I’ve always used full-size chainsets – 42/52 ‘back in the day’ and more recently 53/39. I dabbled with a compact when I bought a s/h bike with one fitted, but I found it all far too low and had me flipping between the chainrings every 2 minutes.

I usually use 11-25 on the back but I found I was honking out of the saddle on a lot of climbs that would have been better seated, so I’ve gone 11-speed with 11-28 on the back.

With 39/28 I can get up anything – it’s actually a shorter gear length than 34/25. Plus, I’ve still got the big gear for descending and that lovely wide range available without needing to shift the front-mech.

Of course, “Aracer” will be along shortly to tell me I’m wrong and that nobody should need 53/11 😉

Edit: I ride mostly in the Lancashire Pennines – plenty of hills, average rides would incorporate 1000-1500 metres of vertical ascent.

Lezyne Caddy Sack here… Does the job perfectly.

you mean they followed procedure when faced with a head injury and asked some questions and from that they garnered facts then formed a judgement

Yep, that’s another way of wording pretty much exactly what I said. Was that ever in dispute? The problem seems to be that the OP thinks his wife should have been spared this probing on the basis that his mother-in-law’s cousin’s daughter’s grandmother’s god-daughter once went on a St. John’s Ambulance course, or something… I forget. Anyway, what was the question?

However, no further action appears to have been taken. So, they obviously feel there’s nothing to pursue. Whereas you…

As I mentioned earlier, I suspect their questioning elicited a satisfactory reaction from Mrs. Doh, even in her advanced state of inebriation… 😉

It seems however that the conclusions being jumped to are a bit different though.

Erm, no, clearly not the case. The A&E staff were obliged to consider all the facts available and form a judgment based on worst and best case scenario. They then acted accordingly and questioned Mrs. Doh in a robust manner.

Good guess though.

Good point. A guess. Based on the same balance of probability that the hospital will have had: Parents take kids to restaurant, kid whacks head, parents choose to continue eating and/or drinking and/or being merry, and then when they’ve had enough, take the child to A&E.

Even now, we only have your word for it. In my experience (passed on to me by a Police Officer trained in interrogation), when people are lying, they tend to offer rather more detail than necessary without being prompted. Like naming exactly *what* soft drink they had, or even how much of it they imbibed.

So on that basis, and the basis that I don’t know you or have any past experience of your integrity, I’m building a picture of a person that puts a meal before his child’s health, and might be in denial about a drink problem.

Of course, you may simply be an unlucky victim of circumstance, but the picture that’s painted to me is exactly the same as that painted to the A&E staff. Just saying.

Photocopier sales figures are terrible… I haven’t sold one all year. But then, I’ve never sold one anyway, so I’ve no idea why you would ask that. 🙄

I did offer an opinion as to what I would do – and I requoted it just a couple of posts ago.

But to be honest, this thread isn’t really about “what we’d have done”, is it. It’s more about the OP trying to assuage his feelings of guilt and foolishness about the whole incident whilst we listen to him flipping the blame issue round to try and portray himself and his poor family as the badly done-to victims of some heavy-handed NHS rottweiler… Fact.

(with added ellipse for some kind of effect).

It’s an “ellipsis”. Or an aposiopesis.

Personally, if it was me and I’d thought the injury was minor enough to ignore it in favour of a meal, and had there been no further deterioration, I wouldn’t have bothered the NHS.

You’ve obviously not read my posts thoroughly ranus, so there’s an edited highlight.

The OP invited my opinion… I obliged.

Speak for yourself

Thank you. I generally do. 🙄

Ah right so given that your wife was (understandably) on a bit of an emotional-edge already, the “massive grilling” was more likely to have been routine enquiring.

Plus, I suspect alcohol may have been involved…

Shib – reckon you’re being a bit harsh there.

Not at all, the OP’s post comes across as a pretty typical STW whinger who thinks he is somehow above being quizzed by a medical professional who is trained to look for signs of abuse and neglect. His wife’s response, whilst not particularly comfortable viewing, would have been exactly what the interrogator was looking for, and I for one am glad to hear that they do subject people to robust questioning.

Personally, if it was me and I’d thought the injury was minor enough to ignore it in favour of a meal, and had there been no further deterioration, I wouldn’t have bothered the NHS. The fact that he did probably prompted the hospital to put 2 and 2 together and come up with exactly the same conclusion as me: that he thought the meal was more important. Which, if it had been a serious injury, could be described as willful neglect.

So I think he should stop bleating on forums about how his wife was “almost” moved to tears and accept that the way his case was handled was a result of his actions.

However, on the way home (when things were quiet enough to talk/think) when it was less likely to disrupt our nice day out, we decided that perhaps, on balance, we should ring the out of hours doctor…

Sounds to me like you’re feeling guilty (quite rightly) for not acting more decisively, and for some reason you feel affronted that a medical professional chose to question your motives on the basis that you chose to ignore a head injury so you could enjoy the meal you’d no doubt been looking forward to.

They probably felt – quite rightly – that if you put your meal before your child’s health, there was a chance that you were less than honest in your description of events.

You might think I’m having a bit of a pop – I’m not really, I’m just amazed that someone would make a bad decision and then feel like a victim for being quizzed by a medical professional who was doing their job rather well by the sound of it!

I’m not aware of any spares issues with Dura Ace… All spares seem readily available which isn’t surprising given that they’re such an widely used wheelset.

