Search results for:

@smudgley maidenhead>pinkney's green>henley via remenham hill>mill end>hambleden valley usually all the way to the top>drop back down to Marlow>past Longridge up the hairpin climb>maidenhead. It's approx 35 miles I think.

Happy to meet up for a ride.

Cheers

N

Ta! :)

@nimhbus I searched the forum for Dreaming Spires Ride but can't find it - what was it?

@diable indeedy - also web developers find it useful as fortunately MS took Explorer off the Mac years ago.

I like the hardware design of Mac - the lightyup-keyboard thing is cool.

Brief Encounter - they don't get it together

Juno has the kid.

A Bridge too Far was a bridge too far

The Longest Day - the Germans lose.

Any James Bond film - he shags the girl.

If your balls don't touch it's technically not (so called) 'rape'.

What kind of saddle do you have to have to prevent your balls from touching?

@Conker Thx :)
@Hippy yeah.. sorry about that.. I don't need to stop in Henley anymore...
@Sharkstar - yes it's bizarre but true
@m.f. Thx :)

Ah excellent, glad to see the Windows vs Mac debate rages as healthily here as it does elsewhere. First computer I used was an Apple Lisa, in Jan 85, at that time the non-apple computers were all green screen code driven crap. I was blown away by Lisa, it changed my life.

I was using MS XL years before it was launched on Windows.

I've used several variations of Windows on different hardware since Windows was launched in the early 90's.

I've only ever bought Mac.

However you can run Windows on a Mac, no hacking required, I've met several employees at MS that do this. At the same time you can install Ubuntu as well so for the price of one Mac you actually get three computers, which sounds like pretty good value to me ;)

This debate will never be resolved. Mac works for me, PC's don't.

@phi_pp Thx! :)
@ Soul - appreciate the honesty :)

My pleasure VanUden thx :)

My world consists of pain. My legs hurt. My wrists hurt. My neck hurts. My arse hurts. All I can see are gears on the wheel in front of me and the tarmac blurring past. I know the road I’m on, but don’t know for sure whereabouts we are on it. The wheel in front stretches away, the gap increases from 5cm to 15, then 20 then 50. Thigh and calf muscle strain as I try harder and invisible elastic brings us back together, so close tyres almost kiss; if Kaye has to stop, there’ll be the mother of all pile ups.

We’d done nearly 30 miles: my standard 25 mile route with an extra loop thrown in, seeing as how Kaye was flying fit, she having done 65 miles the previous day and competing in the notoriously demanding “Dusk ‘till Dawn” mountain bike race next weekend. The extra loop had us turning left at Mile End and already aching legs took us up the achingly gorgeous Hambleden Valley, that quintessentially English valley set in the rolling chalky flinty downland of the Chilterns.

Meandering up the valley, the occasional car trundled past. Wonderful houses, one with the gable end one massive window. Past The Frog at Skirmett, a place on the menu of menus, to be sampled at some other time. We follow the undulating climb all the way to Frieth, then descend into Marlow. From there a 20mph slog to Bourne End where Kaye takes the front and I’m a fag paper width behind her on final pimple-sized mountain into Maidenhead.

We’d started the day easily enough. A gentle potter to Henley. Well, that was the intention. Ambling through Pinkneys Green, then down to Hurley, past the Red Lyon of Red Monday’s fame. We caught another guy on fixed here, on the descent to http://www.blackboysinn.co.uk/, a very pleasant venue but not for two hot and sweaty cyclists!

Then we hit Remenham Hill. I get out of the saddle, dancing on the pedals, when Kaye gets a wriggle on and leaves me like I’m standing still. Swish, swish, swish go her tyres on the tarmac, and she pulls away from me, I’m gasping in her wake. I try to respond, to accelerate somewhat, increase my speed by even a mile an hour, but there’s nothing there, no zip, zing, my get up and go has got up and gone. Then the other bloke we’d caught also went past…

..crap.

I resign myself to a slow, tough, haul up this bloody hill; in either direction it just saps all energy out of me, this way or that. Get into a rhythm and keep it going. On a fixed wheel bike there’s no top dead centre, as long as there’s momentum, then the upcoming pedal will force your leg over the top, and the down stroke begins. You’ve just got to keep going, keep standing on the pedals, one after the other. For some bizzare reason, I always think of Gerald Ratner when struggling over this lump.

