Steak and eggs

Mmm…Osprey…

I bought a Raptor last summer and it’s not bad. The belt buckle is pretty puny and no surprises that it’s eventually cracked. Plus why wouldn’t you make it out of waterproof material? that said, it’s well laid out and very comfortable. Not perfect though.

You miserable buggers.

I had a nice long ride today. Parts of the NDW were heaving with walkers but it was fun. I got cheered up a big bastard climb, shared a joke or two with most of them (always one sour faced git isn’t there), got rained on, bonked badly 15 miles from home and rolled back in a right state :D

Kids are having a Harry Potter marathon this afternoon, Mrs is out at aikido training and I’m sat on the sofa eating my way back to health.

Better than working for someone else.

This is a dent.

Still post a pic tho. I like kleins. :-)

It’s also absolutely flippin’ batcrap crazy fast and good fun to ride when the weather is good

And…..it puts a smile on your face when you ride it

You should sell a different bike if you have to let one go. One that doesn’t make you smile as much.

I had exactly that kind of commute. Back roads/gravel track with a couple of steep hills chucked in.

I built up a cheapo hardtail with steel forks, 1 x 9 gearing, flat bars/bar ends and super strong trekking tyres. When it retired last year I’d racked up over 15,000 commuting miles. It was the perfect set up. The tyres were HEAVY and a little sketchy in really, really bad conditions but I reckon I had only 4 or 5 punctures in five years.

make some sausages?

Simple, but brilliant

How much does it weigh?

Spot in Hora. If it doesn’t look right or feel right then it’s likely to not be right.

Glad she’s ok OP.

Another STW’er in the Garden of England.

History of mental health issues or significant drug use?
Likelihood of drink being spiked?
Can you trust her mates?

Make your decision to seek further attention based on what you know not a bunch of guys on a different continent who don’t know you. Gut instinct FTW

For the record, I really enjoyed his ‘the following’ review and it’s the next bike I’m buying.

The responses were hilarious though.

Whatever you do, DONT review it ;-)

Do a saddle up pic

The one with the biggest tits

My dogs do not like cats because cats are arseholes.

This is crux of the matter. My sister has a cat. A massive, violent, vile shitbag of malice and cunning. It would attack anyone on sight regardless of age or species. We had to look after it for a couple of days before my sister’s wedding. Most of time it was OK as the bastard was behind locked doors in the other part of the house. But the only route up to bed lay on its route. After a couple of abortive attempts to shoo it away which resulted in me losing a sock we hatched a plan…me, Mrs yossarian, the kids and my mum got a load of cardboard from the garage and formed a fairly decent testudo as favoured by the Roman Legions:

We managed to drive the £&@#er into the conservatory where it stayed until we left.

My 2 cats on the other hand are lovely. :-)

Off to St Remy in Provence first week in June.

Then possibly Rome in August and NYC at Christmas.

Haven’t had an OS holiday for nearly a decade and the kids are old enough to enjoy it and have an input now.

Is the cat now strutting around the house like a big shot?

1-0 to the cat.

Law of the jungle innit. Offer to get the dog some self-defence classes if the owner kicks up. And maybe a little tiara.

What would I do with the cat? Wait til you are alone with it and nod approvingly.

Sounds like some rubbish experiences for other people.

My 2p, for what it’s worth is this – ordered a carbon hardtail off them last summer. Came on the day they said it would. Had an issue with the rear mech hanger bolt (which is suspect was caused either in assembly by Canyon or by a bike shop I used for the first and last time). I emailed Canyon to get some advice and was a little surprised to get a phone call from them about 30 minutes later! I dropped the bike into their service centre in London, went for a coffee and an hour later everything had been sorted FOC.

First ride out on new bike after a couple of years not riding at all.

Ride without incident to the first bit of single-track which is very easy roll-in and let out a let out a whoop and a little shout of ‘I’m back’. Front wheel gets hooked up in the smallest rut possible at the top and I’m OTB and cartwheeling down, laughing at the fact that I’ve crashed within 3 seconds of my return to mountain biking. What a dick.

Actually as I’ve been typing this whilst sat in the back garden, one of our cats has just attempted to walk along a sloping roof, slipped off and fallen into bucket full of dirty water below. It must be catching

Fromageries Arnaud Comte
Colston Basset Stilton

This place is rather good – http://www.thecheesebox.co.uk

Great, great batting from the Windies.

