Passive aggressive posting on a mountain bike forum seems to work for many.

Good job. :D

How long are you going for?
How many shots does a full (cold) battery give you?
How many hours a day can you get direct sunlight on a solar panel?

I’d think you would be spending quite a bit on a half-decent panel, then adding either a 12vDC camera battery charger (which they make for the Ixus) or another battery to charge, then use that to charge the camera battery. Either way, you need to work out how many shots per battery and do the sums on batteries v charging for cost and weight.

Why not got for 2 x shorter loops? Put one through the seat rails and then loop the one through the bikes and through that. Far easier than dealing with 1 long cable or chain length.

Reduce the heating requirement before you start thinking about heating it. ‘Fabric first’ and get the walls, roof and floor sorted. Insulation, because stone walls are just thermal mass and that is no substitute for insulation.

Grab a handful of rear brake by accident = a skid
Grab a handful of front brake by accident = OTB

‘We’ are not most cyclists.

Ru your brakes how you want. It isn’t that difficult to get used to them on each side.

I like to stop and appreciate where I am, what I’m doing and just pause for a moment. It came from hillwalking and having a little empathy for the slower members of the group and generally appreciating where we were and the effort it took to get there.
Going out with Munroe-Baggers (not all are the same) made it more important to me. Their focus was on ticking off something on a list, so they were always fixated on the next one and would charge off. I wanted to pause for a moment and enjoy where I was at that moment.

By the time I got to the end of my thesis, I found all of the good stuff that Word / OpenOffice can do in formatting a large document eg automatic paragraph numbering, automatic indexing, referencing etc etc. I wish I’d known more about it before I started to take real advantage of it.
Word can do it all and more – just some learning and prep. At least I’ll know for next time (nooooooooooooooo).

This is the biggest selling ‘car’ in the USA. I get scared on my road bike out here.

Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey – he was a park ranger in Utah in the 50s. Great read.

Any books about climbing mountains in the 50s and 60s. Truly epic adventures.

Second the Patagonia book, Chickenhawk, Spike Milligan and a vote for Eric Newby – A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush and Love and War in the Apennines. Real adventure again.

Of course, I pushed him under a passing tractor. Only fair

I would have expected you to have a chap who did that sort of thing for you. Did you use a stick to avoid physical contact?

Compared to some of their other turds, the Juke is a handsome beast. I give you the Murano Crosscabriolet. I saw one of these last week and felt a little sick.

Have you looked at any of the Hackspace setups? They would strike me as the halfway house between ‘man in a shed’ and business. That’s where you find the geeks pushing the limits of what can be done with your own (shared) resources. I know my local hack group have a 3d printer and other computer-controlled equipment and they run pretty much everything open source.

The OP is going to do some training in the gym and wants to know what is best – the answer from me is freeweights. It’s disingenuous to try and label this advice as insensitive, or to deliver an underhand insult (“the MTFU brigade” – really?) simply because you disagree with it.

freeweights, yes. Unsupervised freeweights with no prior knowledge? No way is that a good idea. Short cut to bad form and doing something dangerous with something that can hurt. I see far more people doing freeweights with bad form than I see with good form.

I used to work for Ronald many years ago. I have had most combinations of the food there, some good (surf and turf – big mac bun, quarter pounder in te bottom, filet o fish in the top) and some bad (fizzy hot chocolate).
I once ate the menu (1 serving of everything) in a night before. Strangely enough, I did put on a few pounds back then.

Is darcy further up his own jacksie today or have I just not noticed him recently?

There is a bit of a lack of empathy going on here. So many people saying ‘get on the free weights’ to a man who evidently doesn’t know what he is doing. Can’t you remember when you were new at this, or have you forgotten, or are you of the MTFU brigade?

Get someone to show you what the equipment does and how to use it. If your work doesn’t have some sort of initial briefing for the gym equipment then that’s a bit gash.

First thing to do? Get some proper advice from a real live human being who can show you how to use the equipment and how to do the exercises properly. If you are that unaware of the kit and what you might need to do, then find someone – pay a pro if you have to – to give you the proper pointers. If not, you’ll likely injure yourself.
Does your work have access to instructors at all? If not, can you find a local fitness centre that does introduction sessions? Perhaps pay a personal trainer type to come in to work and do a couple of sessions and set you off in the right direction.

Uvex – best helmet I’ve owned. Best adjustment, coolest feel on the head and most comfortable. I’ll buy Uvex over anything else now.

