I’ve no idea what’s used in inflatable tents, but ETFE is used in inflatable roofs. I imagine it costs more than TPU and may not be so easy to buy in small quantities.

The label on the bag containing the spacer that came with my Hope 4 Boost hub reads as follows:

“Use this spacer when fitting a 9/10 speed cassette or XT-M8000/XTR-M9000 (11 speed) Cassette”

The audio file on this HSE webpage simulates the experience of noise induced hearing loss. I think there’s nothing you can do to ‘cure’ it*, only stop it getting worse by using hearing protection and avoiding environments with noise levels which damage hearing.

* That said, I read some years ago that the US Navy was working on a treatment which would repair hearing damage for its personnel who work on the decks of aircraft carriers. I think the treatment involved an injection to ‘revive’/repair the hairs inside the inner ear which detect noise (vibration) and which are what get damaged by noise induced hearing loss.

Malvern Rider (and PeterPoddy and anyone else with experience of the step through frame), I would be interested to know what you think of the step through frames – usually marketed as the ladies’ version – as opposed to those with a cross bar/top tube.

I suspect that they are so overbuilt that the traditional arguments against ladies’ and mixte touring frames, e.g. too flexy, don’t apply to these bikes.

If you were buying one (again), would you get the step though version or one with a top tube?

What this will do is stop the intel sharing. Sensitive info in the hands of other governments simply won’t be passed on to the USA.

It’s not just sharing with the agencies of other countries. This will make it more difficult for the likes of the CIA to recruit and maintain informants in any foreign country, e.g. not just Islamic State, but anywhere in the Middle East, North Korea, Russia, China etc. Can you imagine the cold chills that must now be going down the backs of anyone who spies for the USA in those countries and would be deemed a traitor if caught?

The more valuable the intelligence an informant provides to their CIA handler, the more likely it would be important enough for Trump to be given details of it.

Any top tips or route ideas?

Bedtime reading for you.

If you have only a couple weeks before going, this is the wrong time to start making big changes to your set up, especially something like switching to a leather saddle when you’ve not used one before.

Some people do find them perfect straight out of the box, but others find they can never get on with them. You are not just planning to do a long day ride, you are planning to do long rides day after day for maybe a couple of weeks.

It’s not going to be enough if you find the saddle comfortable for a long day ride straight out of the box, it’s going to need to be comfortable for the umpteenth consecutive day of riding straight out of the box. You would be taking a gamble: it might pay off and give you the perfect saddle for the ride, but I would be very concerned about the downside risks if you could not get on with it and found yourself in discomfort and pain after persevering with it for the first few days. Even if you could switch back to your current saddle mid-LEJOG, if you are on a tight schedule with few rest days you may lack the time needed allow your backside to recover.

I think people might be able to advise you better if they had a bit more information:

– When would you be doing LEJOG? In other words how much time would you have to break the saddle in/acclimatise to it?

– What sort of bike do you ride?

– What is your current saddle and do you find it comfortable?

– What daily distances are you envisaging?

Bear in mind the B17 is a relatively wide saddle, which may suit people with wider sit bones and/or who are riding in a relatively upright position, e.g. with flat bars on a hybrid or MTB. A B17 Narrow model may suit some people better who have narrow sit bones and/or are riding a drop barred bike (more so the greater the saddle to bars drop). I have a B17 Narrow and a Team Pro on drop barred bikes.

What saddles people prefer and find comfortable is obviously a very personal thing, and that’s especially true of leather saddles.

If you are looking at doing LEJOG this year, then I would be wary about switching to a Brooks leather saddle this late in the day. If you don’t get pain from your current saddle when riding the necessary daily distance, then I would recomend you prioritise hours in the saddle on consecutive days to get your body (including your backside) accustomed to the daily stress and recovery.

It may be worth considering some of the very high end bib shorts, e.g. Assos (if so buy them and get used to them doing your training/preparation rides).

And what’s more, you can’t do this so easily on a hybrid:

When you undo the existing bar tape, you should find that the brake and gear cables have been taped against the bars in a few places with some electrical tape. It’s unlikely that this has not been done, but if not secure them in position yourself with electrical tape before fitting the bar tape.

slowster has anyone ever accused you of over analysing things?

