Cycling UK Forum

The biggest threat to so called liberal democracy in this country is Reform UK. I suggest you turn your ire onto them, rtaher than promote conspiracy theories about Russia and China.

Of course Reform are the proximate threat, the spearhead if you will, but where do you think they pick up their ideas, where do you think financial backing comes from, and who spends lots of time, money, and effort cultivating social media on their behalf? In case you haven’t worked it out: variously the same libertarian right that is currently gutting the USA, and Russia. Reform are the useful idiots.

My “conspiracy theories” BTW, seem to be ones shared by the professionals in the field, MI6, and the present government, so if I’m mad, I’m mad in company.

Have a quick watch of this, and if you aren’t up on who Bannon is, Google around a bit, especially into his dealings with Farage down the years, his role at Cambridge Analytica etc. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rCfT1MfO2KM

And maybe read this: https://researchbriefings.files.parliam ... P-9472.pdf

Don’t worry, I’ve effed and blinded at motorists who’ve close-passed me, and when I was in my early teens I replied to an insult by bloodying someone’s nose …… which might have been when I realised it might be a better idea to walk away!

Second, the other party have got their opinion across, so if you don't do the same in the time available you will be going home with that deficit on your mind.

That’s the thing you have to get “a bit zen” about, if you can. Don’t carry it about inside you. Unless someone is calling you out for a justified reason (we do all make stupid mistakes sometimes, or at least I do) then you aren’t the one with a problem, they are, and you carrying away a bit of it won’t help them one iota, and it certainly won’t help you.

To confuse things further, though IMO to our benefit, the gravel riding trend has led to a range of cycling designed clothing that doesn't look it.

Yes, I bought a quilted jacket that is marketed for gravel cycling, very well designed for the job, and have ended it up using it for general wear too - about the only instant clue that it’s “cycling specific” is that it has a longer than normal tail, with a zipped pocket built into it.

Also, cycling, running and similar athletic gear in supermarkets is normal, but swimming gear is not. Presumably because after swimming you'll change into something dry.

Comes back to my “far outside the range of optimal” thing. Going to the shop in nothing but a cozzie is very, very sub-optimal in most UK towns, because it is freezing cold, and very much socially frowned-upon. Not so at beach shops, in beach resorts, in warm weather, of course. Cycling and running kit isn’t particularly sub-optimal for shopping - it’s warm enough, and acceptably modest.

I am surprised by all the talk of cycling in jeans though, because I’ve always found them to be just about the most uncomfortable things to wear even for light utility cycling, way too draggy on the knees, chaffing in other places too, and one drip of rain turns them into pure torture. Now that I’m WFH-cum-retired, Im in what seems like a majority here, a wearer of slightly stretchy walking trousers most of the time, and they’re excellent for light utility cycling, and depending on the saddle for a lot more besides..

When I trained as a station assistant, to be able to work at very, very busy tube stations, we were taught that if someone “goes off on one”, that the best way to defuse the situation is to remain super-calm, and ask neutral questions when there is a break in the flow (always keeping on eye for escape routes, in case they go completely wild!).

Asking questions causes the person to put some order into their temporarily ungoverned, toddler-state, brain, and the one we used was often: OK, but could you please be really clear with me what you’d like me to do right now? It causes the person to have to think really hard, and usually realise that there is nothing you can do at that moment to solve whatever problem they have.*

The thing always to bear in mind is that it’s the person venting who has a problem, not you, and that the game plan is to de-escalate and move on. Shouting back is counter-productive, however tempting it is to do it.

Not an infallible method, Im sure, but worth bearing in mind.

* One “old hand” I met even had a standard answer if the response was “Go f@ck yourself”, he would reply very mildly “Im terribly sorry sir/madam, but I’m not permitted to do that while wearing uniform.”.

^^^

Yep. All out invasive war is very last century. The idea now is to corrode states from within, using the gullible plonkers who support the far right as the conduits, then “liberate” them. Anschluss.

They cocked-up in Ukraine, by misjudging the capability and mood of the country, and by believing their own propaganda about their own military competence.

If you don’t believe that Russia, and it would seem increasingly the USA, is a threat to liberal democracy as we know and (certainly in my case) love it, then you must be living in a distant monastery, cut-off from all sources of information. Russia is a threatening “they”, without question, although it doesn’t necessarily need to use direct force to achieve its ends, as again is pretty obvious to anyone who hasn’t fallen under the spell of its disinformation and destabilisation programmes.

China is also a very serious threat to democracy, you need only ask democrats in Hong Kong (if you can still find any), but it is not an obvious threat to democracy in Europe, or to the territorial integrity of European states.

Is it the US’s job to defend democracy in Europe? Well, they’ve spent seventy years trumpeting how they are committed to do just that, although I’ve personally always distrusted their corporatist take on democracy, and the sustainability of their “reach”, so have long wished that we had a viable Euro-Force, and the problem now is that they’ve “pulled the rug” very forcibly. The double problem is that their leadership seems more closely aligned in thinking and behaviour with Russia, than it is with democratic Europe. Thsts pretty serious stuff.

I’ve never found that electric razors make such a nice job of it, even a very fancy one that my son has, which I tried.

Modern multi-blade wet razors are best, but however you nurse them along the blades don’t last forever, and are both expensive and a nightmare of single-use plastic.

Scared herself by only spotting you at the last moment; felt incredibly stressed, and as a result annoyed; couldn’t control her annoyance, so vented it on you.

People, quite a high percentage of people, are like that, they are wired to go: fear>stress>anger>vent, with no controlling function exercised by their mind to break that chain. Under extreme fear, I think we all do it, because it’s part of the “fight” response (with “vent” narrowly replacing “kill”), but some people do it at abnormally low levels of fear, or operate with high fear response to trivial stimuli. Hence violent road rage incidents.

They are optimised, just not super-narrowly. But, at minimum, clothes are almost always optimised for a particular range of environmental conditions.

Start doing stuff well outside the range that they are optimised for, and they’ll become uncomfortable, impractical, and I suppose if you went far enough out of range, positively dangerous.

Cycling-wise, “stretch bags” sound like the sort of thing that would quickly becoming annoying if the ride was all about out-and-out speed, for instance, the sort of riding for which people don their Lycra.

If you do go for that rack, you may find as I did that you have to cut the stays at the top to length (I think that’s the design intent, rather than a bodge). Having done that, and adjusted and tightened everything up, It’s very easy to put in on or off the bike in five minutes if you don’t want it all of the time.

Maybe if people want to argue about the history of Palestine, the subject would be better having its own thread, given that it’s only one of many places that Trump has blundered ineptly into.

Assuming it fits that frame (mine is a Croix de Fer) the Ortlieb Rack 3 is sturdy. To use it with the gravel packs, take the little round things tgat interface with some of their other panniers off, before you use it, because they are a nuisance, and if you leave them the screws sieze tight in the threads.

I’ve bashed the rack and those panniers over fair distances and they seem to survive unscathed.

Even if they are for many people (they very definitely aren’t for all), that doesn’t alter in the slightest bit the truth of what I said.