I loved my Surly 1×1 until it was stolen. The forks that come with the frame give lots of cushioning and the frame is bouncy in all the right ways. Really capable of taking on trails that you wouldn’t think a rigid bike could handle. Just fun really and capable of running massive tyres.

I’d second that. Have done some frankly stupid stuff on mine. Something about it brings out the inner hooligan and I ride it like a stolen BMX.

Well just as an update…just had a call from the dealer and Skoda are covering 100% of the cost of the failed ABS unit.

Result! :D

Mrs Sprocketjockey had a hand in this recipe…. uses mayonnaise rather bizarrely but the results are really light and delicious:

https://www.hellmanns.co.uk/recipes/dessert/posh_brownies.aspx

You’ve been lucky so far OP. For that mileage/5yrs old I’d expect you are entering the eye-watering bill zone with a VW/VAG car.

I guess I’ve been lucky so far with my VWs, which have all been pretty reliable – My MkII Golf went to 190K and 15 years with no major problems. My MK IV went to 150K with just a few minor electrical niggles and I still sold it on for £800. My T4 daily driver is now getting on for 17 years old and still going strong.

I think the problem is more with new vehicles in general which just seem far too clever and sophisticated for their own good.

Yeah it’s the G201 failure – it’s the kit they are fitting to mine, although they are quoting 2 hours labour. Dealer opened the claim with Skoda, I’ve also called them but they have a 3 day lead time to come back with a decision (!). I need the car back so have had to tell the dealer to carry on regardless – have been assured this won’t prejudice the claim, but we’ll see.

Richmtb – you may be lucky, apparently a failed sensor can also trip the warning light.

Sounds like you’ve checked everything that I would suggest.

Can you ping the camera IP address from the router itself? (should be under Diagnostics / Ping Diagnosis)?

I’ve told the garage to go ahead and fix it. Sending the unit away isn’t really an option as we need the car back today and the cost of hiring a car while it’s away would eat into the price difference anyway.

Claim is in with Skoda and the dealer reckons there is a reasonable chance of getting a part contribution… will let you know how we get on.

Just take it as a lesson to never buy a VW based car again.

Thanks that’s useful…To be fair this problem doesn’t just affect VAG group cars. Same Teves Mk60 unit is also in BMW 1 & 3 series, Volvo S40 & V50 and the Mazda 3, all of which have similar problems.

Is the camera also on Port 81? If not you need to set a forwarding rule rather than just mapping the port.

Haven’t got any 2850s but it should be under NAT / Port redirection.

Link posted by zilog6128 above shows you how.

He. We use Drayteks extensively in work. Which model is it, as the configuration can vary a little?

Also is the camera on a fixed IP or do you need to enable DHCP?

Race Face Atlas any good?

http://www.tweekscycles.com/Product.do?method=view&n=3455&p=284329&c=215&utm_source=Google&utm_medium=Base&utm_campaign=MTB%20Flat%20Bars&gclid=COTutNT3i7YCFcrHtAodJ1oA_A

I really like On one Fleegles but they are only around 716 I think, and not everyone gets on with the back-sweep.

Or you can get Salsa Pro Motos at 710 I think?

Last 3 jobs I’ve had have all been through JobServe

Mary Gauthier – Our Lady of the Shooting Stars

I do like a nice Unimog:

We’ve got a Howden’s kitchen in our new build with integrated Lamona hob and cooker.

The fan oven is really efficient and actually pretty good quality. The hob is just OK – works fine but the finish isn’t all that great and the knobs are bit flimsy and not particularly heat resistant.

Cooker hood is pretty shoddy – bits started falling off it after about 3 weeks, and the fan sounds like a Vulcan bomber taking off, but not in a good way.

If you’ve got a choice (we didn’t), I’d aim for better quality stuff if you can.

Might not be what you’re looking for but I’ve seen a fair few ‘cross / monster cross builds on Surly Karate Monkeys which would cover the disc / alfine / ss bases – am actually considering similar plans for mine. They’re great all rounders but probably a bit heavy for ‘cross racing.

Some good deals on at Triton cycles too – 20″ grey going for £259 at the moment and £50 off the new disc specific ones.

Lets not even talk about the ignorant practice manager that does your appraisal….

For me, it was worth leaving my old job just for the fact that I’ll never have to deal with a “practice manager” again… since when did it become acceptable for big companies to assign you a line manager who knows cock all about the job you do!?

The main con is if you’re a dyed in the wool middle manager / consultant who just spouts BS and doesn’t actually do anything – you won’t last 2 months….

Harsh but so true – I know people in my old firm who wouldn’t last 5 mins.

Another thing I forgot to add in my earlier post is that I find there is much more of a JFDI type approach in a smaller business with less of the corporate bureaucracy that you get in big concerns. I installed a new phone system here in about 4 weeks… similar thing where I worked previously would have been an 18 month project with tendering / risk assessments / project meetings and everyone and his dog getting involved etc.

