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Aren't the cable bulges on the Merckx handlebars caused by not using bars with grooves for aero levers? I quite like the look, myself. It looks a bit veiny and muscular.

That looks interesting. They call it 'laid up' bamboo - laminated, in other words, probably using epoxy. I suppose it's one way around the problem of natural bamboo, which is that the irregular size and diameter make consistent joints (and structures) difficult. Bamboo is said to be stronger that steel, weight for weight. It also shrinks less than timber as the moisture content changes, but it does still shrink a fair bit, and it tends to crack when it does shrink. I suppose their 'laid up' bamboo is kiln-dried, laminated up, then sealed with epoxy resin and polyurethane varnish on top to stop the UV from degrading the epoxy. Which would work, but all that work (and chemicals) might undermine any environmental and economic advantages, leaving an admittedly atractive conversation piece.
People in the surfing world are still waiting on a vegetable-based epoxy so that they can make more environmentally-friendly boards. There was some talk of a corn-based product but it hasn't come to anything yet.

Who cares about other people's braking arrangements when there are people in the world who can do this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4W7N-jEl93o

Dibs on the SELLE SAN ROYAL SUPERSTRADA SADDLE - Pm on the way.

I was reading to my daughters just now and I had to try really hard to stop myself from including a line from the Beastie Boys in the story -
"Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair,
So I can climb up and get into your underwear..."

I've been rummaging about in the world of Balkan remix culture recently...
YouTube- Gypsy Beats & Balkan Bangers - Balkan Hot Step.mp3

If you made them like this:
http://www.gartsideboats.com/leather.php
it would look pretty classy...

Yes. The problem that aluminium has is that it is more prone than steel to fatigue failure. if it is flexed over and over again, and the distortion is too great, it becomes work-hardened, and eventually brittle, leading to cracking. The exposed edge of the cracked metal has a distinctive stippled look to it after fatigue failure. Steel can be stretched a lot further and a lot more times and still spring back to it's original size without any effect on the structure of the material.
In a bike frame, this isn't necessarily a problem - a really stiff frame doesn't bend enough anywhere for metal fatigue to set in. But it can happpen. I once had a lovely mountain bike frame made of double-butted 7005 Easton aluminium, and after some years of heavy use the down-tube split near the bottom bracket, right where you'd expect the maximum twist from pedal action to bite. I've seen two other aluminium frames with similar fatigue fractures.

When modulus is tested they do not use a thicker bit of aluminium cause its lighter. They use a test piece of the same dimensions for all materials.

Yes. And measured like that, aluminium is less stiff than steel. But it you made the piece of aluminium thicker until it weighed the same as the piece of steel, it would be stiffer than the piece of steel. So weight for weight, aluminium is stiffer than steel. Which is why people use it to build bike frames when they want them to be stiff and light.

Aluminium is not stiff. It has to be made oversize because it is not as stiff as steel. I refer to Young's Modulus for the geeks...

http://www-materials.eng.cam.ac.uk/mpsite/physics/introduction/e-rho_metals.jpg

Look at the graph again - aluminium is stiffer than steel, weight for weight. Stiffness is always connected to thickness and therefore weight in any material. Because it is stiffer (weight for weight) it is the material of choice for building a bike frame if stiffness and light weight are your priority and you're on a lower budget.

Most modern road bike frames are therefore made out of aluminium. Obviously not all, but most - if you look at the Specialised range, for example, all but the Dura-Ace equipped top end models have alu frames. I can't find any stats but I bet that a very high percentage of road bike frames manufactured in the last year are aluminium.
I'm not saying older bikes are better, or that aluminium is a bad material, or that other frame materials don't exist. I've had a couple of great aluminium bikes. I just posted in response to various comments along the lines of "why oh why do people like old steel bikes when new ones are so much better". All I'm saying - and I can't really believe that this is in any way a controversial point - is that depending on what kind of riding you do, an older steel frame might be a rational choice: a softer ride, good value for money, and perfectly adequate in terms of function for the job, and with a certain period charm that might or might not move you but certainly does it for some.
Hippy, I would suggest that you're not one of the people who would make that choice - if you rode the Paris - Roubaix course you must be a fit fucker, and I bet you thrash your bikes mercilessly on your daily commute. So you want and appreciate a nice stiff frame that won't bounce around too much when you're up out of the saddle. But plenty of people don't ride like that, and it's not just hipsterism if they choose a classic steel road bike - it's actually a perfectly rational, value and task-based decision.

