Cycling UK Forum

johncharles wrote:I have prescription safety gasses and they are as comfortable as my ordinary ones.

No problem with wearing them.

I should have explained that I don't qualify for prescription safety glasses at the company's expense (I could have bought them out of my own pocket of course), this offer is only available to employees whose normal workplace is the shop floor itself. Mine is the office area.

I love all that conspiracy theory stuff! Shows us, the world still admires the sceptics and cynics amongst us. And I can sit through Capricorn One again and again, enjoy every minute of it (I love the bit where what the viewer thinks are vultures transmogrify into far-more-scary helicopters).

The point about C-1 is that the astronauts are never meant to get back to Earth alive: the spacecraft burn-up-on-reentry is obviously staged. Even after the astronauts spoil the little 'game' by getting away, only James Brolin actually completes the home run IIRC. And Armstrong and Aldrin were still very much alive last time I heard. So either they're incredibly trustworthy secret-keepers, or...

We can argue about helmets till we're blue in the mouth - but it's all been said before, time and time again! I won't say yea or nay at this time!

Regarding safety boots and safety glasses, I have the odd experience to tell. On a recent visit to a customer's site I was required to don safety boots. I had an old pair of my own, I was willing to bring them along: but no, they don't have the CE marking or whatever, so they're not 'approved', wear the ones provided on site if you don't mind sir, thank you very much. I found the boots provided for me, hideously uncomfortable, and wearing them probably increased my risk of injury through an inadvertant stumble as I limped around the large site (it was a motor manufacturing site if you want to know - this was when we still had a motor industry!)

Another colleague, on a visit to a different site, similar rules, the safety boots they gave him fell apart after he'd walked a few hundred yards in them. He had to limp back in his socks to the place where he'd left his own shoes. At least he didn't stub a toe.

Ah well...

And as to the safety glasses: well I wear a perfectly good pair of prescription glasses for my eyesight, with non-breakable lenses. My employers at my normal workplace have recently introduced a safety-glasses rule for most of the factory area. Luckily it doesn't cover the office where I normally sit, but if I need to visit the shop floor I need to don horribly uncomfortable over-goggles, which impair my vision and increase my risk of stumbling against something. Once again, my own glasses - no CE - no go. And as to arguing the case that I never go anywhere near any equipment that could conceivably throw off shrapnel or otherwise harm my eyes - forget it.

I wish H&S gurus would negotiate things like this rather than just going all doctrinaire on us. But when you've got jobsworths with targets to meet and the right buzzwords to put on their CVs....

I suppose they do have a point - but people - largely young people it has to be said - a minority of them - have been riding anti-socially since bicycles were invented. What worries me is that the authorities are coupling the words 'increase in cycling' with 'cause for concern'. It needn't be thus. Surely we can have more cyclists and at the same time a greater proportion of us riding responsibly and considerately!

And cycle paths shared with pedestrians and horse-riders don't help at all, I'm afraid. I avoid them except when I really have no option, or when it is an out-of-town stretch little used by pedestrians or horses. For your edification, just look at the following, it's the first page of the Highway Code dating from 1954. Note rule 5. Even in those days it was recognised if you're going to provide cycle paths they'd better be dedicated.

jan19 wrote:

jan19 wrote:
Anyone got a good cucumber recipe?

Good in tabbouleh - especially in this hot weather.

Thank you - that looks interesting and different. May have to do a bit of scouting around the back of the cupboards for the bulgar wheat but otherwise I've got all the ingredients and I'll give it a go. The cookery site looks good too - I've taken a note of it.

Jan

Actually that just happened to be the first on-line tabbouleh recipe I hit upon! There are hundreds! Fairly similar to ours (and seems perfectly do-able), except that we soak the bulgar wheat in cold water, not boiling, for a few hours, then drain and squeeze out well.

What you put in the mixture and what you leave out is largely up to you. The only 'essentials' apart from the bulgar itself seem to be tomatoes, some sort of onion, and lemon juice.

jan19 wrote:Anyone got a good cucumber recipe?

Good in tabbouleh - especially in this hot weather.

PBA wrote:I ... do not recall any highway engineers I met who were not fully aware of the potential dangers inherent in their jobs.

Hmmm... curious statement, that. 'Dangers' of what? Professional ridicule? Loss of status? Or would you care to re-phrase that remark? This thread is about danger to life.

Excellent summary, Thirdcrank. Hope the leg gets better!

Actually, school dinner trauma notwithstanding, I love cabbage - can't get enough of the stuff provided it's properly cooked (stir-fry is an excellent method). Or red cabbage - finely chopped, simmered in a little vinegar with a pinch of caraway seed till it's just tender...

I suppose I ought to put in a word for my namesake - my forum pseudonym that is. Had a big dish of ratatouille for supper last night, served with a mound of fluffy brown rice. Luvverly! Can't get much 'healthier' than that, though perhaps the lashings of Extra Virgin you need to add to get the texture right do hike up the fat content just a bit!

