Ah, I already have plans tomorrow. The trotters ride round my neck of the woods quite often, I’m north of Preston, Trough of Bowland area.

Where’s the ride? Aren’t they mostly from my area?

Why don’t ‘we’ just organise one? Do we need a scapegoat when it ends as badly as I predict?

Middle aged??? Nooo… I don’t think so, is mid-thirties middle-aged??

Harrumph.

Erm… Misunderstood… What do you… Oh never mind 😉

I’m off to watch Corrie and drink a lonely bottle of wine… 🙁

andysbeans – Member

Shibboleth, I detect you are being slightly misunderstood, it happens to me all the fxxking time!

What do you mean?

[edit, sorry… 😉 ]

Quite alright jojo, I’ll wink in future… 😉

Awww, I love happy endings Jesmonddingo! 🙂

Jojo, until you can learn to detect sarcasm, I’d keep your insults to yourself. 🙄

Is it? I’d always turn slightly to preserve my modesty… And certainly wouldn’t dream of doing it in mixed company.

Having said that, I did try one of those public urinals in Picadilly Gardens… Quite liberating it was too! 😳

Surely as a woman who loves a bit of MTB action you (as in a woman, not actually you) would be sensible enough to predict the dynamic of the day and bask in the ego boost of it all?

In a bid to avoid a repeat of that “dynamic”, I’m more than happy to take both Andysbeans and Cinnamon Girl for a ride round the Lancashire Pennines…

They do have a habit of doing that, it’s like they don’t want to end up going blind, having bits amputated, and you know, dying and that.

She didn’t have to do it in a busy restaurant, especially after I’d told her I couldn’t even watch Holby City due to my fear of needles.

It’s like those militant breast feeders. Yeah, we know you have to do it, and you have every right to do it anywhere, but really??? Do you really have to do it whilst people are trying to eat???

I seem to remember that the organisor came in for a lot of flak.

I wouldn’t want to be responsible for 200 middle-aged men chasing 3 or 4 single women round the fells on bikes, would you?

I know what you mean. I was off the dating scene for over 15 years, and I was shocked at how blatantly sexual a lot of women are. Downs syndrome girl also revealed that she was bisexual and asked me how I felt about swinging, and if I’d try “bowling from the pavilion end” if I was in prison!

Lovely girl, but barking mad!

If I could come back as an animal, I’d come back as Miss Paraguay’s lady shave.

Grrrrrr.

andysbeans – Member

I totally disagree that 30 something women are single for a reason shibboleth.

You misread my post, I said a lot of women who are single in their 30s are single for a good reason. From the stories I’ve heard from the women I’ve dated, a lot of the men on there are too!

I’ve met some great people, and made a few really good friends who I’ve enjoyed great dates with but just not clicked. They’re certainly not all weird.

But if you can tell me how to filter out militant diabetics or people who ask completely inappropriate questions, I’d love to know! 🙂

Another fairly recent singleton here, I left a wife a couple of years ago, and had one fairly serious relationship since, but had lots of fun on Plenty of Fish.

Met some nice people on there, as well as some complete nutters. One girl asked me if I’d choose to abort a Downs Syndrome baby… And that was on our first date!

Another was a diabetic that injected herself during dinner in a busy restaurant! Neither got a second date, but I think the experience goes to prove that a lot of women who are single in their 30s are single for a good reason!

Without websites like that though, it does become increasingly difficult to meet people, mainly due to the fact that most of the old ‘social network’ is now raising rugrats and mowing lawns at the weekend.

And as for Facebook, don’t bother. I seem to have attracted quite a harem of portly, middle-aged, bored and lonely women who comment on my every move… I hope none of them read STW!

I think the market is far too small to warrant development of a hydro STI shifter. A few hundred cyclists in Belgium is hardly worth building a business plan around… ;o)

cinnamon_girl – Member

Cateye cordless are rubbish, I’ve back to wires.

Me too now, far more reliable…

Project, aren’t they calibrated to the specific head unit?

Wasn’t it Biff off of Emmerdale Farm that used to do Gerry Adams’ voice?

grum – Member
Really? Pretty sure most people were aware the prices were a mistake judging by that thread. Seems strange to me that Oakley would honour orders from ‘valued customers’ who were basically out to rip them off.

At 90 quid, Oakley would NOT be out of pocket. We’re talking about a product that costs pennies to make. I’d have been happy enough if they’d honoured the order at 90 quid, but doe to lots of internal problems with credit card deductions etc, they chose to give them away FOC as a good will gesture.

And the title of that thread was something to do with Oakleys being “a bit cheap”, not free! Muppet. 🙄

It’s alright, but it doesn’t have any particular focal point or lead-in lines. I think the cables under the pier in the foreground turn my eyes into pin-balls…

Nice light though, a bit more planning and you could have got a better shot IMHO.

