I picked up a BrickPi[/url] and some Mindstorm servos and sensors (and some USB webcams and things to keep me entertained while I was stuck with a fractured hip the other summer.

The NXT stuff was a pain in the arse compatability wise, the Pi interface was a lot easier to use, as was then interfacing with stuff like OpenCV, though I didn’t get much past basic turn robot arm holding camera to track face in a creepy way, and scuttle around pissing the dog off type applications.

knees out

Ice bucket challenge mucking around with a lurcher and a GoPro in Crummock the other summer…

Managed the full 2016 SDA season on tubleless supergravity Magic Marys with no burping or other issues, I did crack a Lightbicycle rear rim during the Inners Sunday morning practice, but it held air for the race runs.

I do now have an Airshot in case of needing to change over to mud spikes in the field.

Foel Gasnach? Self uplift.

A few of us were out there with Ciclo in 2014. It was tough, but amazing.

superdan – Member
Just rolled over 230,000 on my 56 plate Trafic this weekend, use it as a daily driver and bike van, had aftermarket Cruise control fitted.

Of you don’t mind me asking, how much did the aftermarket CC cost?

[/quote]

Was around £550 fitted 4 years back, I thought about it for a while, but couldn’t face a second trip to the alps and back that summer without CC, its been all good ever since. If you are anywhere near Cumbria drop me an email and I can send you the details of the chap.

Just rolled over 230,000 on my 56 plate Trafic this weekend, use it as a daily driver and bike van, had aftermarket Cruise control fitted. I’ve put 120,000 on it in 4 years. Other than a blown alternator a few years back, and a recon box (£800) last Christmas the rest has been standard consumables, tires etc.

Still averages 38mpg unless its totally laden down. Great, no rust unlike the Transits I had before.

I run a Zee caliper on XT lever on the front of my bike, and a normal XT caliper on the back. Lever feel is the same, bit more power on the front for dragging me to a halt.

One of the things I really like about Shimano brakes is the cross compatibility.

I’m heading up.

Hoping to make the Real Food Cafe in Tyndrum before it shuts Friday night!

My mk 1.5 Aeris is a lot flexier than the Process I had before it, it isn’t a bad thing necessarily, it tracks and grips well, I just kept thinking I had a soft rear tire for the first few rides.

I am 92kg in kit though.

I used Gorilla tape for mine, but bought an Airshot to make the changing to mud spikes and getting them up in a race-field dance a little easier.

Got a mate who has snapped everything he owns, all in the usual fail mode spots of the frames – not always the rider

Not everything, just a lot of things. It is partially the rider.

I was trail building up in Whinlatter on Saturday. Spending a whole day dragging rocks around beside a minor technical section gives you a good insight into the skills of the riders on the “red” trail as they rattle, skid and walk (more often than not with one leg on each side of the crossbar like some bizarre duck/bike combination) past.

I spend a lot of time racing, and it is nice to see more people getting into the sport, but a lot of them look terrifyingly ill prepared for it, compared to the standard of riding I see in my peers and riding buddies.

I occasionally lust after a Subaru Brat, but the ones that aren’t a rusty mess are silly money :(
I had a 86-ish era hilux when I was at uni, was an amazing bit of kit for rattling to and from riding and climbing adventures in.

Way out on skiers left there is some more nadgery rooty stuff, but its not very long.
50 shades was fun in a rocky way.

I would assume that the classic Mt Ash tracks must be hidden away somewhere?

Yup, Greenup Edge.

Bar end plugs?

Are you dragging your brakes in the air? Can lead to some _exciting_ effects. The good guys use it to gain some extra height-raise the back of the bike without dropping the front. Not for the faint hearted, but can make a rough transition into a smooth one.

Good luck today everyone, it looks fairly sunny! I’m sat in Peebles Hydro trying to stop drinking coffee. 90 minutes until kickoff.
I’m at the slowest end of the G1 numbers, so I think I might be one of the first blokes off the start ramp this morning.

Not worth it at the moment at all, ongoing forestry work has made the descent into the trees a right faff, 20 minutes or so of hauling bikes over downed trees.

Im 92kg + kit, CCDBA is great for me on a 2013 Process, I did hear that the Inline version was better for lighter types, but the TF Tuned guys didn’t seem to think it would have been an issue if I had gone that way.

pretty much, it won’t need much though, try a half turn

I just use a set of needle-nose pliers to turn the bolt, it isn’t that stiff (easier when the clutch is off)

Racing it on an RP23 was borderline, shock overheated and damping was gone by halfway down the track, which made life a bit wild. DHX4 Air was fine, CC DB air was fine, I assume the bigger volumes on the piggy-back shocks helped with the heat?

