I once dropped one log off a trailer, my feet slipped on the slimy concrete floor and the log fell all of a foot at most onto my leg.

I cried, a lot.

And it took about a month for the hematoma to go down and be able to walk further than the kitchen.

Tempting fate with a few hundred of the things is just stupidity.

Exactly. I’d look at it and think “see that big pile of massive logs that have settled into each other under their own massive weight, I doubt adding 40kg of child into the mix will make much difference to the overall stability”

And when they find the one log that’s finely balanced and rolls off, releasing the one next to it, and the next to it the 40kg bundle of Kath Kidston fabric and norovirus gets entwined with 400kg of moving logs pretty quickly.

 I find the IMOCA and Vendee Globe to be the most impressive from a technological and human perspective.  Looking forward to that starting later in the year.

I find it bonkers watching the foiling IMOCA boats.  Seems like yesterday that DSS was a novelty being retrofitted to Wild Oats and now it’s evolved into something that’ll keep a 60ft singlehander out of the water for days at a time.

But heck that must be exhausting, it’s not exactly the rocking to sleep motion of a displacement boat!

A friend in the cycling club has one of their groupsets (and I think he’s just fitted LTwoo eRX with hydro brakes to a new bike).

So far I think it’s just a case of no news is good news.  They’re just working as expected.

Can’t remember if it was Sensah or LTwoo that had the issues with the carbon shifter paddles wearing against the ratchet pawl but they seemed to fix it pretty quickly.

I’ve used off-brand cassettes and they’re not as good, and even FSA chainrings were pretty rubbish for shifting compared to shimano or even SPA cycles.  So I’d get a 105 chain and cassette at least, that’s where the actual shifting performance is.

Pretty sure my HT was 30t from the shop, so 28t is only half a gear lower than the existing setup. I’d happily swap it.

After years riding a 2:1 single speed I’m not sure there’s really a huge amount of value in any gear much above that anyway.  It’s enough on the flat, and descents are inherently over and done with quickly so other than a few frustrating moments they’re not really worth gearing for. 28-10 would still have you pedaling on anything other than a road descent.

Probably better for chain life too, most people gear so that they use the lowest on any significant climbing.  Whereas what you really want is to be closer to the middle of the cassette most of the time, and most of the time is climbing because it’s slow!

If I reduce my personal contribution to 0%, but sacrifice 10% of my salary to go straight into the pension instead, it seems that the small benefit is a slight reduction in national insurance contributions. I will also have lower student loan repayments per month.

Correct IME

Downsides are I wouldn’t be able to get as high a mortgage, my paternity pay may be affected, and my death in service benefit will be lower (4x my lower salary).

IME the employer writes you a letter saying your gross salary is £xxxxx and that this will always be the figure used in any calculations such as reviews, redundnacy, benefits etc), and even my pay slips still show “Basic” salary which is the gross amount, then the salary sacrifices are listed below that as deductions (salary sacrifice pension, private medical, dental, share scheme etc).

Mortgage co didn’t bat an eyelid at it, it’s a common setup.

.

Just a thought. Laptop GPU chips tend to be much weaker than their desktop namesakes, if the software is asking for a 3060 desktop gpu, a laptop GPU of the same model may still struggle.

+1, even if they use the same silicon they can be throttled by power limits. Although “recommended” usually leaves some wiggle room so it might be a question of turning some settings down.

I ended up with a cheaper Lenovo G340 with a GTX1650 , it made sense for a <£500 laptop because I was working away from home doing on-call shifts so wanted to play games to while away the hours.  But there comes a point not much further up the range than that where it’s cheaper and better to build a desktop gaming PC, and then spend £300 on a basic laptop. Gaming laptops only make sense if you actually need to do the gaming part in more than one location. Now that COVID and crypto-mining are largely over you could probably build a PC with a 4060ti and have change left over to buy a more basic “gaming” laptop for playing games on the train, just not AAA titles.

compensation for the injuries which will more than likely have lifelong effects.

Indeed, but unless the malefactor in all this falls into the eccentric middle-class alcoholic grouping rather than the sitting on a park bench with their dog in a pit of depression struggling with alcoholism group, all you’re going to achieve is a 50p/week CCJ against someone with mental health issues.

As a plan it has all the same energy as Donald Trump telling Ivanka that the homeless person is richer than he is.

forward.com/fast-forward/424037/ivanka-trump-president-trump-samantha-bee-debt/

Yea, report it to the police.  If you struggle with that idea then just remember any outcome is being done for the benefit of society at large, not at your behest.

