Put me back on my bike by William Fotheringham – about Tom Simpson – Very interesting biography about his era and tackles drug issue in it’s pre EPO era.

In Search of Robert Millar

Flying Scotsman, about Graham Obree – as mentioned above, more to do with the difficulties of being a world class athlete with major mental health issues. But incredible rather than depressing.

Sean Kelly’s got a new book out soon or already and so has Sean Yates.

Breaking the Chain by Willy Voet is an interesting one, badly written but he was the team soigneur of Festina who got busted with a vast amount of drugs in the team car – beginning of the whole Festina 1998 scandal, long before Lance and Tyler Hamilton.

Obvious choice – Hamiltons book is good but if you’ve already read around the issue it’s nothing new. I actually preferred Millar’s book.

Don’t bother with Wiggin’s book – gives very little insight into what makes him tick or who he is.

Sorry to hear that, yeah I wouldn’t ride anything fancy about.

Almost all the walk near Eccles is along the busy main roads, is it that sketchy closer to the train st when working late etc? Do I need to sharpen a compass?

Well yes… Eccles doesn’t look all that nice but work is a 10min walk from there – right near the canal. Not media city unfortunately as that’d be a bit easier.

Cheers MartnS – seeing if it’s worth the commute from areas S.E of city into Piccadilly via train, walk to Victoria then train out to Eccles (only 7 mins).

Probably be easier to live north but as the trains from some areas north go to Victoria where there’s a 20 odd minute wait for the one to Eccles, may as well consider south east too if the times line up, the journey could be much of a muchness north or south.

Cheers, I’ll call it 15

If you like piranhas, read the financial times and listen to metal you are a psycho – wow Channel 4 have really surpassed themselves.

Almost as daft as passing Embarrassing Bodies off as educational as opposed to a freak show.

Talking of riding down hills backwards – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QNdx2hs0n4

Akriggs bit is mostly woods by Saltaire, Bingley section of Leeds – Liverpool canal. Me old riding area – miss it! Used to see him out practising.

Yeah! It’s an interesting place, tends to smell quite erm interesting due to it being the world’s most geothermically active town. Actually it stinks but you get used to it. The riding is pretty awesome, I hired a bike downtown and it only took half an hour or so to get to the huge network of trails.

I statyed in a very good hostel I’d highly recommend called the Funky Green Traveller. Sounds very hippyish but it wasn’t really. Just a cool bunch if you need a hostel that is.

Sure you’ll have good times out there, remember to have a chilled out soak in one of the natural springs, they are great after a days hard riding.

Glossop would be nice but researching it today it seems just too far out factoring in the additional Piccadilly – Victoria – Eccles part. I don’t fancy driving in from Glossop, sounds a nightmare from what people have said above!

Cheers all, some very helpful info and advice. Really need to visit some of these areas but this is a great starting point. Horwich/Adlington – M61 route with the train line along that way into the city, that might be another option.

Khani – Glossops an arse because of traffic or busy trains?

I remember Orange running a series of ads – black and white photos with just the orange coloured. The phone company orange than ran some ads with the same concept, looked very similar. Lester from Orange even mentioned it in MBR saying how he wasn’t fussed and would never be able to take on a phone company.

I really rate Aksiums for the money, if you can get them foe around £120-ish. Mine seem to be really strong and that includes bunny hopping holes in roads on 23mms

Yes travel agents often buy tickets for flights as soon or perhaps even before they are released to the public, knowing they will defo get sold as they can sell them cheaper via email ads etc whilst also advertising themselves.

Marketing jargon overload! Wonder if they ever questioned how ridiculous that is.

I know of a pro road rider who rode for a team that used Pinarello. He doesn’t have much good to say about them. Interestingly he also says many of them prefer their second ‘standard geared bike’ over the electronic gears.

[/url]
IMG_5144[/url] by RSMcreative[/url], on Flickr

Bah, can’t get image code to work! link instead:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/richmarshallphoto/11234359764/in/photostream/

Can you actually get caught for speeding on your bike? There’s a 30 near me that roadies regularly go over 40 – 45 down. Must happen all the time.

I used to work in Newmarket, It’s got lots of horse racing enthusiasts. Some were cool but some were right-wing toffs and plenty had pro-hunting stickers on their massive 4×4’s windows. That’s a lot worse in my book.

When I was a teenager/early 20s I kept the wrist bands on, kinda badge of honour/talking point when you met people. Oh you went to Glasto too, did you see so and so…

Nothing wrong with that. Old cars are best too, better for the environment to keep a car a long time than endlessly replace it with the latest model. ‘So long as your bikes are worth more than your car’ and all that.

Are you one of those evil capitalist Land Rover Vogue drivers?

“Ignore the Single Pivot muppets – Whytes are awesome. They have problems…”

Nan Bield is good and rocky, pop into Wheelbase for info

ask1974 –

“Welfare and immigration is significantly to blame. There are always jobs, just lots of them are not very attractive so we allow immigrants to come in, accept low wages and take these jobs. Then welfare pics up the bill at huge expense and traps people in a situation very difficult to escape from”.

Welfare benefit does not cost the country anything like as much as the government has you believe. It’s a continual excuse for them to carry on making cuts and pass the blame away from the mistakes they made and allowed banks to make.

Cuts are made to the very people who need the benefit system. Open your eyes and stop listening to the press, it’s not the reason the country has financial problems. You either have a system where yes, a minority will always take the piss and take advantage or one where far too many people who need the benefits don’t get them and fall into worse health/living conditions like now. There isn’t much opportunity for someone to carefully assess every situation and check upon people, it’s too expensive.