92kg + gear.

Nice crash Dan. The way you home in in that huge rock with the helmet is impressive.

It’s a skill.
New peak and back to being all good :D

I picked one up for enduro racing, and the Mega last year. Riding up hill I don’t notice a difference between it and my Poc Trabec. Doesn’t feel quite as confidence inspiring as the TLD D3 I race Downhill in, but not close to as warm either.

Me having a big OTB in a met parachute at the Mega last year, 6:50 in…[/url]

Yep, 6:30 on a Tuesday night in the carpark behind the weatherspoons in town. Rides are 3-4 hours, condition dependant, finishing in the Bank Tavern. It tends to be winch and plummet type riding, so a little bit of armour is a good idea, as well as some bright lights.

Email in profile if you’d like to discuss, or just turn up, it is pretty friendly I think

good mate and occasional poster on here is living with it and smashes most of us on a ride (just stoking your ego mate…) I’ll link it to him as I’m sure he will post something.

That would be me then. Thanks.

Most of what I would give as advice has already been listed. Like the posters above, it shouldn’t hold you back from any sport, though it can make them a bit of a faff. In the last year, I’ve raced a full season (15 races) of DH and Enduro (including the EWS at Peebles), 2 Olympic distance Triathlons, been snowboarding, ice-climbing and winter mountaineering (we even tried combining the two, and went splitboard-mountaineering. It is epic fun). I even surf. Badly.

Advice from my (counts on fingers…) 28 years of living with type 1:

1) Learn the your low sugar/high sugar symptoms, the difference between being tired and low sugared. Especially for driving this is vital, but it comes in really handy on bikes. I am at the point where I can tell pretty accuratly when gurning up a hill whether I am low sugared and a cheeky jelly baby is going to help, or whether I am just shagged out, and my blood sugar is normal-ish. I quite often see dots and things in my vision if I exert myself when I’m low sugared.

2) As mentioned above, blood meters don’t work when it’s really cold, and insulin freezes at something like -20, so when winter mountaineering, keep them in your jacket. Use sandwich bags or something to keep the meter dry (I have killed a few by getting them soggy). Warming them up in an armpit works pretty well when out biking. I have one of the Accu-Check Mobile meters, which use a cassette type system rather than strips. It means that you don’t end up with loads of little used blood strips in ALL of your bags, your car, your house and anywhere you ever go. It is slow though. 8 seconds in this day and age. FML.

3) Drink – I had a few wobbles in my first couple of months at Uni, it go a lot easier when I figured out just how much sugar is in pretty much anything except beer and whiskey. Wine I find particularly tricky, even now. As I understand it, the fruit juice (because that is basically what wine is from a nutritional standpoint) pushes your blood sugar up, then magically the alcohol later pushes it down. Like a fun drunken see-saw.

4) Adrenalin – this is probably the biggy for me control wise – adrenalin pushes up my blood sugar crazy hard, even when exercising. If I go climbing at an indoor wall clipping bolts, hard snowboarding, downhill racing (race runs particularly) I find I have to inject extra insulin to keep my blood sugars in line. I tend not to eat all that much when I’m out doing scary stuff.

5) You should pronounce it like this: at least half the time when you talk to other people about it. Scientific fact. It will make them and you much less down about it.

6) The Post-Exercise Crash – poor end of ride snacking has caused most of my hypos in the last few years, it seems for me that once I stop exercising my blood sugar will drop quite quickly (I guess the body is restocking the liver with energy or something). Anyhow, I find it is related to the intensity of the ride or whatever I just finished, plus how much I have done on previous days – if I have been riding all week I find I need to eat quite a bit after I stop riding.

7) Most importantly (this was a source of great annoyance until I figured it out had it explained to me by a very friendly nekkid Nursey student type) getting frisky while low sugared will make it very difficult to erm… arrive, and in certain situations will leave you in the unenviable situation of attempting to thumb in a softy. I keep a squeezy honey container by the bed now, which fixes this sort of thing within 10-15 minutes.

Good luck. Email in profile if you would like to talk anything over.

Dan

I did snap the headtube off this bike:
Tabletop on Chicksands NPS 4X by Super Dan[/url], on Flickr
casing a monster double. Woke up still clinging on to the handlebars, wondering where the rest of the bike was.

Built this with the remains:
Bike_0005 by Super Dan[/url], on Flickr
Shoestring budget student 4X racing, those were the days. That whole bike cost less than my tyres for this years EWS :(

PS: Badly built seesaw in background belonged to michaelwsmith of this ere forum. Never allow him to carpenter near you.

