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yeah I have no illusions about the bike, I could have spent an extra hundred and got something much better but in this case crap (but rideable) is what I'm after.

in terms of changing the chainring I've seen the lasco track chainset which is £35, I'm assuming if I throw in a jis bb (£15) it'll fit the frame ok then I just need to add a rear sprocket with the tooth count I'm after and job done. question is do I want to spend £60+ on a POS hack pub bike.

already I'm loving singlespeed riding for my commute and even if i were to ignore the fact my tricross needs some work doing to get it running smooth again (new chain, gear re-index maybe new cables) it would still be struggling to get a look at the moment. so I may save my money and just let the draft lite do what it was intended to do (cart me around when I'm a bit drunk and look a bit shit so no one wants to nick it when it's locked up) and instead put the money I would spend doing it up on buying decent parts to build a 'nice' ss bike for my commute as time goes on.

Hello. I've just arrived here.

Thought I'd poke around see what's going on.

PS. I'm not from London, does that count against me?

Most people in London are not from London.

/notbeingracistimfromessexmyself

Issue would be twofold I think- problem one would be enforcement as the chap on a motorbike doing 50 is already ignoring the limit, and two the bus company would resist strongly as they are targeted on punctual running.

if the motorbike doing 50 is already breaking the law then telling him he can't use the bus lane is a moot point anyway as he's quite clearly going to ride however he likes until he gets his collar-felt and pointed to the point of /being kept off the road. a 20 limit would actually help them throw the book at him if he's caught doing 50 as he'll be in greater excess of the speed limit and more likely to get a ban. for those who follow the rule of the road (albeit with some minor interpretations in their favour) may have their behaviour modified for the better if the speed limit was lower.

as for the buses, I'm merely basing this on my own experiences but the amount of time most buses spend doing more than 20mph is probably not as great as you may think unless it's on a major road. along my commute the buses stop every 50 yards and they're not quick off the mark either.

there's only been one instance in my own personal experience where I had a bus following me and I couldn't go fast enough to stay ahead of him until the next stop so I was holding him up and pulled over to let him pass. he was travelling empty with the lights off though so I guess he was on his way back to the depot in new cross to get home/have his tea.

I can see the cost to implement any such scheme would probably discount it immediately but could they not reduce the speed limit in bus lanes only to 20mph even where the road limit is higher? just a blanket limit, if you're in a marked bus lane the max speed is 20 on penalty of being condescended to by a copper.

taxi's and bikes could then use them to their hearts content so long as they stick to 20mph.

the cycle commuters most likely to take primary are the ones cruising between 16 and 2x mph so the cabs are less likely to try and buzz them to pass if they're already sitting at 20mph or a shade under.

I haven't given this a great deal of thought so I probably missed some glaring hole in the idea or it's been mentioned in the thread before and I've forgetten since I read it first.

the only logical explanation for the sneezing/swimming conundrum is you have an unsuccessful sex-pest frequent your pool. due to the regularity with which he attempts to attack women only for his advances to be knocked back by their pepper spray canisters, he then retreats to the local swimming baths to bathe his burning bits the pepper spray is then diluted into the water where it gets passed through your nasal passage as you swim until it builds up to a level where you begin to sneeze.

quite simple when you think about it really.

how the fuck can I shift this bastard cough that's been plaguing me for the last 18 days?

getting pissed off with endlessly coughing up lung butter like some kind of 60 a day smoker every morning.

I think i've decided its better to run without music. I completely agree it can keep you going when the feel shit but sometimes find myself zoning out and running to the beat and dropping my pace. Ran without it today and did loads better on the route than i've ever done. Ran Brighton marathon last year and they had a headphone ban (not that anyone pays any attention to it) and found I was paying attention to how I was running a lot more.

I started out running with music but as soon as I got up to about 10k distance runs I was getting fed up of sorting out hour long playlists I soon stopped bothering, now I enjoy running without music always plenty enough to go through my head while I'm running to keep my brain occupied.

the tape is mostly to cover up the pink but I get your point.

you're damned if you do and damned if you don't in that sense though, some will see the bike think it's a POS and move on to something more worthwhile, others will see it, agree it looks like a POS but fool themselves into thinking it's really valuable. at least if they fall into the second category and they do nick it they'll be disappointed if they bother to take the tape off and find that it really was a POS all along.

well the build quality on the draft lite is what you'd expect for a bike I paid £188 for brand new so it's likely it'll start falling apart before I can get too attached to it. lol

this sweaty drunken moustache twirling idiot is me...

usually to be seen somewhere between farringdon and greenwich via deptford/jamaica road/tooley street, am a friendly bloke so say hi if you see me.

You may also see me knocking about on my pub bike around here as well...

fully deserving of a spot in anti porn it's an se draft lite that I purposefully want to look shit so i feel less stressed when I have to lock it up out of sight.

my first foray into singlespeeddom and so far i'm loving it. some time this year I'll start working on a proper fixed build with decent parts while I slowly ride this POS into the ground.

people keep saying I've gotten really skinny lately but I'm also 14st and 5' 10"

really it's just down to the fact I now wear form-fitting cycling clothes to work (size m/l) whereas I was wearing a lot of my old t-shirts (size xxl) up until early dec as I hadn't bought many smaller sized clothes yet.

