teaching our daughters to ski/board would be great, but would also increase the amount of boys chasing after them!

Graham that is a very good point about the types of run available off different lifts, they design a good mix in North America.

We used to do a fortnight in North America around Easter every year. Accommodation and meals out or up the slope are much better quality and value for money in North America. Going for decent accommodation and being eating out in sensibly priced places, it becomes cheaper per day to go to over there if you go for ten days or more. If you are buying equipment or even bike stuff you can also save there. It is also nice to stand in an organised queue, as stupid as that sounds everything is very relaxed over there and the customer service compared to France is superb.

Bruk 8 days of freshies anywhere is extremely lucky, just count your blessings. Between Tignes and Val, Val has a lot more going on in the village, Tignes is a bit more ski-in-ski-out from most of the accommodation. Depends what you are after??

Tracey you have lucky daughters. Does your husband know that girls who can snowboard are much more attractive to men?!

MisterGnar you are taking this all very much to heart.

There are always lots of silly people on here, riding their high horses, but such strong negative feelings can’t be good for your chi.

Or do you read a bit of STW, get all riled up, and go and knock some old ladies over…?!

Who cares, if people find a post interesting it should stay. If you don’t like it don’t open the thread.

Those bunches of cynical young people who always seem to be smirking at some unspoken in-joke…?

Riding past somebody on the ground without asking if they’re ok is pretty low.

They are what they are, cheap mass produced hi tensile steel frames. The sycophants can never see any bad in the 9 lengths of scaffold soldered together.

Who cares if they ride alright?

For every On-One sycophant on here there is somebody who can’t bear the idea that 9 lengths of scaffold soldered together does 95% of the job of anything else on the market.

You keep secrets from your partner?

Great relationship

I don’t know where to start with that comment. What would you know?? Is it any of your business?? Why do you have to be self righteous about something that has obviously been posted for a laugh?? Or just a plain and simple MTFU??!!

I’ve no complete bikes although I have one that is in pieces. I’m trying to keep myself to 3 bikes. Some things women need to know and some things they don’t.

Sounds like low blood pressure, go and get yourself checked.

I’m 6’3″, 34 inch inside leg. I’ve an 18″ 456 with a 50mm stem. I used to have a Meta 5 which was an XL, I felt like I was having to reach out and turn the bars around the head tube and it was affecting my balance. You should definitely try a shorter frame.

Jim I think the point is, Madison need a mark-up to maintain their own cost structure. There isn’t long term value for them in trying to absorb price increases. People will probably balk at paying £200 for something that used to be £120, but they will go out and buy whatever is now available at that price point.

I get what you are saying about top end stuff, I don’t think the demand is necessarily as strong, but nobody is going to cut their gross margins when costs are on the increase. We are also coming from a mindset where prices were continually falling, and everyone was after the latest products, to one where people will make do and mend. The cycle will play itself out over the summer but unless there is a lot of 09 kit unsold or the pound rallies I don’t think there will be big discounts any time soon.

I reckon people will start buying down the ranges, they will buy the same part for the same money, just SLX instead of XT etc. Lets face it most decent level kit works perfectly fine.

The demand for mid range bikes & parts is probably fairly inelastic. There is a minimum threshold for functional, durable kit. Everybody is still riding their bikes, and stuff wears out. Most people will rethink the £400 flatscreen tv or the laminate flooring in the living room a very long time before they start cutting back on bike stuff.

And so they should!

Group Hug!!!!!

Fitting a much longer stem to that kind of bike is not a good idea. If you have tried the L and its too short you should try the XL?

You could run a layback seatpost instead to lengthen the cockpit with the seat up, but it would make for a very slack seat angle.

Ha Ha!

As opposed to a bunch of grown men pontificating about the merits of different overpriced pushbikes?!

Druidh, I didn’t favourite the threads but I think it was roadcyclinguk forum or something, they had a lot of “bike for a grand” threads and there was at least one person who had returned theirs. The issue seemed to be an irregular “bubbly” finish but it was affecting new frames, so if yours looks alright now you should be fine. TBH there were a lot of roadies doing down the entry level carbon frames, which I reckon is just snobbery. I’d be surprised if there was much difference between the different Cayos apart from paintwork and components.

Traildog you’re right, the Stealth is TT, its the Pro Carbon I am after.

Cheers for the validation Chris! Druidh I have read lots of good reviews of the Cayo but also some whinging about the finish of the frame. I’ve sold a bike and some bits and bobs so I am tempted to spend a bit more, and I love the Stealth in white. I was looking at the Bianchi C2C as it is meant to be a real mile muncher, but its hard to find them under £1500, you can build a lovely Stealth Carbon for that.

