Another vote for the Octavia Scout 4×4 here. We’ve got one and it’s fab.

My wife bought a bottle of Black Grouse for me last week – I generally go for single malts but really like it. Almost too drinkable. On offer at Asda at the moment too.

Rock and Run do some pretty good deals on Merino. Worth signing up for their offer emails anyway.

http://www.rockrun.com/categories/Clothing/Base-Layers/

Saris Bones should fit if there is enough clearance under the spoiler to get the upper straps through – you’d probably only need a couple of cm.

Even if not there is a conversion kit you can get for cars with glass tailgates that substitutes the little clips at the end of the straps for foam rollers that go into the gap around the tailgate. They should work provided you’ve got enough clearance for the webbing strap to go through under the spoiler.

We had a complete lifestyle change about 18 months ago in order to move to the west country to be closer to family and to give our little boy the type of upbringing we were both lucky to have enjoyed – we both gave up our jobs in the south east and sold up in a matter of weeks – my wife took redundancy and retrained as a teacher. I left a well paid IT systems job in London to work for a small, family owned company. Still doing IT but much more varied than what I did before, and challenging as well since I’ve had to learn a lot of it from scratch.

In parallel with that I’ve signed up as a retained firefighter at the ripe old age of 40 and am progressing through the training at the moment (passed my basic skills last week). Feels great to have a really practical, community focussed foil to the more cerebral stuff I do at work, and I love the camaraderie and banter around the station.

We’ve taken about a 50% hit on our household income and if I’m honest we’re as busy as ever but are both really engaged in the local community in a way that we never were previously – we actually feel like we live here rather than just exist. We spend far less than we did because a lot of what we were paying out was for crappy stuff which we really didn’t need.

If you’d told me 2 years ago that we’d have done all this I’d have laughed in your face. It has been a massive change for us all but we really couldn’t be happier.

Have a think about stuff you could do which is different to your day job but which may well complement it (volunteer work etc?) – if there are things you want to do, or changes you want to make to your life, then go for it. You’re a long time dead.

The weather has got to be a big factor if you’re out in it most of the day.

Actually that is one of the only downsides of living here in the SW – it’s warmer than a lot of the rest of the UK, but also a lot wetter than the E side of the country.

+1 for what Ransos said. Cotswold were really good and let us try out all the carriers they had in stock.

Another happy Little Life customer here. We’ve got the Freedom:

http://www.littlelife.co.uk/html/child_carriers/freedom.html

Ours has been in regular use since our little one was about 7 months old. Comfy and very adjustable. He’s now 3 and although he’s now happy to walk himself we still use it occasionally – an example being yesterday in the Lydford gorge. Water was pretty high and it was a bit too slippery and tricky for little feet so we popped him in the carrier for the difficult bits.

He’s getting a bit big too carry in it for more than a couple of hours now but when he was younger we did proper full day hikes with all our kit without any problems.

I wouldn’t want to live anywhere other than where I already am on Eastern Dartmoor.

Great riding and beautiful countryside on my doorstep. Can get to either North Cornwall or South Devon coasts within an hour. Surf in the morning / MTB in afternoon is possible in the summer months. Town we live in is really friendly with loads going on – great for young families and with a strong community feel. I know about 10 times more people after 18 months living here than I did in almost 10 years of living in a similar sized village in the South East. Also some great local pubs and places to eat and a surprisingly lively local music scene.

I’m lucky enough to work within the national park, but it’s also easily commutable to Exeter or Plymouth. All good basically.

Croyde, low tide, Saturday evening. Just taken on the iPhone, but I like it

I used to work for a “large telecommunications provider” – where my job was basically to make nuisance calls on an industrial scale.

I worked in a team working shifts managing the predictive diallers for a 2000 seat call centre. Theoretically these things were supposed to automatically adjust the dialling rate based on the number of agents available, average talk time etc, In practice the technology was in its infancy and they needed near-constant tweaking to avoid silent calls (and the resulting wrath of the regulator) etc and to maintain the hit rate.

The kit itself was hosted offsite and at the time filled most of a gloomy hangar-like bunker in Swindon – getting in there was like getting into the Roswell airbase and nearly as strange.

