I can’t watch that. Fine saying they are grown adults making a choice, but these top level Red Bull events make & sustain careers so there’s a pressure on riders to participate that is close to exploitation.

If there was some obvious sense that Red Bull had put in a structure that looked after rider & course safety and post crash care I’d be able to watch it. Maybe Redbull do behind the scenes, but it feels like they don’t want to talk about it, so it ends up appealing mostly to teenage boys and men hoping to see some gore.

There’s a way of constantly increasing progression that doesn’t involve scaring the living daylights out of skilled pros. F1, for all of it’s faults, demonstrates how a sport can use danger as part of the appeal while still constantly talking about and improving safety.

If it emerges that it was a safely run event and there’s some cool footage, I’ll watch the highlights, but this years one has no appeal to me as a live sporting event.

St Agnes is nice

I would suggest toppers are ok as a way of fixing an issue you have with an existing mattress. But if yours is hurting your back, get a new one.

What we did was go to Dreams where they have some kind of (probably nonsense) kit that you lie on to figure out which mattresses might be best for you. We tried them all out and then looked at the Dreams ebay shop to see which ones we liked that they had on discount. Saved over a grand from buying it from the store and it looked brand new.

Might sound a bit icky, but if you like hotel mattresses then you don’t mind if they have been a bit used anyway!

Get the biggest one you can fit in your bedroom. Ours is a super king pocket sprung one with a memory foam layer and we’ve never slept so well.

I’ve done it. Moved from walking distance to Bristol city centre to the Moray Coast. Can’t see myself going back to an office job anyway. In theory you can apply for a remote role anywhere in the world (or the UK at any rate) which evens out the equation some what. But if I’m being honest it does mean I feel a little less mobile in terms of career options but I’m very fortunate in my job so that’s not currently a huge deal.

Worse comes to the worst:

Find another remote job. In my simple logic, these jobs are for companies more aligned with how I think anyway, and I like to think I’m good enough at what I do that I would be a catch for another remote company.

Or: Turns out I can actually leave my house in the morning and get to Canary Wharf for a 10am meeting. Early start, stressful in terms of hoping planes and trains are on time, and a late finish to work a full day, but doable (though would probably get better acquainted with Premier Inns and Travelodges if I had to). So for the right company and the right pay, I could get a hybrid role in London or similar.

Or: Downsize and find job(s) locally that ideally have some upside in terms of hours or stress. Use a combination of savings and frugality to survive and ride my bike. Plenty of people that live here do that.

This is so helpful, thanks both.

@texwade what fitted boot liner have you got? Looking at roofbox.co.uk I can’t picture what you might have gone for that works with the multiflex out and the seats down?

Also, presume if you just wanted to put in one or two bikes with rear wheel still on you could split the seat to still have a back seat if needed?

@big_scot_nanny did you get the tow bar fitted at time of purchase? Not sure if we’re going to need an external bike carrier as well.

Other than getting the Style package, are there any extra options either of you would recommend?

reeksy Full Member

The bloody cheek of it!

I really wanted an answer to my question! I knew STW would come through with a bit of focus and if we could ignore the noise 😉

In summary the ID Buzz can fit bikes in better than most new cars (not vans!), electric or not, and certainly has comparable capacity to my elderly Zafira. The only cars (not vans) available from the last say 4 years that might have the capacity + height needed for efficient (e.g put a couple of bikes plus loads of camping gear inside) bike storage are:

Ford S-Max (maybe), Galaxy & Tourneo Connect

Berlingo & variants.

I’m only looking at petrol/electric auto cars and am sure there are some I’ve forgotten, but not many.

As it seems to be important to some people, I do often cycle from my doorstep. Peebles is about 185 miles from my house, so too far to cycle really though I could though get there on a full charge in a VW Buzz, hah! Having said that I’d probably still stop for a coffee, a wee and a top up regardless of choice of fuel.

