Personally I’d just drive my car home as normal (EDIT and change the oil on Saturday)

However I’d still advise someone else to get it towed and change the oil

Why is she topping up the antifreze anyway? If she’s losing water then she has more problems and possibly a blown hose or head gasket.
*FFFFFFFSSSSHHHHH deep breath in whilst rubbing chin, that’s gonna cost you love*

I’ve got 3 Defined contributions (2 frozen), currently I pay 5% the company pays 10%. It’s a way to get another 10% from the company, plus payments get tax relief.

I’m under the impression that things are requlated a lot more tightly after the Maxwell & Equitable life things?

Mrs trb is a nurse, so her birth plan read something like “You let any Doctors near me and you die, no, first I’ll divorce you and then you’ll die”

So we had both of ours at a Midwife lead unit (which was still 20 minutes away from the hospital under blue lights). A very pleasent experience, mrs trb stayed in for a couple of nights with no 1 which was her choice, No 2 we rolled in at 5pm and were home for a cuppa by 11:30pm. Not hugely different from a home birth but she had the moral support of a couple other new mums and there was less cleaning.

My sister had one of hers at home, someone forgot to send the adaptor to connect the gas & air, so she had a drug free birth – which sounds lovely in the NCT class, not sure she appreciated it at the time though.

No,

/troll/ Of course the yes’s will be in the majority on here – the work shy public workers are all on STW instead of manning the picketlines! /troll/ 😉

Apparently,

A range of sports experts from newspapers and magazines across the UK were asked to send in their top 10 selections

BBC how they voted

Quite interesting to see which papers align with which sports

Par for the course, our 18 month old has been ill with various infections constantly for the last month, yesterday our GP was concerned enough to call us at home to check she was OK.

As well as being exposed to all sorts at playgroups, their immunity can be reduced when teething at this age, and little miss trb doesn’t cut a tooth without at least 3 nights of truama.

Her big brother is a lot more robust. We had a vomiting bug a while back that made little miss trb projectile vomit for 2 days, made mrs trb take to her bed for 36 hours, made me poorly for 12 hours and made little mr trb eat slightly fewer cornflakes for breakfast!

Don’t worry too much about everyone else’s anectdotal evidence.

I was healthy until the kids went to nursery & school, now they give every cough, cold & sniffle going.

Turn it upside down, clamp setpost in a vice and twist the frame.

cornwall was once perfectly described to me as a shit picture in a beautiful frame, meaning the coast is glorious but the interior is ugly.

Go careful there, I grew in the interior of cornwall. You are right mind. Nothing romantic or picturesque about a night shift in the open cast mine I used to work in.

I’d stick to devon, there’s too many english people in cornwall already.

Just stored all of my chillis in the form of Thai curry paste, frozen in ice cube trays.

Thai curry for tea tonight with Pumpkin, Butternut squash, green beens and maybe some brocolli & leek. Not what you’d call a classic Thai recipe, but it’s what I’ve got from the allotment at the moment!

Little trb was 4 when his great grandad died and now knows that we had a special bonfire and buried great grandad in the ground for the worms to eat.

As for animals going to heaven, that gets a bit freaky when you think of sharing it with all the chickens, pigs, cows, sheep & fish that most of us have eaten.
In fact that’s the best reason to go veggy that I’ve ever come up with!

Unless of course we bend reality to suit our favoured religion, and only admit pets. 😀

It’s a VW van with windows. Therefore someone will buy it, probably for more cash than you expect.

I’d fix the rust, put some shiney paint on, lower it & add alloys.
But I’m not allowed to buy any more bikes let alone cars or vans ;-(

I’m on the list, and I carry a card, and my family know that I’ll come back and haunt them if they override my wishes (or if they leave flowers by the roadside should I become a traffic statistic, but that’s another topic)

I passed 1st time 23 years ago when we did O levels and had proper cars, so obviously I’m a driving God. 😆

Of the above failures fewer have stated that they failed due to driving like a muppet, than have accused the driving examiners of not doing their jobs properly, now that is a worry and sadly indictative of the driving attitudes of the general population!

The driving test is not there to see if you are a driving god or not. It’s there to (try and) make you less of a danger to yourself and others when you hit the road. So obviously parts of it don’t align to your dad & mates driving styles.

My (thankfully) ex wife failed 4 times, in her opinion mostly down to the examiners imcompetence, in my opinion she was an unsafe driver

Budget wise I was looking at a Boardman Team Carbon (10) which is about £1000

Nothing wrong with that bike – in fact if I was after a road bike I’d consider it. Not what I’d go for as a commuter though. Check it’s got rack and mudguard mounts, will it get nicked? The best anti-theft device is a bike that doesn’t look too flash.
Plus to get a Carbon frame under the magic cycle to work grand mark there are sometimes compromises on the wheels and groupset, so if you buy it and you ride it all winter, budget for new wheels & groupset next spring

As above really.