In rode an £300 aluminium fameset bike over the Paris Roubaix course this year. I've done thousands of training miles on a £100 aluminium Ribble frame. I'd done thousands of commuting miles on an alu Langster and I'm back on the aluminium Kinesis because my steel Condor snapped.
Don't tell me that alu is no good for 'around town' or 'long rides' or any other classification of cycling because those statements are wrong.

Fair enough. But what I've been trying to say - perhaps not very eloquently - is that some people still seem to like riding older steel bikes. Some other people find this hard to understand. I'm suggesting that one reason could be that pound for pound (£) they might actually be better suited to some kinds of riding than a very stiff, steep-geometry modern road frame made of an inherently stiffer material (weight for weight) such as aluminium - the kind of bikes, in fact, that I see lined up in the windows of bikes shops near me, and lined up at traffic lights on my morning commute.

Because some people continue to perpetrate bullshit about frame materials?

^ I find most of that post to be complete tosh

but if people are stuck with the only choices being aluminium or steel i can see why the hipsters stuck in the past choose old steel bikes!

road bikes and hipsters seem to go straight into some time portal bypassing the modern developments in cycling

and us lot - having a mid life crisis? never!

It's a fair point about other materials - yes, titanium bikes are lovely, but still very expensive for a properly-made one; carbon fibre / composites are good too. But most of the newer road bikes I see on the roads are still aluminium. And regardless, what I was trying to say was, the reason why lots of people still like older steel bikes is that you can get something that performs very well for the kind of riding that many people do - around town or out on longer day-rides - for the cost of a top-end saddle, let alone a whole bike made out of onanium.

Oooff.

I know this is tantamount to heresy on here, but modern bikes are far superior in terms of ride quality, stiffness, weight and so on. I love the De Rosa, but it doesn't compare to the Paduano.

I think to some extent it depends on the kind of riding you do. Modern road bikes generally get their stiffness and lightness by being made of aluminium. In fact, alu bikes have to be built very stiff, because if they're built with much flex in them, they fall apart due to metal fatigue. So the ride is hard and unyielding. Steep fame angles add to the stiffness but give tense, twitchy handling. Very good if you're totally going for it on reasonably smooth roads, but a bit punishing if you like big rides on small, potholed lanes.
For the kind of riding I prefer - long day rides through very rural areas, or trips around town with shopping or whilst drunk - a super-stiff, featherlight aluminium road bike with amazingly responsive handling would be no good. On the long rides it would batter my coccyx into jelly and dump me in the ditch if I lost concentration while trying to open a fruit bar, and it wouldn't look after me on the way home from the pub.
So I like steel bikes with a more relaxed geometry. In that category, modern groupsets are definitely better, but the old ones still work well enough; modern frames are maybe a bit lighter than older ones, but not by much.
Given that you can buy or put together a very nice older bike with a great deal of period charm for the price of a new bottom-end Halfords' special, you can see why 'classic' steel bikes still have plenty of fans.

The small contact patch road tyres have is a factor in just how powerful road brakes can be - especially in the wet.

That's more the issue with brakes, for me - to get a set-up where the braking force I can exert is a reasonable match for the grip the tyres have on the road - once you start to skid you lose most of your stopping power. So for a skinny-tyred road bike, I like something that doesn't grip too hard, but is nicely progressive in its action. I have to say that the brakes that have felt the best to me on skinny-tyred road bike are the Shimano twin-pivot 105 sidepulls.
On the other hand, with a big fat knobbly tyre, offroad, the harder the braking action the better, within reason - I remember the original XT V-brakes as being a revelation, compared to ordinary cantilevers. They were the ones with the parallelogram geometry and the special levers with the little plastic chips in to tweak the progressiveness of the braking action.
I would have though that disc brakes were inherently disadvantaged in one way, in that the leverage you can exert is much smaller because the disc is so much smaller in diameter than the wheel; on the other hand, it's up out of the mud and wetness a bit, and it's cheaper to replace a disc when you wear it out than a rim, so inherently advantaged in that way.