@TexWade that’s great- exactly how we transport bikes in our Zafira (except far nicer obviously). Presume you need to put the back seats down? Also is it hard to protect the interior when strapping the bike to the side? The one joy of the Zafira is that it doesn’t matter if we scuff if up!

@big_scot_nanny ah now we’re talking! That’s great intel thanks. Couple of questions:

When you say the rear seats are free but slid forward, does that mean short people could still sit in them, even with 4 bikes?

And, is it possible to reasonably easily get 1 bike in the back, ideally with just the front wheel off? How about 2?

Good luck with your alps trip, we’re in Scotland too so would be great to hear how it went.

OP here. Should have said, the range is fine for me. Just wondering what the inside space is like for transporting a bike or two sometimes.

Not advice at all but might be worth checking your employee benefits. The one that gives me points for walking that I can convert into Google/Apple vouchers* also provides a free Farewill will and another will service that may or may not fit your needs.

* Yes, this is kind of infantile and post capitalist surveillance weird whatever but I walk anyway so may as well convert steps into money 🤷

If you pay the £0.99pm for iCloud then you get Private Relay across your Apple devices, which does a similar thing to a VPN. I turned it on and haven’t noticed it at all.

Safari only of course!

I’ve got an old Thule off free cycle and some square roof bars. It’s fine for the one trip a year we tend to need it for. The cost of better ones seem ridiculous for what they are.

Confused by the storage issues, surely they’re ok left outside?

Are you proposing cutting HCBs INTO QUARTERS!

I’m not proposing anything, some genius (I think it was jesus) before me invented buns with cutting guidelines. I’m just delivering His message.

I wouldn’t cut HCBs vertically, they aren’t big enough to warrant it.  But if I did I think I’d do it 45′ to the cross so that each half had its own V shape.  Cutting a line in half lengthways feels weird.

Well aren’t you just a crazy dough bisecting rebel.

As others have pointed out, you should never cut a hot cross bun vertically.

It’s definitely easier and safer to use a knife while standing up.

As we’re on the subject, isn’t it great that hot cross buns have cutting lines to avoid this sort of controversy

Surely no-one is eating cold cross buns? I assumed that I’d missed the memo saying we all needed to get a dedicated hot cross bun oven to go with our air fryers and pizza ovens.

It’s probably against the OP rules but I only came here to say Inverness is wonderful and by far the nicest airport I use. Security takes 2 minutes, and the views are lovely.

Changi is ok but a bit dull. Nice is badly laid out and full of awful entitled man-child-skiers. Plus they carried out a controlled explosion about 15 metres from me without any warning.

Also hated LAX, but paranoia and jet lag may have had something to do with that.

Hayfever drugs that work please

Just FYI, in case you didn’t know – on the Google Maps web site you can drag the route to go where you want it to go. You can also copy the URL to save/share the custom route to other devices.

So…when is it on?

I’m not sure you can really be on the right side of the toast class war if you describe toast as “al dente”.

OP is obviously a complete and utter 3er.

home by me (https://home.by.me/en/) is easy to use, not sure if you can do it on a phone though.

I sometimes just use Google sheets as digital graph paper. You can make the cells square by resizing the column widths then use the border or drawing tools.

there’s a magazine now!

I guess if:

£1.5k a month salary sacrifice lease car
(Maybe his work pay most of it as a company car allowance)
AND £400 per month paying off a £7k bike on C2W
AND £600 per month pension contributions.

That could take our poor violated OP below NMW. Must be a lot tough life even with the schools, hospitals and other public services up here being in such good shape

Oh, and bonus points if I can copy and paste my existing spreadsheets into it with formulas, which Sheets doesn’t seem to allow.

Is there a reason you can’t just open the .xls file in Sheets?

Alternatively Numbers can open Excel files. Comes free with MacOS 😁

+1 for name remembering technique. Though I’ll never use it again after reading that it annoys some people so much they’ll start a new topic about it on a bike forum.

