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^ Heh. I suppose I should edit it a bit.

What, this...

Oh piss off. I made a slip up in explaining why I wouldn't want a starnut, so you told me that I knew nothing about them. I prove otherwise, and then explain precisely why I would choose a screw anchor over a star nut, and then you say that I've lost the argument. That doesn't make any sense to me.

And no, real-world qualifications are much more than 'shiny paper'. I worked fucking hard for them, and do you know what, it does kinda mean that I have a lot of experience in mechanical things (enough to think that a screw anchor would be preferable to a starnut, at least). I'm not trying to say that a)I know more than anyone else or b)anyone who doesn't have relevant qualifications doesn't have relevant knowledge; you specifically said that I had no experience of star nuts in a very insulting way so I simply told you otherwise and went on to explain my idea of why a screw anchor is preferable in a bit more detail.

Why on earth were you so hostile in the first place? You could've just said 'you don't need to remove the star nut every time' and I would've said 'whoops yeah what I mean to say was...'. Instead you tried to personally insult me, and then you did it again when I explained my thoughts a bit better! Grow up FFS!

What 'argument' anyway? Are you arguing about whether or not I know what a starnut is, or whether or not it's preferable to a screw anchor? Either way, I've proved my point, so nothing against you personally, but once again, piss off.

;]

Unfortunately though it was Mr Smyth who asked if you'd seen a star nut in real life. :]

Ben was doing me a favour more than anything here. He knew i needed the money and hoped as much as me that him buying it would give me a chance to get myself sorted and hopefully buy it back.

Unfortunately i'm still broke, as the sale of the Brooklyn showed, so alas, It's time for it to find a new home.

Cheers though Ben, the offer to buy it back was much appreciated.

I think a few people are missing the point here.
There are plenty of things he could use, but he's trying to make something a little more elegant.

He has access to all the equipment needed to manufacture something himself so why not?
The fact that there are other options out there already is no reason to not try a different approach.

I'm all for inventing AND bodging personally. :]

“There are certain ways you've got to act to be a real mountain biker, Pete Richardson couldn't care less.”

                                                    Free Rider.

In the early evening gloom of a late-October Vermont day, at the peak of a narrow, switchbacked singletrack climb, Pete Richardson leans against the handlebar of his decade-old Specialized Rockhopper, and draws on a Malboro Light.
As usual, he is waiting.
Waiting for night to displace the day, waiting until the last possible moment to flick the switch on his early-generation Niterider and waiting for his riding companions to pick their way up the steep, root-infested hill, where they'll find him sitting patiently, smoking and listening to the sounds of the evening woods.

Pete sighs, and draws softly on his cigarette, sucking smoke gently into his lungs, letting it expand his chest like an inflating tyre.
He paws through a small fanny pack worn backward, hanging across his stomach, and extracts a Snickers bar.
Cigarette dangling from his lips, eyes squinting from the lazy, sky-bound smoke, he unwraps the peanut-y confection and brings it to his mouth with his left hand while removing the Malboro with his right.
For a second -maybe less- his hands meet in the near-dark.
A chocolate bar, a cigarette and chapped, calloused hands.

Pete Richardson is a mountain biker. And a redneck. And he knows it.
“By all means I'm a redneck,” he cackles [he likes to cackle].
“Course, there's all sorts of diff'rent rednecks. I s'pose you'd call me a good-natured redneck.”
Again, the cackle. It's true: He is good-natured. When your chain breaks, it will be Pete who presses it back together. When your stomach grumbles, Pete will be the first to offer food. When a trail is closed, Pete will be the one to soothe the landowner. That's just Pete.

He says “Ain't” a lot. He uses words like “wicked,” and “reckon,” and phrases like “ass high on a ten-foot Indian.”
He calls women “darlin' “ and “sweet-heart” and doesn't understand why they aren't flattered.
He eats bacon and eggs for breakfast almost every day.
He brings plastic bags full of cold chicken-fried steak on rides. The fat congeals and sticks to the inside of the bag. He licks it out.

One by one, his riding companions reach the summit, and one by one, Pete greets them: “It's 'bout time. I ain't up here for my health, ya' know.”
He extinguishes his half-smoked cigarette against the paint-peeled top tube of his bike and carefully returns the charred remainder to its crumpled pack.
He shoves one weathered hiking boot into a toe clip [he scoffs at SPDs, calling them “stupid pedal death”], flicks the switch on his faltering light, pulls on his leather work gloves and pushes off into a dimly lit circle of early night.

