bikemonster

A dab of Frontline, just between your shoulder blades. Well, that's always worked well for my border collie.

Relax mikkelz...that was sarcasm, not support for the idiocy.

You tell them! That's the kind of well constructed (not to mention lucidly punctuated) argument that it's really difficult to argue with.

Ride both and buy the one that speaks to you.

Point being?

Message for covie: Optometrist called. Can't do next week, would an appointment the following week work for you? B)

Ants are insects of the family Formicidae. The same Latin root which provides the adjective 'formic' (of ants), as in formic acid. So, if it feels like you have ants crawling on your skin, you are formicating.

Mine does.

Sorry, Language Police here, Metaphor Protection Unit. A penny dropping is what happens when a person gains understanding that was missing. As in: "I didn't understand what CSA were trying to achieve, but then the penny dropped, and it all made sense." A hat dropping is the metaphor for sudden, unexpected change. As in: "Well, that's what CSA are doing this week, but it could all change at the drop of a hat." Do not take this as a personal dig, it really isn't intended to be. Right, back to dissing CSA everybody!

No need to pick a fight, but I have a quiet word in the ear of everybody I see chucking sachets. Sachet chuckers need to be told that what they are doing is not acceptable. If people don't tell them, they will carry on. Hell, if people do tell them, they may still carry on chucking sachets...but it can't hurt to try!

The easy way to remember this is "back off!". With the arm of the spanner extending upwards from the pedal spindle, push towards the back of the bike to take the pedal off.

LBS. But I've always just used a 15mm "real" spanner, and never had a problem. Some pedals are also designed to take an Allen key in the pedal spindle.

LOL! Long memory, dude! Just back from a route which I am sure you will remember - Stellies, Helz, Boschendal, Paarl and back via Agter-Paarl.

Weekday short rides: a slice of toast (yes, with butter and jam!) before I head out. My weekday rides are around 90 minutes. Now that winter is passed and I am riding regularly again, some fitness is returning, so I have ditched jungle juice for these rides and just take water along. Weekend rides: For me these are usually around 3 hours, sometimes slightly longer. Again, a single slice of toast before I head out, and a glass of water to ensure that I start out properly hydrated. On the ride I drink USN Cytomax, and eat a banana at the halfway point, or perhaps a bit later. My weekend rides are on Sundays but I would expect the same feeding strategy to work for Saturday. After the ride I meat my family for brekkie...black coffee and a muffin, or a croissant with jam. Yeah baby!

There are plenty of threads on the Hub for stirring and poking fingers in eyes. This is not one of them. Please desist.

The above advice works well for ANY event where it's possible to enter on the line.

Enter on the line? There's usually a R20 penalty to do so, which is a small price to pay for avoiding the hassles, burning the petrol wasting the time...and not to mention entering a Cycle Lab store. As an added bonus, you can check out the weather on the day and get some if it rains. B)

Prolly not, but a "real" torque wrench will be. More important, 40Nm is a fair old twist. You can, within reason, lean on the lockring tool. With the lockring, you need to tighten it up good and proper to stop it coming undone. With things like the allen head bolts that hold bars to stem, the torque wrench is more to prevent you from over-tightening than to ensure that you do it up tight enough. Then again, who needs a torque wrench? Tighten until it it goes loose, then a 1/4 turn back.

The gains from shinier bike bits may well be asymptotic, but the gains from the stuff from the pharmacist are psychosomatic! Unless you're being paid to ride your bike, eating sensibly, riding your bike and having fun are what it's all about. Do those and you will go every bit as fast as you would do by manufacturing expensive pee.

And then there's this current news story.... A Zimbabwean spirit medium has been jailed for more than three years for bamboozling President Robert Mugabe's powerful politburo into believing she could conjure diesel fuel from a rock, reports said Thursday. According to reports at the time, Nomatter Tagarira assembled the country's ministers of national intelligence, police and defence and other top-ranking security officials in 2007 for a demonstration of her powers. At a stroke on a rock, an assistant hidden in bushes above the group would open a tap to a secret fuel bowser and send the fuel gushing down the rock. The gullible aides believed she had the answer to the country's crippling fuel shortages then and gave her 1.7 million British pounds, a farm, an armed guard, food and, on one occasion, a 50-vehicle convoy, to carry out her rituals.

Not the power of traditional medicine - call it what it is - it's the power of the placebo effect. I've recommended it before, but read "Bad Science" by Ben Goldacre. Among the other fascinating stuff you will learn that red placebo tablets are more effective than blue placebo tablets at curing a number of ills. And dude, even in USA-land it's "surprised" and not "surprized". B)

One or two tiny typo's there. Fixed now.

Yes. Once.

And bingo! And how different is this kind of fraud from the fraud of "educated people" who fall for 419 scams? Sorry to say, but education (wonderful as it is) can not get rid of the kind of idiocy and greed that these scammers - the prof, the pixie dust purveyors and the 419ers - prey on.

Can I use bad pies with Gu? Will topwhine be along shortly to provide his own recipe for me to make my own bad pies without having to pay the extortionate prices charged by retailers? And what effect will the imminent arrival of Wally-Mart on our shores have on bad pie marketing?