THE Peaks

They did it!!!!

Is it steep?

ITS STEEP!

One of the top 10 toughest climbs in the country apparently.

Allthepies

I was getting a tad down with that foreign-partners thread. I can have no complaints about my life, but I mis-understood their visa rules and had to come home. Apparently I can’t return to Brazil until May. We were meant to be getting married in February but that obviously isn’t going to happen now. But it is good to have the bike to keep me going, and am hopefully off out with Trekster tomorrow too.

So yeah, just got to keep my chin up, stay on my bike and keep going and hopefully the bureaucracy won’t get me down too much!

Is this thread like that Mornington Crescent game where you have no idea what people are banging on about and they are in on it and you aren’t? 🙁

I tell you what. There may be people here who live to argue, but it is quite wonderful to be with the 99% 🙂

Cheers Chakaping

Mike – does “screen output” mean you can plug it in to a projector to do presentations? I forgot that that is probably useful for me too.

Sorry for the hijack!

Are netbooks able to show pdf files?

I am thinking of getting a cheap one, basically so I do not have to carry a macbook in São Paulo for obvious reasons. I would only need to make a few notes on a wordpad type document, light surfing, email and the pdfs would be converted slides from my Mac presentations.

Seems like a cheaper solution than a £400+ ipad which I can see why they are good for others but I am on a tight budget and netbooks seem fine for what I need.

Cheers!

Simon

One of Trekster’s recommendations up in Daleswinton and I’ll need a map I feel 🙂

Does this summarise your typical STW thread? 🙂

Of course, the attribution of no meaning is in fact meaning, therefore there is meaning in the universe 😀

Rich

Hi – I will co-ordinate with Trekster for one or two of these days for sure.

Just so you know I did not do the entire Glentrool loop which is mahoosive! This was an alternative route taking in some of the very nice bits of the loop and then the blue singletrack. Coming back along the other side of the loch also takes in some quite technical singletrack too which at times will probably be pretty muddy this time of year.

Dalbeattie also has some nice little local “secret” sections too which are awesome fun.

Hi turboferret

I am in a vaguely similar position, back from Brazil for a few months and getting some biking in, but I don’t have a car right now.

That is a great itinery. I think Glentrool is underrated. Here are my photos

http://www.flickr.com/photos/simonralli/sets/72157625106190883/

What I did was to start at the centre, go up to the stane, then come back the other side of the loch. From there, you can then do the blue route. It is nothing special in terms of the climb, but I just wonder if people don’t know how silly stupidly fun the bermy descent is to finish, it’s an absolute blast.

Also, you can always add an 8th day and ride Drumlanrig. Horses for courses, and I have never ridden Newcastleton, although I would like to just so I can say I have ridden all the Stanes.

With Ae, see if you can add in The Shredder as it can also be seen as a bit of a hardcore XC bit of fun too, and can be built into the red.

Trekster and I are due to ride mabie some time too, so I’ll see as we can add in some local tracks too, as the red will take you around 2 hours.

Si

Maybe some people are just jealous that at this grand age, you can still fit into skinny jeans.

I am 42 in April and I say you are too old! 😀

It’s horses for courses isn’t it.

Mabie – happy xc fun for red level riders
Ae – for happy hardcore HTs and people who like fun. Yes there is some fireroad etc but they are slowly making improvements and throw in the shredder which can be ridden as an XC track then it’s great
Drumlanrig – very excellent for rooty fun
Kirroughtree – just excellent for fit and not so fit XC riders with some black challenges along the way – lots of flowing singletrack
Dalbeattie – more of a chilled ride

Mabie and Dalbeattie all have brilliant off-piste sections for locals, and Mabie also has the darkside and skills loops with big berms and jumps.

Lots of fun at all the Stanes if that is your bag, if not then no probs either!

I always enjoy the start of Ae too.

iDave – did you post this post tomorrow?

I think I once got as far as page 2 then gave up.

I am currently working my way slowly through Roald Dahl’s “Matilda”….
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in Portuguese!

Life would be much more interesting in Europe if we all swapped those brussels sprouting nonsense for more magical mushrooms!

It was actually OK – don’t forget, I came back from Brazil on Thursday where it is summer and up in the 30s! Just acclimatising 🙂

Definitely a good day – I must have brought the sunshine ; ) Hope everyone else had great rides too.

Ah well – I am looking forward to doing my monster loop – my house round to Ae, up the shredder, down for a cuppa at the cafe, then back to my house! 🙂

We are at one of the highest points in the Lake District. Conditions at the bottom seemed variable, but now we’re not too sure we are going to make it back to base. If anyone finds this camera in years to come, please tell my family I love them all! Goodbye!

Absolutely loved this vid! Some top skills there too which was a bonus.

I’m sorry but having Kirroughtree as one of the worst trail centres is just totally unacceptable to me and I’m not having it!! 😀

I can understand that some people don’t enjoy centres, but there has to be a point where you can recognise a well designed trail which is enjoyed by people who like to use their pedals, and Kirroughtree is just amazing if you enjoy peddling, it just flows and flows and flows.