Yes, but they quickly change their minds when I invite them to discuss some examples of what they think is me over analysing things. In fact, very often they tell me they were wrong to even suggest it in the first place and that we don’t need to discuss the examples.

P35

Interesting. I guess this is a problem which is difficult to analyse beyond anecdote, because of the potential variations in the bikes to which mudguards are fitted, the potential variations in how they are installed by different people, and the variations in how the bikes are used.

Interesting about the PDWs being noisy

they are not noisy (on my bike). they were until i put a small dense foam pad between the rear brake and the top the guard as it would clang over bumps.[/quote]

You get a lot of resonating twanging when you go over broken surfaces for example. No worse than sks creaking I guess.

In my experience with both SKS and PDW mudguards you are likely to get noises which will only occur when you go over a rough surface. Some of us will simply tolerate this, others will persist until we’ve identified what is hitting/moving against what and cured it. Typical examples are the mudguard stays being too close to – or touching – racks or brake calipers. My PDWs made a noise whenever I went over a bump because the front stay was only a couple of millimetres from the front disc caliper, and the solution was to increase the distance with a longer bolt and extra spacer to fasten the stay to the eyelet.

The part of the front guard in front of the fork just sheared off one of mine and flew off down the road, not quite sure I could’ve mounted that more securely…

It’s interesting/surprising that the unsupported short front section should shear off. What width was it? I’ve only ever used the P35 and P45 guards, and I guess that wider=less rigidity (assuming SKS use the same thickness for all widths) and more movement and flexing of that part of the guard, resulting in more liklihood of cracking.

I have had problems getting an SKS mudguard to fit in a close clearance frame that was supposed to take mudguards, but on which the italian manufacturer had used a racing fork crown which gave so little clearance that I had to cut away the sides of the mudguard and place a large rubber washer between the underside of the crown and the mudguard to stop vibration. I could not get on with that bike, and soon stopped riding it, but if I had carried on I’m sure the guard would have cracked apart.

On the subject of sks, without doing the usual bodge on the front guard to move the stays to be mounted outside the guard rather than inside, that part of their design is terrible – why design a front guard with a water run off point built in that flows onto your feet ?

I never found this to be a problem, and now I avoid riding in the rain anyway. What I have found makes a huge difference when riding on wet roads, is fitting a nice long custom mudflap. I use a bi-laminate composite mudflap of my own design (in other words a piece of damp proof course and a backing strip cut from a plastic milk bottle to hold it in position), which is so long that it stops almost all the spray that would otherwise hit my shoes and bottom bracket etc.

I have used SKS for many years and now have both SKS and PDW, and have had no problems with either.

I suspect that the problems others experience are down to the guards not being adequately fastened to prevent movement, and in that respect the rear seatstay bracket for the SKS is probably always going to be an Achilles Heel. Although I still have a couple of bikes where I’ve had to use that bracket, I’ve always found it practically impossible to squeeze the bracket around the sides of the mudguard sufficiently to prevent the mudguard being able to slide slightly backwards and forwards within the bracket. Even though I have never had a breakage, I don’t like the brackets.

The best solution is to have a boss in the seatstay bridge to allow the mudguard to be drilled and bolted directly to the bridge, like the bosses which are now pretty much standard on the chainstay bridges of bikes designed to take mudguards. With a custom steel frame you can also request a similar braze-on in the fork crown to allow the front mudguard to be similarly bolted directly to the fork (drill out the rivets used to fix the bracket to the front mudguard and use one of the resulting holes for the bolt).

However, I have always been careful when fitting the guards to try to fix the mudguard without stressing it. So I have usually bolted the rear mudguard to the chainstay bridge first, and then held up/offered the guard to the seatstay bridge to determine where to drill the hole for bolting to the seatstay bridge. When doing that I have always taken care not to bend, squeeze or push the mudguard, and just to let the mudguard’s natural curve dictate where the drill hole must be. On some bikes, to maintain a ‘good line’, and again to avoid unnecessary bending of the mudguard and keep it the ‘right’ distance from the tyre, I have inserted a few mm of washers between the mudguard and boss and used a slightly longer bolt.

