If you look carefully you can just make out the remains of Elvis’ house – top right, just between Lord Lucan’s place and Shergar’s stable.

D’oh – thought this was some new uber-niche bike that was so niche that even the manufacturer didn’t know they made it.

Try Mountain Trax

[EDIT]D’oh sorry, was suggesting Countif and then read the last line of the post…

OOhhh those long afternoons will just fly by with those 3 at your fingertips….

I’ve had that tingling feeling a couple of times – once due to severe seasickness and once just before the mother of all migraines that left me a helpless panting mess on the floor. So if you’re not on a boat, start worrying.

Yep, it’s drying out and firming up quite quickly. Only trouble this week (half term) is the sparse covering of teenagers on oversized jump bikes that are appearing all over the place :-)

Why spend a packet building a self supporting arch if you’re going to have 2 flanking walls that could just as easily support it? It’d be trivial to keep the same finishes inside & out but have a lot less faff with the construction. The only reason for doing it would be so that you can dismantle the sub-structure and leave the arch in situ, but he was never going to do that. And IMO the interaction between the curves and the rectilinear form of the rooms was quite jarring, especially inside – too many ideas, too little critque.

The trouble with budget caps is that they’re hard to enforce – for instance the new rules require engine mfrs to supply teams at a certain price, so McLaren but their merc engines for say £15M a year along with Force India and Honda/Virgin. But Merc are part owners of McLaren and so invest a further £x a year into engine development – the money is part of Mercedes’ overall budget and the work need not go on at their HPE plant so could be hidden from the FIA – how does that money get factored into a team’s budget?

Then take the same example and pick a million and one other components, plus fuels, lubricants etc and all of the associated subcontractors. Yes it’s easy to go through one team’s accounts and see what they’ve spent, but how would they know what’s actually being spent in the big picture? The inequalities could and would still remain.

Looks like Virgin are in the running to buy Honda. Can’t wait for the comments on here the first time one of them gets rammed from behind…

No, but I did just spot that there’s a ‘visible email’ option in the profile now. The new hamsters are keeping busy!

Just wondering if anyone’s got any further info?

TIA

Hafele[/url], Ingersoll Rand or Google for “architecural ironmongery”

Leftfield suggestion here – if she needs to rebuild confidence after an off, why not take here somewhere that will do a skills course for a day before going on to some trail centres. The right skills course will help build her confidence back up to tackle whatever it was that caused the off in the first place.

Ability to open threads at first unread post would be nice. Lack of avatars/sigs is a bonus IMO.

I managed to lose one of them after getting interrupted during re-assembly, then forgetting about it until I found out I had no back brake any more. LBS were great – dug through their drawer of tat and found 2 spares for me, so I can carry one in case I mess up again.

Cheers Badger – anything you can dig out would be great ta. I visited the Reine Sofia about 10 years ago & was already planning to head back there for another dose of Guernica.

As Stumpy says, if you’re a sweaty bast then check out the trampoline back types – Deuter, Vaude etc. I’ve got a Deuter Cross Air EXP which I use for walking as well as bike trips where I’m packing spare clothes etc. I think it’s around 18L with a bit extra if you unzip the accordion – not much division in the main compartment but plenty of other stowage spaces for food, spares etc.

FC Route condition info here

wwaswas – you’d love this then. A record that MrsP’s dad had for some reason…

I’m getting to like the 2009 cars now – this comparison of the 2008 & 2009 BMWs shows just how convoluted the cars were becoming, the ’09 cars look so much cleaner and sleeker. The RB5 is the pick of the bunch so far this year, with the Renault at the other end of the scale.

Apparently McLaren are in trouble because they’re using last year’s rear wing in testing, Renault are in trouble because the car’s not been quick so far in testing (until today), Toyota, BMW & Ferrari are in trouble because they’ve lost loads of testing time due to the sandstorms in Bahrain, Red Bull are in trouble because the rear end of the car is too tight for proper cooling, STR are in trouble because they’re launching the 09 car too late, and Honda are in trouble full stop. So it’s looking like Williams’ year then!

What temperature does water freeze/boil at on the Fahrenheit scale

What year did the second world war start/end

what’s the capital of… (pick some countries)

what currency did … use before the Euro

What were the 3 speeds of vinyl records

Who was PM from 1979 to 1990?

I was out for a quick tour yesterday morning – the hardpack stuff is fine, but the rain & melting snow/ice means there’s a lot of big puddles around and some of the wetter trails are well mushy & probably best avoided. There was still some snow & ice left to melt too so it’s not going to improve in a hurry.

Come on then phoneticists – I give you “Llwchwr”. Went there for a day many years ago and said it something like ‘thlucker’ as a best guess.

I ditched the world of IT in 2003, went back to school for a year and am now self (un)employed. I was in the consultancy side and got sick of all the corporate bollix and feeling that everything I was doing was pretty pointless. The upside is that I looked out the window this morning and thought ‘nice day, i’ll go for a bit of a ride’ – the downside is that I’ve probably earnt about as much in the last 3 years as I did in the year before I quit.

I’ve got no dependents and MrsP earns a decent wage too, and I knew I was able to take a year’s break from earnings without putting anything at risk, si it was a fairly easy decision in the end.

Lezyne again – lovely bit of kit.

Swinley’s not waymarked at all, so it’s pretty much fair game to ride anything in either direction – for instance I first found the Labyrinth by riding up it (fortunately mid week so nobody else around). For that reason I’ll tend to make room/slow down for anyone coming the other way, up or down

Mornington Crescent?

Swamp boy is spot on – you are allowed to prune the tree to your boundary (including roots) & offer the cut material back to your neighbour – it’s his tree but effectively trespassing on your property. You have a duty of care to do this in a responsible manner, but the ‘what if you’re carfeul but the tree still dies’ scenario is poorly covered. If you’ve got planning consent for the build then perhaps get the LA’s tree officer involved (risky!) or tell your neigbour that as you’re entitled to do the work he can appoint an arborist (at his expense) to observe the tree work to ensure it’s done in accordance with the law.

BS5837:2005 is the standard on building near trees and covers ‘root protection areas’ as well as protection of trees during construction and depths of foundations for close trees. Last time I was involved in this sort of thing not all LA’s had adopted the 2005 standard so there may still be some local variation.

You could also try asking on http://www.gardenlaw.co.uk

26 x 3.14 / 2 = 40.8 inches

Could’ve been worse – if he was *really* drunk he might’ve woken up to find (s)he’d written ‘Dominic’…

Whatever you do, don’t say “I resign. I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered. My life is my own!” – could get interesting after that…

Try GPS Track Maker[/url]

Was out yesterday – it’s a bit churned in places & the usual boggy bits will be boggy, but nothing that’ll stop you enjoying yourself. By Sunday the ground might be freezing anyway so that’ll firm it up nicely.

Thanks folks – if the solicitor ever comes back to me I’ll do the right thing, but for now I’ll just make sure it’s all in place. I don’t think I’ve got enough stuff to argue about, and not enough rellies to argue about it – probably why the solicitor lost interest in doing the job.

If we’re talking infinity, are there more fractions or decimal numbers – and can you prove it?

Kona uk – told you it wasn’t pretty!

AIUI they’ve cut the range so you can either get the Advanced or X – so if you don’t want carbon it’s gonna be an X. If you really want the old style frame then just buy an X and I’ll happily swap the nasty new frame with my 2008 frame FOC…

You might get some decent info from the forums at Garden Law[/url] – there’s folks on there that know as much about that sort of stuff as the folks here do about riding bikes. Oh dear!