The reason the country has issues is because of the banks. As it goes the massive tax breaks companies like Amazon and Google get add up to more than the benefits.

Immigration has overall without doubt benefitted the country, doctors, teachers, builders… Polish people particularly have benefitted our economy. These are workers with skills, most of them have not taken the advantage.

They said he was taking his life into his own hands – not really, not like he has the surface area of the side of a lorry.

Isla bikes – 7005 series alumminium, Kenda tyres etc – really quite light!

The politicians need to look at the facts and get to the point – actual road safety, which can only be improved by separating or at least creating greater space between HGVs and ideally cars in busy areas and dangerous junctions.

No amount of ‘bike road taxation’, cycle MOT schemes and even helmet wearing is going to save you from being crushed by a HGV. So they these MPs are uneducated time wasters.

Ninfan –

There’s a perfectly good comp school full of a range of kids, some rich, some poor, some academically better than others. Then a free school is set up elsewhere by those with the time (more likely to be parents that aren’t working i.e supported by their partner), along with charities and educational experts…

Free schools are therefore full of middle class suburban kids built in middle class suburban catchment areas. We already have a very segregated school system. Scandinavian schools have found that there is no more segregation than before in their free schools but they don’t have such division in their society to begin with.

Look at the money given to free schools too, they have far less kids in them so essentially the money spent on each child is far more than in a standard comprehensive school. Basically they are great for those in them (providing your teacher has actually learnt to teach via a PGCE!!) but they create division.

The answer is to spend more money on current schools as well as clubs and out of school activities in communities rather than stripping them back and screwing them over, reduce class sizes and appoint more trained teachers.

Ransos – Yep true, Scandinavian counties are far more affluent than us or to put it another way if you like, they have huge middle classes and smaller populations as a whole. Affluent societies statistically do better, more money to put into the schools, parents statistically place more emphasis on kids learning/homework etc. It’s not the way I like it and far from anything ideal/fair but it’s fact.

China has a huge and rapidly growing middle class too.

Either way, perhaps the bigger issue is that it is insane and unforgivable that there is such a division of wealth in this country. Our government is failing poorer kids left right and centre.

Deviant you say ” The state system really does need to take a look at how much better things are done elsewhere and make class sizes smaller and offer after school prep/homework time like their private counterparts”.

Clearly class sizes would be made smaller if more money was spent on the schools and teachers. The state system (as in the schools themselves) don’t get this opportunity. Private schools are often dripping in wealth, do you think we can get close to even halving classroom sizes in state schools without immense financial change?

On the counties global ranking, cultural considerations need to be considered. China and other parts of Asia place far more emphasis on working hard and long hours, it is considerably more competitive to get university and business school places in their cities.

Free schools from what I have heard from comprehensive school teachers are generally set up by well off or at least middle class parents who have the time. They wreck good perfectly good comprehensive schools nearby as they take away good students leaving the schools with the lesser achieving students. That in itself is bad because it’s causing students to grow up and learn in a divided society. It’s just completely daft, schools need educated teachers that have learnt to teach in year long training courses with plenty of classroom experience.

If Boris ever made it to be Prime Minister he’d be laughed off the political stage. He has no chance, he lives in a London centric bubble where amazingly he manages to charm his way out of the mess he gets into but that’s as far as it goes. In that documentary on him he came across as ruthless, nasty and arrogant.

I can’t stand the ignorance, imagine if you were a relative or friend of someone who had died recently having to hear that rubbish.

At least Boardman is on the job and carries some clout.

Finely tuned fishing?

MTB Rob – No my point is not “S##t”.

I’m not and didn’t say no one is going to buy 26″ frames. It’s obvious that many with 26″ forks and wheels want a frame to match their current parts. Nor as you say, am I saying that those with 29’ers will chuck them and buy 650b bikes.

The point is it’s unlikely a small company like Cotic can redesign their entire frame range to 650b that quickly and get them shipped over at the turn of a switch. They are just getting their Rocket frames delivered to people, it’d be a tall order to expect such an overhaul.

Seeing as many of us don’t think the expense of 650b is worth it but would like a new frame, Cotic I’m sure will continue to do well but soon they’ll be forced to move with the times just like everyone.

26″ ain’t dead but it’s unlikely that Cotic will be a niche company only selling 26″ and 29″ bikes in the future.

Personally I wasn’t that keen on the concept of Imaginate, prefer the edgey style of Akriggs films but it’s still amazing and fun to watch.

Just to clarify – pliers inside links that is – parallel to chain

Often the way, I use a little set of pliers in one hand and the chain link (being pushed together with fingers) in other hand. Never bother taking pliers on a ride mind

MTB Rob – you missed the point.

Ben H – agree totally, the cost of updating to 650 isn’t worth it for most people.

But is Cotic/Cy really sticking his neck out? Isn’t he just advertising his product in pretty much the only way he can against bigger companies with their 650b frame overhaul on every model? Not wishing to be critical, I think Cotic frames and the company in general are ace, just it’ll be interesting/surprising if the next Rocket, Soul and Bfe aren’t 650bs!

Each to their own, prefer natural trails myself but in some areas of the country there aren’t any big rocks to fill trails up with and the ground is solid rock. Are trail-builders supposed to transport rocks from the north to the midlands?

Doesn’t mean anyone needs a 140mm bike to ride them mind.