Until someone else starts a “people that can’t remember your name” thread.

Ugh. My anyone but City policy is going to be sorely tested.

Ah dammit, think I cheered that goal more than I’ve cheered any of my own teams goals this season 🤣

What happens if you bin it on a wave like that?

Yeah, was also wondering what the consequences are if you catch an edge or something.

And what happens at the end when the wave inevitably gets you? Do you just hold your breath for a long time and hope you bob up to the top eventually?

My only experience of anything like this is wave machines in dodgy waterparks in asia back in the 90s – an intrepid 10 year old boy with a body board can hit a wave at an angle such that he can dragged underneath in a washing machine cycle for just about as long as he can hold his breath. Rinse & repeat!

Pay yourself first is a really good habit to get into.

If you like apps, Monzo make it very easy to:

1. Create pots for different savings. We have pots for bills, car, bikes, holidays etc.
2. Automatically sweep salary into said pots.
3. Automatically take direct debits for bills from the bills pot.

Not sure if any other bank can do that yet (maybe Starling?) but it’s brilliant.

If your situation is even a little bit complicated, and you aren’t a spreadsheet person, FCA approved apps like Moneyhub, Lumio, Snoop, Emma etc can aggregate your household accounts (mortgage, property, credit cards, loans, isas etc) into one place, automatically categorise your transactions, and help you see where it all goes.

Think KennyP and squirrelking need to go for a Glasgow curry

OP have you found the one topic STW doesn’t have any experts on?

I’m thinking Indian takeaway when I say it (EDIT: anything but chicken tikka masala though) Plenty of people would be wanting a Thai Green curry or something else though.

Feels like you’re overthinking it. Would you be just as confused if someone said they fancied a burger? (And don’t you dare say burgers are a simpler foodstuff than curry!)

Reading with interest as I’m doing a 100km etape at the end of the month. Rather less than you OP but I have no experience and it’s closed roads with a cut off time.

Looking forward to it more now that I know I can eat pork pies rather than gels!

There’s no manual for what the best thing to do is because we all have unique circumstances.

Much like there are shades of grey areas all through the interesting bits of life. You might not see them, but you are capable of navigating them. But enough philosophising:

“I don’t understand the concept of “spare” money.”

Well, once you stopped paying monthly mortgage instalments, what did you do with that very obviously spare money?

I’m hoping that you put it into a pension. Even a low risk one. At the very least you’d not be paying tax on the contributions.

And with the work thing, can’t you have an honest chat/email with your boss about how the way he is managing you and the business is really affecting you mentally, and seems destructive to his business?

p.s. if you at 50, with a decent paid job (for your industry) + partner also working + paid off mortgage + no kids, is still working at 70 because you have to, then the rest of us are screwed.

OP you sound like you have a very set world view (which is good, most people don’t, but it probably means you won’t get much advice you find relevant from us lot).

Can you use your past experiences with decision making to help with this? You’ve obviously made big and risky decisions in the past (marriage, house, car, kids/no kids etc) so you are capable of weighing up risk and taking action.

On a related note, and without wanting to sound harsh, your attitude to money is quite childish, especially given how important you realise it is. Yes, it should be taught in schools but it wasn’t, so you need to get good at it some other way, much like many other life skills. It can seem/sound like gambling when you read about different investment types, but really, like most important things in life, money choices are risk based. And the more you understand, the more informed your decisions will be rather than just a gamble on whether to put it all on black or red.

Nerdy question @mark. Do you use Cloudflare or similar to try to prevent bots causing all that extra load?

Thats rough OP. Sounds like they’d rather you made your own decision to go so that they don’t have to jump through hoops to remove you. How long have you been there, and do you have any protected characteristics?

Are you trying to print wirelessly or connected?

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255109997?sortBy=best

What recommendation site? Wirecutter. Or Which if you’re middle age/class and above.

What country? 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