Pretty much unusable IME. Probably work fine if you live in the middle of nowhere but when i’ve tried them in Europe absolutely hopeless.

Crazy Legs –

Join British Cycling or Cyclists Touring Club (CTC), you get……top notch legal teams who specialise in cycle claims..

Do you really? I think they just put you on to a no-win no fee solicitor as people have suggested above. Yes, you should be a member of these orgs (I’d add the LCC to that list if you’re in London) but don’t oversell them.

Try here

Epicyclo: you can't run slack in with Gates drive – tension needs to be high to prevent the belt skipping.

Schlumpf were showing an alternative (but one that works only with their Schlumpf drive cranks) at Eurobike. They've got an English Pdf doc up now that explains it (German only when we visited the Eurobike stand).

If you've got space I'd seperate your office printing from your photo printing. Inkjet ink can be a stupidly expensive way to print documents.

HP Laserjets were intended to print 50k pages a month so one with a 10k pages or so is like new. On the 'bay You can pick one up with network and dupluxer, including toner, for £100 and it will last a lifetime. All the parts are available if anything does break.

Bump.

I'm still a bit vague on this. As far as I can see "44mm" is a 1.5 head tube with a standard 1.5" lower cup and a ZeroStack/Inset 1 1/8th top cup.

It's still just a 1.5 headtube isn't it?

You really need a new broadband and phone deal. Check SamKnows as above but you should be able to get fast, "unlimited" broadband and a load of inclusive phone for less than £25 per month. (I'm with O2 and i think it's 22.50).

They all still have a fair use policy but Spotify is not that bandwidth heavy – the high quality streams are 320kbps and theres a lot of hours of listening to hit the volumes you're talking about. Is he really listening all day every day?

I suspect some video as well – some big film downloads could be some gb each

A few squeezeboxes here. Great gadget and if you want to send music to more than one room, with the ability to play either synced or different music, they're great. Work really well with Internet radio (inc. BBC iPlayer streams) as well.

If you've a mac and only want to send to one room then Airport (or possibly the new Apple TV) is cheaper and means you don't have to switch away from using iTunes for some things.

Either way an iPhone or iPod touch is the best solution for a remote.

As Househusband links to – those are 'good enough' (ie there's no point spending any more) HDMI cables and they're not expensive so why don't you buy one and try?

In *most* cases HDMI will be better but sometimes the softer/more processed picture you get over a Scart lead will cover up the deficiencies in an SD picture – SD can look terrible on LCD screens particularly.

Will – think you're wrong there. All the shifting is at the hub so the chainring and cog make no difference to the gaps between the gears. It's always c500% overall/c13.5% per shift.

All you're doing is moving the overall gear band up and down. I've always run 38/16 on 26" wheels. I'm considering having a play with different sizes but haven't quite worked through the impacts. I figure larger cog on the back improves wear, larger on the front decreases clearance and alters impact on suspension (more imporant on single pivots frames). Anything i've missed? Thought about 36/16 (i like to climb the odd wall)

Going back to the start of this thread…Admirable says
"Capable off road too"

Surely no-one in their right mind would take one of these off road? We were in the Brecons over the bank holiday weekend and came across a trio of 'off roaders'. There was a Mitsi Warrior, a Toureg and an XC90 and they'd turned around at exactly the point in the trail where I'd have driven in any standard 2 wheel drive car.

We made significantly faster progress than them back to the road as well at a gentle cruising pace.

Dixons tax free at airports is by far the lowest price i've seen for Apple stuff. No idea about the practicalites, or whether they're current models, but last week the cheapest iMac they had was £860 whereas the cheapest on Apple's site is £999

According to this you can call ahead and they'll get stuff in for you.

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=55167

?

Thule are good and the latest ones will, i think, take both. Pendle now do a fork mount as well which looks simple and strong. Singletrack did a review the other month – you should get the back issue or take an online sub..

What PP and Tron said. Sportwool is the best – I wish there were some more MTB oriented tops made of it.

Helly Hansen LIFA prowool is my favouite thermal baselayer – same same LIFA merino mix.

Footflaps – that's very interesting, thanks.

