Spiv. As in the guy from Dads’ Army, “Wanna buy some silks darlin'”.

I’m guessing it means the fact that photographers have to spend money to archive files (external hard drives / DVDs, and also the time taken to do this.

My mate once said to me, “What do you want to be comfortable for? You’re mountain biking!”. He said this as I was whinging about having wet feet after cycling through the pond in the car park at Inners.

That said, I use one of the fender bender wee mudguards to keep the carp out of my contact lenses and wish I’d fitted one years ago. I also use a rear guard (anything will do) when it’s wet.

EDIT: in your face, MOFO 😀

Just got this email from photobox, if it helps any;

Hi Jamie, here are 5 great reasons to create 1 of our award-winning Hardcover Photo Books – with 35% off
1. Choose from 5 different Hardcover Photo Book shapes and sizes
2. Show off between 26 and 200+ of your photos in 1 Book
3. Create an A4 Photo Book in just 2 minutes, the Instant Way
4. Personalise your Photo Book with 50+ themes & layouts
5. Share your Photo Book online for free & post to Facebook
Offer code: HCOVER Offer ends: Thursday 23rd June

But I would still go with Blurb.

Blurb is the only one I use now having been through a few other suplliers – not tried photobox though…

Well, I do happen to own a uni…. Lidl special….

EDIT; and as a wedding photographer with a conscience and proper training, I don’t dare take risks either – must have got that from my engineer stepdad!

Spare us a quid for a cuppa mate? There but for the grace of God go I 😉 And on a 10-1 chance too!

And following my last post ^^^

cheez0 – Member
Can an engineer make a good businessman?

Engineers tend to be ‘thinkers’ (Check out NLP)

Thinkers weigh up the risks involved with starting a business, throwing their house/ relationships/ money into a ‘hair-brained’ scheme and most will turn away from that, preferring a little more security.

Entreprenuers, on the other hand may be ‘entertainers’ ignoring the risks and not caring about the facts in order to make their idea a reality. If the idea works, they become successful businessmen, and even if they dont they will likely try again.

I tend to agree with the Sugar.

I also agree with this to a degree… I am a show-off barsteward with the analytical thinking qualities of a slug – I just happen to have been lucky enough to hit upon a business idea which ‘makes my idea a reality’ and pays the bills. Had I sat down and properly thought about it, I’d never have got off the ground.

Hmmm. Well my stepdad was (is) a distinguished engineer specialising laterally in ROVs, hyperbaric stuff, mini-submersibles and general sub-sea spannering.

He was promoted to office work (project manager or somesuch) and so far as I could tell, he absolutely hated it – difficult to say as ex-navy types are even more emotionally retarded than most of the rest of us.

When he finally ‘retired’ a few years ago, he set up a down-pipe patent business and does very well indeed out of it, satisfying long supressed legal urges and making the most of his background and experience. Mr Sugar is just an expert at producing soundbites IMO…

TooTall – Member
If you base your experience of the North East on Sunderland, then you have a smaller town mentality than anyone around you.

I’ll have you know I’ve sinced moved to the far reaches of Houghton-Le-Spring, walk the dog near Chester-Le-Street and once evn met a bloke from Durham!!

Seriously though, I meant absolutely no offence to any North East folk and have lived in cities, towns and villages all over the UK – I base my experience of the North East against the background of my whole life, not the last ten years.

Don’t know if you remember that Panorama documentary about traffic wardens in Sunderland? The one where they used secret cameras to film the wardens targetting folk due to their skin colour? They also had lengthy conversations of a very racist nature and lots of them lost their jobs thereafter.

I watched it and thought it was tame compared to my old workplace – when I first moved to Sunderland (10 years ago now) I got a part time student summer job working at the beach, hiring deck chairs and the like.

The daily racism was a shock to me – skin colour not really a factor; foreigners all got it in the neck from my workmates. Indeed one of my colleagues was african and was told on a daily basis that he was a “black bastard” and was “taking the bread out of our mouths”. That lad was perfectly capable of standing up for himself so I didn’t feel the need to get involved, other than to have a quiet word with the boss about the staff room banter. Didn’t change anything…

Do I think the NE is less accepting of incomers? Yes, and I think that certainly in the case of Sunderland, it’s because it’s essentially a collection of villages, so retains a bit of a small town mentality. The first black / yellow / Polish faces were only seen here a decade or so ago (with the odd, rare exception) and the place is still adjusting to getting all cosmopolitan…!