Personally I’d look at flat bar road bike with a hub gear and a set of bar ends, mud guards and a pannier rack. But then I have a pathalogical hatred of drop bars!

Most of the bikes you’ll be looking at will have a compact or triple chainset – don’t make the mistake I did and buy a special offer and then discover it has a full big-gear-dinner-plate-hard-man road chain set on the first steep hill.

Don’t wear a Hi vis and then put a backpack on top so that no-one can see it….

Ribble and Planet X generally have sizing charts on their websites for a bit of background info, but you’ll still want to sit on the bikes.
Planet X have a show room – never been there, but it’s up north somewhere
http://www.planet-x-bikes.co.uk/how-to-find-us/

Becuase if you sustained an avoidable head injury (however statistically small the chances may be) they would be the ones who had to deal with the consequences

Or maybe it’s just their rules and rules is rules

Or maybe they took offence to your hairstyle

I’ve owned some good cars and some nice cars, but cars I’m glad I’ve owned (past tense) include an Austin Allegro (in beige) and a Morris Ital.

We had lots of fun in those cars as teenagers but they made me appreciate the good cars and nice cars all the more!

Sounds good chaps. I knew STW would have the required knowledge.

Thus far I have just “gone for a run” (bearing in mind I couldn’t even complete 5k back in feb).

This weekend I was top 30 for the swim, top 30 for the bike and bottom 20 for the run. So if I want to improve I need to face my demon and do proper run training.

Is the rim cracked? Check for any cracks especially around the spoke holes.

If no cracks, then it’s probably fixable, but you may not get it perfect again if you’re doing it yourself.

If you’re taking it to a shop it may be just as cheap to stick a new rim on by the time you’ve paid the labour to get it straightened.

I’ll contradict gunna and say take the CX bike. There is not a lot of decent, joined up, legal riding local to newquay – the locals can string a good ride together, but you’ll struggle. There is however loads of family/tourist trails and country lanes that make for a very nice ride. No big hills, but no flat bits either.

From Newquay I’d ride up the coast to Padstow, then turn back inland and ride though St Wenn on the way home. If you want to go further take the camel trail all the way (you lose the bike hire people after wadebridge) to Blisland up on the moor and then back through the lanes.

Or head to here. Family trails with the odd offshoot that will test a CX bike and lots of picturesque vistas, plus tea & cake!
http://www.cornwallcyclehire.com/

I used to find that wire beaded tyres didn’t blow out as easily on my rimmed braked touring tandem, when I overheated them on a 20km mountain pass.

This may seem rather over specific to you, but it was important to me at the time.

It’s back to Cheap, Light, Strong – pick any two!

I can remember being bored sensless in the summer holidays. I did all the rose tinted stuff above, plus had a field bike with antisocial exhuast to terrorise the moors on & use the petrol to make petrol bombs.
Then I discovered summer jobs, disposable income, lager and girls.

The adults have changed, not the kids. We once had a farmer empty both barrels of a 12 bore over our heads as we rode past his farm (again). My mum just told me to stop riding past his farm – He’d have had the local ARU round these days!

We have a Dawes double edge. 19/17″

It’s a good entry level, easy offroad job with lots of potential to upgrade if required.

It’s done 4 month tours with me & the missus and currently has kiddie cranks for 4 yr old little trb #1 & a rear seat for 18 month old little trb #2.

RRP £1300, so you’ll get one on-line old stock or second hand for less.

http://www.dawescycles.com/p-156-double-edge.aspx

Edit : The discovery twin is the same frame, lower spec for exactly a grand

Sounds like my shed.

12V trickle charger from maplins, old car battery. Couple of 12v lights from Go outdoors, old car radio, job’s a good ‘un.

If you need instructions & links to do that I’d question your ability to tie your own shoes 😉

I only have to go indoors for more tea & a wee

Yes. Used it for years. The wax help to stop mud from sticking to the bike next time out.
I try not to get it on the discs, but have never noticed a problem when I do.

Crikey, do you ride through grinding paste? Or do you have a very strict definition of worn out?

My commuter is on the original cassette and 3rd chain after 6,500 miles.

