Dave Atkinson's blog

Today was a first here at road.cc towers - the first ride organised through the site, for the readers, by the readers (hit the 'location" button in your profile to find other road.cc members in your area). Okay there was only three of us but you gotta start somewhere and we had a great ride, getting a metric century in (just) for good measure.

Last night I was pondering the problem of our naughty cat ripping open the bin bags and decided a bin was what I needed. A nice, sturdy bin. My first point of call for this kind of stuff is Freecycle (www.uk.freecycle.org). If you haven't been introduced, Freecycle is a mailing-list-based scheme for partnering people that want stuff but don't have it, and people that have stuff they don't want. The aim is to save all that stuff from the landfill; Freecycle call it 'Changing the world one gift at a time'

Ah, the great helmet debate. This time it's reared its ugly head in the form of a dry paper entitled Evaluating the health benefit of bicycle helmet laws by Piet de Jonga of Macquarie University in Australia.

The paper is attached below. I won't pretend to understand the formulae it contains but essentially it's an exercise in pitting a single cost of cycling (accidents) against a single benefit (exercise), assigning some numbers to the two and trying to estimate the impact of helmet compulsion which MAY reduce injuries and MAY also reduce cycling participation.

Fed up with the rat run? looking for a change? then why not buy this pub and turn it into a biking hostel. It's at the top of the Bwlch for all the roadies, and 10 miles from glyncorrwyg for the fatter-tyred. it's got seven bedrooms, loads of storage, a function room and a pool table. and it'll set you back £95k...

I'll come and stay. i promise.

http://jamesabaker.co.uk/showproperty,266,1.htm

Bimbling home on the Africabike last night and a road bike buzzed past me on the steep bit of the railway bridge. So I did the sums. Running shorts, trainers, rucksack. It was a Claud Butler, the rear tyre looked a bit flat. But it was a road bike, for sure. And I was on a 42lb steel shopper, in civvies, trying not to get too sweaty. My thoughts:

You'd better hope you can make that stick.

Well my legs feel like they've been through the grinder this morning, yesterday was a fantastic ride but it's always a reality check to ride with people who are much, much fitter than you. I've been feeling pretty good about myself of late, dropped a stone in weight and been getting some more miles in, but yesterday I was weighed on the scales and found wanting... so, what did we learn from the day at Highclere?

sorry 'bout that, just a bit of downtime while we switched to a new server. a bigger one!

there shouldn't be any gremlins but if you find anything not working, let us know!