You should have used a WTB rocket as bait…

Another vote for Dura Ace C24s. By far the best value wheel in that price range – comparable in wight, stiffness and performance to wheels costing twice as much from Mavic.

About 75% of the pro-tour teams are riding Shimano wheels this year too, and I tend to look at the kit used by teams that buy their own. The majority use C24/C35 wheels. I think that tells you a lot about their reliability.

I remember looking at Kristian House’s Rapha bike at the the Bike Show last year, just after he’d won KOM in the ToB. The wheels (C35) looked like they’d been to the moon and back – absolutely shagged. But if the team are still happy to put a KOM contender out there on those wheels, it shows just how much hammer they can take…

“Few Cratch and a tiny wear and tear.”

Quite.

[pedant]Shirly the “logo” is th “Aol.”. The other bits are just photos… [/pedant]

For banner printing, you can get away with 100dpi at actual size, assuming he’s created them in Photoshop or similar.

But, if he just bumps up the res, you’ll still get stepped edges – you can’t add detail just by adding more pixels.

As others have said, they would be best redrawn in Illustrator then they are infinitely re-sizable.

Another one here Danny (Adam, we spoke yesterday on the phone…)

Lucky you, I’ve broken 3 road chains that I can recall. The first time I didn’t have a chain tool. I now carry one!

I probably break one or two mtb chains every year but never a roadie one… They just never seem to get worn to the same degree.

Watch this, I’ll snap one next ride out!!!

In 25 years of roadbiking, I’ve never had the need for a chain tool.
I just carry a Lezyne caddy pack with inflator, spare cartridge, lezyne pucture kit, spare tube, 2 Parktool tyre levers and 4, 5 and 6mm allen keys.

Oral. And coconut macaroons.

The mind can sometimes wander at moments like that Rusty! 😀

Mountain biking as a passtime is about clattering over roots and rocks, it’s an exercise in machine control and bravery. Pedalling is a necessity, not a reason.

Road riding is about pedalling.

Rubbish! Road biking is about learning to trust your bike and then wringing every last mph out of it. It’s about that lovely ripping sound from grippy tyres on dry tarmac as you clip apexes on the limit and exit grinning from ear to ear.

It’s about that feeling of total silence you feel at the bottom of a 55mph descent, where your skin tingles and you can feel tears on your temples that have been forced out of your eyes by the speed.

It’s about drawing MASSIVE orange loops on Strava maps… It’s about crossing several counties on nothing more than a bottle of water, a cappuccino and a slice of coffee-and-walnut cake.

It’s about jumping from wheel-to-wheel as you cut through the chaingang like a hot knife through butter. It’s about waiting for a car to pass and then attacking in its slipstream and pretending you’re Fabian Cancellara leaping off the front on the Col d’Aubisque.

I quite like it…

MrMoofo, my solution saves going to the kitchen to get the breadboard… Unless of course you fit forks in your kitchen, in which case, not a problem 😉

I use a T-handled Allan key to fit star nuts. Slide the star nut onto the smaller wrench on the handle, hold the long wrench bit, and tap the heel of the handle with a mallet.

80% of the time, it works every time!

You could shed a bit of eight if you slammed those bars and lost some spacers Matt! 😉

6.8kg… If I take the Garmin off, it’s below the UCI weight limit…

I’ve recently got some carbon 3T ergonova bars. Light as a feather and really stiff laterally for climbing.

The only ‘flex’ seems to be if you hold both hoods or the extremities of the drops, you can sort of ‘twist’ them fore and aft.

Feels a bit weird at first, but you soon get used to the fact that this is how they dampen road bumps.

There’s no noticable flex when honking out of the saddle…

Also, got to say, the Ergonovas are the nicest profile of any bar I’ve used and I love the flattened aero/ergo section on the tops…

Screwed up chicken wire then pack in a load of strong cement. If there’s a hole that you can get a pencil through, they can get their snout through and start munching it wider!

Best to weigh yourself once a week imo and see how you get on rather than day to day

A lot of people say this, and yes, to a certain extent, you’re more likely to see bigger weight losses, but you can still get tripped up by fluctuations due to dehydration, food intake etc.

I weigh myself at least once a day, usually twice or more, and I find it gives me a far better understanding of why my weight fluctuates, what causes it, how exercise and hydration effects it…

Having an understanding of what’s going in, what’s coming out, and what I weigh at any given time makes it easier to spot trends… (IMHO of course)

Have you never tried this??

I don’t shave in winter, it looks worst on night rides if you look down when there’s a car coming up behind you!

I’m dark, so other people can’t really see them. If you’re a ginger, you could try orange tights. 😉

But they’re steel aren’t they??

Hmmm… What a ballache, if I have to factor in the price of a chainset it starts to add up…

Has anyone tried a 10-speed chain on a 9-speed chainset?

Thanks Chakaping, but the chainset is the one thing that’s staying – only had it 6 months…

I take it my 9-speed chainset will work with 10-speed?

just out of interest why are they changing back to a triple?

From what I can gather, the top gears aren’t as high and the lowest gears aren’t as low.

Not ridden it myself, but a couple of guys in my regular riding group have gone back to triples…

All the lads I ride with who got new bikes with 2×10 have reverted to triples on the front…

Are there any issues with 3 x 10?