Gradually the gradient eases, cadence increases, I can sit back down and muster what power I have to get over the brow. Kaye’s waiting and as I pull along side she takes the piss; fair play. We descend in to Henley, she freewheeling, my legs a propeller-blur as they try to keep up with the fixed wheel. Descending on fixed is an art, the consequences of trying to freewheel are too horrendous to contemplate. Kay’s on-board computer is indicating 40mph, which is pretty good going on a 76 inch fixed!

Two Starbucks cappuccinos and sticky buns later, we’re back on the road, refreshed and ready to finish off the remaining 36,682 pedal strokes….

Giving up sugar will be really hard as it's often a "hidden" ingredient in stuff you wouldn't expect it to be in. Like pizza sauces. Cold meats... you'll have to do a lot of label checking.

Building wheels is great fun.. but I could never do it unless it was all I did. Don't try to multitask, focus...

The key to it is in the initial lacing up - it has been 25 or so years since I did it - I do remember tho that the first spoke to put through the rim and add a nipple to was the one next to the valve hole as this gives you a point of reference.

Once the initial "side" of the wheel is threaded for every other spoke, turn it over and twist the hub so the spokes angle away from the valve hole. Then thread the crossover spokes for the same side of the wheel...

..if the rims you are using have spoke holes that alternate left side right side left side right side that naturally you want spokes on the left flange to go to the left biased spoke hole and rights to right....

Dunno if that makes sense, I suspect not. So easy to demo, so difficult to describe.

Use a wheel jig and wheel dishing tool and a quality nipple key.

Check for roundness, trueness and dishing.

Make sure the threaded end of the spoke doesn't extend into the rim where it can puncture innertubes - tricky with deep V's I know. Finish the job off with rim tape (unless you're using tubs natch).

It's very satisfying.

Thanks! Will check Zen & Nildram - fact - Nildram is Adrian Nildram's surname spelt backwards...

Any updates on this topic?

I was with Bethere but the thompson router they supplied kept crashing and they refused to send a replacement.

I switched to BT. The homehub went to the wrong address on the wrong. Once I'd retrieved it and installed, it didn't work. It took a week for them to send and engineer who made a call to the call centre where it was activated..

so I was online hip hoorah but... the Homehub refuses to recognise my Airprot Express wifi repeaters so my hifi over wifi is buggered. BT customer care keep pointing me at apple's website... duh.

I spoke with BT's Director of Research and Applications at their research centre - he had no idea about iTunes and Airport Epxress and the ability for any itunes devices to play and playlist on any zone... he said he'd get his team to investigate.

But despite emailing him I've had no response.

In the meantime I'm not paying for my broadband as I haven't accepted it as in and working... but I have no music.

So I need an ISP that delivers the best possible bandwidth (which is all rubbish in this country) AND that understands wifi applications in the home.

Simple enough. I'd have thought...

Any ideas?

I left a comment - what a balls ache - anyway it's going through their moderation system.

@wannabe what speed do you get?

Sl6...

It's all about fixed...

http://www.cogmag.com/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9P0NncqVqg

I doubt it's fibreoptic as to the best of my knowledge no one is running fibre to the home services commercially yet - Virgin are levering off their co-ax cable network which they inherited from NTL and where they don't have coax they resell BT copper ADSL rubbish. Don't believe the "fibre optic broadband" marketing, it's a load of cobblers for the time being. BT claim to be running fibre to the home in new builds but I haven't seen much in the way of press releases about it - and standard routers won't work as they don't have an optical interface.

"Super fast" broadband IS coming soon which is fibre to the street side cabinet (FTTC/FTTK (k = kerb)) then a version of DSL called VDSL over the remaining copper wire. This should deliver about 40Mbps of theoretical max speed as opposed to 70Mbps over coax cable (DOCSIS v3) from Virgin.

I was told by senior BT staff that after FTTC comes fibre to the top of the pole, the finally fibre to the home... of course FTTH give unlimited bandwidth... which is what we really need.

BBC Radio 4 Today show.

@Hippy - where in the Chilterns?

Touch Rays face when he isnt playing polo, he loves it bigstyle.
But keep teabagging whoever you wish, so long as it's not murtle's turn. He gets the right hump
and the left, yet still keeps coming back for
seconds, thirds and he doesn't mind if you fart chocolate bubbles in his milkshake, but
follow through and pass the dutchie to the left luggage attendant. Alternatively
reach around Richie's swayze doo for extra motion lotion, which alleviates painful
swellings and makes tynans theft paste taste less like marmite. Although caution,
one can never forget the smell of a burning piece of rubber tubing up your

Peyton & Byrne do v. nice pies (and sticky buns too). St Pancras but prob other places too.