Thanks all for suggestions. Dont keep credit card statements and online they only go back a year. Will call the bank to see. Been searching through all the pix but no geotags and not a single bit of reference material any of them. So will keep looking.

If anyone has enjoyed a similar type of place, be interested to know which one.

The house when you come back from two weeks holiday.
That pile of sweat soaked mud encrusted cycling kit that’s been sitting on the laundry floor since yesterday.
The ash in the bottom of the BBQ the next morning.

My mate regularly reminds his daughter of this one. As you leave Cannock Chase car park heading out onto FTD through the GoApe ropes courses, there a sign on a tree under a zip wire that says: Dont look at the zip wire. He was directly behind her, saw her read the sign, saw her look up and watch the zip wire, till she is lookiing backwatds and crash straight into a very large tree most people manage to avoid. Split her lip right open. Blood. Tears. Muffled laughter.

Pulled up at a bus stop with my chaingang. Pack of teenage school girls waiting. Forgot to unclip and toppled sideways right in front of them. 15 years later I can still here the laughter.

Thanks for replies. My local shop has a couple of demo plus bikes in. Might pop in next weekend and see if they will lend me a wheel for a few moments.

went for this – gawd bless amazon!

Wasted opportunity …

Baby emu wins today.

they’re cheap and look pretty good! Is that the full setup, i.e. I just zip tie the saddle bag to the bike or is that just a dry bag to go inside some sort of attachment thing?

The tapered dry bag attaches like this … cinch it up tight and it shouldn’t move too much. They sell the webbing straps separately though I cant find them on the site – pop them an email. I use one of these but slip it into a Wildcat Tiger saddle harness, which holds it more securely and makes getting it on and off less of a faff.

One thing, if you’re strapping a dry bag to your bars, watch out for it compressing your brake cables – either move the levers up so the bag fts under them, or tilt them down a bit.

Edit: And take a fleece instead of a hoodie – light and compresses better

For one trip Id just get one of the 13l Alpkit tapered dry bags to sling under your saddle and one of their 13l Airlok Duals to hang from your bars. That should be more than enough space for extra clothes and probs give you some protection from the dog shit.

It’s not non-gore horror, dark fantasy and has no apocalyptic tales, but Bill Bryson’s new one – The Road to Little Dribbling: More Notes from a Small Island – is definitely strangely uplifting.

Yes, Id probably get it again, but annoyingly I know that should I ever quit they would have to pay someone a good 20-30% more than Im making to replace me.

Shimano MT71. £90 or thereabouts. Waterproof. SPD and flat Vibram sole. Ive had a pair of these for touring and winter commuting for 6 or 7 years. Bit heavy and not brilliant for walking but I like em. There’s also the XM7 which look like an upgrade for an other £20 or so.

sap1
sap/Submit
noun
1.
the fluid which circulates in the vascular system of a plant, consisting chiefly of water with dissolved sugars and mineral salts.
synonyms: plant fluid, vital fluid, life fluid, juice, secretion, liquor, liquid
“these insects suck the sap from the roots of trees”

verb
1.
gradually weaken or destroy (a person’s strength or power).
“our energy is being sapped by bureaucrats and politicians”

Two of my favourites

The Shaven Crown

Falkland Arms

Could be talking through my bung here but it sounds to me like it just needs bedding in. If the lever feels good , doesnt feel spongey or need to be pumped a couple of times to feel taut, then I dont think it needs a bleed or could be leaking. Good article here. [/url]

Edit: could also possibly be that the whole pad isnt contacting the disc. Ive had a few bikes where the brake was bit misaligned and so only half the pad was actually gripping the disc.

Camping. trips, mountain biking, pony club rallies, shopping and school runs. No carpet. No aircon. I removed the bulkhead and put a quick release seat in the back and gave it a tow bar for the horse box. We’ve had more fun in and thanks to this in the past year than all my other cars combined.

Twitter – the modern equivalent of muttering to yourself

Grew up in Brisbane. The magpies were bad but the plovers were worse. And stop worrying about the sharks. The crocs ate all the sharks.

Get a Keith The Moravian Swearing Bear.

Go to 9:25.

Never used baby talk when they were little. Do it all the time now they are teenagers …

We bought a Coleman Cortes Octagon 8 last year. Like this one. Goes up easily enough once you figure it out. Its very sturdy and you can open it up as in the pic. No awning of course, but we use a separate tarp to cook under if its raining. One of the really good things about it is the bag – getting the tent and bits back into it is easy rather than the sweary wrestling match I have had with every other family tent Ive ever owned.

