Ah, so if I were to stick drop bars on my Swift it would stop being a MTB and would become a ‘monster crosser’?

I have had stuff from Billy’s and tbh they have been fine. They are Surly dealers iirc and generally have important stuff in stock….such as a good selection of sprockets for those SS moments. They also seem to be following the trend for messenger wannabe fixies.

Jerry at JT is a very good mechanic and he builds a brilliant wheel but he can be a little disorganised at times. I always found it worth the wait although the wait was sometimes a bit frustrating!

I seldom use him any more as Ely is a 50 minute drive from me (Bury St Eds) and I can use online shops for consumables plus Revel Outdoors are in Newmarket and Bury – well worth a visit.

Let’s just get a dictator in and it won’t be a problem ever again!

Whatever the relative merits of AV or FPTP I predict a tiny turnout and the loser will be able to claim insufficient people voted for it to be a valid endorsement.

As Ian Hislop pointed out, we are being asked to vote for AV on a FPTP system so will the AV peeps be able to claim the result was fair, based on the premise that they believe FPTP is inherently unfair?

RIP Poly.

A lot of the mags seem to rave about the quality, ride and well, almost everything about the Boardman road bikes. One or two might be biased but they can’t all be wrong… unless of course you know better?

I have ridden a lot of road bikes in my time and the Boardman seems to do everything well. My only gripe is that they don’t make them bigger!

Why do you need to?

So I can work out (roughly) what a decent price for a s/h one would be.

OK thanks. I’ll see if that yields any fruit….so to speak.

Night of the Lepus – killer bunnies! I nearly wet myself laughing the first time I saw it.

My mates and I do this sort of riding all the time. Personally, I get bored riding round in muddy/dusty circles in Thetford etc. A bit of road work widens the scope, gives you time to chat and chill and eventually leads to different (bigger) loops being put together.

I have just discovered how much fun a CX bike can be and the fact it opens up masses more scope is even better.

I wanted my Dad to get a a

but he ended up with a

and my mum got a

Me!

I have just bought a pair of these wheels and use Ralphs. They were a doddle to fit but the shop did say some tyres are an absolute pain… best fitted with tyre levers.

Run them tubeless. I got some help with seating the tyres – use a compressor is my tip. Otherwise they are excellent.

I retweeted your erm.. tweet just in case anyone is Suffolk ran across it (a million to one against I know) and it ended up here: http://paper.li/PPCLeeds/1293092784

Precipitous… you know what Thetford is like! 🙂

I have Ay Ups and use them in a bar/helmet combo. Narrow beam on my helmet using a 3 hour battery. Medium spread on the bars with a 6 hour battery. Got them last year and they do have a high and low power setting. For off road use they are just right, a nice combination giving all the illumination I need. I decided against going for a “light up the entire forest” option as I didn’t want to replicate daytime riding. IMO too much light detracts a bit from night riding, riding in the dark should be subtly different to daytime stuff.

As mentioned before, battery times quoted are too short, mine tend to last beyond the quoted times but not by much….15 minutes or so usually.

I love them and prefer them to my HiD which still gets dragged out occasionally.

I am lusting after an Anthem 29er and keep doing some creative maths to persuade myself I can afford it, including selling my Swift, Superlight and carbon road bike but then I always realise that it is only one bike and no way will it ever be worth three bikes.

Then I think… well it costs me quite a lot to maintain five bikes and keep them running nicely, maybe if I just cut down to the Giant, a CX bike and a fixie I could keep them in the style to which my wife would like to become accustomed and I have to fight that one off too.

Then I think, ooh, wouldn’t it be nice, it is another NEW bike and will be so much better than my others.

The way to eliminate this urge once and for all is to confide my urges to my wife and then flee! As it happens, I quite like the fantasy of buying the new bike, wheeling it out of the shop, driving to the nearest trails and riding like a God.

Isn’t reality a bitch?

Thanks all… plenty to listen to there! 🙂

I did (see the last sentence) 🙂

I just wondered whether there was anything else good or bad anyone had experienced. Maybe I should have made myself clearer 🙂

To be fair the gist behind your comment mirrors what the chap at the shop said.

EDIT: MP3. I haven’t got them lossless though I will be experimenting. I have a 160GB iPod so there should be plenty of room!

Hmmmm… let me see.

A biscuit

…. but I just ate it! ;0)

Thanks Harry!

tres amusant!

Snap despite graduating in 1983!

coffee:keyboard interface there Stoner! LOL!

40! Sheesh, I’m hitting 50 in just over a fortnight. Care to swap?

Thanks, that was really helpful. It is now reset to 720p/60fps ready for my early morning ride tomorrow. 🙂

Mine’s a Giant Anthem 29er BTW.

I have never thought about having a blog full of kit I lust after, nice idea!

How do you alter the orientation of the pictures? Do you do it before publishing or after?

I’m too bashful to publicise my blog but I do have a crash you can see… well not so much see as share the tumble with me!

[Pedant alert]We all need our ‘I wish I could have…’ moments. This is mine (today at least…!). The new Orange ST4. Mine is a cracking bike – fast, taught and feels like a bigger travel bike than it is. But, even Orange will admit, the initial ST4 I have is a tad flexible when pushed. A new swingarm and rocker in 2010 helped, but for 2011, a new beast emerges. mmmmm.[/Pedant alert]

It should be taut not taught. 😉

Haven’t read all the posts but fwiw I have had a pair of DT240s for approx 6 years or so. They have never missed a beat and are still spot on with no play, rumbling etc etc. I have had many XT hubs over the same and they never last more than a year.

Take up on the DT is much better than almost any others I have tried… except my fixie of course! 😉

@TheBrick

There are 2 x road bikes and a CX bike in the shed too so I would only be running one MTB.

…and in 29er flavour anyone?

thanks gents!

erm… that’s “gents” in a non sexist and totally all inclusive, generic way…… gulp!

Re the gun thing. Wasn’t there that scene in Spooks in one of the last shows of the most recent series where this guy was shot in the shoulder by a sniper with a .50 cal Browning? He had a nice little hole and was up and about with a sling in a few scenes. Shows we can cock up on the realism front too!

What gets me is the way people (not just in American films) can empty endless magazines in an enclosed space, fire pistols, machine guns, shot guns etc right next to someone (you get the drift) and no one has perforated ear drums. They can all hear normally and carry on as if nothing happened. either they all have ear defenders on or every gun is suppressed although they don’t have silencers fitted!

OK, short term deafness would hinder the plot lines a trifle and would be a cinematic inconvenience but it does come over as a little silly.

In the end, after several passes through revo uninstaller, I finally succeeded. Thanks for your help guys.

No.. it just installs a new copy of the program alongside the old one. The ew one uninstalls fine, the old one just keeps on with the same error. 🙁

ok I’ll give that a go.

How many angels on the head of this pin?

A rather succinct way of saying

In modern usage, this question serves as a metaphor for wasting time debating topics of no practical value

(Wiki)

[smug]Had mine ages ago[/smug]

It is worth the wait. I haven’t finished it yet but it is better than 61 which I didn’t enjoy very much.

I am 6 foot 4 (well a gnat’s under).

The TT length is the same as my road bike and all the basic measurements are the same but strangely it feels longer.