I suspect it might help to use a rubber washer for the fixings and/or the front mudguard bracket, to absorb vibration (especially if riding on rough or gravel roads a lot), but I have not bothered to do that yet.

Many thanks for all the replies and comments. To a large extent it seems to come down to personal preference: you pays your money and you takes your choice.

The comment about reversible sprockets prompted me to double check what is fitted to the hub, and I realise now that the hub is supplied as standard with a splined reversible 16 tooth sprocket and carrier, which has a 57mm chainline (unlike the screw on version previously supplied as standard, which has a 54mm chainline).

I suspect that the 3mm difference would be OK if I used a Hollowtech triple, but I could get a closer chainline with square taper, e.g. the Acera uses a 122.5mm bottom bracket as standard, and SKF, Phil Wood and Royce all make 125mm/126mm bottom brackets, which should move the chainset out the extra ~3mm or so.

Get a Surly stainless steel single speed chainring while you’re at it.

That’s my plan. Ideally I would like to use a 21 tooth sprocket and a correspondingly larger chainring, e.g. 44t, but Surly only make chainrings larger than 36t with a 110 BCD, whereas the Shimano MTB triples are 104 BCD, so it looks like I may have to go with 36/16 or 34/16. However, I will take a closer look at the Middleburn and Race Face offerings and options in the light of the comments and recommendations above.

I just don’t think it’s sensible in this country.

The success of these says otherwise:

I do level it, but something is broken so the saddle slowly tilts.

That’s even worse. ‘Something’ is broken? You mean to say you haven’t identified the problem. I am deeply disappointed in you. This is Singletrackworld. You are supposed to be a ‘proper cyclist’©. You should not be able to rest until you had got to the bottom of the problem; even better if you could post a thread on here about it with photographs. Have a word with yourself, and take your toolkit out with you next time you go out to Spain.

Don’t come back until it’s fixed.

(© copyright old farts everywhere)

A modern hybrid mtb with pannier/rack would be a million times better.

Mattyfez, I don’t think you can make a sensible assessment of the bike the OP’s wife is considering based on your own experience of riding a completely different bike which looks like it is the wrong size and seems to be set up to be ridden by a creature with only a vague resemblence to a human being. I appreciate it’s not your bike and you only ride it rarely, but in your shoes I would not be able to rest at least until the saddle was levelled on that bike (it looks like the seatpost has been turned 180 degrees?). In any case, that bike itself looks more like a hybrid MTB than a dutch city bike.

OP, if your wife likes it and finds the riding position comfortable, and it’s flat where you live/she only wants to use it for short distances, then it will beat a hybrid/MTB hands down. With the encased chain, hub gears and drum/coaster brakes, it should need virtually no maintenance. It’s the sort of bike where you don’t have to think about getting kitted up and ready, you just get on it and go whenever you want/need to and whatever you are wearing.

The tops of the lever hoods should make a smooth transition into the bars, not be anywhere near the angle yours are.

This is rubbish. The levers should be positioned wherever they are most comfortable for the rider, and many pros of that era set their Shimano STI levers up just like that because it provides a very comfortable supportive position for the hands and upper body. Rotating them forward would reduce the support and increase the stretch using the hoods.

The disadvantage of Campag levers compared with the Shimano STIs of that era was that they had to be positioned with the top of the hoods largely horizontal, because a) the top of the hood had a big flat surface which ergonomically necessitated it being horizontal, and b) depending upon the bars’ curve, the Campag lever simply could not be rotated back much – if at all – beyond horizontal. Current Shimano STIs have similar ergonomics to the Campag Ergolever, which is a retrograde step in my opinion.

both are 1-20 Nm which puts my requirement mid range which is great.

You do realise the SL0 is a fixed head (not ratcheting)?

SL0 is also 4-20Nm per Norbar’s website.

I would also have thought that 1/4″ drive would usually be a better choice for bike use for torque in that range, since the smaller hex bits, e.g. 5mm, are more commonly 1/4″ drive.