And as for Ae, well I can understand how people may have felt it was over hyped, but the Omega Man is great if you add in the shredder.

All you have to do is look at the smiles on people’s faces, even on tamer centres. If they are not for you then that is fine, but really, I think they are amazing for what they are, which is places to have fun and to help people get into mountain biking in a controlled environment!

I use this for the conversion

http://www.squared5.com/

It had a lot of recommendations.

From a Casino manager to author[/url], blogger, and lecturing in chaos, complexity and innovation[/url] after doing an MSc 🙂 !

Terrible. I am stuck in Santiago, Chile, about to do a lecture tomorrow, but on Thursday I will have a day off and will go up into the Andes. Came over on the plane with Liam Gallagher’s new band, and had a beer with the roadies. I feel your pain. This business travel is not all it is cracked up to be!

I must try and catch up with these lads. They seem to be Brazilian Mountainbikers who blog about beer!

http://www.sombrabikers.com.br/?tag=cerveja

I haven’t got the nerve to do close up yet.

[/url]
Week 24 – A kiss[/url] by simon ralli[/url], on Flickr

I don’t want to come over all niche, but now that I live in Brazil I am exploring crisps that are made out of vegetables that I had previously never even heard of before. Amazing, especially with some of the Brazilian beers they have over here.

As for Crispy Bacon, so long as no one sees you I can’t see the problem.

Here is my youtube playlist!

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8661EB56544027D8&feature=mh_lolz

As bloggers,is there for you an expectation that others are actually reading it when you go to the trouble of writing it or is it just a cathartic experience? If not, why do you do it and not just write a diary?

Well I get around 30 – 50 page views a day which is Ok I suppose. A friend gets around 5000 a week with his Harley Davidson related blog.

I guess with wordpress blogging and other blogs being quite sophisticated nowadays is a bit more than daily random streams of consciousness 😀

I have a number of blogs, but my main one is http://www.transitionconsciousness.org. I am freelancing right now, and so it is both a showcase for a lot of my work and thinking, as well as being an educational resource for people interested in sustainability, chaos, complexity and transformational thinking.

I also have simonralli.wordpress.com which is an occasional blog to advertise my book, and http://www.shamanicdrumming.co.uk to advertise my CD and discuss shamanic related things.

I enjoy it and it’s always good to get nice feedback from people. On Transition Consciousness I now have guest bloggers and I am trying to add more Portuguese language blogs too.

Ta! That’s the word, but the answer is probably going to be something silly. Is the answer Hartlepool?

I was thinking a whirlwind/twister thingy (not too sure what a water-based one is).

Or maybe a fish.

Does anyone remember that one from a few years ago where an Assie is riding through a forest and he rides into a load of spiders webs and starts swearing like crazy? Now that was very silly and funny in the extreme.

Anyway, you guys at Bushy Park need to be watching out as well

Some more Mabie magic! (Mostly off-piste)

I havent tried it but I normally try not to load too many apps onto the laptop.

Also, in my humble opinion, when I had my laptop, I bought a Zen tiny little player, and it just blew the ipod out of the water in terms of sound quality. To be honest, people rave about the ipods, but to my ears they sound tinny and terrible and I feel we have gone backwards in sound quality.

I remember my first sony walkman with tapes, and maybe I am wrong, but that was just awesome (minus the hiss) compared to digital music today.

Or maybe I am just grumpy and wrong!

I think you can up the quality of the recordings but that is no use now that I have done all my CDs!

Well I now have an MacBook Pro bought in late 2009 using a student discount. I think with student discounts though you really save a lot of money on the software, not so much on hardware but it all helps.

I was really frustrated the first month which took a lot of shine out of the purchase, but that was me getting used to the OS again. I used a Mac at Uni in 1989 and in my first job from 92 – 96.

I was gutted that using a video camera can be dire – my camera “didn’t work” and you have to do all sorts of nonsense to get sound to work even on just the basic software. This got me really down, as I had bought the Mac thinking that it was meant to be good at media and video and stuff, but it just isn’t and the Apple helpline was hopeless in telling me how to get video to work.

Good things are that it is seriously fast to switch on, and I have never had a blue screen of death.

iTunes is just horrible horrible, but its not the end of the world.

I just wish I had a budget to but the MacBook with a larger screen, as it can be a bit frustrating at times say reading a pdf. I don’t have the budget to buy a large screen for when I am home.

I wanted to buy something that would last a long time. It seems great for the basics, and so far does not seem to be slowing down as many PCs do over time.

Overall I am very happy, apart from a few niggles on various bits of software.

Seems OK to me. I have v regular calls back home to the UK from Brazil, and I also have one student I teach English to over Skype so so long as both you and the people you are speaking to have good broadband you should be OK. On poorer links you can always just have sound and no video.