How many riders like Pete are there in the sport of mountain biking?
To read the magazines or look at the ads you wouldn't think there are any.
You'd think mountain biking is populated solely by the cool and young and hip—dutiful consumers who thrive on the latest look, the newest thing. But there are lots of Pete Richardsons out there.
You probably have seen them—maybe you are one.
You don't see many on the race circuit [Shaun Palmer and the retired Bob Roll notwithstanding],
partly because these riders have better things to do with 35 bucks, but mostly because their definition of “fun” does not include riding multiple loops, dragging eyeballs and tongue behind.
You won't find them at most festivals—it's partly the money issue again, and partly because the notion of driving long distances to ride their bikes makes little sense to them.
But throughout America—especially rural America—they are out there.
They might be wearing jeans, or neon-yellow Pearl Izumi shorts they bought on closeout from Nashbar eight years ago. They might be wearing a helmet—or they might not.
They might be riding an old hardtail with thumbshifters and a seven-speed cassette, or they might have traded in their dirt bike for 27 gears and five inches front and rear.
Fact is, it matters little to them what they ride, so long as it gets them down the trail.
And it matters even less what other people think of them. “I'm happy being me,” says Pete.
“And I really don't give a hoot about what other people want to be either.”

Across the table, Pete Richardson sits, all greasy fingers and shit-eating grin, putting into plain words the most basic tenet of the American ideal: The freedom to do our own thing, and the wisdom to allow others to do theirs.
Mountain bikers love to talk about freedom: the freedom to be who they are, to ride fast and alone and without constraint. But we're quick to judge when that freedom is expressed in oddball ways, even in our own sport.
We judge other riders by the bikes they own, the clothes they wear, how fast or slow they ride, whether or not they shave their legs or ride clipless pedals.
Pete couldn't care less. He dangles two strips of bacon—charred, fat-streaked, dripping—from his fingers. He folds them both into his mouth , chews noisily and cackles: “What the hell's the matter with grease, anyway?”

Much of what Pete says is said entirely for his own amusement. He talks in short, spiky exclamations that dispense with standard, polite banter.
“A lot about being who I am is 'bout speaking your piece, whether it needs to be said or not. Sometimes I open my mouth when it should be kept shut.”
He opens it now, tips his head back and drops in another slice of bacon.

Pete rides like he speaks, running wide open when common sense begs him to shut it down.
Things break, parts on both bike and body. Pete's acceptance of this is absolute. That he will get hurt in the woods--either on a bike in the summer, or on skis in the winter—is a fact of his life, as plain and true as night following day. When it happens, he good-naturedly welcomes the injury into his life, and folds himself around it until it heals.
The type of rider he is doesn't protect him from getting hurt, but it seems to keep him from wallowing in self-pity and anxiety.
Is it surprising that Pete is almost always the strongest, most technically adept rider in these sizable group rides of his peers, bike shop employees, insurance salesmen and high school students?
It shouldn't be. True, his living habits would make the Surgeon General queasy.
But this is a man reared in a culture that values bravado above all.
This is a man reared on the two-stroke exhaust fumes and twitchy woods handling of high-strung dirt bikes. This is a man who has made his reputation by going faster, farther, higher, longer.

Pete has been a mountain biker since he started riding in the early 8O's with his brother Mike, on a first or maybe second generation Rockhopper. He's owned a string of Rockhoppers since, the most recent being a late 8O's model that finally cracked at the chainstay after 1O years of abuse.
Rumour has it he cried when it happened.
Mike doesn't ride much anymore—he's a serious horsepower junkie—but for 15-odd years the brothers explored four-wheeler trails, cut singletrack and generally raised muddy hell together in the forests and fields surrounding their hometown of Barre, Vermont.
Pete hopes his brother will start riding again. “He's getting a gut.” says Pete disgustedly, shaking his head.

Truth be told, Pete's mellowed a little himself. He no longer rides off the roof of his car, for instance [maybe because he finally has a car that's worth more than his bike], and spending time with his son has taken priority over day-in, day-out epics.
These days, he rides most often with his friend Tony Berby, a barrel-chested, bellowing man of unshakable good cheer, who drinks light beer before and after rides.
Pete still manages to roust the troops on occasion, and few things make him happier than seeing his old riding pals back on their bikes.
“It's a fountain of youth,” says Pete. “It keeps me away from beer. [This, of course, is not entirely true. In all actuality, it's not even partly true.] I want something more than nestling at the TV and sucking down a six-pack of Bud. I'll ride my bike 'til I crap.” Most likely he means die.