I think that the rise of the supermarkets and ‘convenience shops’ has played a part in the increase in obesity, possibly more so than the food industry manufacturers.

40 years ago food was simply relatively more expensive and accounted for a much higher percentage of peoples’ incomes, so less money was available for food ‘treats’. Moreover, it was not so readily or easily available: no shops open after 5.00pm, or on Sunday, and fewer people had cars and so could only buy what they could carry home or to the bus stop.

Improvements in production, efficiencies of scale, and supply chain management have had both positive and negative effects: the cost of basic healthy foods and ingredients has reduced and they have become more easily and widely available (especially fruit and vegetables), but so have cakes, biscuits, sweets, snacks and ready meals with high quantities of salt, fat etc. The supermarkets have a strong vested interest in the sale of processed foods instead of ingredients: there is more added value (profit) in cakes, snacks and ready meals than in flour, sugar, raw fish/meat, vegetables and fruit, and also more scope to reduce costs/increase profits in those added value product lines. Supermarkets have also been very clever about store layout to maximise sales of those lines, e.g. sweets at the checkout to exploit children’s pester power.

There is an Asda near me where I was shocked when I first used it, because the vast majority of customers is significantly overweight (itself a problem: fat people see large numbers of other fat people around them and consider themselves normal as a result). I don’t see Asda (and its Walmart parent in the USA) or Tesco wanting to educate their customers to eat more heathily, becaue that would mean buying more basic ingredients, cooking them at home, and spending less money.

This isn’t simply a matter of poor impulse control, or people giving in to a moment of weakness and eating a packet of biscuits at one sitting: as Edukator implies, it’s premeditated because people put multiple packets in their trolly, knowing full well that they will not eat them sensibly in moderation (as opposed, say, to buying one packet of biscuits which will have to last the week).

Personally, I don’t think that a sugar tax is the answer, because I think it’s addressing a symptom more than the root causes. I also suspect it would be difficult to frame the legislation for such a tax (if you target sugary drinks, what about energy drinks? If you target all sugar, I suspect the food industry would be imaginative with identifying less than ideal substitutes which would be exempt, e.g. using fruit and artificial sweeteners).

I don’t know if Edukator is virtue signalling, but the use of that term and phrases like ‘fat shaming’ are themselves part of the problem, since they are intended to be perjorative terms to discourage people from questioning and criticising bad and unhealthy behaviour. Edukator’s diet and lifestyle sound very healthy, and the last thing we should be doing is allowing people to avoid facing up to their own poor decisions about food and lifestyle by colluding with them by using those terms.

I could not care less what boils your piss

clearly you do. [/quote]

You’re right, I do care, but only because of the damage that I have seen caused to children by parents with your attitude.

I think that there’s a lot to be said for the traditional italian approach of several separate small courses, including the vegetables being a separate course, i.e. antipasto, pasta, meat/fish, vegetables and then fruit to finish.

If someone doesn’t like one of those courses, they can simply wait till the next one, and if it’s a child then repeatedly seeing adults enjoy a course consisting solely of something they have previously rejected or decided they do not like, may prompt them to eventually try it again (unpressured and without prompting), since there is nothing else on the table on offer during that course.

I suspect that a lot of the households where children are forced to clear their plate and the parents take pride that they themselves are not fussy and will eat anything, are like that because the parents are crap cooks and have learned their behaviours from their own parents who were similarly crap cooks. For them, children not eating something is a personal slight on their poor cooking and poor taste in food, resulting in these sorts of comments:

nothing boils my piss more than a fussy eater. Kids/adults/whoever…

This attitude is awful. It’s also utterly self-centred. I could not care less what boils your piss: this is not about you or what you want. We should want children and others to enjoy their food and take pleasure in sitting down to meals.

Rationing in World War 2 is often used as an excuse by many for this attitude and approach to food, when the reality is that standards of cooking in the UK for much of the 20th Century were simply woeful, and the legacy of that is still present today in many households and in the food industry (appalling cheap takeaway food and rubbish ready meals).

