Austria

For you the boozing is over!

Waves….55 in a few weeks, still do plenty of miles on mtb, road and ‘gravel’.

We don’t have any gnarly stuff here in sunny Suffolk and an off will either see impact with mud, a tree or roots.

I don’t use my MTB quite as much as I used to because I love cycling (in general) too much, and that includes road, and gravel as well. There just isn’t the time to do it all!

Being boring….ultimately, the value of an item or service is the price someone is willing to pay.

Methinks there is more than a healthy dose of tongue in cheek on that graph. Made me smile!

4094 miles, 159026 feet, 122 rides

274 hours

50:50 road and off road.

Going to miss my target.

it just seems that Molly is a man wanting to be called a woman which I find a bit confusing

Sorry to trivialise this but it reminds me of this

Can’t believe no one has said – if you don’t taste blood in your mouth when you have finished, you haven’t ridden hard enough.

Also….prepare a good selection of excuses before the season starts so you can select, use and recycle them as the summer progresses. You will need them to explain why you lost a second and a half on that corner, that short climb etc.

Will anyone believe you? No. Will anyone listen? No…because they are busy delivering their own excuses.

It can be fun though and is curiously addictive. Haven’t done a TT since about 1999/2000 and keep meaning to have another bash before I’m too old….but then I look at some of the old biffers thrashing people way younger, with much more expensive bikes and I realise I’ve got decades yet!

NB when you start believing lycra overshoes will save you 0.5 seconds in a 10 and you think it is worth it….have a long lie down in a darkened room!

WTB Nano 40c tubeless.

Like hen’s teeth apparently. It seems some have hit our shores and they can be found with a little trying.

Not in Dartmoor, in fact Suffolk.

Maybe two or three years ago I was out on the farm which backs onto our garden (or is it the other way round?)shooting rabbits down by the railway line.

I was lying under cover in a hedge waiting for the bunnies to come out when I got the impression I was being watched. A few minutes later this cat walked out of some cover nearby and stood there giving me the evil eye. It had been waiting for the rabbits too – or at least I assume so. The thing is, this ‘moggie’ was the size of a medium sized Labrador. We sort of looked at each other for a while until it moved off.

I called Suffolk Wildlife Trust and described what I had seen. To my surprise they were quite relaxed about it. yes they knew they were around and had been reported on many farms nearby as well as at a Sugar Beet factory.

It seems that a breeding pair of ‘big cats’ (their words) escaped somewhere near Ipswich a good many years ago. The population has been spreading along the railway network (lots of food around). Anyway, they said my sighting would be noted and that was it.

The thing I saw was not an identifiable type i.e. not a puma, lynx or whatever but they said there had been enough time for them to start breeding with the domestic cat population.

The chances of something being on Dartmoor then IMO is highly possible.

All year my mother had been going on and on about how she didn’t have a decent tin opener and the one thing she really wanted for Christmas was a decent …..tin opener….and muggins here thought she really meant it.

Oh dear!

Hey…it’s the cook, not me! Can’t get the staff nowadays! ;o)

Fettling time coming up!

The outer is standard Shimano outer I think, though I did ask for compressionless. I’ll have a gander later.

A wealth of info there….thanks

“It has been scientifically established that whales are not fish.”

(Preamble to Japanese Scientific Paper)

I wonder what he says to his Mum when he gives her a lift 😈

Other things to take with you – always in my saddle bag.

100ml bottle of stan’s jizz for those times when the fluid has dried up in the tyre.

Replacement valve core and tool – for those cold, dark rides when you get all ham fisted and trash the valve.

All of these have saved rides but ironically mostly, though not exclusively, for other people. I will now proceed to forget them next time I go out!

Other tiny extras – seatpost bolts and cleat bolts. They take up no space and weigh next to nothing. You’ll probably only need them once in a blue moon but you’ll be so grateful they are in the saddle bag when they break or drop out!

They aren’t that knobbly and respectably (though not excessively) light. I am quite prepared to be proved an eejit for expecting them to roll well though. 😳

Fit as a flea atm.

Maybe I should stick some road tyres on and take it for a whirl.

Hunt 4 Season Disc, nice and light.

The discs are fine, no rubbing at all.

No rubbing on the stays either. The paint is still there! There is also masses of clearance so they would have to be uber bendy!

I love Secret Santa in my office. I buy myself a present and that’s it.

I also get to have a lonely mince pie and sherry on Christmas Eve if I can be bothered. I usually shut up the office early and go for a ride. Far more fun.

Saw that earlier today!

They live in a different world.

There was another article talking about Osborne and the Tax Credits cuts he proposed. For someone with his wealth, it was mooted that a drop of £2k income is of little concern and that he had no conception of the impact it would make on most people. It is a fair argument.

As far as tax credit cuts are concerned, I think they are working on the ski slope principle. Propose the worst possible scenario, then everyone will be happy when your revised, soft and cuddly version is implemented. The proles won’t know that this is what you wanted all along.

Sorry to digress and all that….!

Someone said these are quite good (was it you johnnystorm?)

http://www.bikes.com/en/bikes/blizzard/2015

I know nothing however, the fatty thing having passed me by completely.

