openmind

Oh come on .. if he stayed in bed he would have been even safer still. Life is risky and helmets do not make you suddenly invincible.

Close - plain Chunkys for me. And then the saddle - something by Fizik.

Measure twice, cut once. Put a hose clamp around the steerer below the cut to guide your saw or use a proper steerer cutting tool. A word of warning: carbon dust is dangerous, especially if it includes nanotubes - the fibres have the same effect as asbestos fibres. Wear a mask and get rid of the dust safely afterwards. See: http://sams.scientificamerican.com/article/carbon-nanotube-danger/

Specialized produced an animated holiday card featuring Tchaikovsky's "The Nutcracker Suite" performed entirely on bike parts: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68N43K5Y0Ek I also remember an article long ago about an Italian wheel builder who would modify spoke weights and tension so that the wheel would play a tune when spun with a card in the spokes (like a music box). Apparently the wheels were true and completely rideable. I can't find a reference online but will keep looking. Great topic!

Your Cervelo has an "English" threaded BB, also known as "British" or ISO. See: http://sheldonbrown....o-z.html#bottom English: left cup - right thread; right cup - left thread. Italian: left cup - right thread; right cup - right thread. The English BB has a left thread on the right cup to prevent the right cup from unscrewing itself during use (same reason a left pedal has a left thread). B.t.w., all the posts above are wrong in some way!

This is not a batch problem - the 980 XTR pedals are complete ****; the design is fundamentally flawed. Just Google for it and you will see that since the pedal has been on the market they have either developed severe play after a few months of use (as mine did) or simply come right off the spindle as per the OP. If you have these pedals and they seem ok, be warned - they will fail soon. Get XT until Shimano fixes this. I have 960 and 970 XTR pedals that are about 11 and 6 years old respectively that still work perfectly with no play and bearings as smooth as butter.

Unfortunately the article is almost completely undermined by the last half of the last sentence - nothing will change if cyclists ride in their basements out of fear. To the author: get on the road, follow your own advice and make a difference!

Nino does not win because he is on a 650b.. but that is what the marketing depts at bike inc would like you to believe.

Thank you, that was beautiful!

I'll stick with my Campag camel hair base layer for the summer, you know, the one I was born with Keeps me nice and cool!

Simple - ride your bike. Seriously, see this: http://www.bicycling.com/news/featured-stories/riding-my-ritalin Also, ride in the morning and then work - believe it or not, it's easier to focus on one thing if you're a bit tired.

Oh, don't be so miserable! ANyway, with those skilz, by the time he's old he'll crash far less often and less heavily than a lot of the recent 40-something newcomers to the sport

http://www.stellenboschcycling.co.za

<latenightrant> You don't have to ride with a suspension fork - my first three MTBs were fully rigid (1989-1992) and one of my current bikes is too. Your other option is to learn to service it yourself. It's a complex piece of kit that needs regular maintenance to keep it working properly. R700 is a bargain given the time and skill required to do that job well. You should love your bike enough to give it that. I wish that somehow good bike shop mechanics could have access to half the PR of a typical bike brand. It would be so cool if the bling thing to do was to get your fork serviced with a wrench-superstar (like Shane (Bowmans) or Lance (Epic)) instead of buying the latest shiny new part. Consumerism has killed the art of maintenance - we'd rather buy a new one than fix or even just maintain the old one it seems. </latenightrant>

The arrests were made in their area, so the confiscated goods were taken to their station.

Easy guys. I've just returned from the Athlone police station with four of my five bikes. The black Titus RacerX is still missing, but I have it on good authority that it was disposed of before the police raid. At every step of this saga I have found the cops to be great - they really wanted to help, always phoned me when they said they would and were really concerned for me and my property. The bikes were returned in good condition, with just a few scratches. Perhaps if we tried to work with the cops rather than just slag them we'd be better off all round? It seems to work in our area.

Hopes rock. Racing on a set for three years with no issues. Smooth as butter and those Brits know how to seal a bearing to keep out the crud.

I have really good news!!! - by a stroke of extraordinary luck, a guy walked in to Bowmans Cycles on Friday morning and showed pics of my bikes on his phone to Shane (Jansen van Vuuren), pretending that he'd bought them cheap and wanted to sell them. I bought one of the bikes at Bowmans years back and Shane had serviced two of the others in the past so he recognised the bikes immediately and phoned me. I went to the Mowbray police station and sped off to the bike shop with two officers. The station had radioed an officer in Cape Town to nab the guy in the mean time. We got to the shop and the guy was still there, telling his sorry tale to a burly cop. Long story short - the guy confessed, told the cops where the bikes were (at a "friend's" place) and a police team went and staked out the house. I got a call from the cops yesterday afternoon to say that two people were arrested and bikes were confiscated! For some reason I need to wait for the cops to call me before I can go and ID the bikes and get them back, probably tomorrow. I'll only know then if they were all recovered or not. I (we) owe a huge debt of gratitude to Shane from Bowmans Cycles - he had the presence of mind and a strong will to do the right (and difficult) thing. He talked the guy into staying at the shop, made him coffee and let him think that a "buyer" was on his way to look at the pics. Thanks to him, a likely bike theft syndicate is behind bars. He reminded me of the the Edmund Burke quote - "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." A lesser person may have just chased the guy out of his shop. Thank you Shane.

On Monday morning at about 6:30am my son noticed that our garage door was open. Our single garage is a separate building at the back of the property - the garage door is visible from our kitchen window. I went to investigate and found that the family's fleet of mountain bikes had been stolen. Five bicycles were taken in all. I owned three mountain bikes varying in vintage from 1992 to 2010. My wife's and son's bikes were the other two that were taken. The bikes were all locked with a chain to bolts which are set into the wall of the garage. After breaking into the garage, the thieves managed to pry the lock of the chain open and gain access to the bikes. They had got onto my property by forcing the motorised driveway gate off its rails and sliding it open. The missing bikes are: (redacted)

Those carbon rails are tough - just snug it up hand-tight enough to stop it slipping. Take a tool with you on the first few rides in case it slips.