Do you mean fast as in:

“I want to cover miles quickly by hammering up and down motorways and dual carriageways at licence-threatening speeds”

or

“I want an engaging and fun experience behind the wheel that makes me smile and allows me to take corners at silly speeds”

or simply

“I want to win at traffic light drag races?”

🙂

I read an interesting article that attempted to explain the resurgence in popularity of vinyl and it suggested it is down to technology divergence. Basically we’ve gone through several years of technology converging to the extent that a modern Smartphone can be your camera, music player, laptop, SatNav etc etc. Smartphones are incredible now and improvements are relatively small, so people are looking towards the next bit of technology to spend their hard-earned cash on. There’s nowhere to go with converging technology, so people look to diverge into specialised and dedicated bits of kit instead. Even if the quality of that kit is only perceived and not actual, it matters not to those who just want to spend money on the “latest and greatest”.

For the record (pun intended), I do love a bit of vinyl and yearn for the day when I have my dream turntable and a quiet room to listen to it in.

I love my vinyl collection, but I’ve collected some crap over the years. More often than not I just wanted to buy *something* and convinced myself that such-and-such a piece of music was good just so I could go home with some more vinyl. I’d like to think I waste no money on music any more.

@edlong I think we’re talking about different things here. I was referring to the point that the recording, made in the digital domain and stored as 1s and 0s, becomes something we can listen to. For a digital source that will be done via the DAC I have sat on my hi-fi rack/in my CD player/on my computer.

For records it all happens before it gets to the consumer as part of the process of converting those 1s and 0s to a wobbly groove on a piece of vinyl. I was pondering whether engineers have more control in manipulating that process recording-by-recording rather than via the “one size fits all” DAC in a CD player.

Is anybody recording and mixing music using analogue equipment these days?

I don’t know the answer, but I would assume that engineers who master the analogue vinyl do a better job for each vinyl release than a DAC would do, bearing in mind the DAC has to do the analogue conversion in the same style for all digital inputs, whereas the engineer can do the analogue conversion to suit the desired “feel” of the specific recording.

Could be talking cobblers, but makes sense to me.

I can’t remember the last time I bought any vinyl, despite having lots of it sat waiting patiently for the day the kids grow up and I can properly listen to it.

In the meantime there are no local record shops convenient to me, so I have one or two in my “Save for Later” basket on Amazon who have a dedicated vinyl section

OK, so how about a different angle? Which rider has been genuinely consistent year in year out? For me it’s only Minnaar. He’s had spells within the season where he’s not been on it, then turned it around and got some good results and always looks capable of doing some damage, each and every season.

Gwin is similar, but had that complete flop of a season (by his standards) after his first World Cup overall. I would have put Gee up there too but he’s gone off the boil now. Hope he can pull it back.

Just Minnaar then or do the results suggest some others are also year-on-year consistently and competitively in the mix for a win?

Track sprint cycling.

Lots of tense tip-toeing around the track then – boom – it’s off (3m 32s in).

I think if I wanted to buy a whole rigid, I’d get one of the many hardtails with a cheap rubbish fork, and an Exotic carbon fork, and introduce them.

I did this and it transformed a crap hardtail into a superb rigid bike – one of my favourite bikes ever. I also did the wider bars/shorter stem thing too. Night and day difference in handling and enjoyment.

Kona Unit

After owning one of these for a few years I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s not that great to ride. I love the way it looks and I love the simplicity of a single speed so would probably not part with it, but it’s too heavy and not as nimble nor manoeuvrable as I’d like. I’ve had great fun with it, but probably despite rather than because of it. Good for winter training tho’ 😉

Yes. Great mentoring, great leadership, good investment and we’re all aiming for the same goals. It’s not always been like that, but the last 2 years or so have just got exponentially better.

I have used the Tifosi Veloce glasses for a few years now and they’re as good as anything I’ve had. I won’t claim I’ve never steamed them up, but they do a pretty fine job. Very light and comfy too. I use the Fototec Light Night lens which is a reactive lens that is usable at night and I don’t recall ever feeling the need for a darker tint during the day (although that could be a reflection of our “summer” weather).

