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My first drinks night was fun, and nice to meet you Mrlemon, 6pt, owenreed, John H, Ivanskavinsky and of course thanks for the poster, Timmy2wheels! Will meet more of you next week I hope.

Also - cheers for the recommendation to get crumble at Bagel King on the way back. It was good, and gave my housemate serious pudding envy.

Hello all...

Im unlikely to be able to make it tonight as I have some mates in town from Melbourne. Is someone able to collect my wallpaper from timmy2wheels for me please? Preferably someone also collecting who has a poster roll so t doesn't get damaged.

I have one. I'll take yours by all means.

It'll be my pleasure to meet you tonight - there is wallpaper to collect from Timmy2wheels but really it's the necessary kick up the arse to get along, so see you chaps later.

Timmy2wheels - are you going to SE drinks tomorrow night? I just moved to SE17 so timing couldn't be better!

a) re-
b) crap

Chap in a rather nice A-Z cycling top on a rather nice orangey brown single speed with a rack on the back and well used white tyres making progress from Regent Street down Haymarket towards Hyde Park yesterday evening. It was crazy ped hour and you seemed to be pretty worked up about it. Couldn't catch up and compliment your bike and shirt choice due to the trouble I had with the turbulent wake of confused and stumbling pedestrians you left behind.

Some gearie guy started drafting me on Northumberland Avenue along Embankment and then blew past once in the airless Blackfriars tunnel with ne'er a 'cheers' or 'ta'. He couldn't hack it on his own cos I doggedly span my 42-16 along Upper Thames St until I hauled him in at Tower Bridge. Twice fooled, me, cos he then drafted me another 2 miles down The Highway before shooting past on a downhill. Hi.

Big ring, scruffy white Specialized, red rims, union jack saddle, white headphones, Victoria Embankment this morning. You are quick.

I asked FH to sew on an extra holster for my (3kg) xena 210 on to the round-the-waist version. I think it was $5 extra, and so I have either or both of the mini fahg and the xena on at any time. I haven't had it all that long, but it sits well and is pretty comfy for my relatively short commute - definitely better than a chain I'd say.

http://www.wga.hu/art/j/juan/1/lazarus2.jpg

Still available?

So basically, everyone who wants a sheet cough up now, and if there's any surplus payments we can have a cagematch.

And cheers for taking this on Timmy2wheels - I'll buy you a pint when I pick mine up.

Someone else already would have :-/ Best of luck with the sale, though - ebay can sometimes be such a monumental hassle.

They're not SPD shoes are they?

Paid:

1. EEI
   
2. SoperRiva
   
3. dave.kent
   
4. Mrlemon
   
5. bodieanddoyle
   
6. jacqui
   
7. nuknow
   
8. Chocky [PAID]
   
9. Balki
   
10. Timmy2wheeks
    11.bongle.404 (cheeky?)
    

I just completed 2 hours or so with David Showell, the boss of Cycle Confident. The kind folk at Westminster paid for it all, since I work there. I've been on the roads for 25 years but seem to have an actual scrape or worse every year or couple of years, and get cut up enough to make my blood boil every couple of days, so I was just looking to reduce the frequency of these mishaps.

He started off with a quick check of my bike - slack chain! - asked if I was happy with my brakes, and offered to adjust them if I wasn't confident enough to do it myself, which I thought was kind. I learned something pretty quickly which was to get on the bike in the road, and starting from the kerb side of the bike. I never did this before, since it's a little harder than getting on from the off side, due to it being lower on the kerb side, but he made the point that if something goes wrong it's much easier to jump to safety when you don't have a bike in the way.

A quick check of my ability to look behind me, and we were off, following my homeward bound commute. Right away he noticed I weave about a lot and don't look behind me, which was certainly true. My line was quite good, but for the first mile or so, the recurring theme was, "Be more aware of who's behind you." After I dropped him at a couple of lights and he saw me power-weave up through the Soho traffic, he got to the nub of my problem. "You're a nutter," he said, "I've never seen anyone ride so fast and so aggressively through traffic as you".

