Should I continue with my ear, nose and throat doctor?
(cont.ENT content)

Bucks > Endz

Flowers > Meadow

lowey is right, it’s single player – if you were after multiplayer. It’s a great singleplayer though. Have no idea re: Xbox 360 but I suspect it’s not possible or is a massive pain in the posterior. Sorry – missed that bit.

Old boss of mine

Oh b@lls too late. Erm….still works….I think.

You could download Steam and play Black Mesa for free.

I have to concur with some of the others above. Lock through frame and wheel. Your bike is secure and changing a puncture (or whatever) doesn’t become a pain in the rear. I think more than one lock is a greater deterrent to would-be thieves.

Remember that tube of chocolates you used to get called ‘Munchies?’
Any excuse for such an awesome tune….

Love the end sequence to that python sketch.

I guess it’s easier to slip through the bars if you’re not fat…

Yup, been using mine for about 4 months and it’s been great. Got it half price of eBay, so had to flip it straight away due to the groove in it. Seems to work pretty well on my 1×9 hardtail. It doesn’t prevent chain bump off the top though – I also run an MRP for that. Some quick tips if you get one – you need to position it back from the tyre. This looks less ‘cool’ but is needed in case the guide rotates into the tyre and gets ripped off. Also, you need thick cable ties and more than 2 of them for security. I use an old inner tube for a chainstay protector, which means the zip ties are pretty secure. Finally, I used to run the chain with 1 link extra over the big cogs. You’ll need a couple more links worth of slack with this to allow it to swing properly, otherwise your rear mech may get pulled out of whack.

Natrix = genius, seconded.

I do see this all the time on my London commute too. It seems this type of expensive pro attire also prevents you from signalling. But even if they did, in the dark you can’t see their arms anyway!

I also work very close to the Rapha shop on Brewer St, which doesn’t help.

I’m giving up 650b threads for NY

“Some people they’ve got limited money and they can’t pay for public transport. I understand why they take the choice – it wouldn’t be mine.”

Wonder what his would be then? Rollerskates?

Quite a good article on Freemen in the Economist, here

One of the things that stood out from the Police’s reactionary “lets spend a morning stopping all cyclists and HGVs in London” day this week was that a full 50% of HGVs were breaking the law. They only stopped 20! The majority were drivers driving for too long (therefore tired and not paying attention) while the others were for vehicles not having the required safety measures fitted.

I’m currently running some DMR vaults I got 2nd hand off Ebay, and £30 waterproof, breathable Quechua hiking shoes from Decathlon, resoled with 5.10 dotty rubber by feet first. Best set up I’ve ever had. Uber grippy, waterproof and breathable. That’s right folks, you can have it all!

I would take a look at Decathlon personally. Seem to be amazing VFM and lifetime warranty on frames!

I think the Asians do horror very well (if you don’t mind subtitles)

I really enjoyed R-Point, and then there’s The Ring of course

statements like this are just as daft as the bawls Giant and the like are spouting

I think you appreciated the drama though 😉

To paraphrase the late Roy Castle.
“delegation’s what ya need’.

Trouble with jet washers is they tend to knacker the bearings. Bucket and brush is better. Having said that, most people I know hose most of their bikes, just taking care to avoid the bearings. Chain cleaning tools are very useful. Degrease (using a degreaser), flush through with water, apply your choice of chain lube (all weather lube maybe), leave for 5 mins, remove excess lube with a rag while you rotate the cranks backwards. Make sure you keep the forks clean. Wipe them down after each ride. Put a little fine teflon lube around the seal and pump the fork – this will lift the dirt out of the seal and you can wipe off with a rag. I wouldn’t put anything else, like GT85, on the fork.
Once in a while clean and lube cables with a fine lube, and lube the pivots on the mechs. Avoid leaving a wet bike outside – steel will rust pretty quickly. Other than re-indexing the gears once in a while and aligning the disc brakes, there’s not much to it. Eventually you may need to bleed brakes etc but that’s another story. Don’t store the bike upside-down.
EDIT – most of the time I don’t even bother with bike cleaner for the frame, just water and a sponge down. When I do use it, Muc Off is fine, or even the stuff from Halfords you can buy by the gallon. One thing I will stand by for drivetrain when it’s very dirty – that’s Fenwick’s foaming degreaser. Awesome stuff, used with a washing up brush or old toothbrush.

well, buy what you want then 😀

The people saying ‘try what you like’ and ride it – even in fact that rather good ‘how to be a mountainbiker’ video with its ‘pick a wheel size’:

The point is, that 26″ is being removed from your option list. Do you get it? The market is being artificially shifted, like some kind of autocratic bike company run nanny state. (Which is odd, given most of those firms were started by hippies). You won’t be able to buy good Maxxis tyres anymore, you’ll be getting cheap, shoddy rubber from a random Chinese seller on eBay.