OP – I reckon there’s nothing wrong with expressing your views – I wouldn’t go drinking with racists, but then I have a choice and feel your pain! You might not change the way they feel about it, but you will certainly feel better for being true to the way you feel…

TandemJeremy – Member
DEET works

Agree – it’s the only stuff that does. It also melted the plastic bezel on my dive watch and melts the outside of chocolate bar wrappers! I’ve always been a midge target and have tried everything from Avon’s SSS to bog-myrtle, to eating garlic in vast quantities.

DEET just does the job.

He’s looking happy SB – and I’m guessing he didn’t have a serious go at biting Mrs SB or she’d be lacking a limb 😯

Here’s Kasper running for a Matteson’s Fridge Raider…

That steroid dog ^^^ There’s a bunch of lads go hunting in the nearby country park with staffie-greyhound cross dogs – they look a bit like that abomination.

Done, but please don’t post the pics – got enough trauma in my life… 😀

SBZ – I take it all back – you do have a soul 😀

Waking up in a tent, fixing a coffee and just riding to the next destination (via a croissant shop) is what does it for me – especially if you’ll be doing the same thing for the next month or so…

Immerse the papers in trays of water, put the trays in the freezer (chest type is best) and book yourself onto one of Mr. Branson’s first anti-gravity, space flights.

When no-one is looking, quickly open the door of the aircraft and lob the whole lot into orbit. Jobsagoodun.

But seriously though, having given it a bit of thought, I do remember how it feels and stavromuller

No, just deal with it

is actually spot on. There’s no quick fix (unless grovelling and begging works).

I still remember staggering through a family reunion after being dumped in a strange city an hour beforehand. All I wanted to do was curl up in a dark room, but you’ve just got to struggle through I’m afraid.

Pull a slapper – genuinely works wonders for the ego (and the body). I have been the ‘slapper’ for others (girls) before now, and didn’t mind at all 🙂

One of the boss-men at my P/T job is a bit of a sad lonely twit loner. When he decided to get married, he went round to his ‘best mate’s’ house to ask him the best man question and the new house owner told him his mate had moved a year previously 🙁

Yup – dead easy to have a hospital appointment that day…

Sounds like you’re trying to do the right thing, and their charges sound mental! When you said you went £8 overdrawn, was that just £8 overdrawn, i.e. you had £-8 in the bank, or £8 over an agreed overdraft, i.e. £-1008 in the bank?

Ian – they gave me a personal loan to the value of my overdraft, resetting my balance to £0.00. The repayments come out of this account. So yes, it was originally -£8 overdrawn.

Northwind – I agree – I’ve been out since my last post but also can’t get it to add up. It includes both reurned item fees and also fees for honouring other DDs etc (the decision seems to be utterly arbitrary)but even with those added, it still doesn’t make sense…

Most annoyingly, the second I saw I’d gone into the OD for the second time, I transferred a largish wedge of cash to ensure further charges wouldn’t apply. Think I will call again tomorrow (when I’m a little calmer) and get them to go through it as many times as it takes for me to understand.

Cheers chaps – feeling a bit less punched-in-the-stomach now! brooess – I’ve a horrible feeling they’ve got me over a barrel with this one and plan to just suck it up…

Yup – I’m actually changing bank with immediate effect – the overdraft is being paid off through a personal loan with the payments coming outof the account in question – it was very slightly cheaper than continuing to pay the interest on the OD, as well as the frankly obscene ‘monthly maintenance fee’ just for having an OD…

LIKE ^^^

Well, seeing as this thread has been resurrected by the now removed spammy comment…. I wear Salomon shoes almost exclusively – I get them half price through working a few shifts a month at the local ski slope.

They’re just ace! I usually go for the XA Pro 3D Ultra GTX jobs – they get worn for riding, long daily dog walks, camping, hiking and even knocking about up mountains when it’s dry. Grip is phenomenal, the goretex liner lasts very well (like months, rather than weeks) and the fast-lace system is the nutz.

Also got a few pairs of mid-hi quasi-hiking boots (staff issue 😀 ) and they’ve taken some very serious abuse – still going strong after a year – impressed!