Training route Open and sign posted from May onwards. Please comply with any special instructions on the route map. Out of consideration for nature, certain parts of the route will only be open on the race day.

hmmm

Eiger Bike route

Could be fantastic, could not be ridable when the event isn't on, but the gps logs are there. Shame the map is black and white and the overlay is solid.

Edit – Route on GPSies

Looks like a lot of road

I'd be really interested to see what you've found in the way of routes/trails – any chance you can send some links/details. We've been thinking about a trip to Wengen in Summer for a while now.

What's the basis of people saying there is a problem with running a business from home? Lots of people have home offices, a lot of small businesses (web design, curtain making, eBay based sales) are run from a residential property.

My understanding is that so long as you've not made alterations that require planning permission, you've told your mortgage company, and sorted out insurance you're pretty much OK. So long as you're not using parts of the building exclusively for business – eg your office also gets used as a spare bedroom or a second TV room – business rates/CGT position doesn't change.

Running a B&B, which you've permission to do, you need to provide secure bike storage and parking. Making a workshop available to guests is no different to letting them use the TV room as far as I can see.

The only issues I can see are around noise and disturbance to neighbours and you have to be making quite a bit, and usually at unsociable hours, before anyone has any valid grounds to complain (and even then it's a slow difficult process and they'd need to provide a lot of evidence).

Even if you *were* putting up 3 pairs of mtb'ers and their bikes every night, repairing their bikes in your back garden in the early evening, and setting off with them in a van you owned to go to the trails each morning at 8am I'm not sure she would have any valid grounds to complain.

From the Garmin Edge manual –

You can also navigate a ride uploaded to your Edge from an external source. For example, you found a great trail ride on the Internet or another Edge owner created a route for you.
note: Track or route files must be saved with the *.gpx extension.
1. Upload the *.gpx file to the garmin\gPX folder on your Edge memory. For more information about uploading files to your Edge, see pages 45–47.
2. Press menu > select Where To > Saved Rides.
3. Select a ride from the list.
4. Select Navigate

Now this patently doesn't work as far as i can see. It specifies 'trail ride' as well so they can't really claim it only works on road.

BTW – Garmin's 605 or 205 are fine for naviagating…you've just got to use a course (.CRS

Really? I'm getting really frustrated with my 605. All I want to do is follow a tracklog of a previous ride – whether one of mine or someone elses. That's something a basic etrex could do 5+ years ago – a little arrow pointing in the direction you needed to go in.

Courses don't tell you which way to turn – they tell you when you're 'off course' (frequently, particularly offroad under trees where there may be inaccuracy in either the original or current location, and uselessly as they don't tell you which way you need to go to get back on the course). If you're course is a lap of, say, Richmond Park this might work OK but in the woods with tight knit singletrack that might cross over itself (eg a figure of 8 loop) it's useless.

The "navigation" option doesn't seem to work at all – just connects a load of random points offroad.

Following a tracklog "as a line on the map" again is OK as long as it's always obvious which way is 'ahead' – go to navigate a loop off the main track and it gives you no indication whether you should be going clockwise or anticlockwise (so you potentially end up climbing up the descent).

Oh, and navigating a course resets the timer/distance etc so you lose your total ride distance if you did any riding before you arrive at the start of the course.

Could you be running lower pressures than you think? Most guages are notoriously inaccurate and the stiffer sidewalls of UST tyres mean that they feel hard than a tubed tyre for the same pressure.

combi-drill is hammer action no?

Not all batteries are equal – you still see drills being sold with Ni-Cad sometimes. Makita rock.

I like Lenovo laptops, haven't seen their desktops in the flesh but suspect you get a nicely put together pc with a good case.

My experience of PC's is that upgrades don't make a lot of sense. Within a pretty short amount of time you end up needing a new motherboard (chip sockets change, connection standards change) at which point you're better off buying a new PC. Adding memory and a larger hard drive is easy enough to do with almost anything – even laptops.

With a cyclist. South African on a 26" jumpy bike of some sort (saddle set low). He spent some time pulling a wheelie down a bus lane some way ahead of me. We set off from the next traffic lights with him standing up and stomping on the pedals, me cruising behind him. When he notices me he slams the brakes on and momentarily locks up his back wheel. I was sharp enough to brake but I mean why?