Is Pete a real redneck? Is he a real mountain biker? Damn the labels. Riding with Pete and Tony and the rag-tag assemblage he invariably coaxes away from throttles and football is like passing through a looking glass to a world where the hype and customs of our sport have not so much been ignored as dismissed from the outset.
But what is “cool” and what is truly important are two very different things.
That Pete and other riders like him honor the latter and not the former is not rebellion. Nor is it arrogance. It is simply another way to ride, another way to experience the freedom of knobby tires on a rocky path.

By Ben Hewitt

I'm one of those people who find it truly difficult to move on sometimes.
I have nothing but good memories of my childhood. A lifetime spent behind handlebars.
Whenever i'm down it's always memories of my youth that inspire me to carry on.

I'm forever trying to recapture that feeling i used to get on family bike rides, or that feeling i had when i got my first geared bike. The look of horror and disappointment on my face when my parents told me i couldn't cycle anymore unless i wore the enormous, full face BMX helmet they'd just bought me after i had a bad accident and ripped my mouth to pieces. The feeling i got when i first started mountain biking.

As i got older i got sucked into the whole "Buy this bike/gadget/suspension etc...it'll make cycling so much better"...and each time i convinced myself it did.
But sooner or later i found myself missing the feeling i used to have. Time after time i'd just buy new things, new bikes and fall into the same trap.

Once i started single-speeding and riding fixed, i began to feel like i did when i first started mountain biking...the challenge of controlling a fully rigid bike on dirt brought back all those happy memories.

Over the years i've bought literally thousands of cycling magazines. A few years ago i threw them all away. All but two.
There were two articles , both from an American publication called Mountain Bike, which inspired me more than any others, and always made me want to ride again every time i read them.
One was an article on John Stamstad, who i consider to be a legend and who i've spoken about on numerous occasions on this forum.

The other was on a completely unknown guy called Pete Richardson. A 'nobody' in the cycling world...but the article about him struck a chord with me and reminded me time and time again just what is most important to me about cycling and why i continue to do it.

It may mean nothing to some of you, but it may also inspire a few of you like it always has me.
The article is Ten years old.

Better make a cuppa for this one as it's LONG and has taken me forever to copy out with my one finger typing technique.

Here Goes...

Let's not forget something here...I simply laughed at the shit quality control of your caps.
Every person involved in the cap process then decided to take that personally when it was a reflection on the chosen manufacturer NOT forum members.
Yes i found it amusing that after months of hyping up how great they were gonna be they ended up with shit quality control...that's my choice...whether anyone else finds it amusing is up to them.

If people then start having a go at me for laughing and take things personally and say i'm this and that then it's also my right to defend myself...which i have.

I didn't say you HAD censored me either, but you did ask me to temper my behaviour...just for criticizing your caps, which i would say is pretty ridiculous given the other things you've let slide previously.

I haven't attacked anybody either...i've discussed with people and i've defended myself against accusations...you don't see me complaining about being attacked.

The one big mistake you keep making is to assume that i'm in some way angry. I haven't been angry in a single post on this thread...i've found the reaction to me laughing pretty ludicrous to be honest.
Where has been my 'rage and fume' ?

Finally, as for 'getting my shit together' and sitting here being a bitch...again you're confusing me having a different opinion to the majority as being bitchy or angry or the result of depression.

My shit has never been more together.
I've never been more focused on my 'shit' in my life...I've never been more positive.
The end of Archie's Grobags wasn't some unfortunate tragedy that i'm mourning...it was the start of the next chapter in my life.

You have my word that i'll never laugh at your caps on here again.
Enjoy your breakfast!

Must be great having access to any of those types of machines.
I could really do with access to a means of machining aluminium too....sigh, sometimes a sewing machine just isn't good enough. :]

So you're going for machined aluminium construction?

http://www.1lesscar.com/

scroll down the products.

One less car.

Will you be making it yourself? I mean do you have access to the right equipment, or are you just designing then getting it made elsewhere?

Erm Scott, what precisely would you have me do? Really? Because I'm already offering a full refund to anyone who wants it, and there are already volunteers who will fix caps that break for those who want to keep the cap but have it fixed.