I lived in inner-east Sydney for a while and parking was at a premium. The bloke two doors up paid a mint to have a “driveway” built into the kerb outside his house. He didn’t actually have a driveway on his own land – just the lowered kerb, then the footpath and then the side of his house. All the neighbours thought it was hugely funny to park over his “drive” even when there were other spots just to get another rant out of him.

Been reading the reviews on here linky.[/url] The Spesh for me.

I don’t have £5000 to spend on an e-bike, but I have no doubt I would if I did.

Sounds like mine – speed dial thingy makes little or no difference. Given the experiences of some on here, Im just glad it works at all and have learned to keep the plums out of its trajectory.

My company had a charity fund raiser last year and rented some bikes that were attached to blenders but also recorded distance over 60 seconds. Naturally, we made cocktails. Was much fun.

Specialized AWOL? Never ridden one but it got a good review on bikepacking.com[/url]

My other mistake in life was teaching them to tell me when they poop.

Is intrigued.

My son is on a second hand Octane Zircus with a 100mm Reba. He was 11 when I put it together and he’s had it for a year. It’s a jump bike, so very low seat height and pretty short reach and reasonable weight.

In the grand STW tradition of recommending what you got, I’m pretty happy with my Six Moon Designs Lunar Duo. The Solo version is lighter and more packabe, but you can sit up in this thing Actually, you could play squash in this thing. Only had it a month or so and used twice with two carbon fibre poles from bearbonesbikepacking. Also highly recommended.

You need to stay at the head of the bunch to show everyone you’re not some newbie and chase down everyone who tries to build a gap.

Epic Bleed Solutions have pretty good instructions.

http://www.epicbleedsolutions.com/resources/instructions/

I snore sometimes and so does my wife. When I snore, she wakes me and I go sleep on the sofa. When she snores, she wakes me, and I go sleep on the sofa …..

I was on a MTB holiday in Morzine with Endless Ride about 12 years ago. Ive never been much of a drinker, so doing lots of it at altitude on the first night was a very bad idea and I was rat-arsed early, so the two Kiwi lads who I’d gone out with carried me back to the chalet and dumped me in bed. I woke up the next morning in the wrong room, naked from the waist down. I assumed the lads had had a joke and dropped me there so I went back to my room, dressed and went downstairs.

Halfway through breakfast Sian (I think it was Sian) comes in to announce there was shit all over the balcony. And a pair of underpants, also covered in shit. Everyone at the table was looking at me and in a blinding flash, everything came flooding back.

I’d woken up about 2am needing a squat but being drunk and disoriented Id mistaken the toilet door for the room door and headed out into the hallway. Lost and in an increasing panic, Id opened most of the other guests’ rooms and been turned away, till I found my way onto the balcony, dropped my dacks and curled one out. A big one. I wiped my bum with my undies, went back into the hallway and managed to find the only empty room in the chalet, where I passed out once again.

Once the laughter died down, I went and cleaned up the balcony and then, with the deepest and most profound shame, offered to pack my bags. Thankfully Sian and Gareth were very understanding and unreservedly accepted my apology. Ive never forgiven myself though.

Ignore me …

XT Falcon wagon. Straight six, three on the tree. My dad had bought it as a labourers hack for his pool business and he gave it to me when turned 17 in 1982. It was battered to say the least. Brakes didnt work and it flooded 2/3 times I tried to start it. I didnt like the colour so took to it with a can of Dulux – two inch brush for the fine detail and a six incher for the panel work. Despite all this I was the only one with a car and it ferried me and my mates between Brisbane and Gold Coast every weekend for two years. It died properly one morning so I pushed it onto the footpath at the end of our street and left the keys in it. It stayed there for six weeks and then one morning, it was gone. Like this one same windshield sun shade and everything.

So I should be screwing the b screw all the way in then I take it?

Yep. So your derailleur clears the cog. Some expander cogs come with an extra long b-tension screw, or you can get one online. Still might be cable tension/limit adjustment though.

+1 for a Leatherman or top notch pocket knife. Some RM Williams boots? Bestest ever boots ever.

This has a lot less draw backs than wearing a wrist watch.

One of which being you must check it now and again to make sure it doesnt get hasnt bounced out on a fast decent. The first one I bought is somewhere on Long Mynd. Its replacement is doing duty on my Fatty.

Back in 1999, I sent an email to every member of staff at a mid-sized UK bank (about 20,000 people) to outline what we were doing to mitigate the Y2K “threat”. It was headlined “Stepping on the Millennium Bog”

just an idea at the moment, pricing it up and a bit miffed how expensive wide rims are! niche tax!

Here here. Was thinking some 27+ wheels would go well on my OO Fatty but cheapest I could price them up was around £350. Meh …