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Sounds crappy - chapeau for pressing on round and finishing.

Equally, there's a lot to take from it - eating, dressing, how much crap to carry with you, water - that'll go better next time. Can't do much about the weather though, beyond judging your clothing a bit differently.

Got one I do use - happy to do threads & facing for others, but it's not for sale. Drop me a PM if it would help to prepare a frame now.

70s frame - sure it's 700c, or are you switching over from 27in?

If you could be persuaded by 27in, got a reasonably nice pair, Campag hubs and Weinmann Concave rims. Hubs say Record on them, but you'd need someone other than me to tell you precisely which variety. Come with block and tyres, all of which you'd probably be well advised to replace sharpish. Not sure on price, but under the ton.

Boo - I liked the opportunity to see all this stuff in London without having to get off my arse to travel. Had a good chat with folk from Paulos Quiros and from Longstaff (and with the bloke selling Faggins), and solved a techie issue (my fuckwittery) with a conversation with Cliff from Royce that I would never have initiated by phone/email 'cos it was about a second-hand part.

Why going back? Attendance? Cost of putting it on in London? A principled desire to keep it a non-metropolitan event?

No great hurry to get it back - you had a chance to give it a decent tryout? How's it been?

Nice kit, especially the frame. Think your prices for wheels and bars may be a little toppy though - might get a couple more sniffs at them if you tried a drop or two before t'bay.

Feck.

I thought GD was just a commercial control - get a receipt. Was there a manned control then? Nobody told me ... (Or more likely I didn't read it.)

Clearance looks non-existent, but I guess if it worked before ...

Incipient crack in the chainstay? I'd clean it up and have a damn good look round the edge of the lug.

£120 plus paint; yes, I'd pay that (and probably just powdercoat anyway).

But, I'd kind of like whoever I give it to to be able to tell me with some confidence that the rest of the frame is OK and the job will be fine. I think I'm looking for someone reasonably established, even though someone using it as practice might take loads of care and do a tidy job.

S'pose it comes down to who would you use yourself - or better, who have you used?

Flapjacks? How did I miss them?

(And TSK as soon as these exams are over I'll drop the Brooks Swift back off to you!)

Think you might mean me not TSK - unless you're really tarting about between saddles ...

Was wondering how you were getting on with it as I headed home after the Great Escape yesterday.

It's not the DNSs who say nothing who are too much of a problem, it's the folk who DNF but don't let the organiser know ...

We will be sending an email with all the times on shortly.

Sheesh, what's keeping you? Anyone would think you'd had a record turnout to deal with or something ...

This is worrying me, actually. I've never cared about times before. Now I'm frantically updating, trying to find out how fast slow I actually was.

There's a couple of threads on YACF about this very problem ... https://yacf.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=80656 and https://yacf.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=80928. They drift a bit, but a good few ideas.

I reckon that your easiest and cheapest bodge is to create an extender out of something like an offcut of plumbing copper - might want a couple of thicknesses to keep it stiff enough, but should be able to get close enough to the curvature of the braze-on. Drill a couple of holes, bolt one end to the existing braze-on and the mech to the other.

If that would put the mech too low, then file the braze-on to extend the slot downwards. I reckon you'd defintely be OK if there was 2 or 3mm of metal left at the bottom, and might be fine with less.

I found with this that it wouldn't expand far enough to be tight in the steerer. Ran it with a coke can shim for a while (like about four years) but finally took it apart and spent five minutes with a file, taking some material off the narrow end of both the cone-shaped expanders. It actually works now ...

My first ever TT as well - thanks for coping with my wobbles on the start line, not used to being held up. Great venue, which I think made it a really, really easy intro, and it was quite fun riding a circuit instead of dicing with traffic.

Waiting with bated breath for my time - think I did a bit under 29 mins, which I'm pretty pleased with as I was really sceptical about my ability to keep up evens for more than about five minutes. Have to wait and see if my watch was right!

No problem with being called off myself - heard it very clearly. But I was just behind another rider as she passed the timekeeper on what (based on number - three in front of me) I assumed was her last lap, and there didn't seem to be a call to her at all. She later said she'd ended up doing an extra lap.

(Oh, and the rain started as I was on my half-lap warm-down - perfect timing!)

The DD's a nice ride - did it last year and would do it again in June if I wasn't signed up for the Snow Roads. Three climbs that took a bit of effort - the rest was grand.

As for the Hop Garden, decided I didn't fancy it and sat at home listening to the wind howling. Should have entered it in advance - I don't think I'd have DNSd.

Not sure about the Hop Garden myself. Was going to enter the 200, then looked properly at the forecast and realised that the stretch along the marshes would be dead into the teeth of the gale, with no shelter.

But today's been so much drier than predicted that I'm thinking about emailing the org to see if I can turn up and EOL. See what the forecast says in a bit, I guess.

Why bother? Because it is - or was - a nice, good quality frame that rides really well: I paid buttons for it, but the price was no reflection of quality. Thing is, it affects my perceptions of value for everything related to it - if I'd had it built for me for a grand, I'd have no problem spending £200 getting the metalwork done, but because I picked it up for well under a ton, I'm going to feel reluctant to spend twice that 'just' to repair it.

Having run into a wooden bollard a bit too hard, I've got a delightfully bent pair of forks and a creased head tube.

