openmind

Take it to droo - he'll sort you out. www.stokesuspension.com

Ok, I'll try... @Sworks20: Dude, women are people too. It's unacceptable to be nasty to someone just because they are a woman. Think racism, religious intolerance, etc. All no-nos. Sorry, couldn't do it with one syllable words without swearing.

I had one of the prototype Backtracker units to try for the weekend. Spent about five hours on the bike with it. It works flawlessly, exactly as advertised. Within an hour or so I found myself trusting it to the extent that I would ride to the right of the yellow line where the road was smoother and glass-free until the green light on the Backtracker display went yellow, indicating an approaching car. I quickly learned to gauge how close the cars were based on where the dot was on the display (have a look at the videos on the site to see what I mean). Once the last car had passed and I had a green light again, I would move right, knowing that the next car was at least 150m away. The device does not replace your road sense, but compliments it. It would detect a car before I could hear it, which was reassuring. I was a little more relaxed than normal having more information at my disposal about the traffic than usual. The main benefit of the device is that the rear LED is interactive, i.e. it gets brighter and flashes more quickly the closer the car is. And it gets really bright. As far as I could tell, the cars on my regular route were giving me a little more space than usual, but that is subjective, perhaps it was just because it was a quiet Sunday afternoon I like the simplicity of the device - it has not been over-engineered. It does one job very well. Personally I would like the display unit to be out on a stalk in front of my handlebars rather than on top of them - this would place it closer to my peripheral vision, meaning I would not have to look down as much to see it. There is a danger of becoming fixated on the display and not watching the road ahead. Another small issue is that the rear unit is rather wide and the way in which it mounts to the seat post made my thighs touch it when I was pushed back in the saddle (e.g. on a climb). It should perhaps be mounted differently so that it is positioned further back from the seat post. Anyway, I liked it enough to order one! Good luck iKubu, I hope they fly off the shelves!

So very Euro!

I have a RacerX (2006) hanger - if it fits it's yours.

No

You're being paranoid. Stellenbosch is crawling with cyclists at all times of the day. Your chances of being involved in an incident are extremely small. Just be sensible and avoid the known hotspots if you ride alone.

Paranoid

Drill the frame. BB shells are over-engineered anyway. If memory serves me correctly, Johan Borman was also an advocate of drilling. If you don't know, he's the Chuck Norris of bike tech.

Clean and grease the shoulders of the bolts that hold the calliper to the brake mount. Loosen both bolts slightly so that the calliper can move side-to-side. Walk the bike forward while pulling the brake lever to centre the calliper. Stop the bike, hold the brake lever in hard and carefully tighten the calliper bolts each a little at a time, alternating between them until they're tight. If the calliper moves, start again and tighten the bolts even less each time. Release the brake and spin the wheel to check alignment.

A drug test is an IQ test. Only the stupid ones get caught.

Bloody hell, Vettes, you've been through the wars. I have a spare Gobi in my parts bin - it's yours if you want it. PM me with your address and I'll send it to you. Rest up and heal well.

You will never regret buying Campag. If you look after it, the groupset will outlive you.

Oil. Just use oil. Everything else was made by some marketing department.

These are awesome brakes, I've had the original R1's for four years and love them - reliability, power, modulation and light-weight all second-to-none. I use only organic pads - the metal ones make the brakes squeal like pigs. A mate of mine prefers the metal pads (they last longer) and lives with the squeals - he calls his brakes his "Italian ladies" (they sing like opera divas). I suggest you stick to organic and just suck up the pad cost. The performance is worth it. You could also pick better lines and lay off the brakes a bit

There was a proliferation of thorns this year, especially in the early parts of the race. I had them popping out of my tyres at regular intervals followed by streams of Stans as the tyre sealed. I stopped twice during the race to top up my tyre pressure due to the accumulated loss of each thorn popping out. Yesterday at home I must have pulled another 20 thorns out of each tyre with tweezers!

How old are you? A max HR in the low 200's is common in younger fit riders. The pros hit the 200's all the time.

Ja, it's confusing. My business partner is a runner and he talks of cadence as foot strikes even though his gadgets don't. Maybe it's the old-school terminology.

Runners measure cadence as each foot strike, so its double what a cyclist would regard as cadence (crank revs). I.e. a running cadence of 180 = a cycling cadence of 90.

A strong MTB wheel is better than a true MTB wheel. MTB tyres typically are "buckled" more than 2mm anyway so I would not worry unless you think the wheel is structurally unsound.

Get a bike fit. If that's not an option, for your height, go for a L if you are more an cross-country rider or an XL if you favour marathons. (I'm 1.88m, favour XC and ride a L). What complicates things is that one manufacturer's L is another's XL. So really, get a bike fit

Lobby your place of work to have a shower installed.

Take it ... into your own garage. Work on it yourself; nothing more rewarding and you know it's done right. It's just a bicycle, not an F1 race car. What you don't know you can learn right here on da good ol' hub.

It's not a pressure plate, it's a coil of wire in the road surface that is hooked up to the traffic lights. A car has enough metal in it to change the inductance in the coil to a degree that the lights control system can detect. Your bike does not.

Hmm, going by the article alone (I have not read the study) this seems like correlation with low fat intake, not causation. Note that three things changed: less smoking, more veggies and lower fat. We know for sure that smoking causes heart disease, so it could be that on its own. We know more veggies make you healthier so maybe that helped. It's the low fat advice which is being questioned these days (with reason I think and know from personal experience) so it could well be that these Finns had lower heart disease *in spite of* their lower fat consumption given that they smoked less and ate more veggies.