Welcome Frank,
Although I don't live anywhere near Bristol, I think you are wrong to say you can't be of help to people outside your area. Whilst I appreciate that you can't get involved in the affairs of other Police forces, you can at least impart of your advice and experience on this forum. Thieving is thieving wherever it occurs in the country! And I don't suppose a Bristol bike thief behaves that much differently from an Aberdeen bike thief!

I feel there are areas of knowledge about what goes through the mind of the typical bike thief (what sort of bike he looks for, where does he like to nick it from, what time of day he operates, what sort of lock he prefers to tackle, what does he do with the bike once he's taken it, that sort of thing) where you could give us the benefit of your experience.

Trouble is, if you give too much away the thieves may take a few tips from you too...

meic wrote:In the 1950s tea was considered worse than tobacco. Eggs were rationed to less than 2 a day for most of my life but now it appears that was all yet another mistake.

Interesting remarks there, I can't say I confirm them. I go back to the 1950s too: I'm pretty sure there was a lot of tea being drunk even then, and no-one demurred (mind you, there was a lot of tobacco being smoked, but people were just beginning to link tobacco to - what we all know nowadays). And eggs? Well two per day would have been an awful lot of eggs by any account, then and now. My parents told me that in wartime rationing, it was one egg per person per week.

A good friend of mine, who is very fit and healthy, thinks that "imposing" a vegetarian diet on the children is almost child abuse.

I won't presume to pass judgement on your friend, others have done it already! But: Child abuse! I'll give your friend 'child abuse'. School dinners in the 1950s and 60s. Endless greasy stews, undercooked sausages, lumpy mashed potato, vegetables cooked until the end of eternity (but with the clever resource of the spoonful of bicarbonate* to keep them green!) And then the suet puddings....the jam tarts with artificial cream... I'll give him 'child abuse'!

*which of course destroyed all the vitamin C.

meic wrote:There are two things we can (try to) do in practice.

Firstly when stopping at traffic lights and junctions, make your prescence felt and position yourself too far out for lorries to come alongside.

Secondly dont ever go up the inside of a lorry which is at a junction, EVEN if there is an ASL inviting you to commit suicide.

I read you. I'd add a third, which is, if a large vehicle does contrive to overtake you despite all your precautions, and you have any reason to suppose it may be about to turn left, emergency stop time! Better that than what might otherwise ensue.

But I can't help thinking, Catriona Cockburn would have known all this, wouldn't she? She was a highly experienced cyclist according to all accounts. She was planning to do an Etape for god's sake!

Folks, we are losing track of the main message of the OP - this terrible tragedy which has not only robbed a family of a loved one and the cycling community of another excellent and experienced cyclist (read the news item and note!) - but has added more fuel to the 'cycling is dangerous' lobby and the active discouragement of cycling...

To my mind the presence or absence of railings is only a contributing factor in this disaster, not the whole story. True, I am of the school of thought that regards most railings as unnecessary and dangerous, but consider: if there had been no railings but only a raised kerb, who's to say whether the outcome would not have been the same? Certainly I could not mount a kerb safely at an acute angle, quite possibly I would lose control of my bike and fall the wrong way with similar result. And what about junctions where there is no pavement: instead the corner of a building abuts straight up against the carriageway? I know plenty of those, especially in older towns and cities. Do we call for the building itself to be removed?

We have already discussed the terrible 'left hook' phenomenon at length in other threads, and it is evident that there are two ways this can happen: one, the cyclist's fault, is filtering up inside a left-turning vehicle, and the second, the driver's fault, is overtaking a cyclist and then immediately turning left. It is evident, from the press photos accompanying this accident, that this particular fatality is of the second type, and the arrest of the driver seems to uphold it.

So what can we do, about the second type? Alarming prognostications in the article: there is a statistical likelihood of three more fatalities in London before the year is out. However much we take each lorry driver who has caused this appalling thing out of circulation, there will be another driver coming along who still hasn't got the message. I see drivers left-hooking me and other cyclists quite regularly - luckily I have not yet witnessed a tragedy. A mandatory second driver in the cab, with dual controls, possibly?

I'm asking questions, I don't have answers.

I've just discovered that if you sort topics on a forum 'by author', the sorting is case-sensitive, so all the threads started by forummers who happen to have begun their names with a capital letter are listed first, before those whose names start with a lower-case letter.
Could this possibly be changed to case-insensitive?

Where I live, there are two common variants of postman-helmet-wearing style:
1. Straps undone, dangling by rider's ears.
2. Helmet with fabric cover (especially in cold weather).

Of these, (1) makes the whole thing ineffective, and possibly dangerous (a helmet could suddenly fly off and endanger another road user).
(2) is certainly dangerous: at any speed that is. If your head strikes the tarmac at a glancing angle, the higher friction occasioned by the cloth cover could result in a torque which breaks your neck! Cloth-covered helmets are only suitable for very small children.

Graham wrote:Topic now censored, redacted and edited ( so that it means whatever I want it to mean ).

Aha! This answers the question I sent you earlier today (by PM)