Find a way to get compensated even if no win no fee.

What benefit does that have though?

The dogs (probably and rightly) put down, which is going to be an utter emotional shitstorm for the owner who it seems is already in a poor state mentally. Putting down a sick dog is painful enough, giving up a dog to a shelter with behavioral issues and having to sign the paperwork that says if they’re put down as a result* do you want to be informed was (from personal experience) an order of magnitude worse. I can’t imagine how bad it is putting a healthy dog down.

Let’s assume that the alcoholic may also be not entirely up to date with their life admin and not having the best 3rd party liability insurance.  If you go after him then at best you’re going to do is get some money and result in him selling his house or other assets. Worst he hasn’t got any assets of value and the bailiffs take those and make him homeless.  Even in the absolute best case where he has insurance who cover it, your hand’s still broken, Lawyers can’t do a better job of fixing that than Dr’s.

*He wasn’t, I’ve seen the pics, he’s living his best life on a farm with a family in the middle of nowhere, nowhere near the strangers he can’t deal with.

To add, if you read the Q&A they advise they should not be used for isolating power ie. splitting when live. If the TV is so close to the switched connection that you can’t fit a plug then I find it difficult to believe you can turn it off before splitting (unless the switch is remote).

Being pedantic, neither is the switch unless it’s an isolating switch.

IANASparky, I suspect here’s no correct way of doing what you’re asking because it raises all sorts of what-if’s about the potentially dangling cable you can’t isolate unless you go the consumer unit.

But if it’s out of reach of kids, tucked away and nowhere near any water (fish tank?) then I don’t see a problem really. Or the correct option would be to use one of these and don’t do anything stupid like try and remove the TV without switching it off first at the consumer unit. http://www.diy.com/departments/b-q-black-13a-terminal-line-connector/178106_BQ.prd

A few years ago probably, on someone else’s bike doing the round Preston NCN route one evening, he’d had a new chain fitted by an LBS and I think they’d broken and joined it the old fashioned way rather than using a joining pin or quick link.

But then I could say the same about Allen keys, spare tube, emergency £20 note or even my phone. I’d probably not do without any of them though, it’s cheap insurance against having to walk a very long way. Or worse, be that guy who has to borrow tools mid ride ?.

n.b. the inside of brake levers (unless you have fancy brakes with carbon / CNC levers) is a great place to tape some spare quick links so you’ve always got some.

probably half of the chains (2 out of 4 from memory) I have broken it has been the quick link that has failed. A new one drops right in, no tools required.

My experience has been the opposite, I’ve only ever broken one quick link and that was a cheap ali-express link. The rest of the time it’s either just been at random points.

Planning to ride there from Reading. Anyone who fancies a bit of adventure is welcome to join me along the way but it currently lacks both planning and fitness so will most likely be following the NCN route.

Gearing TBC, I made the mistake in Scotland of going low for the event but struggled with a couple of very long and spiny days on the bike getting there!

Blue de-stickered On-One Scandal (it used to be Orange but I got bored and had some cheap paint so we’ll see how durable it is).

just the seized bolt fear.

It shouldn’t be too bad.

On cars with the disk on the outside of the hub, there aren’t usually any bolts to seize, it’s just sandwiched between the wheel and the hub. There might be a machine screw to locate it in place but it’s not torqued down.

Caliper / carrier bolts don’t generally seize because mechanics are sensible creatures and cover them in anti sieze.

Front brakes don’t generally need a wind back tool, that’s usually a handbrake thing.   Just squash the piston back with the old pad and a G-clamp.  Do open the bleed nipple to let the fluid out and then top up the reservoir, don’t push it back through the system, because a) the caliper is where all the crap is, b) the seals are designed to resist pressure and move one way, apparently they can flip if pushed back under pressure.

Go for the expensive / premium pads and decent disks.  I stuck EBC GreenStuff pads on my otherwise dull C-max and it was like hitting a brick wall. And wen you can replace them yourself for £30/set then the short life isn’t really a factor anymore.

Buy a set of slider bushings/pins, they’re quick to replace, cheap and for a DIY job not worth getting the calipers off, finding them sloppy then wasting a day waiting for replacements.

Don’t bother trying to manually bleed them, buy a gunson EZbleed, the one that hooks up to the spare tyre. It makes it a 10 minute job to single handedly do the whole car. No pedal pumping required.