These

I bought some of these based on a very favourable review by Mark in Singletrack. Very pleased with them on and off the bike, and I can confirm they’ve had some decent hike-a-bike up various Lakeland and Scottish passes this year.

Mavic Crossmax Pro H20

Depends if you’re there to race or there to ride.

If it’s to ride, then why pay £40 to follow some dayglow arrows. There must be hundreds of £10 guideboks packed with routes for those not adventurous enough to just set off and get lost.

Possibly similar reasons to why people go on guided mountain bike rides. I like perusing a guidebook and getting lost as much as the next person, but sometimes I like to follow a route that someone else with local knowledge has decided is a nice way to see a new area.

On ALL my cycle rides there will come a point – several points – where I decide to give it some beans. Maybe I’m “racing” myself, maybe I’m “racing” others I’m riding with, but the point is that whilst people are competitive beasts, not all people are competitive beasts who have time/energy/will to train for “proper” racing.

Moreover – as someone who has sprinted up cobbled Michaelgate in Lincoln at the end of a 100 mile sportive, there is no doubt a thrill from riding a mass-participation event at which the crowds applaud your finish. There’s no way I’ll have crowds lining the track and applauding at my local cat 4 race (when I come in last!).

My first 100 ride was a sportive and it felt special being part of such a big event. I think the parallel with taking part in the London Marathon is a great one.

Some people will always hate sportives and some people will never “get” sportives. It will always give us something to debate on here 🙂

What did you give up?

I gave up feeling young.

The one thing I really should do is take up Yoga or some other flexibility type practise.

I keep saying this to myself and doing nothing about it. I used to be quite flexible in the days when I did a lot of different physical activities, but now my exercise is limited to infrequent cycle rides – and mostly road at that – I feel myself just getting less and less flexible every week 🙁

Good on him for pushing himself and getting a respectable time (possibly, I didn’t actually check). If this inspires him to try a real race, good on him.

Those who say “enter a real race” do seem a bit blind to the huge jump from taking part in something like a sportive to actual racing. Some of the lads in our club have just started racing this year, so starting at the bottom as expected. They’re not exactly wiping the floor with the competition, but they will demolish me just on a friendly club ride given the chance. Do you think that encourages me to enter “a proper race”? Absolutely not. I’ve only this last couple of years plucked up courage to do a 5 mile TT and our local hill climb event!

I do think there is a market for racing for numpties without the very real risk of numpties racing in a group. Until that market is served, sportives will fill the void.

Never sell? I’ve not sold any of them 🙂 They either get dismantled and recycled (pun intended) into new bikes, they emigrate to new homes (my 25 year old Hard Rock lives at the in-law’s in Spain), they get nicked or they sit in the shed gathering dust with the other bikes. That aside, I’ve never had a bike that I loved so much I could never contemplate getting rid of. There’s always a better bike around the corner…

OP, the club might have thought/hoped that asking you for £15 each was enough to put you off and, when it wasn’t, they had to invent some new objection 🙂

I’m lucky enough to be in a very friendly and very inclusive club. Leek CC is one of the oldest continuously running cycling clubs in the UK and just had its 140th birthday. Anyone can come along to our Sunday club run to “have a go” but eventually will be asked to join after 3 rides. It’s not unreasonable to ask a few questions about experience/fitness beforehand so it is best to get in touch first rather than just turn up.

I do think I’d find it odd if someone just merged with our group whilst we were out riding though, and that would be the case whether I was on a road ride or an MTB ride or just out walking with the family. By all means ask, but understand that the answer may not always be the one you want or expect. I’ve had scares when riding in a group with someone not used to it, so if a stranger asked to ride in the group I would be wary. Fortunately where our club rides it’s (a) on very quiet roads so imperfect group riding etiquette is not the problem it might be on a busy road and (b) it’s so hilly the group often falls apart anyway (with me usually near the back!) Your encounter in the OP does sound a little volatile though, so I do wonder what else happened.

