steve

Mine were R470 .................Finish Line Cycles Oh, and by the way, today, just before 3:00pm I wheeled in an old MTB and rode out with all the components transfered to a full susp frame exactly 25 min later and all that needed adjusting was the front derailler...............beat that!!!!!!!

Very, very clever, oh great ones!! Announce your devious intentions to the world so now they will search everonye................Just declare it and there probably wont even be any fuss....... Remember exccess bagage is the most expensive form of freight and 20kg is the max for checked baggage in cattle class. Alternatively, get them to ship it to SA. Dr Seuss.... SA's dumbest smuggler??

road or mtb? Finish Line Cycles (in Kempton) have regular rides (mtb & road) from the shop. Pomona/Bredel/Bapsfontein area seems the most popular.

Slowpoke.........I'm sure it has something to do with interference from cranks, pedals or other bits of metal. Runners don't have this problem but there again they do go slower and their feet are closer to the ground. .............or what about the magnet not being as strong as the Winning Time chips which are supplied with an ankle strap

I also make sure my foot is at the bottom of the stroke, but then if the race distance is exactly 30. 1492 km I have to make sure I start 18.7538 cm behind the mat or my foot is halfway through the upward stroke at the end. Sometimes I go off line to overtake someone and this screws up my calculations. Oh yes, I also have to keep pedaling and I ride a single-speed. Once I was sprinting for the finish but had to keep my foot down so I could get a time but ole Floyd next to me kept on mashing his pedals and beat me. It turned out okay in the end...........we all know what happened to Floyd

tel number for the track is 011 466 2800

A dead giveaway (excuse the pun!) is the plastic sheet covering a body in the right corner.

I thought the MTB race was a joke. The route was a bore with riders having to stop for traffic (twice). Some competitors ignored marshalls and rode on the tar instead of pavements. Some took shortcuts to miss the quarry section (I saw two riders!!). Most by-passed the so called man-made technical section in the carpark. The distance was very short, the finnish was a non-event and I never saw any medals - I was expecting the finish to be in the dome so saved a bit of voema for the spiral ramp. The only good thing was that there was no dust!!!

Thylo ..... I think DNFs are those who crossed the mat to start the timing, then failed to cross them at the end. Only those competitors with chips were listed as starters and featured in the results - it was a 'no chip-no result' race. There were only about 148 listed finishers in the 60 and 30km mtb race, but I know there was many more, many many more.

I was very disappointed with the MTB race. 30 km turned out to be 26km, couldn't find medals at the finish, very uninspiring route and the roadies came back dirtier than us mtb'ers I thought they'd get it right after last year's farce.......remind me not to do it again!!!

Did anyone notice we had to sign a piece of paper indemnifying the Dome against everything and anything?

Hey Lefty, this whole idea don't work too good....I WIN!! Just had a braai and a good few of Millers finest. Anyway, to cut a story short, I got an old 24" bicycle out the garage complete with permatubes, rigid fork and rusty chain. It was last used by my son about 4 years ago. I had a bright beer induced idea and lubed the chain, grabbed a hacksaw and proceeded to cut a section of one side of the fork out. Next step was to say to my mate "....here, hold my beer and watch this!!" Exactly two seconda latere the front end collapsed and before I'd pedalled two complete revolutions I was face down in the garden. I finished my beer and will have another MGD now that I've proved my theory that a one sided fork don't work too good!!!

I did say I've never ridden one, but this is about the fact that the 'lefty' design seems to defy engineering logic. Go Lefty implies that a car's front wheel is held in place by a McPherson strut located at the top only whereas in fact it is located at the bottom as well - otherwise it would not cope with fore-and-aft forces generated by braking, acceleration and even steering. If the 'lefty' design was so brilliant, then why hasn't it been copied onto motorcycles?

I disagree, but simply put there's a 'lefty' and a 'righty' technology on each side of the car to balance things. However, if you look carefully at a car you will find a thing called a 'lower control arm' or 'wishbone' that tranmits braking and acceleration forces into the chassis legs. As far as steering goes, each wheel is connected to the opposite . If it was such good technology how come it isn't put to use on motorcycles The shaft driven BMW issue is a completely different issue as the single sided swingarm doesn't deal with any steering. Most braking forces are on the frontwheel and the acceleration forces are compensated by the shaft running inside the swingarm tube. issues and only works in an up and down arc and does not have huge forward aft movements to cope with.

On a more serious note!! I've never ridden a Cannondale, but that lefty thing just don't make any engineering sense at all. Surely there must be issues with braking as well as directional stability? We all know that seals are most effective in a cylinder (round) hence round pistons in an engine, pumps are round as well. So, if the fork stanchion is round there would be no way of stopping the wheel flapping around and doing its own thing. If it aint round then the seals are not as efficient or durable as those in conventional forks. As for it being lighter, I can't see that either as the fork stanchion, lower casing etc is all bigger than on a conventional fork. If it does twice the work, it needs to be significantly stronger - and therefore heavier. ..........it just don't make no sense and defies all logic, or have I missed something obvious.

Don't get me wrong, I believe in freedom of choice and wish everyone would stop trying to protect me from myself, but if we are going to promote the 'no helmet, no ride' thing then it should at least be consistent. I'm happier wearing a helmet on the track, but admit that sometimes I nip down to the shops and don't wear a helmet which is probably more risky considering it is on public roads, but I'd feel a bit like a silly psychedelic alien walking into Woolworths or Nedbank with full lycra kit and a luminous Limar perched upon my cranium!! I must say the track is looking better than it did a few months ago.

Jason, he was doing 60kph down the hill!!! Shambolic coz we had to wait at the gate for so long, then got sent to the car park and then despatched to the pit complex. Luckily I'm one of them FTF (fat tyre freaks) so I did my own thing while everyone else waited.

They're stupid unbalanced bikes made for riding clockwise around a mountain..................others just go straight over the mountain.

I went to Kyalami today............it was quite shambolic, but that's not the reason for this post. Some macho twit decided it would be cool to ride without a helmet...yhought this was a no helmet-no ride place!! He was quite a big oke on a full suspension Gary Fisher

Where's Anke these days.............still on honeymoon. Its rather boring without her!

Verizon....................the voice over internet people? Hope not, that will spoil my spring. Oh dear!!!

I once pointed out to a cyclist that he'd dropped something and was told to f... off. Nothing else, that was all he uttered. This was during a mtb race in Graskop after riders had been asked during the pre-race briefing not to litter !!

None of these so called stars complain when the reports say how good they are. They play to the media then get all bitter and twisted when the media picks up that they are drug addicts. Landis won the TdF and was hailed as a hero, actually a superhero! His father -in- law must have made a pretty fortune while the TdF was on, and shortly afterwards - he obviously used Floyd's win as a marketing tool. Floyd then failed dope tests (a+b) and business turned sour, beer sales went flat etc and the he topped himself because of all the bad publicity........shame! Makes a nice story for one of these overpaid brain-dead Hollywood script writer!