See that’s completely irresponsible. Can’t that rider see the dog’s on a STRAVA run and he needs to get out of the way?

Light rain in Swindon. Glad I went out and panic bought 14 bottles of ale last night – although that has more to do with Swindon than the weather 😉

legally a group 2 / 3 booster seat (no back) that uses the normal seat is all that you require.

However in a stunning case of “no sh*t sherlock” a high back seat is recommended as it gives more protection – specifically side impact.

little mr and little miss trb are in high back seats that use the normal 3 point car seatbelts – 5 point harnesses were deemed far to much faff and considered a bit paranoid by me, especially as the kids like to so their own seatbelts

They both also have booster seats (just the base) in the 2nd car for short trips.

all to do with taste

Except when it tastes of fairy liquid 😯

mind you I do have some lemon scented swarfega, might try that next

My kids school was closed on friday – partly because someone phone in a hoax call to local radio and hence it was announced on the radio that it was closed.

Anyway in order to open today the school appealed to parents to help clear the paths and entrances, so I spent a hour up there last night clearing snow. Now I can feel smug in the knowledge that I did a little to help while 99% of the whingers have done nothing but whinge and moan.

Dunno, but I’m running a 6 yr old 105 bottom pull front mech on mine and the mudguard clearance is fine, which may or may not be of use to you!

Looking at the forecast it’ll be thermals + MTB for me. Looks like getting in will be OK, but getting home will be a nightmare, and there is no way I’m spending friday afternoon stuck in work when I could be out having fun on my bike (and feeling smug and being the fastest thing on the road :-))

Yeah, it was easy when I did it 10 yrs ago. As above, beware the solicitors. I had to get something signed under oath, ie in the presence of a solicitor, he tried to get me questioning things that were all sorted amicably and would have happily got me into the divorce money pit of ill feelings.

Considering it was about (and I guess here) 2 or 3 years late and Airbus’s direct competitor the A350XWB has yet to fly, no they didn’t rush.

Is it a big step technically? maybe, so maybe we should expect a lot of teething problems.
Did they have huge problems in design and manufacture? oh yes
Has so many faults in a short period created a huge amount of media attention? Yes.

Pools are great, way too expensive during the school holidays, but good deals to be had mid week in term time.

It is all a bit trueman show though, Some of the cashiers got grumpy when I refused to tell them my villa number at every single transaction, plus we couldn’t decide if the fences were there to keep them out or us in.

oh, and I showed mrs trb the mumsnet thread, she now refuses to go ever again….

wrong on so many levels, yet I’m interested and tempted, even if only to confirm my prejudices……

Cats sh*tting in their own garden? Very much to be encouraged IMO
If you stop them going in your garden, aren’t you just shifting the problem to one of your neighbours?
If you dislike your neighbours that much why don’t you just scoop it up a chuck it over the fence?

Can you tell I’m not a cat owner, but my neighbour is?

We do!!!

But generally only when we are out cycling and me & the little trbs break away from the peleton, leaving mrs trb to ride home on her own.

EDIT, sorry to bring road cycling into it…

Parenthood.

Less free time = make the most of your available riding hours = road bike with less driving, faffing about and cleaning

^^This.
I can be out on the road bike first thing, 30 miles get back, chuck it in the shed and have breakfast with the kids.

As long as I’m riding I’m happy, and currently the mtb costs too much in time and money.

My original one was a white gold one that I wrecked and the “white” rubbed off after 12 months. Still cost over £200. I did however manage to lose that one (luckily mrs trb was with me the day I did it)

So I’m now sporting a £16 titanium one from Amazon. Mrs trb is happy that I have a ring and I’m happy that I can take it off whenever I do anything vaguely dangerous without too much stress about losing it again.

My MIL is terrible for this. She can’t resist a “bargain” and buys all manner of short dated and broken “treats” crap from the man up the market, passing it on to us. This culminated in her giving us 2 catering size bags of those horrible pink wafer biscuits, and I just told her to put them straight in the bin and if she didn’t they would go in the bin the moment she left. She still does it now, but not quite as excessively.
Luckily mrs trb agreed with me but didn’t want to offend her mum over it, so she just hid!

I also once made the MIL put the 2nd pack of 18 yorkshire puds back in the freezer. She was about to cook 36 yorkshires for 5 people – 1 of which was only 4!

So back to the OP, You need to take control of the situation, but if you’re working against the mrs then I wish you luck. My kids are still eating christmas chocolate, but they only get it for desert, after their tea

Dad – large bag of mints and 4 tins of beer
Mum – nice soap, school photo of the grand kids and large bag of liqourice allsorts

If that seems cheap then the last time I spent more than £20 on them they got grumpy that I’d spent too much.