+1 for bikes on the side wall so the walkway gives you access space.

Put shelves near the door., whichever door you will use most. Otherwise you will just dump stuff on the workbench.

Have big containers/bins for storage.  Don’t be too clever about storage though.  You might think that future you will thank you for such a detailed and organized system.  But between you and that future self lies the near-present-you.  And they will dump whatever is in their hand on the nearest flat surface. It’s them you need to appease,

Stricter implementation or age restrictions, I.D. requirements and stricter implementation of the law haven’t helped either. Just means the kids get someone to go to Lidl and go crazy in an adult free environment.

You’re going to deny that in your day kids didn’t get drunk at houseparties and make out awkwardly on the sofa and instead went to drink Boddingtons bitter in the Dog And Partridge ?

My teenage years were more Inbetweeners than Skins but even I had more fun than trying to be accepted into old man village pubs ?

(where letting off the brakes to cool them isn’t possible)

Try braking harder with one brake, then the other rather than dragging both.

Don’t quench them with water, that’s more likely to cause problems than solve them.

There was 9 pubs in the village I live in before the smoking ban was introduced, there are 2 left.

Seven out of nine of them also closed contemporaneously with a longer term decline in the number of pubs, the biggest financial crash since the 1930’s, a decade and a half of public sector pay cuts, a global pandemic and an inflationary crisis sparked by a war in Europe.

But yea, it’s smokers inability to go the the length of a pint without sparking up that’s at fault.

On a long journey you’ll maybe save a few minutes. Stop off for a luxury poo at Tebay services and any gain you may have made goes out of the window. Running the gauntlet for the sake of an extra 2mph is both stressful and pointless, and assuming your speedo is overreading without measuring it is a dangerous game.

Depends, in the work transit van when someone else is paying for the diesel I used to set the cruise control for a GPS *cough*seventy*cough**cough*.  because driving the 5+ hours from Newcastle back to Reading was long enough already without the speedo error.

In my own car on the other hand, 60-ish on the GPS (i.e. an indicated 65-70 which is what 90% of people on the motorway are doing)  is a LOT (~20%) less fuel!

Just get on with life doing what you can of what you’d normally do and one day it’ll  be in the past.

+1

As a three time veteran of breaking the same radius in under 2 years, if you’re a non-smoker and getting your 10,000 steps in every day and dop the physio then you’re ahead of 99% of people who won’t even stick to the physio.

If you’re vegetarian then take any calcium supplements between meals as beans/pulses can block it’s absorption. Do take some VitD.

Some movement/stimulus is good, too much is bad and results in non-vascular (dead) bone, I learnt that one the hard way. Don’t rush it.

It’s natural to stress/panic/overthink it because you’re not in control, you’re a prehistoric monkey brain presented with a scary and stressful situation with access to the internet, don’t make it worse!

In 6 weeks the doc will say it’s OK. In 12 it’ll be actually be 95% there, in 6 months you should be back to almost completely normal pain free movement in a year (or two) it should be as strong as it ever will be.

Don’t crash on it again.

if you are sitting at an indicated 50, but thats actually 47 (because of your speedo error), someone doing a “true” 55 will seem a lot faster.

This +1

I’ve got a GPS speedo on my motorbike because the real one is in km/h. The ‘average’ speed though the current 50mph roadworks on the M4 is about 42-44mph (i.e. everyone’s probably doing an indicated 46-48ish.  At quiet times the HGV’s barrel through in the middle lane knowing the 56mph limiters won’t trigger a fine but is still significantly quicker than anyone in the 1st lane.

Also no hire car included whereas the third party insurers have already offered a hire car at no cost to myself.

Be wary, because if they later back out of the claim for some reason then they may put their astronomical hire car charges onto you.

Someone on here previously suggested just write them a letter saying you’ll settle for £xxxx immediately and as long as it’s sensible they’ll likely accept because even if it’s slightly above the market rate it’s cheaper than months of arguing, loss adjusters, claims management, hire cars, storage fees, etc.  And by doing that it’s potentially not even written off.

So back to the wax discussion in wet weather, wax blends can range from very soft, and with a high oil content, to very firm and oil free. A soft wax will squeeze out from your chain rollers under pressure similar to putty between your fingers, a firmer wax will resist this but most likely has a lower oil content and won’t adhere to the areas of the chain where no pressure is applied, it’s all about striking the balance. What I’m hearing is we would be better sacrificing a little performance to give a softer wax in wet and off road use, we could look at an extra ‘chip’ to add to our wax but I think providing a softer version will work out better, might not make me as much money but sure.