OAKLEY: An international company with an unrivaled reputation for fantastic customer service who mistakenly priced products cheaper than the usual RRP – but in no way free – and decided to provide the goods FOC as a good will gesture in order to protect their hard-won reputation.

DAVE HINDE: An absolute shyster who’s happy to rip people off; tries to discredit his own customers who have the temerity to question his below-par customer service; who’s been removed from ebay, investigated by trading standards and sued by countless unsuspecting customers…

And you idiots think you’re gonna get free rotors??? It’s obviously a mistake – I’d imagine the default price on his web template is £00.00 and he’s forgotten to put a price in.

I ordered Oakleys for 90-odd quid, less than half the usual RRP, but still a significant amount. The fact that they gave them to me FOC was a massive bonus, but 90 quid is still a lot of money for a pair of sunnies, I just assumed they were slashing prices to make way for new products or something like that.

How many graphic designers does it take to change a lightbulb?

**** off, I’m not changing anything.

Giant. They make more carbon frames than anyone else and know what they’re doing. The Planet X seem like a good bike, but I’ve heard nothing but bad reports about service and customer care.

I have a TCR C3 and it’s a fantastic frame, just been reading about the new ones and they sound like a big leap in terms of features and performance.

And full Ultegra? It’s a no brainer, it’s the nicer groupset to use. The Nanos come with FSA cranks, far-east CNCd brakes etc don’t they?

Thanks Binner, Illustrator is no problem. I’ll download it… 🙂

Cheers Skin, is it relatively straightforward to use?

How did you get on in the race Monkeychild?

Gary! Back away from the child!!! 😮

😉

irvb – Member

You’re not trying to fit the back brake to the front are you? The back has a shorter bolt/nut. (I know this because a “friend” was once stoopid enough to try this)…..

No, I’m just transplanting from a skinny steel frame with 1″ steerer to some carbon forks with a big fat crown.

Off to the LBS this morning to try and get a longer nut… 🙂

Here’s my nephew Charlie wearing mine…

Ooh, you got the glossy one. I went stealth matt black!

Looks spot on that, does it ride well?

Absolute steal for the money, one of the benefits of not riding medium-sized frames! 🙂

(You seem to have a rat problem…)

Thanks guys! Amazingly helpful!!! :o)

Old Git, I went for this… A Dolan Preffisio. They were selling them on Ebay for 69 quid! Miles nicer than the Dribble to look at, and I’m really impressed with the finish. Proper painted decals, none of the peely vinyl you might expect on such a cheap frame.

Went for their basic carbon winter fork too for another 80 quid…

What Tim said… 😉

It can only really be considered to have a direct blood line to a very specific genre of garage, which could be argued has so little in common with the true definition of garage, that it isn’t actually garage but a new genre, ie two-step or dubstep, which are ‘essentially’ the same.

passtherizla – Member

Its essentially just garage from about 15 years ago rehashed with heavier bass… Lame.

That’s not strictly true. It could be said to be a progression of 2-step garage, but pure 4-on-the-floor garage.

Dubstep is like the dance version of jazz. It uses longer percussive loops that force the listener to really hunt for the rhythm, and the percussion is often syncopated at half-time or a completely unrelated rhythm to the rest of the track.

My brain finds it really frustrating to listen to, but I suppose that’s the idea: In the same way that jazz chords evoke feelings of uneasiness, so too do a lot of dubstep rhythms creating tension in the music.

If you watch the way people dance to it in a club, it seems to encourage everyone to dance like nodding dogs as their brains try to find the rhythm. The human brain naturally gravitates to 4 or 8 bar loops so it finds longer, more complex or syncopated loops difficult to deal with.

I don’t like it, but I find it quite interesting…

It causes youngsters to riot too… Fact.

I did my first crit recently (doing it again tonight) and I think I fuelled just right. I ate 2hrs before the event, drank 80g solution of PSP22 in the hour before the race/during warm-up and had half a bottle with a High5 tablet in it for the race.

What some have said is right, you don’t *need* fluid onboard for the race, but it’s nice to have and if you use an electrolite, you’ll recover better.

The most important advice I can give is to not think of it as a 45 minute event, think of it as 1.5hrs starting 45mins before the bell.

45mins will give you ample time for a good warmup – do 20mins gentle spinning then 3min race-pace sprints with 3-5mins recoveries in between.

And finally, NOTHING will prepare you for the pace of crits at this time of year! Sorry pal, but they’re **** brutal!!!

Good luck!

If they still did the black ones, I might be tempted… But not Dooooom Blue. They look cheap. I know they ARE cheap, but there’s really no need to look it!

They’re “doom blue” though…

What Simon said. Mudguards mainly for me. Race bikes don’t have enough clearance. Dedicated winter bikes have clearance, brazed-on eyes and less toe overlap etc.