Cycling UK Forum

paulah wrote:

essexman wrote:On a commute i might need, office stuff, laptops, waterproofs, tools, wipes, spare clothes etc. I also might want to get shopping etc cos its mid week. Basically for a commute you want a car boot without the car.

Bike tools, tyre levers, spanner, inner tube, latex gloves, cable ties, 4 AA batteries, 4 AAA batteries, glasses, tissues, clothes, towel (lightweight microbfibre), food supplies, fruit juice, waterproof jacket, helmet cover and visor, purse, keys, mobile, occassionally biscuits for team, sometimes waterproof trousers, sometimes a book. Then on the way home I often stop off at the supermarket.

Saddlebag? Maybe not.

I rode through Germany to Austria and down to France through Italy with a Camper longflap rather than panniers. I did stay in hostels rather than camping but still had a fair bit of gear to carry with me. I did have some issues with the weight distribution though, especially in the Alps where I had to concentrate hard on not lifting the front wheel off the road.
Paulah, I used the same bag for my commute here. I think with the exception of the clothes I could fit most of your list into the pockets of the saddlebag. But then again, I didn't carry the waterproofs, helmet covers or a book. Or biscuits for colleagues - the company provided biscuits! I ate the biscuits

fossil wrote:an old firemans trick , rub some lard or butter on the legs that might help it through the tight spot , worked for our gran when she got her head stuck in the park railings

I had a mental image of an old fireman rubbing butter over an elderly lady's legs while she has her head stuck through the park railings
Then I realised what you probably meant
grw

I remember a shop called Phoenix cycles in Battersea, not sure if it's still there. It was quite a small shop but vey helpful and more catering towards touring equipment than most of the EVans or chains shops. I'm sure they had a good range of bags...
grw
(edit - it is still there - http://www.flickr.com/photos/soggy-semolina/287092164/ Is it just me or does anybody else prefer the older look of the earlier shop?)
(edit again - might have got it completely wrong - looking at the shops website it seems to be a brompton specialist rather than any touring focus. My memory is obviously failing - the drugs probably)

I've had Karrimor and Ortlieb panniers, and Carradice saddlebag.
I find the Ortlieb simple to use once I got used to the closing technique. The catch at the bottom occasionally comes away from the rear rack if I am travelling on very rough roads and going at any kind of speed. It's not a problem on most sealed roads though. I've had no problems with the durability of these so far, (but then I've only had them for a couple of months with a total of just under 4 weeks away with them). The material appears to be fairly hardwearing and if unless I am falling off the bike a lot, I can't see how they're going to get holes in them. I find the lack of external pockets a bit of a pain, but it's just forced me to be a bit more organised. I like that they're waterproof. I waded through streams with these on the bike. While the pannier wasn't submerged, it wasn't far off it, and everything stayed dry. I disagree with pq when he says that waterproof panniers aren't a good idea for touring, but then I'm not as experienced as pq so its just a personal preference.
The Karrimor panniers were good. They lasted me 12 years. (Although I still have them, they have a fairly decent sized hole in the rear pocket). The fixing system of hooks and a cord looked more 'fixable' if broken than the Ortlieb, and it was easy enough to improvise temporary repairs when it broke on one occasion. They weren't especially waterproof so I always kept gear in plastic bags inside the panniers.
The Carradice is great. Only thing I'd say about it is that the material seems very heavy. I know weight is a secondary consideration when touring, but if my saddlebag seems very heavy, I've wondered what the weight of an empty set of complete panniers would be like? Anyone got a comparison between the weight of panniers of different brands?
grw

PW wrote:At home our first was an Acorn Electron. At work a Commodore Pet. The latter was so slow I re-wrote all the survey calculation programs to work on a Texas Ti59 pocket calculator. It saved us hours.

As a child in the 80s our first computer was also an Acorn Electron. I remember loading games using a tape player - 'snake' used to take about 4 minutes...seemed like forever when I was little.
grw

Tonyf33 wrote:Take out ALL the safety features that cars carry and you'd instantly have a much lighter car and way higher mpg, it would also ensure people drove better & with more consideration & thus crashing less often knowing they didn't have the safety features to protect them in the first place. Do away with seatbelts/airbags/ABS & any braking aids and in a few years the accident rates will come tumbling down.

Any breaking aids?
What if you live at the bottom of a hill?

Does any body have more details on his 2009 hr record attempt that was reported in one ofthe cycling mags earlier in the year? Not heard anything about it recently.
We rented the 'Flying Scotsman' form the dvd shop last night, and I saw this thread this morning... I'm expecting a Tales of the Unexpected show any day now.
grw

Steadyrider, just out of interest, have you been posting about this topic recently on the BNA forum down under?
grw

Portsmouth has the highest population density of anywhere in the UK? Wow. I would never have guessed at Portsmouth. I would have plumped for somwhere in London with lots of high rose development. (Its a few years since I visited Portsmouth so excuse my ignorance if recently there has been lots of building!)
grw

I've ha dthe same thing for a while. Was wondering if the clamp was too tight or too loose. Tightened it, loosened it a spot, greased it, nothing seemed to make any difference. Yestereday, I took a look at the headset, turs out that was where the creak was coming from. Dismantled and reasemmbled, all sorted now. I guess I could have discovered this earlier if I'd put a bit of weight on the stem rather than the bars but its not often I ride in that position!
gareth

One of the free tools I've used is called DVDflick. It works for what I need it to although I'm not using quicktime. I use it to covert avi to the videoTS files I need to write movies onto a dvd. However one of the options on the file input types is for quicktime.
I did have some problems initially with the sound not synching with the video properly but sorted it after fiddling with the settings.
gareth

danfoto wrote:Is there a more elegant means of protecting against this potential cosmetic damage than the length of closed-cell foam pipe lagging held in place with a couple of zip ties which currently serves the purpose?

Could you put the pipe lagging on the lock? And if you always use the same post at Tesco, leave a bit on there too? Although that would mean both your lock and the post at the Tesco would lose their street cred...
gareth

Tony wrote:As a keen birdwatcher, I am always happy to see kites.
The bird that puts the fear of god into me, though, is the Australian magpie. Like Arctic terns, and great skuas, they attack people near their nest sites; the difference is in the level of aggression and the mass-participation technique that the maggies use. They also have one hell of a beak, which they will happily use on any threat--such as your head.
So many times I would be riding along and just hear the first wails as they came in from behind, then feel the blows.
The only really useful thing my cycle helmet has ever done!

Having been swooped several times over the last couple of weeks, I remembered Tony's post, and then saw this clip on youtube on the various magpie deterrants people use. Shame you have to wear a helmet down here!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wHreVKgOT4&feature=player_embedded
grw

rbrian wrote:Many years ago, in the busiest carpark I'd ever seen, with no spaces at all, I parked an old Fiesta (when they were still small cars) in the half space left by the brand new BMW which had parked across two spaces for this reason. Since there was no room for me to get out, I climbed out the window, and I'm afraid I accidentally scratched my key all the way down the side.

Unless you were there when the car was parked, how do you know the BMW car hadn't parked (what appeared to you to be) poorly as a result of another's poor parking? I've parked over lines as a result of other poor parking, which in itself may have been due to other poor parking, and so on and so on.
grw

mark_w wrote:It always causes the conversation in taxi's to go flat very quickly. 'Did you see the game' 'No'. Ok.

you could always follow on with "bin busy tonight?' or 'What time you on til?' (à la Peter Kay)...
g