I agree, although my “blending” plan in my homebrew is just adding EP90 to the wax a little at a time.

The additives are the big thing we don’t talk much about, that’s where we spent all the research time and money, quality additives in the correct quantities make a massive difference to a wax, we worked with professors at Queens University and some specialists in performance coatings to come up with our additives.

Reminds me of my university research, I was developing a ski lube although the only conclusion that could be drawn was MOAR=BETTERER, all the graphs just drew a straight line where the more dilute (or lower molecular weight) the additives the worse they performed.

Out of interest have you have you tried using calcium stearate in your soft/winter blends? I’m wondering if it would make it act more like a waterproof grease that clings to the chain better and less like a wax that flakes off , i.e. maybe a bit more like putoline.

If you don’t ride bikes with suspension you don’t really get battered at all. If I ride a bike with rear suspension, I notice that the hard tail is less plush but soon aclimatise to hardtails again.

+1

I mainly ride the HT so it’s more a case of feeling less beaten up on the FS. But it’s more of a feeling of getting to the end of the ride with tired legs rather than tired all over, the same but different.

It’s more important to have a good fork on a HT if you’re going to hit the rough stuff at speed.  There’s only so much you can absorb with your legs before the trail starts coming into the bike from the back wheel and unsettling it.  Then the fork has to manage the inputs from the front and the back.

-1

I find the more basic fork on the HT works well enough as by the time it’s overwhelmed the rear end is too.  Throw it into a rock garden and it feels awful for a couple of seconds, then the whole bikes lost momentum anyway.

I think it’s the opposite. Newer trails are built for flow to my mind and I wonder why the need for FS, but that’s in my local knowledge. I still prefer to ride the HT at the Golfie and other Tweed Valley locations, the FS sucks the life out of the trail. And feeling battered afterwards makes the pizza and pint all the more rewarding.

6 / 1/2-Doz

New / recently resurfaced trails are amazing on a HT and the FS just feels redundant or hard work because you have the opportunity to pedal. Those same trails in 12 months time are very different.  The FS carries it’s speed better and you don’t have to pedal to re-accelerate after every slightly rough section. It doesn’t take much erosion to tip the balance.

A bit like the comment being replied to said “more natural” trails.  One persons natural is soft, smooth and loamy with little traffic, and their man-made is concrete-hard braking bumps.  Another’s natural is barely rideable rocks and scree, and their man-made is like a BMX track.

Looks like these were released early 2022. Still worth getting or go for something newer?

“something newer” is the Epix Pro and the (tomorrow?) Fenix 8.  Which are currently double and looking like to be triple the price respectively.  Although I’d expect the Pro to end up on more of a sale at some point maybe, but then there’ll probably be a Fenix 9 …….

I’ve still got an old 2nd hand Instinct which TBH still does 90% of what I’d like (tell me the time, log stuff for STRAVA, that’s about it) so maybe I’m the wrong person to ask.

Control music – my headphones do that

Pay for stuff – maybe, but if I’m out and about I’ve probably got my phone, which i don’t use for payments because my cards are in the same wallet.

Mapping – maybe, but something bar mounted would be more useful.

Also ability to answer calls on my watch (similar to the Apple watch Mrs Surfer has) im not sure if any Garmins have that yet.

The world does not need more ways to use speakerphone in public!  Either answer it via earphones or get your phone out ?

Think I’ll go Synergetic to be honest, even Fenwick’s needs a setting time so no good on longer trips or mid-ride…

I used to use B&Q Biodegradable chainsaw oil for £7/liter.  I’m convinced the non-bio stuff was the stringy green base that TF2 used!

Now I use Tru Tensions wet because it was reduced in Lidl.  Tried their all conditions dry/wax based stuff and it wasn’t bad. It was getting noisy towards the 60-80mile mark though.

Yesterday my chain went ‘dry’ as in horribly squeaky. Even if there was any wax left the noise was awful and I could feel it through the pedals as more vibration or something. Basically horrible to pedal. Lashed on sone 3-in-1 at a mate’s house and the last 20km felt like tailwind the whole way in comparison.

Yea, I’ve usually got a small (squirt sample) bottle of wet lube in my spares / tools for those occasions.

