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Tried this in mechanics first, but hoping more luck here ...

A very mundane question - anyone know of an inexpensive Boost rear thru-axle that's hollow all the way through?
(I want to adapt a QR old man mountain rack onto my mountain bike, have done this on another bike by putting the QR through the thru axle, but my mountain bike has an axle that's solid at one end. I could drill it out, but would prefer not to).

hadn't thought of that, cheers.

Bump in case anyone happens to look at this ... Am going to have to actually go out to a shop at this rate.

A very mundane question - anyone know of an inexpensive Boost rear thru-axle that's hollow all the way through?
(I want to adapt a QR old man mountain rack onto my mountain bike, have done this on another bike by putting the QR through the thru axle, but my mountain bike has an axle that's solid at one end. I could drill it out, but would prefer not to).

A very mundane question - anyone know of an inexpensive Boost rear thru-axle that's hollow all the way through?
(I want to adapt a QR old man mountain rack onto my mountain bike, have done this on another bike by putting the QR through the thru axle, but my mountain bike has an axle that's solid at one end. I could drill it out, but would prefer not to).

Nice, had never heard of Staoineag but looks good. Stayed at Blackburn last year after very wet/gale force wind crossing of Corrieyairack. Reading this is making me really keen to do badger divide again. On mountain bike this time.
Also keen to see more photos.

Excellent. If I didn't suffer horribly from numb fingers/toes I'd love to do it at this time of year. What were your bothy detours?

Not that I've been able to afford it since they stopped doing bargain berths, but personally have always slept really well on sleeper trains. Have only done seated sleeper more recently which is definitely more challenging if you hope to be functional the next day. Two days to do the whole badger divide would be unfeasible for most people of course...
Limited places to bail out between Corrour and Great Glen from what I remember, which is also the nicest stretch.

I guess important to make sure the going in water is not connected to ducks at all. E.g. Get a floating dog toy and reward fetching that. But going to a beach is probably better than ponds in parks. Personally very happy for her never to jump in a park pond again which are invariably really muddy (happened once on Clapham Common. She clearly regretted it straight away - she's not very keen on getting wet)

When training Ada it's been 99% positive reinforcement. The 1% I've saved for extreme situations like when she tried to chase sheep and I didn't have a good enough hold of the long line. Which was a stressful couple of minutes. After that I deliberately sought out sheep (with her on the lead) and very very firmly told her off whenever she showed the slightest interest in them. Like even looking at them for more than a second or two. I think I could pretty confidently walk her through a field of sheep now without stressing. Though would have her on lead anyway.
She's shown relatively little interest in ducks, but would do something similar if I thought there was a risk.
Of course she's not really wired for hunting so this is possibly irrelevant to you. All the sighthound people I know have gps trackers for when they disappear after a squirrel ...

E.g. No one's making quick release disc frames anymore, because technology has moved on in a reasonably sensible way (for once).

On reflection he might have paid 800. Definitely the carbon one anyway.

OK, not obsolete, but thru axle for disc definitely a significant improvement.

Friend of mine got the same model bike secondhand, in better shape for somewhere around £600, about a year ago. So definitely not great value. Also it's got a stupid seatclamp design that caused me no end of trouble when I was trying to fix it for him. Plus QR wheels, which have definitely become a bit obsolete for disc.

Buy something off here secondhand?

(That said, I wouldn't worry much about that damage if you want to offer the seller a very lowball offer. Have ridden a bike with similar damage on chainstay for thousands of km. Plus the seat stays take far less load than most parts of the frame).

I'm a bit bored of the balls tbh - it's good for getting her to jump over things, but I preferred when she was more up for playing with other dogs.
Am aware that I'll get blamed if anything does kick off. But she just seems to have an ability to get on with most dogs, which I put down to really socialising her well when young (and letting her get firmly put in line by larger dogs). She generally gets on really well with whippets, but unless I know them I won't let her play now, because I had too many of the owners panic when they see all the face/neck biting, even though it's obviously just play if you're actually paying attention.
The closest she's come to a proper fight was another staffy stole her ball and it got a bit angry as neither of them wanted to back down, but even that didn't actually escalate to anything serious (but looked pretty terrifying).
I ocasionally walk her best friend as well, who's a greyhound/saluki/whippet type thing and it's amazing how many more people come up to talk to me. Dog politics are weird.
Am just mentioning this as an excuse to post my best dog picture ever.