We’d target specific demographics and parts of the country at different times of the day and week. Had a wall of tellies in the office so we could crank up the calls at peak times around certain TV shows- we’d get a fantastic hit rate in places like Eastbourne and Southend just at the end of Cash in the Attic!

It was really well paid as it was shift work (we worked overnight to process data etc), and got loads of free time during the day when I was on lates, but can’t say there was much in the way of job satisfaction and it all left me feeling a bit empty. A classic case of a job where you don’t actually feel you’re doing anything useful.

On the positive side, it got me a foot in the door into IT, which I still work in, so I guess it wasn’t all bad.

Karate Monkey?

http://www.tredz.co.uk/.Surly-Karate-Monkey-29er-Complete-Bike_41039.htm?utm_source=Google&utm_medium=Product_Search&utm_campaign=Froogle02

As already stated, it’s dependant on so many factors you really need to experiment to get the right ratio, but 2:1 is a good starter.

As a guide I used to live in Kent and found ran 2 bikes – a singlespeed cross bike at 42:18 and a rigid MTB at 32:16. Both were fine for local trails with not many really steep climbs (N Downs, Bedgebury etc), the crosser was a tad overgeared offroad but really good for mixed riding.

Now live on Dartmoor, which is really steep but have kept the rigid MTB. Tried to tough it out at 32:16 for the first year but really struggled. Now dropped to 32:18 which seems spot on. Still have to carry it up some of the steeper stuff, but mainly on climbs I’d be either pushing up anyway or struggling to make walking pace in the granny gear on a geared bike!

Orange F8s.

Great fork, cheap too.

http://www.allterraincycles.co.uk/.Orange-F8-Rigid-Fork_125995.htm

God Only Knows – The Beach Boys
Waterloo Sunset – The Kinks
Northern Sky – Nick Drake
Wings – Josh Ritter

Used to do some seriously daft stuff on the bike but I toned it down quite a lot when our little boy came along… responsibilities and all that.

Also taking it a bit easier at the moment as I’ve recently become a retained firefighter and don’t want to clobber myself before training starts in a couple of weeks time as an injury would potentially mean having to wait another 6 months before getting on the run.

This may be a bit too diverse, but this is an excellent compilation of American roots stuff in general. Basically three CDs covering folk/bluegrass, blues and contemporary Americana.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Beginners-Guide-American-Various-Artists/dp/B0002FHASS

There are a couple of Rough Guide compilations in a similar vein too .

If you can get hold of them online, Uncut Magazine did some great compilations of American roots and folk too. This one was supposedly music which inspired U2’s Joshua Tree (?!!), but don’t let that put you off – it’s got some classics on it:

http://www.discogs.com/Various-In-Gods-Country/release/1060654

The O Brother Where Art Though soundtrack is also worth a buy if you don’t already have it.

Basically as indicated above, at the moment all folders are a compromise between fold and performance.

Did a daily commute from Victoria to Kings Cross and back for around 3 years on a folder. I had a Dahon Jetstream for most of that time which rode brilliantly (to the extent that I also did a few much longer road rides on it at the weekend), but as others have said it was really bulky folded up and a bit of a pain to get onto crowded trains.

I tried Bromptons too, loved the fold, but as a big guy really struggled with them – too flexy and unstable by far.

20″ bikes like Dahon, Birdy, Bike Friday etc ride more like “proper” bikes but don’t have such a compact fold. Great if storage space is limited, for occasional commutes on uncrowded trains or for chucking in he boot of the car for weekends away.

Of the 16″ bikes, the Brompton is probably the only serious contender, and still the most compact fold, great for shorter commutes but not the best choice for longer rides (although some people do mental tours on them!).

Personally I don’t really get the point of the full size folders like the Airnimal or the 26″ Dahons other than as a handy loophole to get a bike onto a train at peak times. Most need you to remove bits anyway to get a proper fold, and even if not, the resulting package is far from compact. The disadvantages seem to outweigh the advantages and to me it’s just as easy to take a front wheel off a full size bike.