People’s preconceptions are interesting. I doubt you’d get much of a hit pulling modified cars – most are driven by people who pay through the nose for insurance, complain about it a lot on forums, but nonetheless are fully legit and are fastidiously kept that way. Likewise anyone in a GT-R is pretty unlikely to drive anywhere like a loon as they just stand out too much.

I’d need a whole reem of S59 tickets each shift.  If it pops, bangs or skids it’s going in the book.

Ditto any sort of winglets, and tinted headlamps.

mucked about with number plates.
I’ve never understood why they don’t get pulled every 100 yards.

The rules changed a couple of years ago, now IIRC it boils down to the plate material has to be reflective, the font correct and no other colours.

Which means 3D plates are in (as long as they’re spaced correctly, and don’t have coloured sides/back to the letters) because the letters are treated like a very thick sticker. And metal plates are also fine as long as they start life as a plain yellow plate, then get stamped and the black numbers painted on.   I’ve got a metal plate on my motorbike as plastic plates on a retro bike just look naff and out of place.  I’ve not bothered with the actual classic MG though ?

The trend round here is no front plates at all, particularly “M” BMW’s.

On the time front, I just re-waxed the chain from a gravel bike. It took around 90 minutes, but mostly that was the crockpot getting up to temperature. I set a timer on my phone and got on with life. The actual activity time was maybe 30 seconds taking the chain off, another minute threading it onto a hanger and sticking it in the pot and switching it on. Then 90 minutes later,  a minute or so swishing the chain and hanging it up to cool off.

+1

Saying waxing takes a long time is like saying smoove / squirt / other dry lube takes 12h to apply.  You don’t sit there watching it dry. Take the chain(s) off after a ride, clean them (if deemed necessary), chuck them in a pot, wash the bike whilst the chains off, hang bike up in the garage and go have a cup of tea, shower, food, beer, etc.  Come back to the pot, give it a swish, lift chains out and hang somewhere ready for next time.

The only difference between that and any bottle based lube is you have to pop back to the shed to take the chains out and fit the chain the morning of the next ride (unless you use one of those plastic chain cleaner devices that just seem to exist to distribute degreaser all over your drivetrain and bearings).

that’s interesting – I was expecting wax to be quieter but the road bike did make a bit of noise after the initial wax had dropped off.  How do you tell if it needs redoing if not through noise?

Putoline is silent IME

Paraffin wax* based lube is a little noisy, not dry squeaky chain noisy, but there’s definitely a little more whirring than with wet lubes.

It still sounds like a squeaky dry chain when it’s gone.  There’s a school of thought though that this isn’t “dry” in waxing terms though and is actually still good for hundreds of miles because there’s still some paraffin / additives left inside the chain where the high loads are, just not keeping the side plates quiet.

In general though I probably re-wax most bikes long before they need it.  Depending on the time of year one bike inevitably gets used more than others or in conditions that strip the wax quicker. So that chain comes off to get waxed and while I’m at it I’ll do any other bikes that need it.  Or on the 12s bikes I have 2-3 chains in rotation so I wax all the chains, then use them for a few weeks/months each and then swap.

Chain washing I’m somewhere between a skeptic and a convert.  I now give new chains a good soak and a swish in white spirit, then rinse in petrol which seems to be minimal effort and do the job.  Next time I might just try the boiling in water. It definitely helps with new chains, I’m not sure it’s really necessary with old ones.

*I’m currently experimenting with homebrewed wax blends after years on Putoline, YMMV with commercially available waxes.

I have tried both firmwares on the pinnacle app but when using it with indie velo i am getting no difference in gears and still need to move through the gears a lot wjen the gradient on tbe course changes.

That’s normal, all the firmware options do it change how abruptly the resistance changes and how it deals with fluctuating power output.

Some people want an unrealistic flat line on the graph which can feel pretty brutal and tends to also mean it overshoots the start and end points of the interval.

Other people want it to smoothly transition to the new power and then react a bit more naturally so if they slack off a second they just reaccelerate gently, not suddenly find it’s a brick wall to climb back upto the setpoint.

I compared the radings from the power on my chainset (4iii) real-time while riding and the 4iii was showing about 10% higher power reading ish. I am thinking of trying another type of trainer program as i am thinking the software in the program itself converts the power readings with its own software.

Crank/pedal based power is always a couple of percent higher due to drivetrain losses. 4iii might be a bit more off because it’s single sided and people are rarely symmetrical so it might just be your left leg is naturally a bit stronger or your right leg is a bit lazier on the upstroke.