Despite the way it reads in print, he was totally non-judgemental about it, and pointed out a few points from the previous mile where I'd abruptly changed course while 'making progress' and could have been taken out by someone who didn't know where I was going next. He made the point that if you're moving very fast, there is less opportunity for another road user to see you and judge your intent. I never thought about this, but it seems obvious now that if someone is only glancing in their rear view mirror, side mirrors or over a shoulder, then the faster you go, the less likely you are to be in their field of view in the instant of the glance.

A little later on in the journey (to Halfords, to exploit the BOGOF computer mishap and land some tasty shorts) a bendy bus conveniently cut me up and, had I not jumped on the brakes, would have pushed me on to the pavement, which would have been disastrous at those speeds. David showed how I could have avoided this situation, had I spotted the bus stop ahead and been aware of the bus behind me. The rest of the lesson was focused on not going at breakneck speed everywhere, and communicating manoeuvring intent through eye contact, hand signal and road position. I'd always thought that if you have to signal, your road position wasn't clear enough, but he laid out several situations where position isn't enough and encouraged really assertive hand signals to help drivers back off a bit and give you a bit more room.

As a trainer, I thought David was really good. He had a hard task having to be the angel on my shoulder, on the matter of speed. While he was making the point that by going at breakneck speed I might make a few more minutes, the devil was whispering, "But you'll WIN!" Win what? I guess is the question, but I've always seen just about any journey as a competition between me and the rest of the road, chasing down any cyclist who happened to pass me while I was day dreaming, and generally acting like a 17 year old boy racer in his first XR2i. David was really helpful in both identifying this attitude and suggesting, for the first time, that going as fast as possible isn't the best way to ride in traffic. I'd definitely recommend a lesson of this kind to anyone. Like I said, even with a quarter century of road cycling behind me, there was plenty to learn.

This isn't a meme in the slightest!
from your post i hoped it was goign to be like Lounge Against the Machine, or Iron Horse, the band that do bluegrass versions of everything

Have a video of a cat looking shocked then:

YouTube- OMG cat cannot unsee the horror

Swing child o' mine. I think I prefer this to the original, even while it is, in a sense the original.

Go here for a full explanation and many many more.


355 quid! you can't skid a flywheel, and where you gonna put your spoke cards! lolz0rs!

The idea of cyclists speeding around "hoping for the best" fills me with melancholy; 'specially as it seems like that's actually how so many of us actually seem to behave.

Fixed :-(

in the absence of anything better,

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osnUB9bUm-E"]Torn
mimed[/ame]

am literally crying at these shreds clips ++dooks

Plastic Pedals, mini fag can go around a chainstay and a couple of spokes, and fix to the smaller sort of street furniture, like the posts that hold those small plates for describing parking rules. I use it as primary lock for well lit and busy areas, and as secondary when I'm leaving it for a few hours and have my Xena 210. Between them there's 5kg of lock, but I'm tired of having my bike nicked, so I hope this stops it.

Given how specialised the metal used for these locks are, I can't imagine that railing metal is anything other than warm cheese by comparison. I wouldn't trust a railing.

Don't think I've been through the Kingsway tunnel but I use the Piccadilly underpass a lot and love it to bits.

When I lived in Hammersmith that was the best bit of the journey in to work. Not hard, really, when you think of the rest of it, but nonetheless genuinely fun to let rip after a really bitty trafficky journey.

Moar metal: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBmM79YadYM&feature=player_embedded#
(not a meme, but doing the rounds nonetheless)

Classic vocals!

@bsic yeah, but slipping since I came back.

@j b & drdvice, hello and welcome! If you're about to get used to riding in London should probably visit the locks the work thread if you want to keep your bike. The thieves here are merciless.

Discussion of this just picked up over on Pistonheads. Isn't it a bit strange that such an avowedly pro-car community seems so much more sympathetic to the victim overall than we do?