IanJ

If I understand you correctly you are talking about riding on the Hekpoort road? I wouldn't recommend that with a group, the road has no shoulder and has lots of speeding cars, motor bikes and trucks. I agree about the Cradle road though, I have also been advised that it isn't safe for groups at the moment. IanJ2009-06-21 12:41:15

DR will break it off and then weld it back for you. Johan will first start a Hub Debate about the relative tensile strength of the different alloys used in break brake (sorry Bored Girl) arms and then tell you to upgrade to disk brakes because they are much more efficient . On a serious note, I wouldn't try bending it and still trust it. That arm must be under lots of stress when you pull the brakes and could very easily break off. Can you not replace the arm as a separate part? IanJ2009-06-21 12:08:48

I think others will still join. Thug and i will work on it.

Ok, I can't let you Southerners take over our roads without a fight so put my name down for the ride please.

Sorry to hear this, wishing Francois a full and speedy recovery. Deposit made.

Another one that annoys me are the ones primarily run by radio stations where you have to send an sms to register for a competition to win some prize. The sms costs you R2 to enter or some similar amount. A radio station with 500,000 listeners will probably get 50000 entries and they run it quite a few times a day. Assuming they collect only R0,50 per sms you do the maths. The same scheme is used by a certain radio station for a loyalty programme. There you have to send an sms to claim your "points" and another sms to burn them again to have a chance of winning a prize. So they score double.

Oooh, that is against the rules. It is a well known fact in training circles that you are only allowed to stop at Fournos if you have performed some kind of physical activity of sufficient intensity to warrant the extra kilojoules. Actually I am just jealous and hoping I can find sufficient warm clothing to allow me to ride tomorrow morning and stop at Fournos.

Psycho - If you ever need motiviation speak to this guy Psycho volunteered to manage the TCS 40+ Vets this weekend and for the first time we rode as a proper team with radios and Psycho giving us feedback and shouting encouragement in our ears. What a difference! Although we were a small team we played our part to the best of our ability and we are proud of our achievements. Thanks to Psycho and my other team mates and well done to Boss Logistics on their win in the 40-49 VB category, you guys are just too strong a team for the rest of us at the moment.

Hey BigH was good to see you again, bad luck and don't worry it happens to all of us at some point. Most important is not to give up, keep on training and come back next time and try again.

The potjie party and prize giving on Saturday night is one of the best parts of the weekend. Huge pots of food, huge fires and cool people. You will have an hour or two to recover before the party starts.

epoh should be on this course. I just need to buy a fork that is worth servicing but i was clever and sent my son on the last course .

we actually ended up doing more mileage than you guys. That's cos you were riding round and round making crop circles trying to unclip . IanJ2009-06-01 07:54:57

Sonic and myself will be there, please add us to the list.

Some races enforce a minimum seeding for entry into licenced categories but it is mainly the bigger races where they tend to be over subscribed.

Not sure if you could use it at Nationals mallo, doesn't UCI prescribe Age Cats?

I think mallo is referring to a system similar to that used overseas where age is not a factor in determining seeding. You earn a seeding based on race results and that seeding determines your starting Category for the next race. (Cat 1 , 2, 3 etc.) That way you are always racing with people of similar ability regardless of age. edit: mallo beat me to it. IanJ2009-06-01 06:33:39

I think that if you buy a complete bike from a retailer and soemthing goes wrong and it is still under warranty then the retailer should be responsible for putting it right. They could have absorbed the labour cost or claimed from the manufacturer. If I buy a car and the engine packs in and needs replacement under warranty I am certainly not going to pay for the labour to fit the new engine. If the frame was bought as a separate item then that is a different matter.

Surely thats a reasonable charge.Do you have any idea what is involved in building a bike from scratch...apart from removing all the parts from the old frame.Do you think they wave a wand?Or that they are working for a charity??? I think his complaint was that it was under warranty so he shouldn't have had to pay.

Another up to Northcliff Cycles. Gave them the go ahead at 3pm, fetching the rebuilt bike at 6pm this evening.

As some of you may have heard my son (Sonic) had a crash on Saturday at the Bela Bela. I submitted the claim form together with a quote for the damages at 1pm today. By 3pm I had received back an agreement of loss form to sign and fax back so that they can arrange the payment. 2 hrs to process my claim. But now the warning. We hadn't updated the value of his bike since adding some bits and pieces over time so when they checked the bikes replacement value they found we were badly underinsured so they only paid out a percentage of the claim based on the insured versus replacement value. I cannot complain about it as it is my fault. Take it as a lesson, update your insurance schedule and values on a regular basis.

Coming from an old school running background I still carbo load but not nearly as much quantity as before. We used to deplete carbs for 3 days (eating mainly green salad) then cram in the carbs for the last 3 days. Could easily gain 2-3kg's in 3 days. Now I just eat extra carbs the night before (pasta with a plain sauce) and will have 1 or 2 servings of a carbo loading drink the day before. Works for me.

Don't mind riding slow and/or waiting for people to catch up. We are riding from home anyway so will get in a good workout.

You will just have to do it Mandibles but if you need help with "Marshalling" Sonic and I will give you a hand . We just need some of those Cyclelab Orange bibs, a whistle and shock stick to make sure everyone rides no more than 2 abreast. Oh hang on a minute this is MTB isn't it . Seriously though if you need someone to show people around we can help, in fact after the 24 hour last year I can show them around and around and around and around ......... IanJ2009-05-25 13:32:28