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A very high proportion of the crashes are with tipper/skip/concrete lorries. These are the ones rushing around to get as many trips per day as they possibly can.

This implies that it could be worthwhile targeting training at these lorry drivers. They probably stay working in one area for longer than other types of lorry drivers too.

You might expect that the rate at which different lorry types crash with cyclists would be proportional to the time they spend around cyclists. Is that all there is to it, or do any lorry types show crash rates that deviate from that?

(Deviation would imply that there is something good or bad about particular lorry types that could be copied or fixed.)

To anyone who wants to get their heads around how the various options add up, i heartily recommend this free book.

I am coming round to the idea of earth hour. I think even ridiculing it nudges people towards acknowledging how big the problem is. Had i been in at 8, i would have taken part.

Datatags don't get removed - smart thieves can zap 'em with a microwave.

That's some microwave. Do they build their own?

Oh , and by the way, the UK is facing an electricity generation capacity crisis. We are running out of time to build new power plants to replace old ones. Without drastic action now, in a few years we will face rolling blackouts or electricity rationing.

@ Epifania: I agree we absolutely do need to get off fossil fuels, and I admire your willingness to do something, and do i hope it does more good through building awareness than harm in making the cause look ridiculous.

There was a question on radio 4's latest 'any questions' show about wind farms, and the replies were all umming and ahhh-ing about maybe off-shore is better, or maybe we should do tidal power instead. What none of them realise is that we could cover an area the size of Wales with on-shore wind farms, and another with off-shore wind farms, and build tidal and wave power systems all round the coast, and stick solar panels on every roof, and grow bio-fuels, and put hydro plants on every river, and tap all the other sustainable energy sources we can find, and we would still struggle to match our current fossil fuel consumption.

Mighty oaks from little acorns grow!

Every little helps!

Every little helps a little, which is not enough, as all the littles added together are still dwarfed by the bigs. As an energy-saving measure, this is utterly insignificant.

How it might help is in changing people's minds. Politicians might think 'ooh - look at all those people who turned their lights off - maybe they will vote for me if i support more substantive change', and people in general might take the issue more seriously just because they see others taking it seriously.

But it still feels pretty pathetic to me, and may just invite ridicule.

Forgive this potentially silly question snoops, but why not? Apart from convention?

Your pedals would fall off?

Hooray for more people having more fun with cycling!

I find the demands for them to do stuff for us men a bit bizzare - they've set up to serve an apparently ill-met need; why should they dilute that?

thought they were brass

Looking at the one on my desk, the valve stem is stainless steel, the threaded rod that pulls the valve closed is brass, and i'm not sure what the twiddly nut is made from (shiny silver colour, but softer than the stem). Contact between dissimilar metals in the presence of salty water can cause galvanic corrosion.

Fuck right off and get off your high horse you self righteious piece of shit.

I cannot believe you have had the audacity to suggest there is a link in those comments. Someone HAS DIED FOR FUCKS SAKE, and now you are using it to try and turn people against me.

That is grotesquely dispicable thing to do you horrid, horrid person.

If the readily apparent link was unintended, that merely emphasises your incompetence.

Those little threaded valve thingies are needed even less.
Gumbies, feel free to continue to use them.

Some kind of conical washer put on inside the rim, like a spoke eyelet but for valves, might be worth trying.

Wow.

You need to be within 6 inches of someones back tyre to draft properly. Unless of course they're Shaq and you're a midget troll.

It's a bit silly to do this to a stranger on a busy road. Drafting a bus is much cooler.

Unless they are very aero, i notice some benefit being within a couple of metres, and wouldn't sit closer than a metre to a stranger. I'm usually happy for people to draft me at their own risk, and sometimes even sit up a bit to make more wind shadow if i am full of beans and feeling generous.

I have an old pair of specialized sonoma shoes that are just taking up space. This sort.

Size 10.5, used but in reasonable shape. Laces are a bit fiddly. Specialized shoes are quite wide, and the footbed has a little bit of arch support. Yours for 10 quid.

PM me if interested. I'm over towards Hammersmith, but would be happy for an excuse to ride to somewhere more useful.

Its a great little fest fo' sure, they tried to stop organizing it as there was so much hassle, carnage for police to clear up, and quite a few people died, overdrunk in the last few years.