Mind you my kids will probably “buy” me a large bag of haribo and 4 tins of beer – and that will make me very happy indeed, so I appear to be turning into my dad…….

Dunno, I work in Swindon and have yet to haul my worthless, lazy backside the 2 mile detour to ride it.

But these are the people that do know and they have regular group rides there :
http://www.mbswindon.co.uk/

Somewhere in the depths of my memory I seem to recall a similar situation to this, where an MTB trial was moved away from nesting birds, and said birds upped and moved next to the new trial. The theory was that the MTBs proved no threat to the birds, but scared off predators.

It was a long time ago mind, so I may have been drunk and / or dreamt it up!

yeah, I’m 2-3 mph slower in winter, and it’s all of the above
* Big flappy waterproof
* More cautious on slippery surfaces
* Lower visibility
* Muscles complaining in the cold
* Just less comfortable and less enjoyable than in nice weather!

It’s definitely not my drivetrain as that’s in the same sh1t state all year!

Counter question; ever known someone with a degree who think’s it’s held them back?

Hmmm, the grass is always greener on the other side though.
My degree helped my get my first job, but 20 years on is largely irrelevant. I sometimes think that without a degree I’d have gone and done something more interesting.
Now I’m driving a desk with a mortgage and a family and would love to retrain to something more vocational, but the bills need paying and the kids will insist on eating and wearing shoes etc, so I can’t take the required short term financial hit right now.

My old boss never had a degree – he worked his way up from the shopfloor. But then again he will be MD one day as he’s very ambitious and is good at the corporate politics of which I hate

Getting up at 5am this morning to go swimming before work.
but to be fair I though it was foolish as well when the alarm went off!

I have a pair of marigold thermal gloves (£4.25 on ARCO – they are the ones people wear in supermarket cold stores) and stick a pair of Planet X windproof gloves over the top.
Cheap and toasty, plus you can ditch the marigolds if it warms up.

I think Andy Murray could take it. I’m thinking of mail reading people like my mum who love sitting down for 2 weeks every year shouting “come on tim Andy” and the LA stuff will have tarnished cycling for them. It’ll come down to wether they can be persuaded to vote (which my mum won’t)

But cyclists are a well organised and militant sort of bunch, so I’ll vote for Brad as a vote for a cyclist is akin to a vote for cycling and the news that 3 cyclists are nominated is over every cycling website today is just a hint of the campaign heading towards to persuade us as cyclists to vote for Wiggo. Plus he’s got a personality and I can appreciate what he’s achieved of course.

A colleague of mine loves gambling – it’d his hobby and he’ll bet on almost anything in sums from a fiver to a grand. But he puts all his gambling through a dedicated bank account so that he can keep tabs on it. A good year for him is when he breaks even.

So his hobby actually (probably) costs no more than a good MTB habit and he gets to stay indoors in the warm & dry this weather!

He does still make mistakes like going to the races, getting drunk and losing 2 grand chasing his loses!!

If there is crap unburied, on the lawn for example, then there’s a very good chance it’s from foxes.

Apart from my neighbours cat that I caught turning one out on my lawn, although watching the little begger running up the road with a t*rd hanging out of it’s a*se ‘cos it didn’t have time to pinch it off before I got to it always puts a smile on my face 😀

Alas lethal action is frowned upon, so I use an infrared spinkler which I find very effective. Just type “cat sprinkler” into ebay or amazon

Here you go, Last weeks thread on that exact subject

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/am-i-an-idot-spending-for-an-isla-bike

But to summarise. Yes they are.

surely “pinning” a driver who is waiting to pull out of a side street with a few hundred lumens form a helmet mounted spotlight is a good way to get you seen?

The driver will certainly see you, but the point of reference that you are giving him is 2 feet higher than he’s expecting. Therefore you look a lot farther away than you actually are. Which could be considered a bad thing

Reflective tyre walls here

Ohh yeah, my Tortec mudguards have reflective strips as well
http://www.sjscycles.co.uk/tortec-reflector-mudguards-prod15328/

if a driver pulls out without first being sure of how far the light source is, then that’s his bad, not mine

The reality being that if you’re not careful about how you appear to a driver, then quite often they ARE sure how far away you are…..right up to the point you go over the front of their bonnet

I have almost taken out a cyclist who had a silly bright flashing light mounted on his helmet. The fact that it was so bright and shining in my eyes meant I couldn’t focus on it (& him) plus the height made him look at least 100m farther away that he actually was, ie from my point of view his light was at the same angle as the car waaaayy back down the road.

Luckily I was so busy calling him a c*ck and wondering what type of light it was that I stopped where I was…. someone else may not have.