The problem of course (avoiding the snapping the headtube off issue), that at full travel the junior-t’s will still be slammed, and if anything at 0mm might even be shorter a2c than something shorter travel. This will make the front end twitchy, I think 140mm is probably about the sweet spot for hardtails (though my current steel 456 is running some u-turn 160mm Lyriks, and have run Bombers and Fox 36’s on others in the past). Stiffer springs, more compression damping?

This photo, because I love it: DSC_0662 by Super Dan[/url], on Flickr
150mm Z-150s. Terrible really, the 3.2kg fork really boat anchored the front of the bike on jumps.

Has anyone found a source of replacement dropouts/mech hangers, or a part number for them? Can they be bought online, or is it a bike shop order thing? Could do with picking up a spare fairly quickly.

We visited some friends out there this time the other year, the highlights where Kayaking round the middle of town (it’s all islands innit), fresh sushi, drinking mead in a longhall and riding the Dalbeattie style rock slabs in the woods of Hästhagen (I think)

danger **** with headphones in.

Not quite sure how that is relevant to the discussion but on BG support by any chance ?

I pressed send before I finished.
I was going to say that no one was going to be out stopping people doing things at that time, so its a stupid suggestion. Also, doing that I experienced some of the most hostile conditions I’ve ever come across, the fog was so thick I couldn’t see 1m in front of me, the rain was constant and it was dark, so my headlight just glared off the fog reducing visibility further (gonna be honest it doesn’t sound as bad as it was), and I was in a light waterproof, T-shirt, shorts and trainers the whole way. Having equipment doesn’t make you safe, knowing how to look after yourself does that.
And not quite, we were doing leg 2 of the Bob Graham relay (Billy bland relay for those in the know).

I was up there with a bike on Sunday at about 2am. Weather was a bit grim, but not too bad. Mate James took the pics, I’m the muppet in the blue jacket there were two guys bivvying in the summit shelter. I don’t have the pics to hand, but we have carried bikes up Swirral on a tuesday night as a quick way up, to then descend Sticks or Dollywaggon.

Dan

I got 5 rides out of my Tesla Evo hubs before the freehub ate itself. They were warrentied, but I didn’t trust them after that, a search online would tend to indicate that it isn’t the one off “we haven’t seen one of those before” type incidents Superstar were making it out to be.
I own 3 sets of Hope wheelsets, the eldest must be coming on for 7/8 years old. Familiarity breeds contempt I suppose, and I have had several back for warrenty in that time with cracked sheels, pulled spoke eyelets and cracked rear axles etc, but always sorted with no fuss under warrenty. The occasional bearing changes are easy enough, and the newer style pawl springs seem a lot more durable.
I like the look of the DT swiss hub mechanism, but my next wheels will likely be a set of the newest Hope Hubs on a rim of somekind. They just work, and when they dont they can generally be bodged with a zip tie.

Maps are released the week before the event, until then it’s hard to know, but you would probably assume Glentress and the Golfie would get a look in as trail locations, good bike access to most stages last year, park in Peebles and ride I reckon, you can find some other trails to ride at the same time. Peebles was rammed over the weekend last year, but we managed to find places to eat each night with space, failing that, the chippie on the high street is ace.

I moved up to Cockermouth for the biking and the climbing and so on, managed to sort a job and love it up here. On the culture side of it, it isn’t that bad, I occasionally think I would rather live in a city, but a week long training course in London or somewhere reminds me that I don’t, not really.

The big difference for me is the total lack of public transport, so to see bands playing or to head through to a particular pub or club that’s showing something you would like to see, there is some nominated driver action. People around here seem really good at sharing lifts to stuff though, we saw a metal band in Whitehaven last Friday night, and Rob Heron & The Tea Pad Orchestra in Penrith on Sunday night, was good fun. Like Mike mentions further up, Cockermouth is very different to towns closer to the coast, which seem a bit more inward facing. It seems to have a lot of people who have moved to the area, and has been very welcoming.

I hired a car and drove out to Boulder (30 mins from North vegas) to ride in Bootleg Canyon for the day, when in a similar situation on a work trip. Epic dusty trails. The bike shop in Boulder were friendly, did hire (I spent the day on a mint GT enduro bike thing, a Sanction? – they even swapped the brakes over to “Moto style”), though I took kit/helmet/kneepads to ride in. It is HOT and DRY though, I burned through my water really quick (went last Feb, so riding Whinlatter on the Friday in the snow, then Monday in a desert was a bit of a shock to the body). Take a bag, take more liquid than you expect.

I’ve flown, gone on the train and driven, I prefer driving, can take a couple of bikes, full set of spares etc. Have a van, so tend to take other peoples bikes so they can fly unencumbered.

All good, but very very heavy