Fundamentally how you get better is through hard work and practice

That will get you so far. Then you need a coach to help you with the bits you have been practicing that were wrong in the first place.

But if you spend time sessioning a particular corner you will get round it faster in a way that suits you. I have in the past sessioned lines where I thought I couldn’t get enough speed up, tried different ways and eventually found the fastest line for myself.
The same technique won’t suit everyone, its an art not an exact science.

So you get one particular corner nailed. Great. What about the next corner?

The same basics do suit everyone. The basics, that most people are sniffy about and assume they have mastered, are exactly the same and are applied well by those at the top of the sport. If you don’t think that having your pedals flat and more weight on your feet than your hands is a universal basic technique, then perhaps we’re all wrong.

As said above, coaching is how you progress in pretty much any activity. Be that driving a car, riding a bike, playing rugby, tennis, golf etc. BMX racers get coached.
Very few people can achieve their potential without the occasional external view of what they do, and that is life in general.

When I moved to the US I joined the local MTB club. It’s now an IMBA chapter but has always built and advocated for trails in the area. The club was behind the efforts to put another 25 miles of trails in with more to come, focused fundraising efforts and has all the trailbuilding gear it could need.
I joined it because they are doing the right thing and I wanted to be part of that.
We have plenty of binners-esque miserable rebels who aren’t members and do nothing but bitch about the trails, trailbuilding, dumbing down etc etc but won’t step up and do something themselves.

all of a sudden IS appear from no where

Really?

What kind of mincing are people doing to find Flows strong?

I weigh 240lbs and have ridden a pair of Flows in my famous ‘feckless lardcore’ style for 6 years and found them strong and very durable. I’ll get some more if and when these ones give up on me.

Thanks, but life’s too short to start adding additional depth with stilts. I’ll be happy with some insulation between joists and boards down.

If you do the job properly, you’re adding value and in the long term, saving money.
If you actually pick doing a gash job over a proper job, even having sought advice, then you deserve high energy bills and less money when you sell it. The insulation works for the whole house, not just the upstairs rooms.

That makes no sense whatsoever .

Not really. Cars in the US are registered to the state and have different plates showing this.
Police forces in the US are often county, city or town-based. Several of them are known to pretty much fund the county, town or city through the collection of fines, be that arresting and fining for low level crimes or motoring offences.

So, an out-of-state car stopped for speeding will get the fine without upsetting a local.
Got it?

Insulate first, then floor.
Given the current recommendations for insulation, you would probably need to get ‘stilts’ or legs to raise the level of the floor you want to put down. Insulation thickness is probably thicker than your joists.

Blowing cellulose insulation in is probably the best way to add insulation. It performs better than rockwool and the thought of Kingspan up there is a terrible one.

Insulation pays back 12 months of the year, so get it done then put the floor down.

We have a gas grill and it uses indirect heat. Works really well – sort of like a charcoal grill without the faff and with way more control. People who live in warmer places and who grill more often tend to use gas for the convenience and cleanliness. It’s just how it is.

As for using briquettes? No thanks. :cry:

If Americans get so little holiday, how do they spend so much time doing cool ‘lifestyle’ activities and driving around in RVs!?

They don’t. Everything is done as a sprint, nobody takes more than a week off at a time and the average RV is used for 2 weeks per year (I actually looked this up a few months ago).

An American couple I know went to a Caribbean island earlier this year for their 20th anniversary. They were in a non-American hotel and were the only people not there for 2 weeks. They now understand my issues with the American work/life imbalance.

Vacations seen as less important but people get personal days too, so they work a little more than us but not as much as you’d think. Also they get paid generally a little better than us and probably have a slightly better standard of housing and healthcare (if you have insurance obviously)

Americans work far more than Brits on average. ‘Personal days’ are to cover sickness, your own and your kids. Not many personal days in contracts either. Couple that with 10 days leave a year and few observed public holidays and you have almost no time off.
Housing? Bigger houses with more garden, but further apart and more reliance on cars, so there is a trade-off there.
Healthcare is not better. It’s more available if you have insurance you can afford. It requires more paperwork, more worry, usually less waiting times, but don’t think of transferring to another hospital for your woes. They don’t share information so expect to take a multitude of pointless tests to make up for it.
Don’t fall ill outside your state of residence. The paperwork will kill you even if the illness didn’t.

There is no statutory minimum leave in the USA. It’s a strange place at times and their corporate culture is nuts. There are a lot of jobs that advertise for specific degrees that pretty much don’t exist in the UK. This means a lot of people have very narrow career fields without the potential to broaden or do other similar but related jobs.
Banter exists – you just have to look for it. I share a healthy stream of insults and sarcasm with a few other chaps and it’s all good.

The rest of them are moon-units with guns and they are to be avoided.

It gives the illusion of cooling. Given the percentage of the rest of your body that’s hot and all those warm blood vessels nowhere near your forehead, this is doing as much as Deep Heat does in the cold.

THE original documenter of such things:

http://thisiswhyyourefat.com/%5B/url%5D

http://thisiswhyyourefat.tumblr.com/%5B/url%5D

lots of ideas there.

I still think a pork parfait was one of the best foods I’ve seen since coming to the USA.

Normal bibs plus knee warmers. More year-round options, better knee comfort when required.