Not sure if I’d pay full price for the GTX trainers (£80-90) but Go Outdoors were selling them for about half that recently…

Good morning! I like it! I especially like the home page slide show. Not qualified to talk about the design of the site, but can make a few grammatical suggestions (well, you did ask!) 😀

Here at Lavatrax we stick to what we know best, the riding, so we don’t manage…..

Here at Lavatrax we stick to what we know best – the riding. So we don’t manage…….

So what type of Mountain Bike trails do we have in Tenerife and why should I go Mountain Biking in Tenerife?

Is OK, but I would use ‘you’ rather than ‘I’.

And actually, reading the next paragraph, I can immediately see several more minor and forgivable errors but am too tired to go through them all (e.g., ‘…islands…’ should have an apostrophe). Yadda, yadda.

There’s also a lot of extraneous text IMHO. You want to grab, and hold the reader’s attention and you could easily cut the home page text in half whilst retaining the meaning. Some facts are stated twice (OK so it’s for everyone / riders of all abilities – once is enough 🙂 ).

Overall though, it’s a solid, clean looking site. Easy to navigate around and well put together. The above ^^^ is just me being niggly, but it seems many STW riders are grammar pedants, and by extension, perhaps many MTBers too!

Went out with the dog tonight hoping for a bit of evening light on the poppy field I usually pass at 60mph – there was a little, very warm light so got the tripod set up quickly….

Then trudged up the hill to see what was happening on the other side – glad I made the effort now 😀

Jaysus – these companies who hire some marketing bellend to work on raising the profile of the company through social networking media / random Google searches want boycotting. ^this^means^you.

Rotational forces = nil. Win.

Internet banking

It always astounds me the number of my clients who are too scared to use internet banking. I always ask for payment through online bank transfer and one of three will still insist on sending a cheque or going into their branch.

When asked why, they tell me there’s too many scams around to use internet banking!??! My clients are typically bright young things between the ages of 20 and 35.

No going off half-cocked then….

Peachos – turns out the guy I mentioned above phoned a specialist task force – I asked him how he went about the whole thing and he says to email cycletaskforce@met.police.uk and they’ll guide you through the process. If I understand this correctly, they exist solely to retrieve stolen bikes and will help you using the course of action above…

My mate’s brother was in exactly this situation a few weeks back and I foolowed the saga on Facebook. He basically ‘bought’ the bike over the phone, got the guy’s address, phoned the police and told them he was going round to collect it, and would they like to attend as it might get a bit messy.

Did the job – the police came out, went with him to reclaim the bike and it was a happy ending.

Ah – didn’t realise it was on a TT 😳 What he says then ^^

I’ve always stuck sensors on the front wheel, and even then, they have to go a good way down the fork leg to be close enough to register the spokey-dokey widget… Zip ties are ten a penny – don’t bother shortening the cable, just wind it round the front brake hose to reduce the length.

I’d just go for a flimsy shelter / shed to keep the worst of the weather off it and then invest in a mahoosive ground anchor and chain.

This was supposed to be a troll thread, right?

No 🙁

One useful thing my stepdad taught me recently, is to give a good burst of throttle just before the apex of small humpbacks on roads (plenty of these where he now lives on Skye). The effect (in theory) of this, is that it compresses the springs and ensures you don’t take the sump out on the downside / dip of the hump, because by that time the springs are all pushing back up.

What’s more, it actually works IM (real world) E. gets a tad scary if there a few in quick succession as you can end up doing 70 on a singletrack road….

cruzheckler – you depress the clutch once to put the gearbox into neutral, let the clutch back out, depress it again, select gear, let clutch out again.

Don’t think I’ll bother now though…

EDIT – Cougar – you may be on the money re the vintage car thing – my dad has a bit of a fleet of vintage cars / commercial vehicles / taxis but he’s not overly smug!

I bought a 2nd hand petrol Flymo on ebay with local pickup only for about £40. It starts and works perfectly with very minimal intervention from me.

Needed it as we have a very long garden and I wanted to be able to mow out the back of the garage too, which would have involved two extension cables and lots of faffing.

It cuts through pretty much anything I throw at it with burbling enthusiasm. It’s small, light and surprisingly powerful. Just wish I’d bought one with a bag, as the raking gets a bit tiresome…