As for these average speeds, I can only dream. I don’t even get out of the teens on a 5 mile TT!*

*In my defence the Club 5 miler is up and down rather than flat and I am not exactly in tip-top cycling fitness.

If I had a 5/6 year old Orange Five and had £3k plus to spend on a new Orange Five, I’d be spending that money on a holiday to take me and my (old) Orange 5 on 🙂

I do like the Five but if it’s still putting a smile on your face and is mechanically sound, I do think there are better ways of spending several thousand pounds. If you really must have a new bike for whatever reason, do yourself a favour and see what else is on the market. There might be something better and more suited for you out there.

First (vinyl) album – Kids from Fame
First 7″ – Spies Like Us by Paul McCartney
First 12″ – Rock Me Amadeus (joint purchase with older brother)
First CD – not totally sure but I *think* it was Led Zeppelin Remasters

What retro full susser would still float your boat?

The one with the biggest tyres?

So many stand out moments for me and I’m gutted I missed 3 or 4 stages. I thoroughly enjoyed the penultimate stage with Izagirre, Pantano and latterly Nibali thrashing it out in the rain though, but no doubt it was special seeing Froome stunning the naysayers – well, everyone in fact – with his downhill attack.

I’ve driven to Anglesey quite a few times from the Peak District (Buxton/Leek) and it’s quite easily 1 1/2 hours from Chester and sure enough that’s what the SatNav says too. I’m sure you can do it quicker if you drive faster, and I’m sure you can take longer if you drive slower.

Shrewsbury

What about Shropshire hills OP? Seriously.

You’re possibly – definitely – a lot fitter than me if you’re attempting it all in 2.3 days, but just bear in mind that for most “mortals” the Mary Townley loop alone is quite easily a 6 hour day out.

EDIT – or did you mean 2/3 days?

Not me. Let me preface this by saying I have no love for Tony Blair and I didn’t want us to go to war. That said, a decision was made and it was made with parliamentary backing. It’s taken Chilcot 7(?) years to tell us the decision could have been made better in a 12-volume report with 12 million words and a 150 page (!) executive summary. Instead of focusing on the finger-pointing and flaming, let’s focus on what we learnt and what we can do better next time, which was surely the point of all this time and expense.

I heard Blair interviewed/harangued by John Humphries on the Today Programme yesterday morning and neither interviewer nor interviewee came out of it looking good.

Tired of all this negative politics.

I can only comment for the Mary Townley loop and the Peak District sections having not done much of the northern end (or if I have I’ve not realised it!).

Huge sections of the Peak District PBW are probably best suited to a CX bike or at least a XC bike just so you can cover ground more easily. However in my experience there are sections of the Mary Townley loop that will be more comfortable on a full susser. It’s not that anywhere is especially technical, it’s just that 205 miles is a big ride off-road and being able to sit and spin for long distances is important. That’s sometimes easier on a full susser as my hardtail-riding friends will attest to from when we did the MT loop, especially on the big cobbled sections.

There will be sections where you’ll wish you had your CX bike and sections where you will probably wish you had a (short-travel) full susser. You need to decide which is the best compromise for the way you like to ride.

For the record, not all roadies are super fit and some are easy targets for an overtake

*waves* 😆

Anyone else got any fun roadie owning stories.

Not that can compete with yours

Really. I have no such manual tasks I perform daily or even weekly or monthly.

Me neither, but that’s hardly statistically conclusive 🙂 Sounds like the OP has had a suggestion to solve his problem that is very manual, so I thought Automator could help.

Most of us who work on our Macs every day have several tasks we perform repeatedly and which are both time consuming and tedious. Isn’t the whole point of using a computer that it’s supposed to do the boring stuff for you? Of course it is. And with a little preparation, you can make your Mac do exactly that as easily as dragging and dropping elements onto a window, using Automator.

What is Automator?
Automator is a tool included with OS X which allows you to build custom workflows to perform both simple and complex tasks, such as renaming files in a folder, combining multiple PDF documents, or converting movies from one format to another using QuickTime.