A mate had it done to him by some Fakenger the other week. Same deal – he was following behind him when the idiot decides he's too close and locks up his back wheel. Said mate ended on the ground with a load of road rash. Asked why the Fakenger replied "i've had a bad day". Nice.

Don't rate Tyrwitt shirts myself. Thomas Pink are really good but expensive.

M&S do made to measure of a sort at a very good price. You put in your height, weight etc and it does a pretty good job.

The other option is just to get a tailor to put some darts in the body. I'm told you can get it done for about £10 a shirt at a lot of dry cleaners and some shops will do it as well – i bought a sale shirt in Reiss that had been taken in for someone else but came back too small.

As someone pointed out above – you can create a course from a tracklog on the Edge itself so there's no need to export and reload. Definitely works on my 605 though took me a while to find the menu/option.

I really like the 605 but there are so many 'nearlys' with it. The navigation is just a joke – no idea why they thought that algorithm would be useful for a cyclist.

Courses work up to a point but I haven't found a way to track total distance for the day – ie ride to start of a course you've downloaded, follow the course, extend ride after end of course (or just riding a section of it).

On my old Etrex Legend this was no issue – I'd end up with an active tracklog for the whole ride plus a time/distance etc. On the Edge i end up with a load of different rides. Any suggestions?

Autostart would be good as well…

That haircut reminded me of
Hoxton ****[/url]

2 year old and fairly rare vehicle so don't expect to find many for sale.

We got units from these guys –
http://www.arena-kitchens.co.uk/

It was a few years back so don't know if anything has changed but the stuff they sell is good quality and priced well below what you'd pay on the high street (Wentworth make the kitchens John Lewis sell as their own brand at a much higher price than Arena sell them for).

Very solid carcasses, delivered fully built.

Microsoft? Their keyboards and mice are really good. I use a wireless ergo microsoft most of the time which isn't bluetooth but they do some bluetooth ones as well. The Magic Mouse is nice (and we have one on an iMac) but i'd not want to use one full time – you can add lots of extra functions to the multitouch via some 3rd party preference panels.

The First Direct mortgages let you do this as well but unlike some of the older 'One' style mortgages you keep a seperate current and savings account as well as a mortgage account. Everything is offset but you can manage your money in a more conventional way.

Sudocreme is very drying – it's good for treating saddle sores but is really not the thing to use to prevent them.

Assos chamois cream works for me and the advice i've heard from real indurance riders is to apply masses of it. Vaseline is probably effective but wouldn't want to have to wash it out.

That's worrying. We should check ours.

A lot depends on what she's using her website for – it sounds like it's just a small online brochure. I'd second Brant's recommendation of using WordPress. The new version is pretty sophisticated and it's very easy to self-maintain.

I'd recommend Google apps for domains for email. Reliable email with IMAP which means you can keep your account syncronised (including sent items) across multiple machines, webmail and mobile. Shared/collaborative documents are also excellent.

M&S? Bikes in 'unspecified items up to 5k' so you don't need to mention them. They didn't have any problems insuring Katie who works in a similar way.

When looking at home workers the insurance companies are only really worried about having people at the house and them stealing stuff. No customer visits and delivery to the door comes in the same category as you working from home one day a week. Actually it should bring rates down as the house is nearly always occupied.

Bikes are the awkward thing as they can really bump things up. You could try leaving off the home working and then call to amend when you get the policy documents through – that way you get the 'web price' (20% discount with M&S i think) but get to discuss the amendments to the policy with a human.

I've just got an Edge 605. I've added OpenStreetMap UK mapping – it's definitely not an OS map but it's a lot better than nothing (+improving all the time and free).

However, I'm a bit puzzled by the navigation options. I uploaded a GPX format 'tracklog' but when I selected Navigate the route the Edge chose was just bizarre. In the end I just displayed the track on screen and followed the crumbtrail. I'll try a 'course' next time but can anyone explain what the 'Navigate' option on a track/saved ride is MEANT to do?

We've had various track pumps over the years and most of them haven't lasted long. The oldest, and still the best by far, is the Silca. Would buy another without question.

When I did it (10+ years ago) I was on a 80mm hardtail. From what i remember it was pretty much all rideable (though it could have changed a bit since then).

I remember it being a great ride – would love to do it again.