Thread resurrection…..Did anyone ever make this work fully with Rouvy?

Not tried it, but was almost tempted to get it out again for the winter after Saturday’s biblical rain!

I’d like to know where these get raised as I spend a lot of time in the UK countryside and I see a hell of a lot of cows in fields and very few in sheds.

A lot of more intensive lowland farms will tend to keep them in sheds over the winter and not put them out untill spring. The grass isn’t growing so they need feed regardless, and more than a few cows will churn up the ground and make a mess.

Same for small upland farms where the pasture is just too exposed.

Keeping them outside means:

– higher metabolisms in the cold means more feed and higher costs.

– damage to the soil

– hoof issues (Foul, thrush, foot rot, soft hooves)

– time and effort

Some will be out all winter, but if a pasture can support 100 in summer and 20 in winter, it’s only sensible and profitable to keep the remainder indoors.

I never used to de-grease mine, but then I washed a new chain in white spirit and completely unscientifically it seemed to last a little better. Perhaps the white spirit acted as a kind of flux for the wax? Dunno.

I 2nd this anecdotally.  The factory grease doesn’t play well with the wax for some reason.

1) You’ve ridden the bike through a few filthy rides and it feels like it needs lubing – how do you prepare it before dipping it in your currently lovely clean wax?

Personally I don’t, I just throw it in and assume the crap gets diluted to insignificance in the molten wax.  But I’m curious to try what others have suggested and clean the chain in boiling water.

2) how do you determine when your wax is ‘done’?  presumably the level drops as you wax some chains and you keep topping it up, but you’re also getting it dirty when rewaxing.  At what point do you scrape it all out and start afresh?

My first batch of putoline went yellow in the end.  I presumed it was the paraffin separating into a layer on top of whatever the darker stuff was.

My new wax is homebrew (paraffin + PTFE + WS2),  I’ll see how it goes. but I doubt there’s enough grit on even a few years worth of chains to make a detrimental concentration in the pot. And in terms of how much wax is used each time it’s tiny (about the same amount as you’d use wet lube).  So even if it’s 1-2g per chain, that’s probably still 200+ waxes before the level drops to about 1/3 and doesn’t quite cover the chain in the pot, probably 50,000miles worth of riding?

1k in a car these days you’re basically looking at something that’ll probably not make it past the next MoT without a few hundred thrown at it, or less if you know a ‘friendly’ garage.

I disagree.

Yes there’s a lot of crap for sale, but presumably no one buys it which is why the adds are more noticeable.

And even at the crap end my £600 Berlingo did almost 30,000 miles on a couple of oil changes, a clutch cable and a headlamp bulb* before I scrapped it. The only problem was the punitive road-tax being a big diesel from before the era of cheap diesel car tax.

*and a free set of spare front wheels and winter tyres

I sort of wish I’d not scrapped it! But in reality I don’t drive much and it would probably have died of something else.

are any of the leaders in this conflict legitimate targets?

And does it vary by country?

In the UK we have a civilian government, and the Monarch is the head of the armed forces. So is Charlie a legitimate target but Keir not? Whereas other countries roll the head of the government / head of state / commander in chief into one.

Is Buckingham Palace a legitimate target for bombing, but Downing Street would be a war crime?

Ermmm, do vegan and vegetarian foods use a different transport method to get to the supermarkets I’m not aware of, or do they arrive on the back of the same big effing juggernaut that my steak does??

Ignoring* the fact that the environmental impact of your steak is in it’s production not just it’s transport. Yes it does.  Lamb comes in freezer containers all the way from NZ, fresh meat has had to go around the country in livestock trailers, then back again in refrigerated trailers. Processes meat makes a few other stops along the way as well.

Compare that to a bag of dried lentils.

A stark example is milk, fresh milk needs refrigeration and complex logistics, just like meat to keep it fresh.  UHT milk is exactly the same product, except it doesn’t need that (a bit like the lentils) except it generally costs half as much because it comes on the cheap lorry.

*if you don’t want to ignore it, then cattle feed accounts for 80% of UK soy imports. Yep, your “grass fed British beef” actually spent a lot of it’s life indoors and the grass was more like a side salad for the imported soy main course.

“A lot of motorcyclists convince themselves that it’s careless car drivers who cause most of their issues”

And a lot of non-motorcyclists think they’re some homogenous group that’re all the same (like Daily Mail readers and cyclists).

