US_BenR

Well thank you! Just went with your recs and booked a place in Dalston. Decent little affordable hotel. Going to try the bar your recommended here in a bit! Just here for one night now. Took a stroll around Westminster earlier just to do it really.

I am going to be in London for 2 nights here shortly. I have only ever been to the airport, and so far, my experiences in England have been rather "rural" and industrial. I've been working around Bristol for the past few months and want to have a decent London experience before heading to Europe. I'm not to keen on tourist stuff, other than seeing Big Ben (have to, per the name). Looking for where the cool kids hang out. Want to have decent meal and some nice cocktails. Low key. No clubs. Yes to hipster chicks. Etc.

This was for work, of course. I had a nice month-long stay there. Was pretty amazed there was almost no place locally to eat, except a kebab place. Plenty of places to drink though. I would say it was a pretty bad first impression of England! Probably one of my weirder times in life, and strangely felt more foreign to me than any other experience I've had in some 40 different countries.

I was just in Bristol. My first experience within England somehow. Mostly was in Avonmouth; which, oh my, what a wild place.

Doesn't matter at all to me. Who cares about exposure? You see how dead this forum is? How group rides have shrunk, most riders ride alone and competitions/competition attendance has dropped? I was actually just talking about this with another rider earlier--there always seems to be this talk of exposure importance, but not enough talk of benefiting your everyday rider. Not that I don't love Danny Mac, but just saying. You make it sound like the sport has blown up, but the sport has dwindled during that same time.

GoogleFi unlimited plus for 65 dollars. That includes 50GB of data monthly and hotspot tethering. Especially if you travel internationally, I just don't think you can beat it. GoogleFi is my internet, but I don't really stream much, so 50GB is plenty each month.

I bought a Chinese carbon fork from ebay. I then purchased a Niner fork to replace it. The quality left a lot to be desired. Free if you want it.

Thank you for making me nostalgic as f**k! Remember seeing this when I was about 12!

I have the levers. Best Magura lever on the market if you ask me.

Not the best photo, but my road bike. She's light, fast and expensive.

Such a beautiful hub

Cancer sucks. Chemotherapy sucks. Its like my life has been ripped out from underneath me overnight. Just a tad over a month ago, I was envisioning that at this point I'd be off work and with friends in Poland (prior to shit hitting the fan out East). I had all my final assessments scheduled to raise my rank to Chief Officer... Just a month ago I thought professionally and leisurely my life was on point. Just a month ago I was finishing a 4-month contract on my vessel and really f**king stoked to plow forward. I thought I was done with this cancer shit, and my yearly routine scan found that its back and spread. Now as a 31-year-old man, I'm back in my hometown, chilling in my childhood bedroom. Thankful my folks are able to help get me through this, as I there is no way I can even drive post treatment, as I'm f**king doped up. However, it is a completely humbling, lifechanging and isolating experience. Almost everyone I know in this town is a piece of shit, I literally have had people hitting me up for money--bitch, I don't even know when I'm able to work again.

Makes me so f**king nostalgic.

Figure I may as well get my ride up-and-running again during this down time. I wish to put my Echo titanium SL screw-on back on my rig; however, I was having problems with skipping a year ago when I last rode. Seems there is a lengthy bed-in time for these, is there any way to speed-up the process? A night's soak in diesel? Or something to that effect. I know; I could likely search for the answer, but seems this forum could use a thread or two.

It's amazing how cheap shit so nice is now; I remember scrounging money together to buy an outdated mid-90s X-Lite in 2004 for something equivalent to like 260 GBP today.

Quite what I figured, unfortunately. Something like this would have been abuzz years ago! Just seems that there isn't much new product/news in the past several years, and seems that that only keeps getting worse.

Really? Tell me then when we have used vaccines that use mRNA versus conventional vaccines? We haven't. Look, I'm totally for this vaccine, and I'll take it in a heartbeat, but it is new technology.

Something that I was pondering the other day--what happened to them? Do they still have a trials team? Seems the last high-end bike they made was what 2016? Now they just make those ugly aluminum frames? Just curious.

I understand Andy's sentiment; I mean, this is an entirely new class of drugs, and the effects are not completely understood. Having said that, I'd likely jab myself in the arm with a vaccine if I could get ahold of one. I'm getting stir crazy. I miss parties, playing dress-up and traveling to little seaside towns sipping cocktails and espressos. Now I take 3-hour baths and build expensive bikes because I've got nothing better to do.

I miss King BMX hubs...they were the best. I also remember thinking ACS FWs were amazing, as almost 20 years ago (!) My first ride had one of thos Dicta freewheels, which had around 16 points of engagement.

You get f**ked. Billing in the USA is asinine. My last medical problem...lets see, the surgery bill was about 15k, but then negotiated down to 2k through the insurance company, and they paid something like 1800 of that. f**k, for most things, if I had that negotiating power, I'd rather pay 2k than expensive premiums each month.

I have a Pivot Les 29 hardtail I'm looking to sell. I'm CONUS midwest/upper south.

So pretty!

I find I care less about what anyone might think with age. I'm almost 30 now. I'm not as good as I was half my life ago, but truth be told, most people are impressed by the simplest moves, so I find having folks around gives me a good energetic boost to be honest.

Cancer. It's like I'm branded now trying to go back to work now that I'm essentially "cured". I'm fighting for a waiver to work right now, as "history of cancer" now severly restricts my options. I don't put in enough days I lose my insurance, and I can't even get my required follow ups. I've been sitting at my parents house with my thumb up my ass waiting, waiting, waiting.