The other aspect of serving food groups as separate individual courses, is that you cannot get away with poor cooking: if vegetables are a dish in their own right, then the lazy unimaginative approach of boiling them to death, as if for part of a meal of meat and two veg, won’t work.

If this thread does nothing else, it should discourage anyone thinking of opening a cafe for mountain bikers.

quite possible but the attitude of “I’ve got to do it five minutes ago” isn’t there either.

Partly that and partly that the whole way of life is just less rushed. No-one seems to care if they arrive at their destination at any particular time that day or even that day at all!

Is that true of Madrid as well? I am sceptical because I think globalisation and the nature of competition in modern economies means people in cities and densely populated areas are under similar pressures and stresses everywhere, and will tend to respond similarly.

And part of it is that the Spanish do actually know how to build good roads, they’re usually wide, smooth and offer good visibility for easy overtakes when required.

According to Wikipedia, the population density of Spain is 91 persons per square kilometre, compared with 255 in the UK. Spain is more than double the size of the UK (506,000 square kilometres vs. 243,000 square kilometres).

In the UK the road network evolved from country tracks which were no wider than they needed to be and would have followed routes around farmland and estates and avoided natural obstacles. It’s not surprising that where there is more land and longer distances between villages and towns, that the roads could be wider and straighter with better visibility, especially in areas where the land is less fertile. I suspect the UK’s climate is also a lot more damaging to road surfaces than Spain’s.

The common denominator for the positive experiences described above seems to me to be more low traffic density, probably as a consequence of low population density, rather than any particular nationality or culture.

Unless I’m hopelessly out of date, I would expect that they would want to see the intermediate workings, which if things have remained unchanged since I was at school (unlikely), would mean something like this:

6x + 12 = 5x + 17
6x – 5x = 17 – 12
x = 5

Not so much a suggestion as a question for the experienced campers on this thread: for just a single night or the first night, why not just bring a pre-cooked portion of curry or ragu in a freezer bag and reheat it at the campsite?

I appreciate pasta or rice to accompany is an additional item which requires cooking separately and an extra pot, but egg based pasta only requires 4 minutes in boiling water and rice could presumably be cooked using the steam absorbtion method (taking it off the heat and keeping the lid on for 10 minutes while it absorbs the steam, during which time the curry could be reheated on the stove and any accompanying meat/fish be added and cooked). I guess rice would have an advantage over pasta because it requires much less water, and therefore less fuel, to cook it.

I would be interested to know why this would not work or what the problems/pitfalls would be compared with the alternative options being suggested.

So, your employer has made bad decisions which have effectively cost you money and wasted your hard work, skills and knowledge. Given their track record, do you think they would a) make good use of advance warning that you plan to leave and b) not use that information against you in any way?

If they have already cost you money by their bad decisions, and if your skills and knowledge are important to the success of other projects, I would expect them already to be aware of this and to have already acted to ensure that they would retain your services, either by compensating you for the inability to earn the bonuses or by increasing salary. The fact that they haven’t suggests that they don’t see it that way and don’t see your skills as critical to the new projects, so I would not tell them until I had another job lined up.

If I don’t go to work, I can’t contribute financially.

You are worth far more than just what you contribute financially, and if you are a health care worker, you have already done vastly more than your fair share as far as contributing to society is concerned. Time for you to put yourself first.

To compensate for the minimum wage increase, they’ve found another way to screw us by nearly £1000 a year.
That’s nearly a tenth of my wage.
They see us a disposable and our years of experience mean nothing.

Can you survive financially if you quit, at least for long enough to recover and find something else? If you can, then seriously consider quitting. You do not owe your employer or even the patients anything, especially not when it is at the expense of your own well being and health. Being treated so badly by your employer is itself bad for your self-esteem and your mental health if you accept it, and I would urge you to remove yourself from that situation as soon as you can. I hope you feel better soon and that things improve for you.

Define “good”

To which the answer is not what beans were used (arabica, robusta, single estate etc. etc.), not what espresso machine or grinder was used, not how hard the water supply is or what water filter is used, not how skilled the user is, but whether you liked it. If you like very milky lattes, mochas, straight espresso, filter coffee, Nespresso, pre-ground, instant or whatever, then that is what you like.