Surly frames are pretty traditional geometry so IME always look a bit on the big side until you sling a leg over them.

Great bikes.

Fun, versatile, hugely capable, tough as old boots. What’s not to like?

Mine is also geared, but that’s because I’m such a massive Surly fan-boy, I’ve got a Surly 1×1 for singlespeed duties which is also fab.

Best thing is the grin it will put on your face when you thoroughly beat someone on an FS bike which cost 4 times as much!

Just remembered – ours had an exterior outlet to the outside (bit like the one on a kitchen or bathroom extractor) so any dust generated by the system went outside rather than back into the house so presumably less dust is also an advantage.

I suppose it does smack of a solution to a problem that never existed, but I guess the main advantage is that you have masses more power than you would with a portable vacuum and less stuff to lug around while you’re hoovering. The cylinder on these things is huge.

You don’t have any cable. Just lots of flexy hose running up through the voids in the wall. And lightweight hose with a brush attachment for when you are doing the vacuuming. If I remember correctly the hose was about 3.5″ diameter so you’d have to be going some or seriously “experimenting” to get anything stuck up there.

You can still get to the bag if you hoover up anything vital.

Can imagine it would be a complete PITA to fix if you did get a blockage or a hose wore out though. Depends on the layout of the house though – ours was all running up through a central pillar with discreet access panels on each floor.

Best thing, if you are clumsy oaf in the kitcken like me is the automatic dustpan feature :-):

We had one in a house we rented whilst living in Holland. They are really good. Unit and bag were in the attic. System activated automatically when you slotted the hoses in.

Forgot it was there most of the time until we needed to empty it, but the bag was huge – unit as a whole was about the size of a standard hot water tank. System was really powerful and easy to use.

It was quite a small place though. If you have a lot of large rooms, you’d either need lots of hose or lots of inlets.

Would be very difficult to retrofit due to the plumbing involved I’d imagine, so doing it on a new build makes sense. The place we rented was a converted 17th C barn which had been completely gutted.

Also, leaving all that mucky and dirt-infested pipes in your voids doesn’t seem too hygenic.

The one we had continued to run for a short time after you disconnected the hose. Presumably to “clear the tubes” so to speak.. put it this way, I wouldn’t want to reverse the polarity on the thing!

BoardinBob – Member
Dirty Dancing

There aren’t enough red faced smilies in existence to excuse that one

PMSL

Beverly Hills Cop was great. Still cracks me up. Also liked the first Lethal Weapon 😳

I really love all the John Hughes “brat pack” films from the mid 80s. Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, Ferris Bueller etc. Saw them all at the cinema first time around with my mates and they really struck a chord with us all. Not because our lives were anything remotely like those of the characters in the films (far from it), but because they seemed to be fairly insightful about being a teenager around that time.

Antwerp was our favourite weekend destination when we lived in Holland. Great city.

+1 for the Rubens, but most places around the Grote Markt are pretty good.

Don’t miss the mad bar next to the Cathedral which is crammed with religous relics: Het Elfde Gebod http://kathedraalcafe.be/fotos/

It’s official. “What NAS?” is the new “What Tyres?”

Buy a cheap rigid fork and give it a go. If you don’t like it, sell it on, but you’ll be surprised what you can clear, especially on a 29er.

As a fully paid up, hair-shirted attention monger with militant Luddite tendencies, I really like riding rigid – it’s what I started out with and just feels a bit more direct and involving and altogether less faff. Haven’t run suspension for the last 18 months as a result. Line choice gets a bit more important, and yes you may not be as fast on some descents, but it’s still fun, and it’s still a bike.

A few years back I was on the train back from London to the village in Kent where we lived. I was in the guards van with my bike and a skinhead bloke (in paramilitary gear – Black MA1 jacket, combats and boots) got in just as the train was pulling out of Victoria. He was acting really oddly – looked like he was speeding his nads off. Really jumpy and nervous. He leaned out of the window and as he did so, I saw what looked really like a hand-gun tucked into his belt…. really didn’t know what to do. Ended up diving out of the carriage and calling the route control on my mobile from the corridor (I worked for the railway at the time). They got in touch with the BTP and had an armed response team waiting for him at the next station. The hand gun turned out to be some sort of (still illegal) taser / stun gun thing, and the bloke was done for possession as well but still felt a bit daft nonetheless…. in my defence this was a few weeks after the bombings so was perhaps a tad paranoid.

