@michaelbowden, have PM’d you

@benum
Thanks very much for that, I had seen that.
The recall is actually for the aluminium forks on the original model, not for the carbon forks on the RX9S which mine has, luckily
Thanks for the heads-up though, much appreciated

I just bought an Orange RX9S on eBay.
I ride to work on the road every day but I took the Orange the other day and came back on some farm tracks and canal towpaths that I wouldn’t ride on my road bike on.
Bike felt solid, maybe a little heavy, but sure-footed, robust and a load of fun.
It was also pretty swift on the road, considering.
So, not as nimble and light as my road bike but much more fun.
I will use it more when the weather improves to avoid getting too covered in shite, but it’s great to be able to vary my commute route to include some more fun stuff without taking the mountain bike.
Keep the road bike as well and have the variety.
Don’t think the RX9 is made anymore but they turn up on eBay quite regularly and always seem to be unused and in great condition.
Read into that what you will, but I love it.
The ‘S’ is the later model and has carbon forks, the earlier models were aluminium.
There’s one of the early ones on eBay at the moment but someone’s swapped the drop bars for flats.

Bent rear mech hanger ?
I had grief with mine the other week, couldn’t get it right myself despite all new chainset and cables, gave up and took it to my lbs.
They said the hanger was way out and adjusted it, it’s fine now.
Then I remembered the bike falling over heavily on the mech side about the time it started to play up.

Beluga, I guess it isn’t really legit, however I’ve ridden it all the way round on three separate occasions with no bother at all.
While some of it is undoubtedly on public footpaths we saw so few other people that it made no difference on most of it.
The terrain is mixed, footpaths, bridleways, canal towpaths, Thames Path, the Greenway thing I think it’s called around the Olympic Park. Pretty much all well surfaced, you can ride 99%. There’s a couple of flights of stairs and couple of narrow footbridges you have to push/carry.
It’s pretty and a really nice way to see some parts of London you’d never really see. My favourite parts were probably around the Olympic Park to London City Airport to the Woolwich ferry and then around Richmond up to Greenford.
We started at Harrow and was certainly a long day out.
Do it mid-summer and mid-week.

Haven’t read all of the above so someone may have beaten me to it.
Check out the ‘Capital Ring’.
It’s supposed to be a footpath but I’ve ridden all the way round a few times with no hassle apart from a park somewhere around Highgate that has high gates (!) and fences to stop you getting a bike over. But it’s small and easily detoured around.

Stuck up where ?

Leigh

I have a pair of Hutchinson piranha in 34mm I thing at home.
Brand new and unused if they are of any use?
Tubeless ready

Have PM’d you – cheers

Just something general really, probably see more use on the road but some tame off-road too. Not planning on doing anything too mucky.

Prague ?
Exceptionally beautiful in the winter, cold, frosty, quiet. Much better than the summer when it’s hot, overcrowded and full of stag do’s.

p.s. Hire a bike to get to Haynes Point etc.

I like Washington, in fact planning a trip there myself in the Spring.
All of these are worth a visit : Capitol Building, Air and Space Museum (two sites, one in the Mall near the Capitol and the other out by Dulles airport), Lincoln Memorial, Arlington Cemetery, walk around Georgetown, Redskins game, ice hockey game (Capitals ?), Giant statue out on Haynes Point, Natural History Museum, Washington monument/Roosevelt Memorial/Vietnam Memorial), White House.
It’s a nice town.

So far this year we’ve had

Teachers(standard)
Tube drivers(standard)
Doctors(unprecedented)
Paramedics(unprecedented)
Royal mail (standard)
Train drivers(standard)
Prison service(unprecedented?)
Pilots on a work to rule(virgin)

Any I’ve missed?

How about Swissport baggage handlers at Heathrow
And British Airways cabin crew

It’s Virgin pilots, not BA as someone up above said, that are working to rule apparently.

MTB Berkhamsted’s website seems to have dried up though

Used to live in Tring, from Dunstable you’re at the North end of some great riding.
If you head South past Whipsnade, up towards and around Ashridge, then Tring on to Wendover Woods and Princes Risborough, vaguely following the Ridgeway, there are miles and miles of brilliant trails.
Ashridge is a bog in the winter but Tring to Wendover out to Risborough are fine.
Take a map and just go exploring. And don’t be shy of using footpaths, everyone else does.
There’s a bike shop in Hemel called Leisure Wheels who used to have a shop ride out on a Wednesday that often went around Ashridge, and there was an MTB Berkhamsted group that did too, but not sure if they still exist.

Maybe he was pushed

Thanks everybody !
Cheers russyh, might take you upon that sometime …..

But you get two half corners which have presumably been cut from one of the other soggy corners.

You do, but half a corner’s a bit easier to stomach than a full corner

Triangles.
Only get one full corner that way instead of two of the things.
Not a big fan of the corner bit, dry and chewy.