Some people have a lot of defensiveness about their coffee preferences which you don’t see with their choice of beer, whisky or food. There is also an element of emperor’s new clothes with coffee: people thinking that they should drink a particular coffee and say that that is what they drink, because that is supposed to be a better choice rather than because it’s what they actually like. In both cases there often seems to be a need to (implicitly) denigrate other people’s preferences:

If you’re not really into coffee then the Nespresso or similar are decent options

I’m into coffee. I’m just more into not fannying about every time I fancy one… The advantage is I get my Aldi coffee about 5 minutes sooner.

We need to get away from conversations about whether someone is ‘into coffee’ (snobbery) and about how others fanny about when they make coffee (inverse snobbery), and start talking more about we like, what we’ve tried, and what we recommend others try.

A friend of mine likes a cappuccino with lots of sugar. I don’t tell him he’s wrong to prefer that; I serve him a cappuccino and give him the sugar bowl. In the past I have also given him an espresso to try: he tried it and didn’t like it.

When I said that many people who think their espresso/bean to cup machines make great coffee are over estimating how good their coffee really is, I was not seeking to criticise or denigrate them/their coffee, but to highlight the fact that because the coffee in many shops is so poor or even bad, it’s often a poor benchmark to use to assess how good is the coffee we make at home. Starbucks, Costa and Nero haven’t raised consumers’ expectations (at least not for many years), and if anything they now lower them. My advice would always be to try to find a very good local independent coffee shop – there are not many, but there are an increasing number.

With regard to espresso equipment for home use, my own experience is that you to need have at least one or more of the following:

– Very good equipment, especially the grinder. A top end grinder won’t turn bad beans into good coffee, but it greatly reduces the need to adjust the grind and dose (wasting coffee in the process). I have a weekly subscription, and the coffee sent each week is different. With an average commercial grinder, I could easily use up 50g to 100g of my 250g weekly pack just dialling in the grind and dose. Instead, with a top end grinder I just dump the bag in the hopper and usually just make one minor adjustment to the grind or dose every couple of weeks or so. If I made more adjustments to the grind, I could probably make better coffee, but I can’t be bothered and I am satisfied with what I currently drink (and I’m not sure my palate would discern the difference anyway).

– Very good beans. There is more to it than just freshly roasted and freshly ground. Some beans and blends are a lot easier to make espresso with than others, by which I mean they are a lot more forgiving of variations in the grind and dose. I once bought some of the house blend made by Square Mile coffee roasters for the Flat White/Milk Bar coffee shops in Soho, and I was amazed at how easy they were to use. So, if I had a bean to cup machine or a not particularly great grinder, I would make a point of finding and buying beans like that, even if they cost significantly more.

– Very good skills. Perseverence and practice will enable many people to develop the skills to get the best out of their equipment and the beans they use. I don’t have good skills.

Having spent all that money on equipment and having tried different types of coffee and beans, I now know that I would be quite content to do without espresso and cappuccino and could happily make do with a basic grinder and a Chemex to make filter coffee.

Every dripper coffee I have ever tasted is disgusting, the best coffees I have had have been espressos with added hot water or cafetiere. I guess it must be down to personal taste.

I’m not saying it’s impossible that the reason you’ve found filter coffee disgusting is personal taste (we are all different, and ultimately all that matters is personal taste), but I suspect it was disgusting because the beans were rubbish and/or the technique of the person who made it was rubbish. Filter coffee is very easy to get right (the Hasbean brew guides for example provide very easy to follow step by step instructions), especially compared with espresso, but it is possible to screw it up.

If your experience is based on comparing americanos made by a good/decent coffee shop using good beans and good equipment, with filter coffee made by someone at home who does not know what they are doing and using supermarket coffee, then I’m not surprised that you preferred the americano. However, you may find it difficult and/or expensive in terms of equipment to make a similarly good americano at home.

In an ideal world you would be able to buy a coffee made using a Chemex or V60 in a coffee shop as an alternative to espresso and espresso based drinks, but speed is essential in coffee shops and americanos are much quicker for them to make if someone wants a long black coffee.