In reality you’ve got everyone from boy-racers on Fireblades (or CBR125’s imagining they’re on Fireblades) to my dad pottering about the dales on a 1940’s Matchless hardtail.

Some collisions are caused by car drivers or just plain bad luck, a bit like car* on car crashes.

Some collisions are caused by the bike riders inexperience / stupidity or what gets called “lack of skill” but I don’t like that because it implies that at some point you have enough skill to do something stupid and get away with it.  Skill doesn’t get you round a corner on the road any quicker than is sensible, good luck that there wasn’t a slow tractor cutting the hedge just out of sight got your round it.

So if you ride motorbikes, and ride them sensibly, the odds of being in an accident are probably only slightly higher than those for a car driver.

So is every accident the fault of a car driver, nope.  Are enough accidents caused by idiots to their own detriment that statistically I’m far more worried about being hit by a car than any other cause of accident because I don’t ride like an idiot, yes.

To quote Arthur Ransome on the idea of letting kids go sailing:

“Better drowned than duffers, if not duffers won’t drown.”

*for brevity I’m saying cars /  bikes crashing, obviously these aren’t sentient and it’s the driver / rider that caused the majority of incidents.

Thefts have gone up due to pothole damage.

I trashed one wheel, bought a set of 4 that was a bit of a bargain and sold the rest at a very healthy profit. One person had hit a kerb, the other two were replacing stollen wheels.  And these were generic 20 year old 15″ Ford sub-zetec trim level OEM alloy wheels.  Nothing fancy.

The MG doesn’t but:

a) 43 lb-ft torque because of the silly little 3/8th studs. By wheelnut standards that’s sod all, it’s less than bicycle wheel nuts!  I have to locktite then on.  I really don’t like taking them on and off without a torque wrench.

b) Very niche, 13″ wheels with 101.6 PCD.

The news* isn’t an arbiter of the worth of the events it’s reporting. More people die in events all of the world than in the stories that make the news on any given day.

Statistically there will be 2 murders in the UK today, neither will make the news.

Tens / hundreds will die in Palestine, Yemen, Sudan, peace talks might make the news but the death toll won’t.

People will die of cancer, dementia, Parkinson’s, but only new treatments ever make the news.

Motorcyclists dying in the Peak or people dying in warzones isn’t newsworthy because you already know it happens, there’s nothing new to report and you don’t learn any new information.

*on the TV or the BBC in particular.  Newspapers are different, they can have a bias, and need to generate sales immediately so will promote stories that their readership deems worthy.  So MCN will probably have this in the front few pages, The Daily Mail will probably have a running total of migrant crossings because despite being not-novel it’s newsworthy to it’s bigoted readership.

I’ve been banging on about this for years. Perhaps not compulsory, but maybe a punitive tax regime that heavily penalises people being in the office. We have to pay to come in when it’s not really needed, so make the CEOs pay instead.

I’m torn on this.

1) It’s primarily a middle class thing and would turn commuting (and therefore fuel duty and other commuting costs) into a regressive tax.

2)  Some people really don’t work well from home. Half my team I’d happily let WFH all the time except when needed in the office.  Others I’d make come in every day if HR let me. And it’s a strong negative correlation between those that want to WFH and those I’d want in the office ?

But ….

It was better over lockdown. Seemed like when everyone was at home we all worked better from home. Probably because there wasn’t that disparity between being able to work with those in the office and forget those not. I’d just have my headset on 75% of the time chatting whilst working.

I’m waiting for the thread to fill with ideas which have minimal adverse effects on the poster, but massive ones on other people.

Having to be one of those people who cry “BUT WHAT ABOUT BACON” at vegetarians isn’t a real hardship though is it? Admit it, you quite enjoy it really.

Don’t pay for the tyres until you’ve had a look yourself?

This then becomes one of those cases where the MOT rules deviate from what’s sensible and what might get you in trouble at a vehicle checkpoint.

The MOT manual says the tread has to be measured in the main circumferential grooves.  So if the blocks on the inside / outside edge wear off it’s not an MOT fail right down until the chords are exposed.

The inner edge of an asymmetric tyre is doing the bulk of the water clearing (the outer edge is there with bigger blocks for cornering grip) , so if those grooves disappear then water clearing is inhibited.

DVSA checks on the other hand can be stricter they measure the actual width of the tyre and then check the depth ~12.5% in from each edge.