The up-side of this is that things get done really quickly, downside is of course that it’s not always so structured and well-planned.

I personally find it quite refreshing to be able to get on and do things but have started to encourage a more structured, but still pragmatic approach to project planning. If you’re the sort of person who likes everything planned to the nth degree you may struggle in a smaller concern.

Surly 1×1. Nothing fancy but would survive the apocalypse and just rides really well.

Went from company employing 35000 to a family owned firm employing 35 about 2 years ago. I have no regrets but it is a completely different game and the impact and level of difference will really depend on your role and what you want out of your future career… And of course the company.

From my own experience:

Pros

Less politics and backbiting
More varied workload – in smaller companies people tend to pitch in and get involved on other bits of the business.
More of a stake in seeing the company succeed
Greater chance to manage your own work area / budget and see projects through from beginning to end
Depending on the company, better recognition of the work you do

Cons

Benefits / pension package not so good
Potentially Less job security
Increased reliance on you as an individual – less cover for holidays / sickness etc do can sometimes be difficult to take a break
Fewer promotion prospects

For us, making the move meant that we got to move to a beautiful part of the country, I have a 10 minute commute and I get to see more of my little boy, so having already done the career thing the pros far outweigh the cons.

Not technically active and a bit touristy but the Timanfaya national park on Lanzarote is worth a visit for the truly bizarre volcanic landscape and a visit to the restaurant which cooks by geothermal heat!

I’d be looking at powerline adaptors for that if you have a power socket at both ends.

http://www.misco.co.uk/Product/127767/NETGEAR-Powerline-85Mbps-Network-Adapter-Kit

If power sockets are at a premium, you can also get pass-through models to enable you to still use the socket for power for a bit more £.

Because someone is paying me a lot of money to do it

Fair enough :D …is he from a high gravity planet?

One of today’s jobs is machining an axle for a double disc hub on a Brompton. That’s two disc brakes on the front wheel.

Why?

That’s quite bonkers but really rather lovely.

Love the brass clamps – makes it look like bits have been salvaged from a Victorian angle-poise lamp, but in a good way…there is a touch of steam punkiness about it like it was designed in a colonial drawing office. Some matching Brooks grips would set it off lovely.

I use Halo hex skewers on my singlespeed together with a (single) Surly tugnut. never had any issues with rear wheel slipping.

http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/Models.aspx?ModelID=26621

Mind not to overtighten though.

Snow chains go stright on our (retained) pump if forecast looking sketchy. A couple of neighbouring stations have 4×4 response vehicles – and our own truck is due to be replaced within the next 12 months, possibly with a 4×4 light rescue pump. Service as a whole does a lot of contingency planning and we’ve got other resources – specialist rescue team, police / air ambulance / armed forces / community services if we need to.

As other posters have stated, despite that and with the best will in the world, we’ll never have the same resources as countries which regularly experience a 3 month freeze as it’s just not cost effective to do so and I doubt whether Joe Public would suck up the resulting rise in council tax if it was done on a local level.

On the subject of Police 4x4s, a mate was called out with his crew in East Devon just before Christmas to pull a Police X5 out of about 4ft of flood water. Driver had apparently assumed it was not only 4×4 but also amphibious… a near write-off apparently!

I think Taunton Leisure carry a few of their shoes but not the bike specific ones – but should be OK to check sizing. If you’re in Exeter then may be worth a call.

Otherwise what wysiwyg said…

<applause>

Brilliant. Really uplifting post. Thanks for sharing. A reminder that it’s all about enjoying yourself on a bike at the end of the day, not matter what you ride or where.

:D

I know you said no bike related purchases and cash was tight, and it’s true you could file down your existing chainring bolts but if you can slip these in under the radar it will save your good lady wife from being subjected to a stream of of profanities that would shame a Flemish docker.

http://www.charliethebikemonger.com/id-cromo-chainring-bolts—single-speed-double-and-extra-large-128-p.asp

Existing chain should be fine for a bit provided you’ve got good chainline. I ran an old 9 speed chain on my hack bike for about 3 years without any problems.

I do love London, but I couldn’t cope with that.

We lasted 6 months for that very reason!

You may be OK for a couple of hundred miles but best to get it seen to if its slipping in 4th. My T4s just been in for a service and they said they thought the clutch may be on its way out but I think they may have just been referring to the judder which you get when you slip the clutch which most of them seem to be afflicted with. I’ve had it for the last 5 years!

Used to live on the south side of Clapham Common. Good rail and tube links, decent choice of local bars and restaurants and easy riding distance into Central London. Not cheap now but generally a decent area to live. Like a lot of south London a complete pig to get out of town by car though – sometimes 90 minutes to the M4 / M25 on a Friday afternoon.