I was shown this by some friends a couple of months ago. They love the show. Is he still living in France?

yeah, he lives in the farmhouse where they filmed half of the second series of the show.

he had a mild stroke in march last year though (he's recovering from it ok thankfully) but the family is putting pressure on him to move back to the uk so we can keep a better eye on him. shame really, living in the wilds of france really suits him not sure he could hack moving back to essex now.

Rico Daniels aka the Salvager, his tv show used to be on discovery home & leisure and now it's on quest channel I think.

YouTube - My award winning trailer for the second series of The Salvager.

Hellooooo! The bike is now free! Found an angle grinder that worked and it took about 30 seconds. After all that. But the relief is huge.

Thank you so much again everyone. You're all great and making me wonder why I ever stopped reading this forum.

If I managed to angle grind my own lock in 30 seconds I think I'd just end up a bit depressed as I realised just how easy it was to get through rather than massively relieved.

still at least you can ride it again now.

I'd love to be able to take my bike on the DLR as if I want to take my bike with me to visit family in essex I'd have to cycle from greenwich to limehouse and the reverse on the way back.

the thing I imagine they may be worried about is access to the stations, almost all of the station entrances are elevated and only have elevator/stairs for access I can imagine the insurance providers would shit if they were actively encouraging people to carry bikes up and down what are usually massively steep stairs.

^aren't you an IT boffin? :p

I am indeed.

Hmm, I just checked the site and can't find the bit that mentions the runs being open to non-members but you'll be fine to join in anyways. just say you're interested in joining and wanted to check it out if asked. the guys who lead the runs are nice chaps so you won't have any problems they don't demand membership cards or anything.

the meet point is here (just on the heath next to the arrow not in that persons house): http://goo.gl/maps/V9jP

aim to get there for 20 past if i were you as it starts at 7:30 and come 7:31 you may not be able to see where we've gone.

you can park on the road by the meet point as it's just a residential road, there's lamppost's about for chaining up a bike but tbh it's a bit dark & deserted up by the heath at that time and we don't really stay in one place the whole time so unless it's a hack bike I'd personally not risk it.

you won't need a kit bag though, I took a water bottle the first few weeks but ended up not bothering in the end as no one else did, hydrate before you go and you'll be fine. don't wear too many layers either I made that mistake a few times and soon found it's really fucking annoying running intervals carrying a jacket.

I run with my house keys (separated from my big keyring) and a five/ten pound note just in case I want to buy something to drink/eat from the shop on my way back.

no one drinks after the tuesday runs but we do a monthly 5k handicap on a friday on the heath which is followed up by a trip to the spanish galleon down in greenwich town centre (the landlord is a triton)

Just finished Beyond Exile: Day by Day by J. L. Bourne which is the second in a decent series of books written in the form of a journal by a USAF officer in the wake of a zombie apocalypse.

Currently reading the Fuller Memorandum by Charles Stross which is a kind of techno-lovecraftian take on the british spy thriller where the main character is an it boffin.

you said you were interested in joining the greenwich tritons this year didn't you?

get yourself down to one of our run sessions on a tuesday eve, it's an hour of continuous running but the format changes each week. this weeks was 6x 1k laps increasing in pace as you went (i was at se beers though drinking 5 pints at increasing pace instead as I have still got dodgy chest cough) we also do hill sprints and interval training too with the standard warmup/cooldown and stretching for each as well.

if you can run 10k at any speed you're fit enough to take part and you set your own pace whilst running and the group varies from beginners to double ironman standard.

it's free and it's open to non-members, we start dead on 7.30pm and the meet point is by the mini roundabout on st german's place at the edge of blackheath. there's details on the tritons website.

I joined in sep last year and I've got my 5k time down to 22:28 (32:19 in June) and the last 10k in november I ran I finished in 48 minutes something.

I thought that box was the wrong size for a massive cupcake.

Send me your bank details by the way...

yup it was too flat and wide. not cup like at all.

Cheers for the welcome lads, was a good laugh. Even if I did get the piss ripped out of me for the first 5 minutes about how long it took me to lock up (and how many locks I used).

Will definitely be showing my face again at some point.

should be there about 6.30ish

I'll be the one sidling up to random people asking them if they like bicycles...

Basildonk!

Another Basildonian here!

Lived in Noak Bridge, Fryerns, Kingswood and Long Riding over the years. Sensibly moved to London's famous London now but I still miss it occasionally though.

oh and my biggest claim to fame home-town wise is that it was my Granddad (rip) who carved that wooden statue that used to be outside the towngate and the stone head that's since replaced it. This pretty much makes me bas-vegas royalty or something I believe.

can see the pricing on that being suitable if you are on a bike worth a few grand with top-end components but based on the price of existing security skewers etc the cost could easily outweigh any benefit for people on the more sensible end of the spectrum if they want to protect their whole bike.

would be interesting to see them pair up with otp manufacturers to provide them on the bikes from new.