Tomm

Whoever posted Spice Girls can GTFO. I was at secondary school when that came out! For me it was I just called to say I love you - Stevie Wonder.

That ^^^ might actually be the best way to go. I've got an Alpine head unit with the iPod connection. In some ways it's brilliant. Pros: It charges the iPod Sounds good, looks good You can route the wire to the glove box, it's a tidy solution Relatively cheap Cons: Although it works fine with my iPod, it refuses to charge my iPhone (although it plays music just fine) iPods are really good for selecting music on, whereas my Alpine head unit is a real bitch to actually select music on - it's unintuitive and takes an age to scroll through all your artists. You can be scrolling for literally minutes if you have a lot of artists. This is by far the biggest problem. Mine's a few years old now - perhaps they've improved things with the newer / more expensive models. Don't get me wrong, I still like my Alpine but it could be so much better than it is. It's definitely worth having a play with some different models though - don't just buy them off spec alone, because some will be a PITA to use, some might be nice.

It depends what bike it's for, and what sort of stuff you ride. For a bike that's designed for 5" forks for riding on smooth-ish stuff, Pikes are great. I love mine. Super smooth and very predictable, plus very easy to set up well. The only fault I have with them is that they tend to get slightly overwhelmed on big fast rocky sections - the damping gets confused and it's not as active as you might like. I've tried some Marzocchi Z1Frs which don't suffer in the same way, although they're significantly heavier. Unless you regularly ride really rocky stuff though it's not an issue. Pikes are definitely do-everything forks - I put them on my jump bike for a while and they were lovely on that too. Mind you, Revelations are now 140mm, and they're a bit lighter so might be worth a look if you could get some second hand. Very similar to Pikes in feel, just not quite as stiff. I don't really know about shorter-travel forks.

An early appendicitis (I assume this is what you had?) can mimic any cause of abdominal pain - E.g. if you ate a bad curry etc. You certainly wouldn't put everyone with that pain through the risks of an appendectomy, so it's very difficult to see someone in the early stages of appendicitis and say for definite one way or the other. All you can do is wait and see what happens - if the pain improves, great. If it worsens then you might get closer to an answer. It sounds like the only thing that went wrong was you leaving it too late to go back to hospital - perhaps the first hospital didn't explain to come back if the pain gets worse?

Safari on my laptop (it's fast) and Firefox on my PC. I would probably use Safari for my PC if I could use mouse gestures with it.

My Xbox Live subscription ran out, forcing me to go COD cold turkey on 22/2/2010. I am now an entrepreneur and have my own million-grossing business and a family, whilst my charitable work has been recognised with multiple awards. COD:MW2 destroys lives.

This is exactly it. I usually wake up believing I CAN manual, and then realise over breakfast that it was just a dream, which makes me angry by reminding me that all I want to do on a bike is endless manuals and despite a good 7-8 years of trying, I can't do them

It's nasty but I guess you're on the mend? Get well soon!

My bikes. Ghetto Fabulous (It's been like this for well over a year now) My XC Mochine: The new baby:

Time don't heal shit. That's what I've have. Fo' Realz.

Let's just hope your friend has a decent grasp of English. A simple spelling mistake would really f**k that up.

There's loads of information that any random website can tell about you, from your browsing history, or cookies or something. If you go on this website (which appears to be down right now) you get a list of the past 40 websites you've been on. Kinda scary really.

If you want some Dirt Jump forks, these seem to be the bargain of the century. DJ1: http://www.wiggle.co.uk/p/cycle/7/Marzocchi_Dirt_Jumper_1_100mm_Travel_Suspension_Forks/5360040015/ DJ2: http://www.wiggle.co.uk/p/cycle/7/Marzocchi_Dirt_Jumper_2_100mm_Travel_Suspension_Forks/5360040016/ The DJ1 is 20mm axle though, watch out for that. Neither of them have v-brake mounts either, just in cae you were wondering. They're good forks but not necessarily for a trials bike - they weigh a ton!

You didn't actually do anything wrong with the link for that image. Some sites don't allow "hotlinking" (I.e. the image file is on their servers but we're using it embedded into a TF page) and I think that's probably what's happened. The picture shows up for you because your browser has cached the image (saved it to your computer's memory) from when you saw it on its original website. The way to fix it is to upload the image to an online image image linking site. Photobucket is good

Yeah but that was because of the R&D costs associated with making a handful of bikes that no one actually bought. I'm not sure bike prices are changing too much though - I remember at least 10 years ago, high-end bikes were over £4000. Surely inflation will have taken prices up quite a lot since then?

I've actually been using the XTR / Dura Ace chains (the only XTR part on my bike ) because they don't rust. Seem to last quite well too, but they're not as cheap n cheerful as the SRAM ones. http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/Models.aspx?ModelID=1018

Just get a SRAM one. From what I've seen, the cheaper ones are slightly better anyway - they're simply more metal so they last a bit longer than some of the more expensive ones. Chains are about the only thing that SRAM does better than Shimano IMO.

Wow I assumed zanier was a description not a brand name. I well want some "zanier" gloves

I dunno - Sometimes it'll feel really cold. -13C on a crisp clear day with no wind is probably ok, but the same temperature in a windy cold wet blizzard is going to feel horrible if you don't have right equipment. I wouldn't underestimate the cold because it could really ruin your holiday. Take layers - that way you can easily strip down if you're too warm. Hoodies under jackets aren't the best idea in the world - they're not particularly warm for the "bulk" they are, and once they get wet, they stay wet (and cold). A couple of thin thermal layers would be as warm, and much easier to move about. Decent gloves is a very good idea. Which reminds me - I need to buy some before I go away in March. Anyone got any suggestions? ~£50, warm and stylin'

I don't recall a section on crud catchers, but I probably wasn't paying that much attention. As for the soundtrack, I have no idea. It might not have been the complete genuine original version but it was close enough!

I got it free from MBUK about a year ago. It was tacked onto the end of another DVD with that tosser Doddy teaching people how to pedal AND look like a nonce at the same time. But yeah, it's still worth a watch. Also all the Earthed series. Look out for Steve Peat - If he's not on a bike going a million miles an hour, he's drinking a beer, smoking, or both. Hero

Big hits do look like that, yeah. (Well, at least the older ones did. 09 and newer are different)

Let us know if they're actually any good. I've got the bog-standard cheap Superstar pads and they're rubbish!

DMRs aren't that heavy. Maybe 1-2 lbs more than a light jump hardtail frame. Which you'll cancel out if you put gears on it

I've got a friend who regularly rides DH on one of those frames. Looks very similar to that one, and it's still going!