On a side note, if you want to roll over things easier, simply rotating your hands behind the bars, rather than on top, makes a world of difference. First thing I learnt from Jedi.

I helped fund it with a sub for a year

What that video says to me is that the bike industry big players do collude and force the rest of the market. People poo-poo the idea of this as ‘conspiracy theory’, but it’s not unusual in unregulated markets. Even the price of iron ore is still mostly set this way IIRC.
AT some point, 29″ started to become more popular. Then the price of materials form the far East started to go up and a global economic downturn put off the consumer. So heavy, heavy marketing on the 29er seemed like a good idea to rejuvenate sales and secure profits. 29ers are also ideal as the wheels are fairly obviously different, so the consumer can ‘set themselves apart’ on the trail by having the ‘latest wheelsize’. However, this didn’t work quite well enough (small people like me for example will never by 29″) so they have decided that to ensure they can still pay dividends to shareholders, they will have to market 650b as the ‘one true size’ and kill off 26″ and the associated 2nd hand market. One of the reasons 26″ has to go is that it’s not that easy to tell the bikes apart, so for this to work, 26″ simply has to ‘go away’. The prime example is Boardman, who always says that they take 2 years to release a new bike so they ‘can really use all that R&D’. However, he is quoted in Bike Magic in July 2012 that he’ll ‘never go 650b’. So clearly, there was no 650b being developed by Boardman less than a year ago. 2 weeks ago, he releases an ‘only 650b’ MTB range. So, all the ‘maths and research’ that was pointing to 29″ last year and the year before is apparently suddenly pointing to 650b. Yeah, right.
That’s not to say that the different wheel sizes don’t make great bikes – just that the market is being forced. It will be very tricky though. ‘New’ people and youngsters coming into MTB buy a lot of new bikes, as do people with disposable income and those who ‘must have’ the latest thing. They can be sold whatever in the shops. But there’s a solid hard core that remain avid MTBers for longer. If I remember correctly, the polls show that most people on here have a standard 1 1/8th headtube still. So there will still be a strong, genuine, consumer demand for 26″ that will be hard to ignore.

I recently bought some of the cheap Decathlon waterproof/breathable hiking shoes (with a Novadry membrane)(£29) and – after another thread on here – had the toe section resoled with 5.10 rubber for £40 at FeetFirst. The shoe is actually excellent and with the resole, as good on the flat pedals as 5.10 impacts. So that’s a waterproof, breathable shoe for less than a new pair of non-breathing, less waterproof 5.10s. Overtrousers stop the water running down the leg into the top. For normal light rain/ showers, I wear these with some £10 overtrousers from Sports direct. They are fine, although are starting to fall apart. I’ll go for Berhause Deluge next time. For really cats and dogs rainy days with deep puddles, I have some Goretex army surplus overtrousers(£25), which would work on their own, but are a bit flappy, so I wear some lightweight Trekmates GTX gaiters to keep it all together. Another advantage of the hiking shoes is that they take a gaiter strap. Once I’m wearing them, I don’t notice the gaiters at all, I’m too busy enjoying my nice, dry ride in the rain.
Mudguards simply don’t work well on an MTB. Fender Bender up front is useful to save your eyes and face, but better to have clothes you can hose down at the end than mess around with rubbish rear guards IMHO.

Hunter Prey is entertaining. On Netflix I think.
Limitless is good (assume that’s real SciFi as it’s plausible, scientifically).

“It’s good to have an open mind, but if you open it too much your brain will fall out.” – Frankenstein

Look up hypnopompic and hypnagogic hallucinations. Actually pretty common, and very, very realistic for the people that have them. Also helps to explain why most ‘ghost’ sightings happen at night and are usually experienced by a solitary person. Unless you’ve done research and have found out that what you are having are these type of hallucinations, you would think that what you were seeing where ghosts. These aren’t seizures, it’s simply a failure of the brain to quickly distinguish between sleep and awake. They can also last for up to a minute, even when you feel fully awake and your heart in is your mouth pumping adrenaline because you can’t believe what you are seeing. Lots of people see spiders crawling on walls that aren’t there etc etc, but many people see people – such as a stranger sitting on the end of the bed etc. Some are extreme hallucinations that last for what seems like a long time, some are mild. The film Fight Club plays on a similar idea.

If it exists in your mind then I think you’ll agree it exists.

Excellent news and thanks for the update. Couldn’t get 2nd hand Salomons for under £30 in the end, and was determined to get my project in for at least £20 cheaper than a new pair of 5.10s. So I’ve ended up getting some budget (but apparently very good) waterproof, breathable shoes from Decathlon and will be ‘stealth rubbering’ them shortly.

Aren’t the companies now required to write to you if you took any PPI out with them and do the investigation themselves?
I never took out PPI but both the wife and I have recently had letters from CPP saying that we may have had PPI (because historically we both had cards that used CPP as the insurer) and if so, they will write to us again to tell us if we are entitled to compensation.