We used to do the conditioner and nit comb twice a week till they cleared in London, the school was a constant source of infestation. Got them again for the first time in a few years so we have resorted to poison this time (for the nits, not the kids).

I did mine Saturday, small bit of bone pulled off where the ligament attachs at the bottom joint of thumb. Saw the specialist yesterday, no mountain biking for at least 5 weeks (avoiding trigger shifters esp). I can commute on the roadie with paddle shifters (although he wasn’t entirely happy with this. I have to keep the splint on 24/7 for the next 3 weeks, after that I can take it off to sleep. Bloody pain though it is, the injury doesn’t hurt but the splint is really awkward. If I do as he says then there is a 95% chance I don’t need to have it screwed back together, so I’ll follow the docs advice.
I’m guessing it’ll be mainly wind training for me for the next 5 weeks or so. Got good advice about trainers from people on here in another thread.
Good luck with yours.

Cheers, Hopefully they’ll make it more bearable.

Thanks Simon, will have a look and give them a go.

My worst was camping on the Bongong High Plains (Aus) with a group of year 9 outdoor ed students (as a teacher). Camping in the snow in driving rain and sleet. I got food poisoning and spent most of the night running out of the tent to the nearest patch of trees. No toilets anywhere, just a shovel to dig a pit and the poo tube to collect the bog paper. Oh the joys. It was an experience.

My cracking ride on Saturday was great, lots of singletrack around here, nice and dry, until the front wheel washed out, leaving me missing skin and cracking my thumb. No more mountain biking till it heals as I can’t do trigger shifters, will have to use the roadie with the paddle shifters for the next few weeks.

Some companies are better than others. I’ve dealt with Giant and they have been great. Warrantied a 4 year old anthem frame, replacing it with an Anthem X (more travel than the old outdated Anthem I’d cracked) so new rear shock and bearings also.

Get someone to unlock it and roll it into the street, locksmith shouldn’t have any problems unlocking it as it is on your land.

It can be difficult, but as other people have said it depends on the level of stress and chaos you are willing to accept.
We moved about 1 week before my son was born. We already had a 15 month old and the house was a ‘renovators dream’ (read absolute sh*thole). We spent the week ripping carpets out, stripping wallpaper, knocking out badly put in partition walls etc. Most of our stuff was still in boxes scattered about the rooms.

My wife was stripping wallpaper till 10 pm the night she went into labour (she got the nesting instinct bad).

Cue being woken up at midnight with the ‘I’m in labour’, time to grab a few things, call a good friend of ours who was coing to the hospital to help. Luckily the good friend lived two blocks away and had already had 5 sons, she heard MrsS on the phone, dragged her partner out of the house at a flat run, realising we didn’t have the couple of hours I thought we did. I was obliviously wandering around slowly packing a hospital bag when she stormed in, dragged my wife off the toilet (pointing out the baby shouldn’t be born down the toilet. My son was born less than 10 minutes later, ambo didn’t have time to get there, neither did midwives. It was quite an experience, made more worrying at the time as MrsS had major bleed when the placenta didn’t come through with the first child, resulting in her being rushed into surgery. Luckily everything went smoothly though.

2 or so hours after labour began everyone had left and we were all in bed with the new addition.

Also, it was the middle of summer and all the windows were open, we hadn’t met the neighbours at that point and obviously woke them all up, next morning there were lots of flowers from them all, they were all great neighbours.

I commute to work and back by bike, extending it a bit on the way home if time permits (not by much though) and ride sundays, getting out at or before the crack of dawn so I can be back 10.30-11 ish. I also do one night ride a week, it is my one night out and doubles as my social occasion. I work full time as a teacher, have two kids, and a wife who works full time. It does get easier as the kids get older, mine are now 10 and 11 and so will walk home and I’ll get in about 30 minutes after they get home (and find them both plugged into electronic toys).