That makes more sense.
I guess there are also so many variables. In the last 6 months, Ada's gone from wanting to play with any dog she encountered, to really only being interested in playing with dogs she's already friends with + generally preferring balls or sticks. With the exception of bully type dogs who she's usually happy to have a wrestle with still.
I still tend to think most of the time it's best to let dogs sort out stuff amongst themselves as long as no one's getting picked on too badly. Seems like with bigger groups there's often some initial snapping and snarling and then they just figure out their place in things and they'll then peacefully co-exist. Annoys me when people panic and pick up their dogs the moment there's any tension as that just seems to be guaranteed to create a reactive dog in the future.
Though obviously it's easy to say all this when I have a relatively indestructible type of dog. I'll still pull her out of any interaction I'm not happy with.

Am not a fan or parks without railings. Even with a well behaved dog, there's always that chance they'll chase another dog out the park if they're really engaged in playing. I have a choice between Brockwell park and Clapham Common usually and almost always go Brockwell if i can for that reason. Plus it has a much better dog selection.

Can see that maybe discouraging dogs from only interacting with one specific group of dogs that play in a specific way might possibly be worthwhile advice, but the idea (if I correctly understand what the behaviourists said) that you should always keep moving and not stop to let dogs play seems absolutely terrible.
I mean there's good dog play and bad dog play - I find 3 dogs playing often doesn't work that well, but bigger groups are fine if all the dogs are happy and if they're not, it's usually pretty clear. I guess it cuts down on risk/complication so can see why a behaviourist might suggest it, but I still think that's bad advice.
Am a bit dubious about behaviourists though. I talked to some guy who said his dog's whole personality had changed, was really stressed about it, they'd got a behaviourist in, etc. Discussing it a bit more, it seemed pretty clear the dog was around 10 months and was just a teenager. Ada's whole personality changed for a month or so around that age and she stopped listening, went and sat on her own in evenings and didn't want anything to do with us. She grew out of it shortly after. Was a bit horrified the behaviourist had agreed to take their money.

Also I'm sure pretty much every dog owner has had an incident where their recall has failed, so don't feel too bad. I thought Ada was near perfect a few months back, at which point she chased another dog out of Clapham Common, across a main road and back to its house. Which was incredibly stressful and I felt terrible about and led to her going back on long line for a while + some intensive chicken based recall reinforcement.

I guess there is that “how does your dog learn the cues to not interact with certain dogs if they don’t interact with certain dogs and their dog cues”.

Yes, I'd like to think unless someone's got a reactive or particularly elderly dog they wouldn't object. Plus who does't enjoy meeting puppies? Suppose I'm lucky to have a large park nearby where it was always relatively easy to find other dogs to interact with and she's really benefitted from it. She's almost always very calm/confident in her dealings with other dogs now. Though lately she's a lot more into balls and sticks than other dogs, unless they're ones she knows already.

Got a long line? Good opportunity to practice recall if so. Plus did the owner mind? Personally (because it's not too long ago that Ada was a puppy), am quite happy if younger dogs want to interact with her - she'll tell them off (increasingly firmly) if they try and take her ball and the end result is the puppy is going to learn not to bother other dogs. Best thing I did when training her was chatting to some of the more competent professional dog walkers in the park and letting her get pinned down/put in line by a large pack of dogs when she got annoying.
But yes, in the end it is your responsibility if you don't have the recall yet.

This does remind me that I never posted any updates on Ada since my initial new puppy excitement. She's turned out to be the best dog in the world.

I had something similar and it was because the rear light cables were connected the wrong way round (I'd assumed they were interchangeable, like the wires from the hub).
Discovered this after dismantling the front light trying to figure out the problem.

Was also hoping they'd drop lower

I feel like everyone's maybe a bit too hopeful that a broken website for a dying company is actually going to work properly when it comes to stock/prices.
I'm pretty surprised customer services people are even bothering to answer messages.

(that said, if anyone sees any winter mtb boots in sizes 45-46 for a bargain price, let me know)

The guy who does the bitex distribution (that site above) is really helpful if you email him - I broke a bitex axle and he helped figure out which I needed from photos.
Thru axle is definitely a huge improvement over qr so worth doing if you can.

Will take the backpack, will pm.

I've got one that I'm about to not need any more, trying to find a nice black carbon post to replace it with at moment. Which I'll hopefully get round to in next month or two, but if you've waited 4 years guessing that might not matter. Though if you're really desperate I could remove it earlier as probably won't be riding that bike for a while.