I ride with a halide light pointing down and to the left so that it’s useful for seeing the road, and have a hi vis vest and keep my wheel reflectors on (you know the ones we all take off as soon as we get a bike out of the box)

Little trb, on a hot sunny day as an rather rotund gent walked past with no shirt on :
“Dad Why’s that fat man got boobs?”

And my personal favourite
“Dad, you know Grandad is dead”
“Yes”
“Have the worms eaten his eyes?”

Oh and little miss trb asked “for the moon on a stick” last week – and had a strop when she didn’t get it.

If someone held a gun to my head and forced me to vote it would have to be for a politically independant (assuming someone like that is standing for my area)

As that is currenly unlikely to happen, I’m struggling to decide between not turning out and a spoilt ballot.
Trouble is a spoilt ballot shows that I do care and do actually have an opinion and thus giving the vote some small legitimacy, but by not voting I struggle to accept someone landing a £70k a year job on the back of apathy!

In the end it’ll probably come down to 2 things
1) Is it raining?
2) Do I fancy a pint on the way home?

Married with babies en route, so staying in will be on the cards anyway for a while and my wife understands and supports me (so far).

Sounds like me when I joined. If anything the pressure is worse for the missus. As you may be there, but she can’t leave you with the baby even for 10 minutes while she walks round the block for a pint of milk, and if the baby is playing up you can’t take it out in the buggy while she has a break and catches up on some sleep.

Of course little trb loved coming up the station and sitting in the big red truck while I did my routines – but again if I was booked on the missus had to come as well.
and you’ll be able to sit down and give Fireman Sam a critical review 😉

I paint a dark picture there, but it was too tough for me & mrs trb, especially when little trb #2 came along.

They’ll ask you a load of questions to make sure you aren’t racist or fattist or sexist or not-very-nice-ist.

They need you to do be committed as it costs a lot to train you and they don’t want you to leave after 12 months. They also want you to be reliable when the pager goes at 3am on a cold rainy sunday, and they need you to understand just how much commitment it takes to stay at home all weekend waiting for a call that never comes when it’s quiet, and then how much support you’ll get from your family and primary employer when it’s busy.

Also your motivation for joining – cash? Bored? new Challenge? Give something back to the community?
People that want the cash tend to stick it out when it gets tough.

To be fair the interviewers guided me to the right answers as the station was desperate for new staff – probably the wrong thing to do as I only lasted 18 months – couldn’t stand waiting in all weekend (sober and unable to ride your bike farther than 3 minutes from the station) to attend nothing but faulty alarms and burnt toast only to be shouted at for 2 hours every week at drill!

Good luck, and don’t underestimate the commitment you need. For those that like it they love it!

my lumenator eclipses my L&M Arc HID even on 50% power.

Could be nice new light time then, my Halide appears to be dimming with age which makes me cautious of just replacing the battery pack

A replacement battery is an option, but When I bought my Halide it was leader of the Lumens arms race for output. These days it feels a bit dim. So either the bulb is fading or I’m going blind. I really need to confirm if the Halide bulbs lose performance over time before I decide what to buy.

Hmmmmm, The battery on my old Lumicycle Halide eventually gave up last week after 8 or 9 years of service. I can get one of the MTB Batteries V2s for less than a new battery from Lumicycle

When I bought my halide I was an umarried, childless, “racer”
Now I’m skint, have got a family, mortgage and 99% of my night riding is on the commute, so how will v2 stack up against a 9yr old halide on dark country lanes at 25mph?

And – one for the experts, my Halide appears to have gone a bit monochrome and lost the depth of field – do they tend to fade over time?

We used to holiday with Freeride Spain, Oscar their German pointer used to come out on rides quite often. In fact he would lead on some of the singletrack sections and it was a struggle to keep up with him!

Worth keeping in mind that Tri’s are an absolute bastard to get an entry for

Nonsense. There must be a dozen within a 20 mile radius of my house and most are in the region of £30 for a pool based sprint to £45 for a lake based standard. You just have to adjust your sights from one of the blue ribbon events to a local one. Anything with IM in the title however I agree, Kerrrching!

Anyway get thee to a swim club or tri club swim session. That’s my only advice.

Personally I don’t like running, can’t do it and don’t enjoy it. so next years challenges will be a couple of road centuries, at least one 3km open water swim and the sprint tri at the local leisure centre (Beast the swim, beast the bike, walk the run!)

family & friends clubbed together to get junior trb a couple of starter packs and some vehicle sets for his 5th birthday. Hours of fun for all the family on a rainy sunday afternoon 😀

Once you’ve got a starter kit the good thing is that small additional sets are not too expensive. It’s a long term investment

I mentioned to his 15yr old cousin that he could feel free to pass on any of his collection. He refused. Wise boy