I think part of the reason they went this way was they were loosing lots of sales in Asia by moving away from 26ers mainly due to the average height of Asians compared to Caucasians being lower. Harder to fit smaller people to a 29er.

Giants and Rocky Mountains here (the local shop is a rocky dealer and lots of the locals either ride with the owner or have ridden with him.

Ahhhh…my peanut butter is trying to eat me

my toy, only had it since late last year, but it is fun to ride

I’ve 120 on my anthem X (2011 frame), it is a much better bike than my old 2008 anthem with 100 mm fork (I broke that frame and the new one was a warranty replacement)

Been using my camelback now for 5 years, it gets used 2-3 times a week. I’ve had no problems with it (I did replace the hose last year as it started to grow black stuff)

The old odyssey route goes through private land, you are better to start in forrest. The new (2013) route started in forrest and went out from the footy oval. The riding around there is brilliant. There is also some riding in Anglesea, not sure where though.

email is in profile

Forrest is great. Don’t think there is much sneaky stuff out there though as the trail network is well established and well looked after. Mariners run is my favourite out there, but other great ones include ‘follow the dog’ and ‘The red carpet’ descent. There should be good maps online for the You Yangs also. I’ve only ridden there once for a race last year. THe stockyards section is fast, flat and flowy, the rest is rocky and steep in places.
The comm games track and the rest of Lysterfield is fun although it gets a bit crowded and the trails do suffer a bit because of it. Check if the trails are open online. We were there a week ago and a few trails were closed due to water damage, but a number were open.
There are lots of other places to ride out this way also. Drop me an email if you want more info or someone to take you out for a ride. School hols at the moment so as a teacher I get to relax and look after my kids.

We have 2 kindle paperwhite in the house, just having converted to ebooks. I bought the first to have a play with 6 months ago, still haven’t finished a book on it as MrsSG refuses to put it down. Had to buy a second for my daughter for her birthday as she kept taking the first one to read her books. They are great pieces of kit, easy to read, light. I was initially concerned that the screen size seemed a little small compared to a paperback, but that isn’t an issue. Might need to buy a third so I can read it.

Red wine, finished the half bottle from last night while prepping dinner, and debating starting on chateau cardboard from the cupboard. no beer currently on the house, othersie it’d be a nice ale in front of the fire

I finished mine here in Australia, did 2 post-docs (Holland and London) before jacking it in to become a secondary-school teacher and dragging my family back to Aus.
It is a long slog, especially if you don’t enjoy it, but all Ph>D’s (well most) have their ups and downs with collections of disasters. At least you aren’t in biological sciences, I had a -70C freezer die and lost 6 months of samples along with numerous other problems. I don’t think I was really cut out for research.

Broken scapula (sking), blown knee (skiing), broken left wrist twice (over-exuberant childhood games), 4 broken fingers, broken cheek (touch rugby, mixed no less), broken heel (climbing, bloody painful) and a broken nose, the only ones mtb related were the nose and one of the fingers.

I came from a similar situation and did a PGCE about 8 years ago. I’m not sure how much the situation has changed as we moved overseas a few years ago.
I did a few days at my daughters primary school and a few days at a secondary school prior to starting. I really enjoyed the course (I did mine at Institute of Ed in London). The NQT year I think was tougher as I did mine at what at the time was a fairly disfunctional school which had a habit of churning over NQTs and staff (had 1/3 staff turnover the year I was there).
The PGCE is a year of solid work but no harder than my honours year at uni or times during my PhD. You just need to stay on top of the work and realise that long rides will have to be put aside for most of the year. On the bright side, you will forevermore get school holidays (or time to redecorate another part of the house as my wife calls it).

