Lets hope nobody builds one of these roundabouts in Darlington: Swindon’s Magic Roundabout, or slightly worse Hemel Hempstead’s Plough Roundabout
How To Run a Weblog on Behalf of Your MP
How To Run a Weblog on Behalf of Your MP: “Why/When Stalk an MP?
# If they don’t have a website.
# If their website isn’t updated frequently enough to be useful.
# If you want to shine a torch up their arse and see if the light comes out of their ears.”
Any takers for Mr Milburn? Or we could blog about the entire council/town (though Darlington Town sort of does that already).
Head Case
Do you like your helmet? If so I’d like to know about it! I’m thinking about buying a brain bucket but what to buy and what are the pros and cons?
Since I’m skint it’ll have to be quite cheap so my budget is something like a miserly £35 🙁
I’ve heard that the best advice is to actually try out models in one of those ye olde shoppe things, so I’ll probably do that if I can make a shortlist of models beforehand. I’ve heard that a badly-fitting helmet can do more damage in an accident than not wearing one at all so this seems excellent advice.
Apparently Specialised head cases are better for folks with narrower heads and Giros are better for folks with round ones. I’ll be looking for a Giro then 🙂
Helmets I’ve seen that I liked were: Specialized 03 Enduro Pro and Giro Animas.
What helmet would you recommend or what should I know about or avoid?
Singlespeed conversion
My old Kona was looking sad and unused, in the garage gathering dust ad cobwebs, so I took a few parts off it. It’s not a proper singlespeed conversion, but it forces me to ride it one-geared; and, a full conversion can be completed eventually.
The starting point. Rigid Konas just look good. Unfortunately, this one has a flat front tyre and the gearing is rather worn.
A box o’ bits!
The bike with all the extraneous parts removed. I got rid of the bottle cage, pump mount and crud guard as well, but they may return at some point. It still looks like a geared bike for the moment, but I have no cash to spend on bits to properly singlespeed it.
The chainset with no front mech. An advantage of keeping the rear mech and the chainset is that I can manually change between three gears, for road use, or big hills. Eventually, the three rings will be reduced to just one.
I’m using the rear mech to tension the chain, and still have the seven sprocket cassette. A single sprocket will be added at some point. The mech is aligned with the cog using the high and low adjuster screws.
It might not be a proper singlespeed yet, but it looks like one from the front.
One of the pedals creaks a lot, so I’m going to have to share a pair of flats between my two bikes, and it now has a rear puncture, but it was fun to ride on it’s first outing.
34:19, by the way.
IMBA-UK blog
IMBA-UK: “UNOFFICIAL record of the activities of IMBA-UK, an organisation set up in the UK to represent to interests of mountain bikers. IMBA UK promotes environmentally sound and socially responsible mountainbiking, and works to keep trails and public access open for mountain biking by encouraging responsible riding, supporting volunteer trail work and co-operating with trail user groups, land managers and public bodies.”