Not sure. This one is based in South Wales, but he seems to stock a lot of shops in North Devon too.

jam bo – Member
Presumably you’re a pretty experienced surfer though?
its not always the length that counts.

thickness and width are the way forward…

True, but I’d suggest that someone who hasn’t surfed for a while and is used to a minimal or longboard is still probably going to struggle on a sub 6 foot board.

Typically the cheaper epoxy boards are machine rather than hand-shaped around an EPS core.

The Circle One boards are fine and really popular with surf schools as they are so tough – they’ll probably be slightly heavier than an equivalent “traditionally” shaped board though, but not so much you’d notice and they generally surf a lot better than the old style plastic pop-outs. They also look more like a “proper” board than the BICs.

i ride a 5ft10 in our UK slop, about to go 5ft6, dont have a prob catching waves.

Presumably you’re a pretty experienced surfer though? The OP is coming down off a longboard and has been out of the game for a while so I’d guess that he’s probably not quite ready for a shortboard yet.

In terms of size of board – general rule of thumb is to start off with something at least a foot longer than you are tall with plenty of volume and not too much rocker.

If you’d previously reached a reasonable level of surfing with your longboard and want something with a similar feel but a bit more manageable in size, then look at Magic Carpet type shapes. These are typically (but not always) single fin and have a bit more volume in the nose than a minimal – basically think a longboard with 2-3ft cut out of the middle. They ride very similar to a traditional longboard – you can even get up on the nose, but are a fair bit more manouvrable and a bit easier to handle and get out back in bigger stuff.

FWIW I’m 6’1″ and 15 stone and ride a 7’2 Magic Mat shaped by Roger Cooper which I’m really happy with.

The Loughrigg Terrace loop from Ambleside isn’t super technical but has plenty of interest, is hilly and rocky enough to be a challenge and is pretty short. Also plenty of bits around the old slate works to “session” if the fancy takes you.

Ambleside out to Troutbeck and back via Skelghyll woods is also a good short ride.

Biketreks have route cards for both of these I think.

Sorry for the thread hijack but we’ve got our 3 1/2 year old a balance bike and I’ve also got a second hand CNOC 16 which we bought off some friends of ours.

He’s not shown that much interest in the balance bike so far – generally preferring his scooter, but I’ve got a feeling that if I stuck some stabilisers on the pedal bike he’d be away.

Don’t want to force the issue either way – if he’s having fun then I’m happy but wondering whether to persevere with the balance bike or just get him straight on the proper bike.

Trail Centres are great fun and I can see why people enjoy them but I think you’d be missing out if you were ONLY to ride them.

The real appeal for me in mountain biking is being out in the wilds, plotting a route on an OS map and generally being pretty self sufficient with spares, navigation etc. For that reason about 99% of my riding is local “natural” stuff, although I’d acknowledge that very little of that is not man-made in some form or other.

The closest analogy is probably on piste / off piste / cross country skiing I guess.

EDIT: Just saw this earlier post:

Someone on here a while ago described this as ‘two-wheeled rambling’. They meant it derogatively but, to be honest, it perfectly sums up what I like to do.

+1!

Good work!

As an IT Manager and where BT are concerned I can categorically say that there is no place in hell hot enough!

Also an IT manager, and in fact an ex BT employee and can’t agree enough… since the final unbundling of the local loop / Openreach and franchising out BT Business they’ve been a shambles. We had a recurring problem with our ISDN30 dropping out over a 6 month period, each time we raised a fault on it it got bounced as no fault found and they insisted it was a problem on our side (we’d installed a brand new PBX and tested everything thoroughly). It was only after really kicking off at them that they dispatched an openreach engineer to take a look at the exchange where he found a switch problem which had been recurring for, yes, you guessed it about 6 months without anyone picking up on it.

Raising a fault in the first place is incredibly difficult – you get sent into automated contact centre hell and advised to raise it online (difficult to do if you’ve no net access). On the staggeringly remote chance you get to speak to a real human being, they’re generally only call handlers and have no clue what you’re talking about and no apparent way of giving you an update on fault works. When I worked for them the old CSS / CCH system had its faults (lots of them) but at least you could see what work was being carried out anywhere in the country. It seems these days the fault reception don’t even have visibility of the Openreach job queues.

What really stews my prunes though is the way in which having sacrificed a significant proportion of your working day to raising and escalating a fault, but before they’ve actually done anything with it you then get a chirpy call back from someone in a Mumbai call centre asking you to rate the service you’ve received…. first one I made the mistake of telling him exactly what I thought of it before then getting a series of calls from his line manager, then his line manager’s manager and then his line manager’s manager’s manager all politely telling me how sorry they were that their service had fallen short of expectations and promising the matter would be escalated, presumably to someone who would tell me exactly the same thing. My theory was that if I stuck with it long enough I may actually speak to someone who could help, but I snapped and told the 5th such caller to go roughly pleasure himself. Not proud of that but it made me feel better for about 30 seconds until the phone lines dropped again…

Am in process of sacking BT as we speak…