Buy the most expensive house you can possibly afford. Money is so tight now due to my massive mortgage I’m not sure that was good advice at all. Although I’m sure it’ll work out in the long run!

The thread’s turned into a defensive masterclass from the T5 owners justifying to themselves, as much as the ‘STW nay-sayers’ why they own one 😉

I’d love a LWB by the way, I think they’re great, would be brilliant for lugging my family of four, two dogs, all our stuff and our bikes on cottage self-catering holidays. If I were a rich man etc.

How tall are you? Are you riding street, park, trails etc? If I was in the market right now for a complete new BMX I’d go for something like this, a good all-rounder, probably this in fact:

http://www.winstanleysbmx.com/product/66208/WeThePeople_Crysis_2014_BMX_Bike

21″ tt full crmo frame, 3 pc cranks, good components all over and good for someone up to and a little over 6′ tall. What do you class as cheap by the way?

Does taking one off the wall to put on the floor to prop a door open, only to accidentally spray it all over my bosses PC in the office count?

Exactly as scotroutes said. I’ve had a terrible run of luck so far this year having bent 2 hangers and snapped 1 (and also bent 3 rear mechs as it happens) I have straightened the 2 bent hangers and keep them in my pack as ‘get me home’ options, with a new one fitted on the bike.

Bizarrely, after the ‘Built a bike for an ungrateful female friend’ thread, I had a dream that I saw my Mum walking towards me, and my best mate said ‘Wilk, here comes your Mum, I’m gonna hoof her in the slats’

Every time I’ve seen a sounder they do nothing but carry on snuffling around and barely even lift a snout to look at me. If you’ve got unruly dogs with you however, different story (not that I have, there’s no way I’d let my dogs off the leash in the forest!)

Pedals, shoe grip and suspension have little to do with it. It’s all about technique. I learnt to drop on a BMX with well slippy pedals. learn to drop off a 6 or 8″ curb first, relax and land comfortably both wheels at the same time, bend you legs on landing to make it nice and smooth. Stay nice and loose. The technique is then the same for any size drop.

Yes, although I was wearing a raincoat, the poor whippets got so wet they completely changed colour. They were very sorrowful by the time we got home

Our 18mth old is on a cheapo Trax from Halfords with 10″ wheels. He was so keen on copying his big sister riding her Stomp Stompee I had to find a tiny balance bike that he could fit on at the age of 15 months. I wouldn’t recommend it to any bigger/older children as to be fair its a wobbly badly built piece of crap. As soon as he’s big enough he’ll be on his sisters Stompee (she’s currently learning to ride a pedal bike) which strikes a good compromise between quality and price at £50 delivered.

I was somewhat limited in choice as I needed a layback post. That led me to getting a KS Dropzone from Germany for around £140. It’s been brilliant. And the remote lever replaces one of the ODI clamps on my grips which I also really like. Very happy with it. Whether that classes as budget or not I don’t know, but I’d not hesitate to get another.

I bought New Vegas second hand last week for 4.99. Bargain. Its blimmin brilliant, albeit buggy and with pretty pants graphics by todays standards. But still an amazing, immersive, massive, fun and addictive game.

4 year old and 18 month old sat on my back as I do press-ups is amazing for upper body and core 😀

That the temperature of the earths core is about 6000 C, and its cooling at the rate of about 100 C every billion years. Bit like a McDonalds apple pie.

I wondered who actually built Rush Skatepark 😀

If you open up the ride on the Strava website, there is a little spanner symbol to the left. Click this and you have the option to ‘Export GPX’ which will allow you to save the GPX file somewhere on your computer. Et voila! That GPX file can then be emailed to friendly (EDIT: and massively grateful) STW’ers to enable them to follow your route when they are on holiday in North Devon later in June 🙂

Okay cheers, haven’t tried that. I’ll turn on the heatmap and see if it follows the routes I want to take.

ifra – sounds great, do you have a gpx by any chance?

Not looking that great then! Don’t suppose anyone can point me in the direction of a good route/gpx taking in the best stuff please? I can return the favour if ever anyone’s heading to FoD with some excellent off-piste routes 🙂

One more go – any evening Exmoor folk around? Thanks 🙂

Any afternoon Exmoor folk on here?

I’ve taken magazine reviews with a pinch of salt since my motorbiking years. Back then it was all, for example, “the meaty midrange of the ZX6R stomps all over the GSXR600 between 6 and 8000rpm” blah blah blah. They were both 600cc supersports bikes weighing pretty much the same – go and ride one, find out which fits you best and looks best in the flesh. Same for MTB. Marginal differences over-exaggerated in magazines. All perfectly capable of performing the task they were designed to do. IMO!

