Saw him in Cardiff for the first time, a 3 hour and a 30 song track list made it an excellent gig with a high energy encore with Bruce looking to be in top form considering his age. Ticket price was a little eye watering. Didn’t feel like it was his final good bye tour. I think we will see him in the UK again on another tour, his catalogue of songs being  so varied that he can have a slower paced set list and it would still be a great gig.

I can recommend a fender mustang micro.

I got a cheap pair from amazon for when I was riding around the woods in, so sound quality did not need to be great. Perfectly fine for that task. I work from home, and spend a lot of time in team meetings and now prefer to wear the cheap amazon ones for that rather than conventional head phones. Now other people in my team all have the cheap amazon headphones which they use for cycling and work. Have tried the more expensive ones, they are a little more comfortable, but not that much more.

My son and I went to Passo Tonale during the Half term week. First two days it snowed loads, then blue skies for the rest of the week – awesome. We stayed in Hotel Cielo Blu – its a basic hotel, clean, warm and food was fine. Perfect location – 5 mins from the ski school.

My son had 4 snowboard lessons at local dry ski slope ad this was his first Alpine trip. I had not snow boarded for 18 years (but had done a lot before that) and was linking turns in 30 odd seconds after being back on the board.

Getting organised into learning groups was a bit hard work, but once that was sorted the ski/snowboard school was great. As my son could snowboard to a limited extent he has put in the intermediate group and I just joined him but could have gone up a group. By the third day we were doing the easy reds.

I did a little video that I put on utube of the last few days of my sons progress.

https://youtu.be/dS5Bg2RG84I?si=sgsf8eaW5xfC_A9i

Heading back next year with luck. I though Passo Tonale was really good and recommend it for beginners.

I’ve picked up a DVT in Left Calf muscle and just been put on apixaban (two tablets a day – not a particulary high dosage). I Was just planning on riding easy mountain bike trails with helmet for exercise along with some running. I always wear a good helmet and knee pads and gloves for the biking.

New Guitar

Hope this works? New guitar day yesterday.

Learn a musical instrument. Then when we come out of lockdown you can look at jamming with other folk.

I to paid for google play – which was pretty good i thought. I also have google home speakers around the house and the wife loves the simplicity of just asking for a song – casting is far to difficult for her! So I was forced on to YTM from GP, but I find the YTM app loathsome – but it does have a fantastic catalogue of music.
My top tip is to put all albums you download into play lists – and just use the play list functionality.

If my memory serves me correctly – these are just the Mountain Bikes Since I was 16

Muddy fox courier
Muddy fox courier comp
Dawes Fat chance
Merlin
Trek Vrx 500
Trek Fuel
Marin alpine trail
Specialized big hit
Santa cruz V10
On One – summer 456
Santa cruz bullit
Specialized sx trail
Nukeproof Mega Pro
Specialized Enduro
Cotic Soul

@Binners – it really beggars belief, utter madness indeed!

So reading the article, The reason Warrington/Birmingham are the Customs check in point is that Hollyhead Port has not located a suitable location for a customs point. I’m guessing the folk at HollyHead didn’t want a park with a 1000 plus lorries a day going to it!
I’m assuming at some point Hollyhead will be coerced into setting up a customs point near to the Port to stop all/reduce this unnecessary traffic.

I would have thought the Irish would have had multiple sea routes to Mainland Europe to avoid UK congestion – but apparently not till now as they are chuffed with this news.

So now there are less lorries that leave Ireland – travel through the UK without really stopping and then get on ferry or tunnel to France and then on to where ever. And the same with the return journey.

So this makes UK roads (From Fishguard to Dover etc) a little less busier and less pollution/better air quality. That must be some sort of very small positive right?!

Read this in the guardian comments section
Somewhere between a shambles and a catastrophe is coming in January

Bit too big to fit on the side of a bus…That’d be a shatastrophe then.

I just want this winter to be done with now!

My Road bike gets cleaned once a week. My mountain bike gets cleaned after every use – all year round – unless trails are super dry.
My car is lucky to get a pre MOT wash!

Will Sajid Javid return? He’s been keeping a low profile through all of this so far.

Clash of Clans

So Just to get my head around this – first post here – be kind!

We can’t request an extension to the transition period – that dead line has passed.

Boris Oven Ready plan (easiest deal in history etc.) is dead in the water.

Which leaves us with
1. Hard Brexit – Pleases a minority but causes massive havoc for everyone else as UK is not prepared for this. The mess caused by this will be so large, that Covid surely cant be blamed!

2. Boris capitulates to the EU, signs up to some sort of deal which makes us follow EU standards for food, workers rights, environment & animal welfare. This does not seem like a thin deal? And This making the UK as rule followers rather than rule makers which will make some people mad and question what is all this for if we finish here, and others thankful that no deal bullet was dodged.

Any other outcomes?

When and if Boris wonders off – and a new PM is found/elected by the Tory Party – would that prompt a GE? I know about the Fixed term act, but that can be circumvented.

A road bike – specialized allez elite. Pleasantly surprised myself on how much I’m enjoying riding it.

4 posts a month – not posted anything since the last Dyfi roll out! Very much a lurker – follow all the brexit, keir starmer, BJ posts – never once added in my 2p worth!

sftp?

SCOOBY

I’m there on Saturday afternoon, going for the 56km as I don’t see me making the cut off time. Doing it on a hard tail! should be fun – I think!