I’m 6’3″ and my mate’s medium actually feels quite nice, especially stood up. I’ve a large SX Trail which feels just right, but I am short in the back. Its a tough call as a long frame will eventually get on your nerves when you are looking to enjoy it most!

Raving loons out the front of RBS. There seems to be a fair mix of genuinely concerned people, knobs out to casue trouble, and students with nothing better to do.

For Morzine, the local pikeys camp down by the river on the Nyon side of town, I would hesitate to leave bikes in the van though. Apparantly there is a site on the far side of town and there is definitly a camper van area by the lifts in Les Gets.

Les Arcs, stay down in Bourg St Maurice, there should be a site. Les Arcs itself will be completely dead in the summer and the funicular ride up will give you more vertical for your day.

Surely 9am is a bit early for protesting? Most of these chaps are used to a lie in…

Lets give communism a go I say, after all it has been so successful elsewhere.

You need to get a book called Total Immersion.

The essential difference between swimming and most other sports in the level of drag created by water as opposed to air. Because water creates so much drag, increases in “power” are very easily negated by poor form. If you can get used to a body position which minimises drag you will drastically reduce the amount of power required.

I swum a lot as a kid and went back to it a couple of years ago. I was doing 2000m in about 45 minutes, getting out of the pool hyperventilating and slightly cross eyed. I can now do 2000m in anywhere from 33 to 40 minutes, after a gym session, and get out of the pool feeling more relaxed than when I got in.

If you’re swimming for triathlon there is a big advantage to maximising your efficiency, especially if you can get on somebody’s toes as you get a great draft off other swimmers.

I do serviced offices myself, there are loads of them around. Benefits for you are reduced commitment and a turnkey office. Type “serviced office” and your location into Google and fill in a few forms, before long you will be deluged with options.

I can stop my bike with a vigorous wiggle of my pinky finger.

GNARGNAR SX Trails can be built up light, my 08 SX is built up to about 33lbs without too much effort.

I did a couple of years of MMA with a guy called Duncan Airlie James who used to teach around the West End. I knew the guys from the Griphouse as well, all good coaches.

MMA will get you very fit and is far and away the most effective martial art in terms of self defence. Its all very well being able to dislocate somebody’s pinky but you cant beat a good elbow to the face. You’ll also learn to fight standing up or on the ground, you need to be able to do both and it adds a good variation to the classes as well.

Glasgow is like anywhere else, rough in places but fine most of the time. The local neds are like chavs elsewhere, full of talk but unlikely to resort to physical violence unless provoked.

Grand, it’ll need to do me for everything for the next year or two so a road bike is probably the best bet!

Cheers

“Utter pish”

But its not though.

Bankers responsibility is to increase/inflate share price. Regulators responsibility is to stabilise the market.

The government were taking a hefty percentage of the “imaginary” gains in tax and using it to subsidise stupid levels of government spending.

The reason we are more screwed than most countries out of this is that the government were just as greedy as anybody else and have left us with nothing in reserve.

They weren’t forced into anything, they were allowed to get away with it by the regulatory framework. If the regulators didn’t understand the situation that isn’t the banker’s responsibility either.

noteeth, I think you’ll find if you broke any laws, and then got caught, you’d be in jail. That is pretty much the way it works.

Until we have a new electoral system where everything is put to a retrospective tv vote on a saturday night, it is the government’s job to produce and monitor the legal framework that runs the country.

At the end of the day our current Prime Minister presided over the economic decisions that put us in this position, and the inflation of the public sector which is going to become increasingly unsustainable.

Blaming the banks is nonsense. They may have made stupid decisions but any organisation in a market economy is expected to act in its own self interest, and they were largely acting within the legal framework imposed by the government.

Blaming the banks, or individual bankers, is a political ploy to delay the broader realisation that the economy is completely borked, that we area service economy with one of the highest cost structures in the world, that anybody in a major pension scheme is essentially screwed, and that all the resources that should have been spent on stabilising and regulating the economy have been wasted by excess public spending. When people realise these things New Labour might, ironically enough, end up more hated than Thatcher ever was.

Sir Fred probably reflects on all this quite happily, but then everybody in this godforsaken country is playing the system so why shouldn’t he.

Its not that much extra for the RC2. The first time you take them out just concentrate on the pressure and the rebound dial. Next time take high speed, the time after that take low speed. As long as you isolate the variable you will start to understand what you want out of the forks.

We’ve got out of a few renewals on the basis that the initial contract had finished and the supplier hadn’t incurred any cost in continuing the service.

All I can say is thank f*ck I am not in the bike business. Gooner you are coming across as a bit of a prick here.

Everybody knows On-One don’t really do great customer service, but they will always sort you out in the end. I have got plenty of exceptional deals out of them, and had one order that somehow just vanished without trace, its no big deal. I don’t see why some people expect to made to feel special and important every time they put their hand in their pocket.