I think I can get away with just a new head tube (95% sure there are no creases in top and down tubes), but I'd like to have confidence in whoever tells me so - and for them to be happy doing a fillet brazed replacement.

Forks, well, the steerer's an interesting shape but the legs don't seem to be too far out of whack. If a new steerer and retracking works, that would be great, but otherwise I'm sure I can find new forks.

So, who's currently forum favourite for repair work? Looks like Ryan@Oak gets a thumbs up from lots of people; how about others? Saffron maybe, though they say they won't touch forks? Can Mario Vaz still get his brother to do stuff - and if so, tube replacement, or just little stuff like braze-ons?

Any idea of costs? The frame was dirt cheap, so even though it's quite nice I've got an aversion to spending money on it.

I know what you mean about different options being nice but not quite right: I like the look of this one though. PM coming ...

50/14, surely?

As f_j says, google cache remembers, but only for the moment. Here's Mr Frankel's text in case anyone actually wants to read it.

I wouldn't.

---

The problem with cyclists

By Andrew Frankel on 6 May 2014 @Andrew_Frankel

How many of you are familiar with these circumstances, or similar? You are on a fast country road, trying to enjoy your drive, despite all those militating factors life throws at you: traffic, pot-holes, the children on the back seat and so on.

For the avoidance of doubt you are not driving like Ronnie Peterson on qualifiers, oversteering everywhere at triple the speed limit, you’re driving sensibly, but enjoying all those aspects of driving available entirely legally to anyone with a shred of sensitivity and a half decent car: finding the natural line through each curve, making imperceptible gear changes, listening to the engine, noting the loads build in the suspension and reading the road through the feel of the steering.

You crest a hill at, say, 50mph, and discover two cyclists travelling at one tenth of your speed, side by side in the middle of the road, having a nice chat. They can or at least should be able to hear you approach but despite the clear and present danger to their continuing existence, they exhibit not even a desire to pull over, let alone any kind of duty. You are the maniac in the one tonne metal projectile, they are the poor, innocent keep fit enthusiasts doing their bit to save the planet.

They believe that if you hit them there’s not a court in the land that’s going to find them culpable for the appalling accident that will ensue. The fact damages may well be paid to their estate rather than themselves appears not to register. They know that when faced with a choice of slamming on the brakes and/or swerving around them, or running into the back of them, you’re going to do whatever you can to prevent an accident entirely of their creation.

And yet when once you’ve shed the speed or found the gap between them and the truck coming the other way, when you look in the mirror, you find yourself in receipt of a single digit, black gloved salute. You find this an unworthy reward for saving their life.

I like cycling. I believe cyclists have as much right to use the roads as cars, motorcycles, buses and trucks. I have no problem at all with those who stay in single file and, like the rest of us, use no more space than they need; and, to be fair, most do. But in a sizeable minority of cases there is something about climbing aboard a device fashioned from metal, rubber and carbon fibre that trips the survival instinct switch in their brain to the off position.

None of these people would dream of walking in the middle of a busy A-road any more than would you and I, but put him or her on a bicycle and despite the fact that on many hills they can manage no better than walking pace, it’s apparently absolutely fine.

The problems cyclists now present motorists are many and manifest. Drivers must be 17 years old, trained and insured before they can take to the road: cyclists, like horse riders, remain untroubled by such inconveniences. Moreover they wield their weakness as a strength, believing their vulnerability somehow confers upon them the right to the moral high ground and upon you the obligation to do anything to accommodate their perceived right to travel on any part of the road at any speed they see fit, regardless of the inconvenience and danger to others as a result.

Measures to deal specifically with the hazards presented by two such incompatible devices as bicycles and vehicles occupying the same stretches of road will surely come but because the explosion of interest in cycling is a recent thing, they’re not here yet. Locally there is one road which has a simple cycle lane painted along its edges and I can’t remember when I last had a problem on it. As a measure it is neither expensive nor draconian and, so far as I can see, it works.

More fundamentally however cyclists need to realise that while their pastime is to be encouraged for all the obvious reasons, it should not be seen as a postmodern alternative to going to the pub: essentially a social occasion with the added benefit of keeping fit. Until this education is complete, people who ride bicycles very slowly in the middle of busy roads will continue to lose their lives, and people who drive cars in a manner that in any other circumstances would be regarded as entirely sensible, will continue to be unfairly blamed.

If the route map I found onlines elevation is correct then I need to add more hills on my average rides.

www.bikely.com/maps/bike-path/Dunwich-Dynamo-route-UK
4600ft/1400m climbed over 112miles/180km

Todays ride after work was 33.5miles with 603ft climbed. So 1/2-2/3 the hilly I need.

Will have a look at some older rides and find one with good numbers then repeat it lots.

No need to overanalyse it, frankly. 1000m climbing in 100km is a fairly good, normal average for a ride that isn't flat but doesn't have any hills to be scared of - this is much flatter than that. 1400m sounds a lot (more than Ben Nevis! Shock), but you don't do it all in one big lump.

I've not ridden the DD for ages but when I did, it was really my only long ride - I was commuting maybe 6 or 8 miles each way, but not doing anything much at weekends. I might have been pretty shagged at the end, but still in good enough shape to trundle down to Ipswich for a train. Take it steady, and you'll be fine.

Anybody had a Swiss Army knife refurbished?

No, but over on YACF there's a knife porn thread with fairly detailed accounts from someone who's pimped and customised one knife and seems to be making a habit out of it.