It’s gonna be a fantastic final!!

Ahem, small island, edge of North Atlantic, no palm trees, blame thatcher.

It’s no worse than it’s ever been. Just look on it as resistance training. This morning’s ride out south was tough but the ride home was awesome!

I’ve got one nice bike, pretty much all the kit I need and some fairly good local routes. Pretty content actually. Yes, of course I’d like a couple more bikes but I wouldn’t ride 3 times as often if I had them.

What I really want is an end to the 9-5 every weekday. I don’t really give a toss about money, rather have time.

1. More cheese
2. More cheese
3. More cheese

a mate of mine illustrates for BPRD/Hellboy. His work is painstaking and magnificent.

The medium is spot on for me. I’m 43 and I get a stiff back pretty easily these days. Any hardtail I can ride for 5 hours at a time must fit pretty well

I’ve got a CF SL 7.9 I think, can’t remember the exact model. I regularly do 50 milers on it, mainly loamy, woodland xc with a few roots and lumps chucked in and it’s very comfortable. Some tubeless 2.4s at 25psi plus a 70mm stem and carbon bars seems to suit. Still bloody quick uphill (everything’s relative remember)

I’d say it’s a great choice for long xc style days out.

A number of things:

The results of the restructure at work. Initially they’ve slimmed my role down, taken all the stuff I’m brilliant at off me, broken up the things that were working really well and left me with the stuff I can do in my sleep. For the same money I was on previously. I’m not convinced it’s ‘deliberate’, just knee jerk stupidity from out of touch and overly political senior management. I’m considering my options….

My side project to kick off. Very exciting piece of work that has massive mileage in the sector and beyond. Halfway through the trial period, so perhaps another 3 to 6 months before it’s ready to go. Lots of interest and an invite to speak in front of a 100 or so interested parties later this week.

It’s a balancing act at the moment

Couple of weeks back I received a letter from tesco bank telling me that they’d screwed up with the t’s and c’s on a loan I’d had with them. Plus a cheque for 3 and a half grand.

I was massively hung over so didn’t really take it in at the time.

I’m fairly poorly informed on this so far but it’s fair to say that I am completely torn down the middle. Leaving aside the political ‘personalities’ and their generally grubby attempts to hijack this for their careers, I genuinely don’t know which side I’m on.

Stay:

Play a central part in the European experiment, develop the strongest possible links that protect workers, be part of something that supports us as much as we support it.

Leave:

Change the way we do things. Make a new model that might perhaps be a better way forward. Protect our essential services and be able to negotiate on our own terms with anyone.

I suppose I’m a bit of a Luddite. I’d like to see a return to an economy that provides the majority of our needs from within our own borders. I’d like to see countries and communities build up their own resilience to free market trends and see an improvement in aspirations and opportunities for the young. Which side fits that best? I don’t know. Staying perhaps fits some of those but within a larger, more chaotic whole that offsets those benefits with other imposed challenges. Leaving would be a leap into the unknown (and run the risk of promoting some pretty odious politicians), but I wonder if it’s time to do something completely new. Will be reading a lot on the subject over the next few months for sure.

I don’t bloody know

Not sure that this thread would inspire me to buy a Canyon! At a rough count there were 11 warranty issues on 20 bikes! Their service may be good but it does look like a lot of issues!

Err…..the thread is specifically about people’s experiences of using the after sales service……you’d probably expect people to post who’d had a problem….

https://www.canyon.com/en-gb/mtb/grand-canyon/2016/grand-canyon-cf-sl-7-9.html

Pissing in the sink/garden/wardrobe after a night out with the chaps.

It’s practically bullying imo.

New bars, stem and saddle went on today. Bit of extra sealant in the rear tyre then a little poodle around to check how it all feels. Saddle is awesome, one those cut out selle italia jobbies, so comfortable.

I had an issue with a stripped hanger bolt on a canyon. I emailed them for some info and they called me within half an hour to discuss. They have a place in twickenham and I dropped the bike off there for an hour where they sorted the problem for nothing.

It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.

Wait.. dry teabags into waiting hot water? Or used ones into empty mugs?

Dry into hot water, but wrightyson has upped the ante with that video now

I’m good at throwing teabags into waiting mugs from the other side of the kitchen. More specialised than molgrips I’d say :-)