Can’t believe I missed that, it’s right on my doorstep.

Is that photo on the website Bellever?

As above, a burst of speed before hitting muddy sections and then moving your weight to the rear (almost a manual) floats the front of the bike through the clag and puts you in the right position to get rear-wheel traction when the momentum dies.

Surly Karate Monkey would fit the bill.

http://surlybikes.com/bikes/karate_monkey

I’ve got one. It’s a great all rounder and has the mounts you need. Go for the Ogre if you want something more touring-specific, although I guess that may be a tad utilitarian given your OP.

http://surlybikes.com/bikes/ogre

The older frames like mine only have eyelets on the dropouts, but I happily run a rack on mine with the addition of one of these babies:

http://www.charliethebikemonger.com/salsa-rack-lock-seatpost-clamp-1915-p.asp

Newer frames have mounts top and bottom though I believe.

I don’t for a moment believe he was cured by the laying on of hands but the fact that he injured his eye a couple of days after the incident is definitely not made up, I assure you.

Papa_Lazarou – weirdly, the events posted above were also on Anglesey. Nr Moelfre, if you know it.

When we first moved to North Wales in the early 80s, my parents got friendly with a bloke in the local pub, H, who was a local artist and claimed to be a white witch and faith-healer for which he was apparently quite well known in the area. Another acquaintance of theirs, Tommy, a chippie, thought it was a load of old tosh and turned up at the pub one night with a bandage and eye-patch over one eye claiming he’d had an accident at work and asked H to take a look of it. H leaned over, carefully removed the eye-patch, and out fell one those joke eyeballs on a spring…. everyone in the pub was rolling with laughter but H was absolutely furious and told Tommy that he shouldn’t mock what he didn’t understand.

3 days later, Tommy was using a chisel at work, the tip broke off and went into the same eye. Doctors told him there was a good chance he’d lose his sight, but he went back to see H, and was apparently cured by the “laying on of hands”.

At the time my parents ran a shop on a caravan site nearby, and around 6 months after this incident a group of holidaymakers renting a van on the site also had an altercation with H one night. Next morning they were on the steps of the shop when we went to open up with the keys, ready to leave only a couple of days into their holiday – I’ve never seen a group of people so terrified in all my life – absolutely ashen faced. Still don’t know the full details of what happened but they were talking about weird lights and noises around the van in the night. They’d ended up sleeping in the car after one member of their party was apparently physically thrown out of his bed by “something” in the early hours.

My parents had bought one of H’s paintings prior to all this kicking off – a really moody seascape – it ended up on a bonfire shortly after the second episode as my Mum couldn’t stand having it in the house.

I think the above is probably all more to do with the power of suggestion than anything genuinely supernatural but was all quite creepy nonetheless…

It may have already been asked, but what is the advantage of disk brakes on a skinny tyred road bike other than a reduction in rim wear and possibly maintenance?

When it comes to braking performance, surely it’s the contact point of the tyres that is the limiting factor, not the brakes themselves??

Or am I missing something?

EDIT – Ignore me, delayed post. Just saw comments above. I’ll get me coat…

Pretty sure it’s the same frame and the Cross does have eyelets in the pic. I’ve used spacers and slightly longer bolts to fit both rack and guards to my Surly 1×1 which also has a single set of eyelets on the dropout. You could use a Salsa rack-lock if you wanted an extra pair of eyelets on the seatstay, or again just use longer bolts.

http://www.tritoncycles.co.uk/m13b104s204p8365/SALSA_Rack-Lock_Seatclamp/RS_GB/22376

Are you sure about that? Pic here seems to show the relevant lugs and I’ve seen a number about with rack and guards fitted.

I was toying with the idea of sticking my Lush longboard on Ebay, having not ridden it for ages, but this thread may have just inspired me to keep it.

40s not too old, right?