IME cheaper cassettes last longer as they are made of heavier/more material and so wear better. As for chains – buy a proper chain checker

With that wear rate though I’d be investing in an Alfine hub and heavy duty BMX chains

Because little trb was too small for a pedal bike at 2, he used it as a means of transport for going the shops/park/nursery for 18 months so it got him out of a pram and got him active, he went on to a pedal bike without the need for stabilisers. Plus it was the envy of all his mates and he was much quicker and fell off less than those with stabilisers
littlest trb now has a balance bike to use when she’s big enough.

I spent money on a Isla bike, so I’ll still be able to sell it on for 50% of the purchase price once both my kids have finished with it.

I feel slightly grubby now that I’ve fallen for your blatant trolling

There are literally thousands of places to stay, I’d recommend my mum’s caravans, but they are good quality and well priced, so are booked solid by this time of year, which you may or may not find a problem.

With a little one, I’d recommend Dairyland (near Summercourt) just because the cost of entry gets you free re-entry for the rest of the week and they have a good soft play area. That was a life saver on one particulary rainy trip we had.

On a more sensible note, the ferry that trundles from falmouth up to truro and back is a very nice trip.

Surfmat will be along in a mo no doubt

I took redundancy at the ripe old age of 35 sold the house and used the money to fund an 8 month trip for me & the missus (inc 4 month cycling around NZ). This was prior to buying a “keeper” house, getting married and having kids mind.

I can now see that mrs trb is cleverer than me and realised I needed to get it out of my system before we settled done properly, so she encouraged it all the way.

One thought – the kids are due 6 weeks off soon, get the time off work somehow and take them on an extended holiday – we met a family trekking in Thailand who reckoned it was cheaper than spending 6 weeks in the UK with bored kids

Retire at 65 twist
“Retire” at 55 Stick

My missus is sticking as at currently work levels she’ll be burnt out by 45 let alone 65! So the plan is to “retire” early and get a less stressful job to tick over with until proper retirement.

About 9 or 10 months in a rear mounted bike seat.

Although to be fair, that was April, so any earlier and the weather would have made things less enjoyable.

I forgot to add, If you are going up to Lake Tahoe check out the tahoe city inn
http://www.tahoecityinn.com/accomodations.html

Overall it’s pretty average, but the double rooms had heart shaped hot tubs when we stayed there. So cheesy it’s cool!
Horse riding and biking is good up there as well.

It was a few years ago, but we just rocked up to the Mammoth mountain resort hotel and got a top room really cheap what with it being out of seaon (this was in september). Get up, eat breakfast, walk across the carpark to bike hire shop, ride bike 10 yard to lifts, up to top, choose trail down, repeat for 6 hours.

I got to ride the Kamikaze a la JMC and Tomac 🙂

I still have my souvenier beer glass “Mammoth mountain ale – a brew with altitude”

Little trb – hit his friend over the head with a saucepan – a proper one mind, not a toy plastic one.

We found that sticker charts with a reward of his choice when chart was full worked wonders for a while. Then we also noticed a serious decline in behaviour the day after the chart finished…..

The naughty step does work, but little trb put me on the naughty step for drinking too much beer once – bliss, 40 minutes of sitting quietly!!

The only thing I remember was never to threaten anything I wouldn’t carry out

Mrs trb said this to me once when I threatened to drive everyone home 200 miles from our holiday if the boy didn’t get back into bed at 2am.
The look on her face when I told her I meant it was a picture – and the boy got back in bed PDQ.

My last factory got “Unite the Onion” in and as a non union member they were a pain in the a*se, bickering over little things and generally delaying things.

Until we got shut down and production relocated, they then pulled out the big guns and secured a very good financial deal for the guys that travelled extensively to support the relocation. We all still lost our jobs and the redundancy package was very good pre union anyway.

The interesting coincidence is that approx 2 years after the arrival of the union we got shut down. The company could have chosen another factory that didn’t have a union, but it chose us.

you’re supposed to let it season for at least a year before burning it though, ……. and the sap can apparently cause chimney fires

Sap from any poorly seasoned wood is one of the main sources of fuel for chimney fires – Not getting your chimney swept and allowing the sap to build up is the cause of chimney fires.
Yes I have spent a few cold winter evenings squirting water up / down a chimney while the watch manager explained the need to have your chimney swept to someone who’s just had a wood burner installed!

Free. Because I saved up and bought one I could afford

Beaten to it

I take it that gear1 is road and gear2 is offroad?

Anyway it’s all down to chain line and chain tension. If you’ve got the right spacers on the back wheel then chain line is no problem. Personally that’s where my knowledge ends as I have a slidey dropout, so I don’t need a tensioner and so I don’t know how easy they are to get right.

Of course you’ll be wanting 2 chains of differing lengths

Cool, Thanks for the tips