Its basically just a load of people getting together in a big park, drinking smoking dope and relaxing listening to music. I think people will love it, especially having just come from a long ride to sit down and chill will feel rewarding. I think its totally worth it, and hopefully a few of us cambridgers will be able to join ya'.

Keep us posted...

It attracts a lot of disparate groups; hippies, bikers, goths, metal-heads, ravers, and a fair few locals of no particular affiliation. Not huge numbers of students as a lot of them still have exams then. The stalls too range from greasy burgers and plastic tat through herbal highs, various varieties of ethical foods, some genuine craftsmen (fancy a posh hammock?) to stalls promoting various issues and alternative politics.

I particularly remember picking up a goat curry and an anarchist pamphlet on Tesla coils one year.

Remember the left hand pedal has a left hand thread on it - rotate clockwise to undo. (Both pedals undo by rotating the way the do in normal use.)

Also, you are not the first: http://www.londonfgss.com/thread2482.html

Stopped right at the start to help with p*tures - one bloke suffering valve fail, his friend holding his bike up while he pumps, and as i pass i realise there are loud hissing sounds coming from both their bikes... His friend has a pin-badge stuck in his back tyre. A 531 pin badge. We swap one inner and patch the other, but just as we get the second up to pressure another valve fails (sharp edges on rim?), so they bail and i sprint for Wandsworth bridge expecting to get ahead of the pack, but run into another group who tell me we are still behind. Finally rejoin the action at Battersea park.

So i missed a few bridges, and then missed the millennium too, but it was an awesome ride at a good pace. I felt i still had a few bridges left in me at the end, but it turned out i needed them to get me home. Cheers to dropout, morgan, damo and someone else for excellent company on the ride back - made the miles fly by.

I would say now to anyone who has knee pain. Go and get it seen to by a good osteo/physio asap.

Book a private session, will set you back no more than £40 and get it diagnosed correctly. It is something you definitely do not want to make worse

How do you find a good one? http://www.londonfgss.com/thread4924.html? Anyone care to add to that?

Specialized sell footbeds that come with thin plastic wedges to tilt the front part of your foot a degree or two in or out. I don't get on with the footbeds themselves, but i find my knees are a lot more comfortable with the wedges in my shoes.

Old engineers way of measuring nuts and bolts was across the corners, not the flats, and for a while all measurements were specified the size and then A/C or A/F...

And Whitworth (BSW) and British Standard Fine (BSF) sizes refer to the diameter of thread with which the nut or bolt head is customarily used, while in the BA system higher numbers correspond to smaller sizes...

I imagine A/C sizing would make square nuts very confusing.

How about the ecological impact though - Does the saving from not burning fossil fuels outweigh the cost of using weird and wonderful materials to create a PV panel in the first place
?

yes, but only by a factor of 30ish or often less.

essential reading: an awesome free book on making energy add up

I think the fall in oil prices is one of the worst parts of the credit crunch - high prices were just beginning to create change on a scale that no elected politician has yet had the balls to attempt. Brown was an utter hypocrite for trying to oppose the price rises while claiming to be green.

Seeing the sun rise above Brighton with all the abruptness of a fried egg popping out a toaster

And you call me a poet!?

It was a really good ride thanks to all of you on it. Oliver - thanks again for your excellent preparation and navigation, Gina and mmccarthy - hope you got home ok and are recovering, Dropout - the random babble helped greatly.

moth

it was good. Weather pretty much as forecast, stars twinkling through a thin layer of stratus and a yellow moon that rose up to welcome us to the countryside and light our way to the surreality Gatwick, where we spent a long time faffing around and lost two to an insufficiency of sleep & warmth and an excess of milk respectively. We left them to catch trains and went back to cold clear skies, a bright moon, and a lot of twisty interesting back lanes (with surfaces of variable quality) through woods and farmland.

As dawn began to seep into the sky we joined A roads and upped the pace a little for the final stretch into Shoreham, making it to the end of the harbour breakwater in plenty of time to see a glorious golden sun rise behind the tower blocks of Brighton and clear the moon's sliver path from the sea.

With the sun well up we cycled on into its yellow light to find breakfast in Brighton. Blazing sunshine everywhere.

overpriced for a spanner £17.50!
i got a nice 15mm spanner from the harware shop near me £1

You either have an astounding bargain, or a spanner shaped lump of metal that will turn out to be too soft or too brittle.

Come on people - sign up! The forecast is for a glorious clear moon-lit night with a gentle tail-wind. It will be awesome.