Cycling UK Forum

What about visiting all the Good Beer Guide pubs in Cornwall (other pub guides exist, but they all worry about boring things like food etc.).
Not only a different challenge, but one that will change every year so maybe never ending. How's Sailor on public transport?- it's not something you can really do by driving

Mick F wrote: ↑8 Sep 2021, 9:23am I had to look it up what HMS Vigil was all about.

Also, on one ship, we would spend weeks at see up the Iceland Faeroes gap in atrocious weather and unable to see any daylight or get any fresh air. Rocking, pitching and rolling and sleep was difficult.

Father has a story of when he was (possibly on Andromeda) off Iceland. He was on the bridge and remarked "It's dark out there Skip". The reply was "No Chief, that's a wave, the skies up there"

I don't think he left the boiler room after that

Pebble wrote: ↑17 Aug 2021, 12:21am Has the virus stopped mutating

China
Kent
South Africa
India

why no more variants? it is still rampant in many parts of the world.

The virus is constantly mutating- the UK is one of the leading players in virus sequencing and there are always new sequences being added to the database. It's just that atm none of these variants have given the virus any selective advantage so they don't stand out. Why that is is a good question- delta is really very infectious when compared to other similar viruses, so it could be that there really is nowhere for the virus to go to improve itself. Whether that changes with vaccination remains to be seen

+1 for the Kool Stop tyre mate. I normally don't need it, but it's a godsend in the rain on a cold winter's day. Just be careful to make sure the inner tube doesn't get caught

biketips666 wrote: ↑4 Aug 2021, 9:20am , I assume way beyond whatever current building standards are. They used a specialist architect and builders.

You have building standards specifying the bare minimum and then the builders who try to work around even that.
Even worse is the ones who don't even think- there's a new estate being built in my village- all the houses have a (now obligatory??) solar panel but maybe it will put people off seeing them on the long lines of (perfectly) south-facing roofs along the main road so they've been put on the north facing roofs in the estate.. You've got all that added cost, all the extra CO2 to produce the panels and the inverter and they are never going to generate anything. It's worse than doing nothing.
There are also more expensive "eco" houses in teh development that have TWO panels, but all of them are running more or less north-south, so they will get some power at least.

I contrast a farm on the edge of the village has a large barn with a perfect south-facing roof and they've covered everything with panels. What a curious idea- it's almost as if someone actually thought about it.

thirdcrank wrote: ↑27 Jul 2021, 3:23pm Search right to the bottom of every cut in the tyre and check the inside too.

But do it carefully- don't just run your finger around the inside of the tyre and hope because if it is a piece of glass that can end up very messily. If you can line up your tyre and inner tube so the hole in the inner tube should be where the offending item is. ( I always line the start of the manufacturers logo with the valve hole so even if things have moved it's easy to line them all back up again)

Not changed yet, but at the end of December I will probably be unemployed for the first time in 30 years. I say 'will' because I could start looking for jobs now, but I'm a tight old sod so I've saved enough to award myself a sabbatical for a month or two.

I've posted on here in the past about my experiences of cycling around Cambridge, where you almost can hear another cyclist before you see them and you regularly pass bits of bicycle (most commonly chains, often in a nice shade of rust brown) discarded on the road. Often it's students' bikes but a look around any bike rack outside any research department or biotech company will reveal the same lack of attention, and I guess it's where the bicycle is just a way of getting around and as long as it goes then why do anything?
I have been tempted to stop some of the worst offenders on humanitarian (cycletarian?) because bikes really shouldn't be crying out like that.

Who knows, a few maintenance lessons and some spares and we'd probably have defeated coronavirus months ago

Is the 'Freedom day' actually going to remove the need to self-isolate if you've been in contact with someone infected? I've just sort of assumed that would still continue for a while yet.
This issue with schools is that the whole bubble has to isolate if there's a case, which can include a lot who have had minimal contact with the virus.
Maybe the answer is for all the children to use a proximity app https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-57643697

Another +1 for contacting your doctor from me. It happened to me last year during the first lockdown and the GPs didn't even quibble, got me in for set of checks straight away.

This thread's interesting for me because I am very competitive and when playing a competitive sport I want to win and I hate losing. I used to play rugby to quite a high standard (until I discovered you can get a knee to articulate 360 degrees and that was the end of that). Nowadays the only competitive sport I play is petanque but I still have that will to win. Even at work as a scientist I enjoy the competitive part of it (after all who remembers the second person to describe the theory of relativity etc.).
When it comes to cycling I deliberately steer away from the competitive side- even after 10 years away from rugby I'm still 90kg with a lot of upper body development and that's a lot to haul up a hill. I don't even do strava or anything to even compete against myself, I'm happy to just use it as exercize and wonder around doing my own thing.
When it comes to watching sports I love watching sports I've played in. I can watch rugby at any level and I enjoy all the bits that people say puts them off watching. I really can't be bothered watching football, mostly because I don't really know what's going on.

Pub wrote: ↑4 Jun 2021, 9:07am
A custom wheel builder quoted me nearly £2000 but I have no idea how to even go about buying separate parts or putting them together.

I'll do them for £1000
Spa cycles have a 6week lead time on hand built wheels but I think they used to be £50+parts , so even with their most expensive parts you'd have change out of £400

Not far from Mick F- this one would be fun to cycle through

(By Tony Atkin, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9202504).
I suppose if you were boring you could try at low tide , but I think I would still use the raised walkway

Wheels really shouldn't be an issue. Thorn are happy with just 32 spokes (on 26" wheels as I recall) for their tandems and they will be rated for over 200kg load. Admittedly they will be hand-built but a decent 36 spoke should be more than up to the job.

So this has been our steed for the past weekend, hired from the manufacturers Circe.
Impressions- its big, heavy, not as fast as a conventional tandem, but it is great fun and Mrs T prefers being able to see what's happening rather than just staring out to the side. As a pilot you get rough road experience that the stoker usually gets, the upright cycling position takes some getting used to- I definitely had tired legs after the first few outings, and had to change my dismounting style to avoid smacking my knees on the horizontal bars of the steerer. Steering takes some getting used to as well, especially on cycle paths because you have to remember the stokers feet are going to be swinging out beyond the front wheel, and you are a long way back at blind junctions if you don't have a stoker. I actually liked the ability of the stoker to freewheel- it meant that approaching junctions or in traffic I could be in complete control if I wanted to be.
On the whole we almost certainly will go for this style. Given the expense we just want to try out a pino as well (hint hint- just in case anyone near Cambridge has one we can try)- the Circe is over 1K cheaper but neither are even close to being cheap so we might as well get what feels best to us.