I definitely allow my kids to get away with playing more dangerously when Mrs Wilko isn’t around. I bought our 14 mth old son a balance bike as he was very tall for his age, had been walking (and running) for months and was very interested in his big sister’s. Mrs Wilko was not at all keen on the idea but he’s bombing about on it now, aged 18 mths (with only a few cuts on his face to show for it 😳 )

If you have a ride planned but have a pants sleep the night before and get up feeling like a zombie – force yourself out on the bike. You will feel much better and will enjoy it. Sometimes both Mum and Baby are miserable for one reason or other, it makes a big difference having a happy face in the house, even if you do feel a bit guilty for leaving them to it while you enjoy the great outdoors.

As others have said, work with your partner, communicate effectively (easier said than done when both horribly sleep-deprived) You will find a compromise where you ride enough to keep you happy whilst still having time to provide enough support for her. I ride as much now as I did before both of our kids came along, they’re now 18 months and 4 years old.

One other compromise to make was on the n+1 theory. I now have a full suss, an xc hardtail and a BMX. I can’t afford any more bikes, nor do I have the time to build any more, or the space to keep them!

A friend of mine rides a Parkwood when he’s not ragging his Mojo HD. He rides bl88dy hard and fast, hits pretty sizeable jumps and it handles it well. I was considering one to replace my Scandal, but now going full suss instead.

P-Jay if you wanted to have a go at dragging your G-spot round the Wild Boar, someone in our club has an entry going spare. My email is in my profile.

No, I was wondering about the same thing regarding the GPX. I want to check it out before-hand to see if there’s any cheeky singletrack sections I can divert across instead of the official route 😉 not to cheat on my finishing time mind, just because there’s so much good stuff hidden away over there!

The Wild Boar won’t affect either the Verderers or Freeminers. Admittedly the official route hasn’t been released yet but normally it doesn’t go anywhere near the Pedalabikeaway marked trails.

That Rose looks great, nice one. Ideal for the Nutcracker, did a big Dartmoor loop last year that took in Lustleigh area, bl88dy brilliant riding.

Oh dear, what’s your new bike then? I’m probably going to be on my Blur LT with 160mm Pikes which is totally inappropriate but bl88dy comfy 🙂

Had various MK2s 8Vs in the 90s, but my favourite Golf I owned was a MK1 1983 1.8GTi. It had 260,000 miles on the clock when I bought it but was in amazing condition. It was a bit quicker off the line than my mates MK2 16Vs, it wasn’t until you hit about 70 that they would pull level and pull away. Great fun, miss it loads.

Uh-oh we’re back to the double entendres

It’s going to be very difficult to ignore so much good singletrack and stay on the Wild Boar to be fair especially if the weather’s good and the trails dry.

As above, Greggs Belgian Buns – iced to within an inch of their lives, they’re soo-bl88dy-perb

I’m in. Currently having a bit of a dilemma over what to ride, my Scandal 29er seems like the obvious choice but I’ve been finding it back-crippingly uncomfortable lately. I’ll probably end up dragging my full suss round as I’m used to long FoD off-piste rides on that. Planning on doing the Full Boar.

Don’t know which route to advise you, I’ve never done the event before!

Struggling to eat custard slices or cream slices? Rotate them 90 degrees around their longitudinal axis and its pretty much problem solved 🙂

All the above areas have some really good riding. Plus of course all the stuff in Nibley and Stinchcombe. Nibley has some great DH runs, a good quarry area to play in by Tyndales monument (this is where the DH runs start too) Good singletrack and bridleways between Nibley and Stinchcombe. Stinchcombe has DH type stuff, jumpy runs, some steeper trails and more singletrack. Good area to move to. I’m in Bigfoot and currently there’s 3 or 4 club rides per week mostly based in the areas qwerty mentions. There’s quite often Stinchcombe and Nibley rides too though. Plus we get over to FoD as much as possible as some of us know shed-loads of off-piste stuff 🙂

Jedi showed us to ride outside foot down, something I feel far more comfortable doing on left-handers. This is mainly due to my goofy stance on the bike – right foot forward when coasting along. Although as I mentioned above I’ve practised loads in the last year and feel much better on right-handers too, although its still not as instinctive.

And you can drown in an inch of water

Had a Jedi course, was brilliant. However, if you don’t go out and practice regularly, and keep reminding yourself of the things you’ve learned, then you do tend to slip back into old habits. Practice and remind yourself regularly and it will eventually stick