So as we're covering both of those angles already, what precisely should I be offering customers that I'm not already? That is what it means to say it's run as a business, to step up and admit faults (which I personally have done) and offer to put them right (which I personally have done through refunds and other have done through offering to repair) and to make sure it doesn't happen again (which if I make more I will do).

So... what would Scott not Scot do? Tell us your business tip for success so that I can learn how to produce things up to your standard.

Well you could try being a little more grown up about accepting criticism for one...you're the boss FFS.
Seriously, is there a need for the patronizing tone?

I never said you need to DO anything did I?

Throughout my time on here i've seen Racism, Sexism, Homophobia, Bullying, and for the most part it's been allowed to slide, because you believe in freedom of speech...you think censoring is against peoples rights...Then you tell ME i need to temper my behaviour...I'm labelled unsupportive and ungrateful...and for what?

For laughing at your caps!

Seriously...get a bit of perspective here.
Take a look at some of the things that have gone on on this forum and ask yourself seriously...is laughing at your hats really a cause for telling somebody to temper their behaviour?

It's a forum...you of all people should be able to take a bit of criticism by now.
I'm not under some kind of obligation to like the hats or call samaritans for support when somebodies elastic breaks.

As i said, if you don't like my opinions just ignore me.

If everybody else is happy enough with the hats why should it matter in the slightest what i think?
But i'm still entitled to voice my opinion am i not?

Generating funds for the forum makes it a business venture. You made something, you sold it, you put the money into the forum/business.

I've shown plenty of support for this forum over the years Wayne, I never asked for ANYTHING in return.
Archie's Grobags was a business. I made a product and sold it, when i wasn't either giving them away or trying to let people have things as cheaply as possible.
I don't ask for or expect bumps of any kind. If people choose to support or encourage then i'm pleased, but if you're trying to say that i owe everything to the forum then i disagree,

Regardless of the support i've received it doesn't mean i can't find this whole situation either amusing or ludicrous.

Just because forum members were involved it doesn't mean it's above piss taking.

Just because i say things openly rather than leave snide tags like people have on my threads is no reason to throw the toys out of the pram.

If this place is heading the way i suspect it is then you're gonna have to get used to people speaking openly AND criticizing.

As far as i'm concerned i've said nothing on here that is any more out of order than most of what i read on almost any thread on the forum.

If you don't like reading my opinions then you can put me on ignore too. Simple.

I do get that very well

Not judging by this.

I know that you meant "handlebars+stem" instead of just handlebars, that was clear, nonetheless the comparison makes no sense, because there is nothing, no ridge or anything else on a normal stem that stops it from sinking deeper when you start tightening the bolt (but the stem curve itself on the top, but that'd be, as said, uneven distribution).

I look forward to seeing the next version you spoke of though.

You're still not getting it.
I read what RPM said to just mean if you attached ANYTHING to the star nut bolt which would allow you to exert leverage on it, it would move easily as it wasn't designed for anything more than applying a pretty small amount of vertical pressure onto the headset.

Difference being that star nuts weren't designed to have much load on them. They certainly weren't designed to resist braking force.
A wedge will be more able to take the tightening that this idea requires.

IMO.

No, no...it's 'Darker black' now. :]

I nominate Pistoffski's Brooklyn! :]

The force will remain acting in the direction off pull, it will not go around corners if you know what I mean.

The force isn't what it used to be. :[

Brooks? They've sponsored a LOT of forum based things?

Bright times may not involve riding around on the dance floor, but i'd say it's more a part of this community.

I find it amusing, that's the opposite of being miserable.
Besides, as you always tell people...if you don't like somebodies posts, put them on ignore.

Who's shouting?
There is obviously a problem with the quality so why don't they just get sent back?
The fact that they're having a factory holiday shouldn't mean that people are having to fix their own hats?

If my bags all started falling to bits i wouldn't tell people to stitch them back together themselves.

Regardless of how personally certain people are taking it, i still find this whole situation rather ludicrous.
If Rapha sold forum members a load of new jerseys and they started coming undone at the seams and then told people to sew them back together people would surely find that pretty ludicrous too.

I just don't see why it's different just because forum members had something to do with the design and ordering process.

Well surely there must be something which relates more to the forum?
Why not a stack of LCEF caps?
Or Bright Times CD's?