I got stung by one a few weeks ago. Reached into the esky for a cold bottle and it was on the neck of the bottle. Luckily it only stung me on the finger but bloody hurt. The joys of Australian nasties. I have had to a bunny-hop snake in mid summer

Some of the best riding near-ish to Melbourne is at forrest, near Lorne on the Great Ocean Road. You can hire bikes from the coffee shop there.
Other great places near/in Melbourne include You Yangs (near Geelong), Woodend (about 1 hour north), Lysterfield, Smiths Gully, Yarra trails (all in or very near Melbourne). If you are going to the wineries in the Yarra Valley, Smiths Gully is on the way out there (kind of).
The Yarra Valley wineries are good. If zoo type places float your boat, then Healseville sanctuary is great. There are also some good galleries around. I live here now in Warrandyte. Drop me an email if you want, my address is in my profile.

THe shifter issue might be particular to a batch shipped here (aus).

I’ve gone through a few X9 shifters in the last year, and one X0 derailer (to be fair though though it did cop a rock fairly hard). THe X9 shifters seem to be a real pain, I know a few peopple that have had trouble with them. Strangely enough the ones on my old bike (2008) never missed a beat.

I end up taking 2-3 days a year, mainly to look after my kids when they are sick though. As a teacher though, it is hard to stand up and properly teach a lesson when you are really crook. Usually it is the mrs (who is a GP) who orders me back to bed when I’m not well. As a teacher we get good sick leave allowance and it can be needed at times. Parents often send the kids into school when they are sick, resulting in the kid spending half the day in sick bay and infecting half the kids (and the teacher) of their classes.

bombers!

Got my first roadie recently, a second hand one from a mate. Lovely bike, I can’t really do it justice, but great fun to ride.

Bovril and Marmite are both foul, Vegemite is the real deal.

There is a program on 4 corners (australian current affairs/investigative journalism show) tonight, should be interesting

NQT is a bloody hard year. I did mine in a rough school in inner london and regularly wondered if I’d made the right decision. I finished the year and left that school for a better one to regain a bit of confidence and work on skills. I’m now teaching here in Aus and love it, although there is still lots of work. It is well worth sticking at, you get lots of variety (I teach different a new subjects each year)but there is lots of after hours work (marking and planning). You also get long holidays and depending on the school you can walk out at 4 pm, go for a ride or whatever and do your marking/planning later at night.

As a doctor and someone who has spent the last 20 years in a tibetan monestry learning the sacred art of eccy thump healing, send me 150 pounds and I’ll heal it by the divine power of thought. Ignore all the other charletans on here, they don’t know what they say.
PS I also have a good nigerian friend who needs help transferring money and will guaranty you a good return on you hard earned cash if you help him

I’m always keen to go for rides, do tuesday evenings most weeks (5 ish till 8 as I have to pick up kids from cubs), saturday/sunday mornings also. Normally I go yarra trails/warrandyte/smiths gully. Not interested in simulation modelling though.

I’ve used both trail gator and tag-a-long. THe trail gator was OK once you do up the bolts bloody tight, the first time we used it they weren’t done up tight enough and dumped my daughter in the mddle of the street (a very quiet street where we’d chosen to test it). It was small and easy to take camping so she’d still ahve her bike.
Used a tag-a-long for a good while with both kids also (a trek model). It was great. My daughter would pedal on it so it gave you a real speed burst. My son was a lazy sod on it. My son was a lazy sod, prefering to sit back, and at times put his feet on its handlebars. He only fell off once though, I was half way up the hill before I thought it seemed too easy, turned around and saw him in tears 100m behind me. Bad dad award that day.
The tag-a-long got much more use and I used to commute with them on the back of it.

THose french cheeses could kill someone

Didn’t Cochrane report say that chiropractic was a waste of time and/or money?

We used Whites estates in london to manage our rental property, they were bloody useless, equally for us and our tenants. Ivariabley when things went wrong in the house the tenents would contact them, they would ignore the tenants, the tenants would contact us, the tenants would contact us, and after we repeately spoke to whites something might get done. We got rid of them for a significantly better letting group. I would have managed the property myself but we are now living on the wrong (or right) side of the world.