"If you refuse to take part in the government of your country, then you consent to being governed by your inferiors." - Plato.
It's genuinely astonishing that an argument can run for over 2000 years and still feel fresh...

Dinner is what I used my cooking equipment for.
Even the cheapest restaurant is no match for tinned ravioli.

And tinned ravioli halfway up a mountain looking at the sunset tastes pretty good too.

Goretex bivi bag (if you're on your own), a Trangia stove, a really well thought-out tool and spares kit and the best sleeping bag you can afford. I used to have a piece of rip-stop nylon about 6 foot square with eyelets round the edge. It weighed fuck all, but I would stretch it out between some trees and sleep underneath. If it rains, you can still have your head out of the bivi bag and your luggage doesn't get soaked. And And nice wide tyres - Panaracer Paselas are great - and a really good-quality pump. You load a bike the opposite way round to loading a rucksack - heavy stuff at the bottom and light at the top for bike touring, and keep the weight balanced between left and right sides. Panniers are an absolute must in my opinion - I wouldn't commute with a rucksack, let alone tour. Padded shorts too. And pack everything in bin bags in case it really pisses down on you. I used to mix up my own muesli for breakfast with powdered milk in it - that way you can have a decent breakfast but just carry water.
Writing all this has made me realise how much I miss doing that... Itchy feet now.

Can you post this frame? If so, how much inc postage?

So without sounding like an idiot is it possible for you to have a very low carb diet whilst still being able to cycle big distances. Would you body not start using your fat reserves if it had no carbs to burn?

Not really - your body can't burn its own fat fast enough to keep you supplied with energy on a long ride. You need to load up the carbohydrates before, during and after if you want to ride long distances.

And grows fast enough to be a particuarly vile form of torture, popular in China...

Bamboo has dozens of uses!

And weight for weight, it's stronger than steel. Although it has quite weak bonds between the fibres so it has to carefully engineered to get the best out of it.

I've lost about 2 stone this year. I'd been living in the countryside and having to drive everywhere, and having an emotionally trying time so tending to eat a lot and drink plenty of alcohol. So I got quite lardy. Moved back to the city and a decent length cycle commute plus doing the school run with two small children on a bike trailer, and it seemed like a good moment to lose a bit of weight.
To be honest, there was absolutely no special magic about losing the weight - just lots more exercise and lots less food. I've been doing the dieting in short-ish bursts - 2-3 weeks at a time. Your body goes into famine mode after a while if you eat less than you need, hoarding fat and refusing to give you much energy, so prolonged diets are troublesome - you just feel knackered all the time and can't ride very hard. When I've been dieting, I eat all the same food I normally eat - bread, pasta, rice, whatever - just less of it. But no sugar, no food between meals, and not much cheese (I'm a vegetarian anyway). I don't really go with the demonisation of carbohydrates - they're the primary fuel that your muscles burn, so if you're riding enough they're all good.

What's the top tube length on the Gazelle, if it's still available?

Roland why have u being using my Account

Why not give him a ring - his mobile number is all over the other adverts...

tree surgeons are famous for having lots of blood.

The point is that he was a very tall, very muscular dude who spent his life outdoors climbing trees and lifting heavy weights - maybe 15 stone and not much fat on him. Muscle has more blood in it than fat; the volume of blood in your body is a function of your weight and your body fat ratio. The more blood, the lower the blood-alcohol level for a given intake of alcohol... But I was still quite startled by that story.

Well, the 24 rule is just a personal one for me. It's possible you can have a drink or two after work and be back to 0 the next day, I don't know.

You actually metabolise alcohol pretty fast - I once had a couple of bottles of beer at seven, drove home at eleven, got stopped and breathalised and got a zero reading. I'm not proud of this, but it did happen. I know of someone who got stopped driving home at six in the morning after drinking all night, about two bottles of wine altogether, and he was under the limit. Mind you, he's about 6'3" and a tree surgeon, so he's got a lot of blood in him to dilute the alcohol.