Re the tyre…..road rubber gets very dirty on a turbo, it sheds all sorts of (rubber) goo and globules all over the place. Get a proper turbo tyre if you are using the turbo indoors. I found it easiest to buy a cheap back wheel, put the turbo rubber on that and just swap the wheel out as and when required.

Another thing, turbos wear ordinary tyres out quite quickly so it could become expensive using softer compound tyres.

Sounds like a job for lunchtime!

@woody2000 I am lucky if I get 3g outside the house. Ironically, if I ride into the middle of the forest down the road, there is a clearing where I can get 4g!

£35 is exclusive of line rental, that is another £17 or so on top.

It seems the speed I am getting is the best I can get (I have looked into this extensively). If I don’t get any joy with BT you may certainly send me the referral!

I have never, ever got one to work.

I got the new Bkool when it was hot off the press. Love it.

You can pay per month 8 Euro or at a discounted annual rate.

I run mine on a MacBook Pro.

I have flaky, rural, broadband but I have only been unable to log in once (their servers were down) and only very occasionally does it drop out.

I have synched my account with Strava so when I download data, it is copied over to Bkool automatically. Your data is then made available to everyone else as a 3D route. MTB routes are far easier on the turbo! What took me an hour and a half in the week, took about 42 minutes over the w/e.

The basic old unit is £169 now iirc.

They have done a lot of work to game-ify the whole experience and it works very nicely. Well worth the dosh.

My first car – well one like it. Keys fell out of the dash when I did 63mph. Could drive around on full beam at night and no one noticed. Got 8 up in it once. Reliable as a very reliable thing til I rebuilt the engine!

Brand X…..now there’s a band I aven’t listened to for a while. A bit of rummaging in the vinyl pile needed for that methinks.

Can’t believe the official line hasn’t been quoted yet.

‘If you have done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear.’

ergo, if you got in a scrap with the Bill, you had it coming my son!

Of course the irony filter is on…before I get shot down.

Saw it happen during the riots in the 80s. We too, were on a quiet night out when we bumped into chaos. Quite frightening. we managed to leg it before the SPG rocked up.

@gatsby – Am I offended by people wearing poppies? No. I wear one too but equally respect those who choose not to. They may be doing their remembrance in a different way. It is not unknown for people to donate to the British Legion and not wear the poppy. I know this is what I did for many years.

Oh yes and @fasthaggis, I know exactly what you mean. It is humbling when you see the lists of the dead.

The poppy has become a horrible symbol of ‘support our brave boys’ which is code for ‘support whatever war we tell you to or you’ll be branded a traitor’. Original meaning completely lost.

This

But equally

This:

I can’t think a better place to put a poppy than on a weapon as to me it says weapons kill and this should be your last resort.

Personally, and I’m not sure what validity my thoughts have outside of my own mind, the occasion is to remember those who did the fighting and were killed or maimed in the process. For me, I take time out to remember the grandfather I never knew and my two uncles who were scarred and traumatised by combat in WW2. I despair at the political hijacking of the event and equally, I reject the ‘poppy nazis’, it smacks of the white feathers handed out during the 1914-18 war and in retrospect, we all know how misguided that was.

Mentioned early on but Billy Cobham +1

We had a synthetic one for a while and it was like a foam mattress insofar as it seemed to lie on top of you, in a semi rigid sort of way. It was warm enough but draughty. (It wasn’t a budget option either)

When I was at Uni, my mate blew his whole grant (and all his savings) on a 1st gen metro. I think it was a 1ltr engine and the car was beige. His missis was made up about it because ‘Lady Di’ had just been pictured driving one.

Horrible car. Not much to go wrong though….but what there was to go wrong….did go wrong!

This mini metro was like most of them…rust, held together with paint and whatever the local garage had to weld on to get it through the MOT!

Two weeks ago, we sent it to the big scrap yard in the sky!

My in laws went the whole hog. The walls were plastered and painted. the last 1/3 (up to the door) had fitted carpet. They had someone put in fitted kitchen style units. The part where the cars went had those rubberised tile things.

It was dusted, vacuumed every week and repainted annually, though the paintwork was better than most of the walls in my house. They stopped short of shelves with ornaments and pictures though.

Oh yes, it was heated too, so the cars would be warm or something…… The cars were pretty special though, so you can understand it….a shagged out Subaru estate and a mini metro (late model). I have heard of people having ‘special’ garages for their classic sports car collections but never for cars whose main value was as scrap.

Barking I thought…..Mrs Slowjo agreed! Ironically, we are just selling the house and the purchasers really liked the idea of a smart garage so maybe it is becoming a ‘thing’ and they were ground breakers!

Hi Dave

TBH I don’t spend much time in the forest these days, it is way too dull and most of the trails have been harvested over. I guess you have been posted away too!

Wheels – Ikon hubs, 32 at the front 46 at the back. Really nice wheels, good combo of rim depth too. Very little trouble in cross winds.

…and if employment costs rise, surely costs to the consumer will rise so the overall impact is largely neutral….or my my rudimentary grasp of economics lacking?

Neutral, unless you are in the poorest segment of society when the impact will be compounded by rising prices.

Thanks. I’ll use the road bike as a basic template then and work from there.