I’m the other way around, after about 12 years on flats, I’m now on a Pair of DH mallets and really like them. It took about 2 months to get use to them and forget I’m clipped in. And if pushed I can unclip and the platform is wide enough to be ok which does not happen that often.

Always had Shimano brakes (Deore & XT) which have been excellent.
The guides performance are good, not had any issues with stopping when riding on the Mendips and BPW but they are just not as good as the XT brakes. And the guide brakes themselves just feel cheap when you handle them.
They came on the bike when I bought it. When they actally start to play up as parts are made of plastic I will ditch them without any thought.But I’ll get my money’s worth out of them first.

If your having output power issues, bleed them thoroughly just in case there’s some trapped air in there. Hopefully that will do the trick.

Good luck!

AS above, I’ve had my Guide Brakes for over 15 months and not touched them and noticed the braking point was wondering.

Bought bleed kit from ebay, watched the vids on youtube several times over and then bled the brakes and all is good again!

I fixed youtube, its now working 😆

Which section did you build?

Quick Ride on the Mendips on Sunday morning and thrown together edit.

The inline on my Specialized Enduro died about 7 weeks ago, so Shock went to TF Tuned under warranty, But TF Tuned have been unable to get the spare parts, so the bike shop have now agreed to replace it with a Rockshox shock.

Drop in performance but better reliability is what I’m suspecting will happen.

@welshfarmer, sorry no gpx files – the trails are in my head!

Definitely back up what the others are saying about TA, if you want to get the most out of Les Arcs then being guided is the very best option.
The edit is a real mash up of trails, with one trail getting quite a long showing. It would probably take a couple of days to fully ride all those trails in the video.
I’m not sure if I have gold rush or miners strike on camera (not using strava means I don’t know names) but I did ride that neck of the woods – one of the trails was ridden in pouring rain so the go pro was kept off that day, but I’ll stick the other trail (and maybe a few other trails) we rode on to youtube and link it here.

Thanks for the positive comments, It was filmed so that I could enjoy the trails in deepest darkest winter on my TV! The chest cam does get a bit shaky at times, which did affect the quality of footage, doesn’t bother me as its my riding holiday and brings back good memories! However I’m glad people are enjoying the edit.

Cheers

So I basically rode the week with the GO PRO on, the edit was taking the best bits from the various trails.

If anyone, wants to see a particular trail I.e. Double header, etc let me know (with starting point described) and I’ll try to get it uploaded onto youtube.

Its the silversun pickups performing lazy eye.

Hmmm something a little odd when trying to view this edit. On my mobile to view the video I have to click on the video image, but on the home PC I can use the link or video image.

Les arcs is great, that’s the Third time there and still finding new trails.

The 650B has the original 26 inch front end frame with a modified rear triangle. The People at Specialized think this works really well for the 650B – or they just had a shed load of frames to use up! I guess if Specialized build a specific front end in the near future for the 650B then that answers the question!
The 29’er version is a real beast of a bike that eats up all that is put in front of it, (almost to the point of sacrificing a bit of fun,IMO) and has outsold the 650B because of its reputation, However the 650B is still a great bike.

I have the 2015 Specialised Enduro Elite 650b – bought about 3 months ago and really happy with it.

It’s reasonably light (Just under 30lbs), covers ground really well for longer XC rides (Partly Down to the Specialized Slaughter tyre which rolls extremely well) and is really fast (Strava segments back this up) and fun on descents. It’s a bit of a issue to remember to hit the climb switch on the shock when going up and remembering to release it before descending!

I had a Nukeproof Mega before which punished me on longer rides, But my legs are way fresher on the Enduro after the equivalent ride. I would not feel apprehensive about taking it on a long day ride – I think it will really help you out in fact.

I swapped out the 34T ring to a 30T ring and swapped out the stem to a 50mm stem and bars to 785 (which is how the 2016 bike is set up). I did not feel the need to change anything else.

Feel free to post back if you need any more specific info.

Cheers

It appears that the Samsung S5 has a known Bluetooth issue, which is not fully resolved yet. I have however managed to get the HRM working via Strava, but not though the phones Bluetooth interface or through endmondo or sportstracker.

So looks like I’m using Strava from now on!

Bought mine and tried connecting it to my Galaxy S5 (on OS 5.0) and the Phone and HRM can see each other, but the HRM rejects the connection. My Mate has an apple iphone and connected to it with no issue at all. I don’t get the opportunity to punch in any code, so its using the default Samsung code. And I don’t know how to change that!

Had a look around the internet and I cannot see a fix for this.

Has anyone else encountered this issue? Otherwise it looks like this is going back to the shop.

Top 5 for me

mendips because they are 20 mins away
bike park wales
antur stiniog, its so different
nant yr arian
Cwmcarn dh track

Matt – thanks for rotating those! Really appreciate that.

pinkster – thanks for answer and for the double check.

Mystery solved!

+1 for a group ride on the mendips. I know the rowberrow area well, and would like to get to know the other areas a bit better.

Got a gusset lil chap chain device.

First impressions of it is ok, will fit to bike and see how it goes.mostly all metal which is good

Going to write a review on the bike monger website, find it odd after spending 30 quid on it there are no reviews on it.

Just to update this thread, this case ended up going to ebay for resolution. Ebay sided with me the seller. Chap unfortunately lost out, but he was given the option to return the goods which he refused. Ho hum.

flats all the way.

My ride in les arcs last year