Ta very much smatkins !

Weren’t those bikes with a wire for a downtube called ‘Crossbow’ too ?

There’s Weeley in Essex, which always makes me wonder if that’s where the bins come from

A few things I bought recently that went down well : Ugg boots, Barbour coat, nice underwear

I am going to try some of those when they are in stock somewhere. Wiggle should have them in November some time. I will be using them off road for 50% of rides so hoping the fact they are toughish and tubeless should keep the punctures away and mean I don’t have to use heavy and lifeless commuting type tyres to avoid punctures.

I found some in stock at BikeInn.com
Bit strange that nobody else has any, hope they really are the ‘2’ version.

A friend recommended Hutchinson Intensives, there’s a TLR version. Thinking I might give those a go, any one tried them ?
They did get bad reviews for grip in the wet, but there’s a ‘2’ version now that is supposed to be much better.

Some great thoughts here people, thanks very much.
Am open to second-hand, just whether I have the time / inclination to spend ages searching.
Those IWC Portugeiser are lovely, but probably just a little too ‘dressy’ for me.

Any recommendations then for a tough winter tyre then is TLR ?

Liking these Seamasters a lot. That’s the kind of thing I’m after, and those Christopher Wards are lovely too.
Max budget would be about £3.5k.
Interesting comment about titanium watches scratching easily – thanks for that.

Bit concerned about the perceived inaccuracy of automatics, is that a general view ? Is that likely because they need servicing ?

I’ve got an old Omega Geneva auto that I inherited back in the 70s and it was never accurate, maybe it just needed servicing.
I’m going to try and part-ex it for the new one.

Thanks all for the comments and the ideas, keep ’em coming

Home-made carrot and spinach soup the other half made with stuff from the fridge that was a bit past it’s best.
5-2 day here, so low-calorie. Which is good.
T’was ok after I’d added about a ton of salt. Which isn’t.
:-)

“You’re just vanilla”
is that a good thing or a bad thing ?

@Duffer, actually it’s an ex-Royal Canadian Air Force aircraft. It’s painted in the colours of a famous USAF example, 433915, ‘Miss Pick Up’ which operated out of Halesworth in Suffolk during the war.

There’s chapter and verse here, if you fancy a read :

History of 44-33915

Cheers !

Indeed the Cat at Duxford does fly, I volunteer with the team that operate it and get to fly on it regularly.
I like. A lot.
It’s the same aircraft as the one as the in the You Tube above flying of Lake Geneva.

On the subject of Topeak, heard someone call it Top-ee-ak once.
My, how we laughed.
(slightly scared now that he might actually have been right all along)

I’d be interested in a group ride / showaround sometime ……
Love to try some of the off-piste
Cheers !

Does the shed have a wooden floor ?

What I did was, screw half a dozen long screws into the floor in a circular pattern leaving about three inches standing proud of the shed floor. Then got an old bucket and cut the bottom out so leaving just a plastic cylinder.
Bought big strong post-type ground anchor with a big eyelet on the top, put the bucket on the floor over the screws, positioned the anchor inside the bucket and filled the whole lot up with wet
concrete. Left the eyelet on top of the anchor standing proud obviously.
Then when dry you can remove the bucket leaving the concrete lump in place, I actually left the bucket in place though to protect the bikes a bit from the rough old concrete. Then big fat chain and lock through the ground anchor eye.

The advantage of this method is that the heavy weight, bucket of concrete in this case, is fixed to the floor of the shed and not ‘loose’. The scrotes have a habit of lifting the heavy weight plus everything else on to a small wheeled trolley and rolling the whole lot out of the shed/garage. At least this way that wouldn’t be quite so easy.
Not foolproof I know, but it makes me feel a bit more comfortable.

Gillan, December 1981 at Hammersmith Odeon.
Double Trouble tour I think it must have been.
Sheesh……

One problem with trying to do anything in a day is the weather, the racing is every other day and that’s done to allow flexibility. If the weather is rubbish the racing will be postponed until the following day, or even cancelled altogether as the Senior was a few years ago. So if you’re all booked up to go for one day and the weather is pants then you may end up not seeing any racing at all. But it’s brilliant anyway, go for a long as you can.

Vickypea, have you tried Sumatriptan ?

Nope

I had all sorts of grief with them trying to set up our broadband and my BT Sport. Endless phone calls to people with European names but suspiciously strong Indian accents.
In the end I raised a complaint on-line in which I said I required to speak to someone in authority who actually had the power to do anything at all, and, I refuse categorically to speak to anyone in an Indian call centre.
If I didn’t hear back from them in 7 days all of their useless tat was going straight in the bin and I would cancel my direct debit immediately.
Somebody from the UK called me the following day, she got the problem sorted almost straight away, regularly called me to make sure everything was working and that my bill was correct.
Next time, I will go straight to B without wasting any more grey hairs on step A.