On a final note, I will stick my neck out and be a bit provocative and say that I suspect that many people who think their espresso/bean to cup machines make great coffee are over estimating how good their coffee really is. I say this because the coffee served in many coffee shops is not that good, and that provides a low benchmark for many of us for the coffee we make at home. The fact that most espresso in the UK, including and especially in coffee shops, is consumed in a milk drink such as cappuccino is very telling: milk will dilute and conceal a bad espresso to a significant extent, but a bad espresso on its own is undrinkable.

People like Convert and RichPenny who use manual lever machines, will probably make much better coffee than a bean to cup machine, because they have had to persevere and learn the hard way how to get the best out of their equipment and beans.

I thought an Americano was an espresso with hot water added? Hence thinking I should move away from the cafetiere?

If you prefer an americano to cafetiere, then I would urge you to try filter coffee, e.g. V60 dripper or Chemex.

Although in my post I lumped the cafetiere and Aeropress together with the dripper and Chemex methods, the cafetiere does produce a different drink to the others. It’s difficult for me to describe, but I find the cafetiere to be a more ‘robust’ (and to me harsher) brew, whereas filter coffee is a more toned down drink where more delicate or subtle flavours in the coffee are better able to come through. It sounds like the latter is what you appreciate when comparing cafetiere with the americano you drank, so I think you would like good filter coffee. Aeropress is probably between cafetiere and the other filter coffee techniques.

If it is specifically americano that you like and want, then you need an espresso machine, but I would recommend you try filter first, before committing to an espresso machine.

When you make and drink a good espresso, it’s great. The problem is that espresso is very unforgiving of inferior beans, inferior equipment (by which I mean much of the equipment marketed for home use, which is inferior to the equipment used in the better coffee shops)) or poor/inconsistent technique, and a bad shot tastes disgusting.

Good skills and technique can compensate to a large extent for inferior equipment, but you may find yourself getting very frustrated as you keep tweaking the settings trying to get the grind and the dose right, and pulling one bad shot after another.

Similarly good beans can make a major difference. By ‘good’ I don’t just mean high quality or freshly roasted and freshly ground. Some very good quality beans can be very difficult to use to make espresso: you have to get the grind and the dose just right. However, some beans are much more tolerant of variations in grind, dose, technique and equipment.

Likewise commercial grade equipment, especially a high quality grinder, makes it much easier to get the best of any bean. Frankly, the difference in ease of use between a top end grinder and even the mid-level commercial grinders most shops use is very noticeable. The top end grinders require much much less tweaking of the grind and dose.

In contrast, filter coffee is vastly easier to make, requires much less equipment, works well with all beans, and is just a lot less faff. Hence my recommendation to try it before going down the espresso route.

I especially like the fact the steaming bit could also produce hot water to americano-ise my coffee.

An espresso machine is unlikely to be the best tool for the job if you like long black coffee. If you like espresso or cappuccino, then only an espresso machine can make those drinks, but for long black coffee you would be better off with a cafetiere, an Aeropress, a dripper (e.g. V60) or a Chemex, which are generally reckoned to produce better long black drinks than americanos.

The money you save on not buying an espresso machine would be better spent on a good quality grinder (which will probably be much more reliable, trouble free and longer lasting than a bean to cup machine for a similar price) and good quality beans.

Not close to me then, otherwise you could try mine.

I am a bit concerned that what appears to have been better advice from one member of shop staff was overruled by someone more senior. We all make mistakes, but the point of someone supposedly more knowledgeable and experienced reviewing advice is to spot and correct mistakes, not to introduce them. In situations like that in any business, senior staff should always be mindful that if a junior has apparently given the wrong advice to a customer, they need to take their time double checking and be absolutely sure of it and of their facts before saying so.

If they have made a mistake, I hope they will acknowledge when questioned and agree to change the order, rather than, say, suggest 51cm will be OK with the maximum amount of spacers allowed and a 10mm or 20mm longer stem. There is some overlap between the sizes by virtue of the scope to vary the amount of spacers and stem length, but if 54cm, or even 55.5cm, is the ‘correct’ size for you (i.e. optimum for you, your height, riding position, flexibility etc.), then that is what you should get.

