Aye - the bus driver could probably stand to stop at the actual kerb though. It's maddening when they don't bother to pull into the bus stop and block the road instead, and it's then that the terminally clueless try to undertake them.

Fatbirds.co.uk have a couple of reduced Ambrosios with full (albeit low-end) Campag 10-speed for around that money, though they're 50/52cm so you'd need to be pretty small. Getting something with a "proper" road groupset is probably money well spent as you can upgrade piecemeal from eBay rather than having to swap the whole thing out.

Can blue men sing the whites

or are they hypocrites #

as Vivian Stanshall put it.

I recommend Dave Peabody for all your white-bloke-does-blues-amazingly-well needs.

5000 EURO = Holly Shit

Oof! Spiny.

Whose extremely lovely fillet brazing is this? DO WANT.

Oh, the envy! I'm not a huge fan of TIGed frames, but I'd have a Pegoretti in slightly less than a heartbeat.

FWIW, Sapim spokes are 40p apiece at London Fields (price accurate as of 8 seconds or so before close of business today, thank fuck).

Also, Kool Stop bead jacks FTW. Available at Condor - don't leave home etc.

Rubino Pro Tech onto Campag Protons has been the worst thus far. About half an hour of swearing and torn up hands per tyre. I think Campag rims (and the Protons in particular) are a little oversize. OTOH, they're gorgeous wheels in all other respects and only cost £140 for the pair so I'm inclined to forgive.

Aye, they're horrid. I have Vittor Paves ready to go onto the new wheels once I've visited hillbilly.

I find Gatorskins fine in the dry, but appallingly slippery in the wet (even worse, in fact than the Kenda things that come on a Fuji Track). I have a slightly used set I keep forgetting to give to Fred because I just don't trust them enough to want to use them.

To you, the line is a dot.

Excellent news!

I don't see any other chicks commenting on here and lots of gooch talk so I don't know if I'm getting the same saddle sores as you guys are. Basically, I have freaking callouses where my sit bones are. I'm riding double what I did in NYC, yes, but I'm back on a bike that is more to my size - the top tube was too long on the Coventry Eagle. I'm riding the same saddle as in NYC (the last place I did riding this regular, but it was last September when I had to quit).

The only thing I can come up with that is different is I'm not wearing padded shorts. But how do I get rid of the callouses? I'm not going to the salon and have the lady give me a butticure.

If the top tube was longer on your previous bike, it probably moved more of your weight off your arse onto your wrists which might help with arsesoreness, though obviously with corresponding disbenefits in handsoreness. Also, talking of weight, you're pretty slim - maybe some additional pies would help with internal padding?

I have a British Army Servuce khukuri from these excellent people: http://www.himalayan-imports.com - cracking quality, small enough not to be a pain to carry, heavy enough that I've cut down a fairly sizeable willow tree with it. Also the wonderful (and rather huge) bowie-type knife I've attached a picture of, also from HI. Two Benchmade 710HS and a Lighweight Axis complete the collection.

With oregano grown by me own self, natch.

Hangovers. Specifically this one.

Pasta fagioli shortly should sort me out though.

You too? In retrospect my afternoon of farmhouse cider wasn't the best plan...

Nice work, organising people. A damn fine evening.

Or (if you can put up with DPM) go to your local army surplus place/eBay and get a Northern Ireland Patrol Pack. Tough as anything, good middling size, comfy, doesn't scream "laptop".

It was intended sincerely. Black cabs are some way below rats and on a par with amoebic dysentery in my personal pantheon of favourite classes of organism.

Also worth mentioning something about hardening - there are three basic cases:

1) No/insufficient hardening. Easy to cut/crop, no matter how thick it is, as it's just too soft.
2) Through-hardened. The whole of the steel is hardened. This is worst case for cutting with eg a grinder, but a through-hardened chain is more at risk from impact and bending. Cutting one side of a link with croppers will cause the other side to snap too (avec pretty sparks) saving a lot of the thief's time.
3) Case hardened. The outer surface is hard, making cutting awkward. The interior of each link is (relatively) soft, which prevents brittleness under bending/impact. Also, cutting one side of a link with croppers will cause the other side to bend rather than break - thiefytwat now needs to perform a second cut on the other side of the link (albeit it may be slightly weakened now). Poor the thiefytwat.

CrazyJames: A WINNER IS YOU :-)

Depends what you mean by rudimentary - DIY is cheap(ish) though there's some lathe work involved to make dummy axles, cones etc. The cheapest commercial jigs I've seen have been $1000+ (and shipping from the US). I believe Dave will make you one of his for ~£4k, but that's the high end - it's a stunning bit of perfectionist heavy duty construction.

I suspect I'm going to end up doing this one: http://www.instructables.com/id/The-simplest-bicycle-framebuilding-jig-I-could-com/ - nothing like as good as the real thing, but definitely better than nowt.

Neighbours in the next block of flats again. She has light blonde hair and a black fixed branded "Veto".