DeltaOscar

Here's a few

Love that USAF jet paintscheme on a Trek TT Bike at WE.

I once read an article on helmet law in USA which stated that there was a significant decrease in road fatalities in states where helmets were law. More intrestingly they interviewed a neurosurgeon who worked in an ER who said that in a year, of all traumatic head injuries, those suffered by cyclists outnumbered all the rest put together. I used to race cars and was sponsored by Bell at one time, and Arai at another. I visited both factories and the technology which goes into it is amazing, youi definately do get what you pay for. It was interesting to see that it is the inner, or foam which absorbs most of the impact, and does most of the protecting. The ability of the inner to do it's job can be severly compromised by relatively minor impacts which will not damage the shell. I was shown a demonstration where a full face race helmet was dropped from hip height on to a concrete floor, no visible damage to the shell. It was then put into a destructive impact tester where it failed its minimum impact test. A crashed or damaged helmet is useless.

I prefer cytomax too, been trying a few out recently - powerbar gel is good, hammer gel did nothing.... but the raspberry one tastes good. Also on a seemingly never ending quest to find a good drink.

Leave them alone..... Evolution at work. It's just strengthening the gene pool.

Something I've been pondering for a while now: Variously it is the combination of bar sweep and height, with stem length and rise which determines ones hand position relative to the steerer tube. Does it matter/affect the handling which combination of the above is used to acheive hand position. i.e. If one were to use a flat bar in conjunction with a 100mm stem with 10deg rise, OR a riser bar with a 90mm stem with zero rise, would there be any difference in handling assuming the hand positions were identical? If so, then why risers?

He asked what's best for XC racing, not what's cheapest. Don't even know if it is the best, it just looks so cool.

Road or Mountain?

Silence is golden, duct tape is silver.

Decent 2009 XT bikes seem to be around mid 30- 40K. I ran a Reba Team with poploc for 3 years, awesome. Most reliable, easy to use XC fork I ever owned, can't reccomend it highly enough.

Just want to pass on/warn of a scary event yesterday at Majik Forest: At the bottom piece of singletrack where it runs alongside the dam I was in my flow and railing along when bam! I felt an impact on the front of my head and pressure pulling me off the bike, then snap! pressure was gone. WTF? I went back to check it out and found a length of fishing line had been tied across the trail at head height from tree to tree. Very luckily it connected my helmet and shades, then snapped before it did any damage to me. If I wasn't wearing shades I could have lost an eye for sure, or if it had been a bit lower, at throat height.... I don't ride there often and am unaware of any local politics/fueds with fishermen? I'm hoping it's just some dumb kids. I think I'll stick to Tokai - I'll take the puffys and the baboons any day over the dumbest species on the planet. Why is it always people that f*#k things up?

I use my LBS exclusively, and I have done for 10 years now. I will only buy on-line if they don't have stock or cannot get stock. I've found over the years that the more I support them the better the discounts get. More importantly it builds a relationship while keeping a local small business going. I recently had a leaking brake master cylinder (juicy ultimate), my LBS fitted a juicy 5 so i could ride while waiting for a replacement. This LBS once mail ordered a part for me after the local agents failed repeatedly. LBS paid full retail and shipping, but honoured their quote to me. If i do order online it's only CRC, they are the best. I mail my sister in UK a wishlist, she orders and pays, it's delivered to her, her company couriers it to me. I put funds in her Cape Town Holiday Fund. No duty, no shipping. Cool.

Porky - you are dead right. 'Responsible' and 'obliging' are key. Seems to me a lot of cyclists forget that we share the road with other users(nearly all of whom are bigger and meaner and will do a lot more damage to you than you will to them). I ride from Hout Bay usually 5 mornings out of 7 taking in Chappies, Suikerbossie and Victoria. 3 hours later I'm driving Victoria on my way to work, and every day I see the same 4 favourite stupidities from my brother riders: 1. Running the lights at bottom of Suikerbossie. In both directions. 2. Riding 3 or 4 abreast having a fat chat, well into the road. 3. U-turns across 2 lanes of traffic at top of Suikerbossie or anywhere along Victoria without looking. 4. Pulling out of a slipstream to take a turn at the front without looking behind, and without warning. And less common, but equally stupid - thinking that doing 70km/h down a hill gives you the right to take up the whole road. If this kind of stuff gets my back up, imagine what it does to non cyclist drivers. It's dangerous enough without trying to piss them off as well.

DT Swiss XCR100 1380 gms

"That's Cocaine, for our eyes. This is Chloroform, for our gums. And pills, do you want to see pills?" - Francis Pellesier, 1924 Tour. And, of course Jacques Anquetil's quote about "A good pheasant, some champagne and a woman." I wouldn't worry about a few beers.

I need to do some longer, lower intensity training rides on both road and mountain. I live in Hout Bay and every road ride starts with a climb straight away - suikerbossie, chappies, or (very rarely, cos it's too dangerous) the nek. Every mountain ride is tokai which is either up, or down. And usually becomes just a grind up to Silvermine then a blast down the singletrack. Great fun but i don't think the best training. Any route ideas would be very welcome. Cheers

Iv'e been up there 4 times in the last week, and seen puffys every time. The trails are looking, and riding much better - Thanks Murant and boys. Baboons are cool, never had any issues with them. I was told never to show your teeth to them - which is diificult not to do when you're puffing like a steam train and about to cough up your liver on lap 3. And never to throw anything at them. They throw back. Hard. Don't know how true either of those gems are, but i stick to them anyway. But i'm thinking that if we were riding as fast as we should be, then we shouldn't even notice the snakes and the monkeys.

I ride a Trek Fuel 100 Team Issue, full carbon with a RockShox Reba Team fork. It's a sweet setup. Just one issue - when bombing down corrugated fireroads as we approach 50km/h the fork seems to just give up trying and starts to rattle me to death. It gets so bad I literally cannot see where i'm going. There almost seems be a sympathetic resonance through the frame. Any ideas? Is it a rebound setting on the fork? Or am I not going fast enough?