One source, but plenty of others on t’web[/url]

Whilst my dream job most certainly isn’t being a teacher, I think it would revolve around some sort of education of others. One of the joys of being a parent is teaching my kids about the awesome (and not so awesome) stuff in the Universe. Sometimes they even look interested 🙂 Passing on knowledge is hugely rewarding so I’d try and build something round that…

HINT: Red Bull TV website *may* be a good starting point 😉

Downhill Finals
SATURDAY, JULY 9TH – 1:30PM BST

EDIT – beaten to it

Automator probably has the right tools for this job. I have never used Automator 🙂 but this kind of problem is what I believe it is good for solving.

Pump track. A small one.

It’s the unknown that gets me. On my mountain bike I know from experience how easy/hard maintenance jobs are. For example I know what I need to order to replace my Hollowtech bearings, I know what’s a good/bad price and I can swap them over in the garden with the kids running around my feet offering to “help”. No fear. With my road bike it’s a BB30 press-fit bottom bracket so it’s a case of learning a new maintenance job and possibly even buying/borrowing/making a tool to fit them (and take them out??). An unknown and therefore I CBA.

now I realise that for a tenner I get a better job done in minutes and get a big chunk of my weekend back, which is bloody good value in my book.

^this. Absolutely this. Our local hand wash is even fewer £££

Yep. Several weeks if not months have gone by with me not getting around to replacing various graunchy bearings. Finally decided to let someone else do it for me, although to be fair I don’t have the tools for my press fit BB.

Not Halfords, LBS

Coldplay: there’s someone called Will and someone called Jonny. I think there’s a Buckland in there somewhere, could be Will or Johnny. Inevitably I will have no clue what the bassist is called 🙂 I might be thinking of Radiohead though 😆

I suspect that the (younger) Coldplay fans probably do know what they’re all called. They’re fans. We’re just a bunch of moaning middle-aged (mostly) men and, as is evidenced on this thread, few of us are fans. What do we care what the musicians are called? It’s just rose-tinted nostalgia for a time when we were young enough to have the mental capacity to (a) remember band member names (b) give a toss. I could still tell you the members of Cypress Hill cos I was a huge fan when I was young enough to think that mattered.

Caveat: this could just be me.

(I do, however, believe that the death of vinyl as a popular medium for consuming music has a part to play in this, but that’s another thread for another day…)

It’s music for people who don’t actually like music.

Ouch! And there’s the low blow 😆

For the record, first album good, second album better, 3rd album good/great (depending on whether you’re listening to Fix You or not) and live they are indeed tremendously entertaining. However the last couple of albums and singles have left me cold.

Coldplay are the musical equivalent of Doom Bar beer. They arrived on the scene when the alternative was unpalatable watered-down pop or edgy and hard to swallow “specialist” material and they wrapped up the market.

Happy to say that since then the choice has got wider and better, but Doom Bar/Coldplay will still be the populist choice until something else comes along to replace it/them.

My (second) mid-life crisis car was a Boxster 3.2S. It was an 02 plate for the right side of £10k and was an absolute joy. It sounded awesome and I cannot recommend one highly enough. I test drove a few and some sounded well and truly ragged, but eventually I found a well looked after one. Buy carefully and you’ll get a stonking car that will never fail to put a smile on your face and is remarkably practical for a 2 seater. Granted I did avoid taking it out in the snow 😉

My Boxster by stilltortoise[/url], on Flickr

Was the ride in question much longer and harder than normal?

From OP

I’ve not felt like this just from riding a bike ever, even after rides 3 or 4 times as long and hard.

Not was I expecting sympathy for one minute 🙂 , but I’ve done lots of (much bigger/harder) bike rides recently and done lots of drinking, so neither are new experiences for me. The way my body has reacted this time is new though and *maybe* it’s because Saturday’s drinking was a much bigger session than usual. I had no uncomfortable or adverse effects whilst riding.

Just seeing if anyone else had combined a serious bit of boozing with a bike ride and had similar effects, or whether this is nowt to do with the drink and the ride.