I agree with Cinnamon Girl, 51cm for 5’9.5″ would almost certainly be too small (unless you normally have a very large saddle to bars drop and aero position which you wanted to replicate on the Tripster).

I’m 5’10”, and ride a 54cm V1 Tripster. 57cm is too large for me (despite Kinesis’ own size chart indicating that should be my size based on my height), and I think I would probably be OK with a 55.5cm, which I suspect would give me a more touring bike position with slightly higher bars. I’ve commented similarly at more length to another poster querying the Kinesis sizing on page 71 of this thread.

Where are you based?

Recipes: Curries !! Herbs & spices become more important, fresh produce too. A lot of meat based cooking is lazy just having the meat as the star of the show. So much great Italian too.

I would echo what Jambalaya says above. Rather than trying to find substitutes which will mimic the flavour and taste of meat, focus on cooking and eating really good food which just happens not to have any meat in it.

It’s no accident that Italian and Indian cuisines have really good tasting vegetarian food. Meat was/is expensive and most great cuisines are based on peasant cooking, which has always made the very best of what is both available, e.g. in season, and cheap.

As Jamabalya also says, good quality fresh produce is even more important when you strip out meat and are often relying on fewer ingredients to provide the flavours and taste sensations. For example, buy the best quality tomatoes, especially if they are the main part of a dish, and use fresh herbs rather than dried (except for oregano).

If the mech will not shift to the 2/3 largest sprockets, then not enough slack has been taken out of the cable when it was clamped to the mech.

OP, have you operated the shifter for the rear mech to ensure it is in the position for the smallest sprocket, before clamping the cable in the rear mech?

Ran the cable through then adjusted the H screw so the chain aligned with the smallest sprocket

Maybe I’ve misunderstood, but it sounds like you are using the H screw, when you should first be taking the slack out of the cable (pull the end with pliers or use a 4th hand tool, and then use the barrel adjuster* to take out the last bit of slack), and only then tightening the H screw to limit movement of the mech beyond the smallest sprocket.

* The barrel adjuster should be tightened down when fitting a new cable, so that it has the full range to move to tighten the cable when it stretches over time.

done it. was intrigued by the ‘cycling policy’ on where you’re allowed to ride part?

The various paths and tracks on Forestry Commission land in the New Forest are not shown on the map as rights of way, so there are no legal footpaths or bridleways as such. Instead, the public are largely free to walk and ride horses anywhere on the Forestry Commission land.

However, the FC restricts cycling to designated tracks, specifically probably about half of the gravel tracks in the New Forest. Unfortunately, the network of those cycling tracks is not that good for riding any great distance off road and linking places together. Consequently a lot of cyclists, including the ordinary public, use the non-cycling paths to get from A to B in some places.

BUT, that’s 40% margin before any “costs” (rent/rates/payroll/utilities/back office/etc.) of operating the shop are applied to the calculation

Those are all FIXED costs, which are unlikely to be affected to any significant extent by whether or not the shop sells Lustyd the groupset. If they do sell the groupset, the margin will go towards covering those costs/profit. If no sale is made, then those fixed costs will still be incurred by the shop.

So the question for the shop is whether the margin is sufficient to make the sale worthwhile, including the costs/work involved in ordering the parts, a notional allowance for the costs involved in any warranty return (the amount of which depends upon the typical percentage of warranty returns for those products/that manufacturer, i.e. low if highly reliable and high if, say, 1 in 4 generate a warranty return), and the costs of any workshop fitting if applicable*.

* How much of the margin might need to cover workshop costs could depend upon how busy the workshop is: if the workshop is already booked up with paying work, then fitting will reduce the revenue earned by the workshop and the margin on the sale will need to cover that fully or at least substantially.

Since the shop was not very interested in attempting to negotiate a sale to Lustyd, the shop must presumably have plenty of other customers who are more profitable. That’s fair enough, but equally it’s also fair that Lustyd can buy the groupset for significantly less from an online retailer.