He’s in the RAF and there is a standard system of secondment from the UK military to the likes of Saudi, so most of the advice re tax etc means nothing to him. It’s a different system.

He’s looking at it because it is common for his Trade and a regular thing rather than this being a job in itself, so that’s why he is thinking about it.

I have friends out there now and friends who have been out there before. Most all of them gritted their teeth and did the time, but most all had their kids in boarding school anyway.

I sweat like a fat lad in a chocolate factory and out here it got to 36C and 90% humidity on Tuesday. In my 1st year here I cramped badly on a regular basis. I now always use some electrolyte drink and, touch wood, not cramped this year despite riding further and faster. Most rides need 2 x pairs of gloves through sweaty hands.
If it’s a long ride I’ll fill my Camelbak with water, take a waterbottle and use the tablets (Nuun, Camelbak etc – whatever’s on offer)to make up extra bottles as I go. It keeps the bladder clean.
For road rides it’s 2 bottles and one has a carb / electrolyte and the other just electrolyte.
Experiment and see what works for you.

Renton. If you ever find a bloke who can honestly say he spent too much time with his kids growing up, let me know. I’ve not met one yet, and I’ve met an awful lot who would wish they hadn’t been away quite so much.

Then you’d be insane to leave before your 22 and all that entails. You need to start on your 5 year exit plan now.

For that money, BAE are still humping you.

If you are leaving, get properly working on your resettlement and make the most of it. Don’t be a typical resettler and gaff it off then end up outside the camp gates, blinking and wondering what to do next.

Tackling racism by taking down flags isn’t tackling racism.

As a Norn Iron resident, you are in the epicentre of flag nonsense. Loyalist loons can riot for a whole summer over a single flag issue!

Al – forget containers but I can put you in touch with a friend of mine in Stow near Galashiels who has nearly finished building a straw bale house on his land. He has plans for more and did the build with volunteers, which is a very good way to learn.

It depends whether you want to build a standard house in a standard way, or if you wanted to consider alternative methods and materials. I’m not talking about hobbit houses but something like straw bale. If you do it right it need not cost very much (but the plot is still the killer).

Alpha – I can guess where you’ll be working if you hope to move to Emersons Green :wink:

There’s some riding out from there that I strung together – a few bridleways joined up with back roads and you can have a decent play out NE of Emersons. Go and see Si at Webbs of Warmley – for a mostly roadie he does know a few off-road routes around Warmley etc. He also builds a mean wheel.
The Cheesy Riders are a bunch of deviants and miscreants. I recommend them wholeheartedly.

Park homes. Prefab, often ‘double wide’

http://homeseekerhomes.co.uk/park-homes.html

‘Chuckability’ is mostly bolleaux. A L and an XL frame won’t have much difference and probably the same length stays, same angles, same wheelbase etc. The larger frame will enable the rider to have less seatpost and a shorter stem (I’m generalizing, yes) as long as they still have enough standover, but slightly more frame. making for a little stronger and a little stiffer. Going down rather than up has mostly been fashion and guff.

I see that smugness doesn’t prevent other issues in life.

You are very lucky and have what at first glance appears to be an energy efficient house.
Most people are not so lucky. This report is not ‘for’ you.

If you hold a position with the Heritage Foundation, it’s more likely that your own myopic world view is what’s providing the tint to your perception. Limbaugh is the megaphone for the mouth-breathing loons.

This is not a representative view of ‘The Americans’.

We’re the same age and have the same problem – too much hair on our heads.

CELEBRATE! It will have grown out in a couple of weeks, and that’s way better than being a baldy like so many our age. Revel in it – at least you have options with hair!

But I want Whistler in the back garden! Not my own, obviously, just down the road would be great.

I thought you owned Chelsea. Just sell a couple of houses and buy a few country estates with the cash.

Bath is a V expensive city surrounded by V expensive countryside owned by a multitude of private landowners.
Trail centres are mostly in low population areas making use of land being used for something else (forestry).

Short men with taller women. That’s biologically wrong.

I’m 6’7″, she’s 5’9″. Not much clothes / bike swapping in our house.

I just read that. What an awful article that comes up with a really awful conclusion.

I’m now into my 3rd year of living in the USA and some of the headline stuff is easier to understand after a while. However, most of it does still baffle me!

Some forces are working hard at conflict resolution training and giving their officers the tools to de-escalate situations without more violence; these are obviously a minority. It’s hard not to escalate a situation when the next step after ‘shouting’ is ‘shooting’ and nothing else to call upon.

In that light, any adult that practiced once a week at a range (which is not unusual among enthusiasts where you can find gun ranges as easily as golf driving ranges) could quite easily be better – which is to say, less awful – than currently serving officers.

The problem with those trained and accurate gun owners isn’t the ability to hit a paper target on a range. The problem is the real world situations where they might be tempted to use that gun isn’t a paper target on a range. They might be good at plinking bullseyes all day long, but the complexities of a shooting / hostage / robbery scenario are way beyond their abilities.

For those looking at statistics for American gun death / crime, have a look at age and race. ISTR that a lot of gun deaths are
a) Old white rural men killing themselves
b) Young black urban males killing each other

Sort of classic British working clothing?

http://www.old-town.co.uk/collections/product