If you have a UK satnav, see how much it would cost to download the US map. We did that a few years ago and it was less than £20 on a TomTom.

Is that your best chat up line, Al?

He’s quite persuasive after a couple of shandies :oops:

£35 for a new rear wheel from EBay, delivered.

Go to Tesco / Asda / Wilkinsons for cables, inners, brake blocks, chain even. Pence for the bearings, couple of quid for the grease.

Why wouldn’t you DIY?

Bristol. Best place I’ve lived in the UK. Good rail and road links, music, food, tech, arts, rural very quickly and just a great place.

Here – let me do your googling for you

http://www.ironmongerydirect.co.uk/products/gate_hardware/gate_catches_and_latches/4092/extended_auto_gate_catch_galvanised/890294

Ring or cottage latch?

Move the existing latch to the top of the gate?

Cycling isn’t a great exercise for lower back issues. Us cyclists tend to have tighter hamstrings, so you really need to do something else (stretching etc) to combat that. If mine get too tight they really pull through my lower back and exacerbate the other issues I have / had.

When I say stretching, I mean proper stretching, not a bit of ‘limbering up’. Pilates and anything else to strengthen the core is also recommended.

You can backflush a Gaggia Classic. You need a blank basket and the powder. Happy Donkey do them.

Use one with a steeper angle. Anything else is a bodge and you will die a horrible death when it fails.

15 g would not even compress against the shower screen with my gaggia classic

Yet with my Gaggia Classic a 14g load and the right grind gave a perfect 22 second pour of a double shot.

That depends on the basket (usually 18-21g with a double basket)

Standard double shot is 14g. 21g will seriously overload most baskets and cause problems by the time you’ve tamped it enough to fit.

There’s nothing so annoying as going on a ride and having to miss large areas out because you’ve got someone new riding with you who would stack it on some trail features.

There is nothing more annoying as someone new to ride with someone who forgets what it was to be someone new.
I’ve moved about once every 2 years for the last 18 years, I’m reasonable on a bike, but I’ve been ‘someone new’ a lot more than most. I’ve met some wonderful people on my travels and the majority have been fantastic. Those less so have nearly all been the local trail warriors with no empathy for others, whether the others are new to the area and don’t know the trails or new to riding. Just try and remember what you were like before you were TEH AWESUM.

And yeah, i have been on the wrong side of the law according to what retribution i carried out and i received a rather unpleasant 6 week holiday but i’d do it again

Being double internet hard and stupid doesn’t make anything better.

Nothing said to the thief will sink in, the person will just nod and apologise until they are allowed to leave.

Not always. Have you ever been part of a reparation process? I have and it was pretty good. A young kid that did something very stupid was made to connect his actions with the results, met the people who had to deal with it and do something for them that went some way towards making things better. The feedback from his teachers down the line was positive. I’m not saying it can work for all, but it is a better idea than battering someone and doing time yourself like our hard man up there.

Go and see the art in the forest. Please. Don’t just go there and ride the mountain bike trails. Grizedale is so much more than that.

Hang the thieving scum.

i’d quite happily place a thief’s wrist on a block and whack them with a hammer

Internet hard men to the right, please. Letters to the Daily Mail to the far right. No, further over. Thank you.

the lack of ambition and the missing desire to improve

I bet they have other skills in life. I bet they just enjoy riding their bikes as well.

How much for your soul Matthew?

About the price of a small, generic bungalow.

6 6? Are you black and play professional basket ball?

Really? A new level of stupid, even for you.

I personally think you’d be putting lipstick on a pig. It’s a bungalow on a plot for a bungalow and any addition would be a huge compromise IMHO. What are your other options in the area?

I’m 6’7″ with a 23″ Turner Sultan, their XXL Sasquatch size. The XL would be about right for you.

matt – you’re not a snob. trail rat appears more of a forced reverse snob than anything. As for ‘it’s the people inside’ – yeah, right. That’s the sort of thinking that permits the construction industry to keep on throwing up gash buildings that don’t perform very well or support the wellbeing of the occupants.

I hope the house is at least in a good school district :D

Just gone from 175 to 180 on the SS, had to put the saddle up a bit

Erm……….down a bit? The pedal is now 5mm lower at the bottom of the rotation.

Any longer and you are into custom frame time to get the BB high enough. I’ve got longer legs than most and haven’t saved up enough to go up from 180mm and they seem fine to me.
Keep a look out for 180mm XT triples – that’s how I got my last ones.