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Live blog: Specialist bike shop Ubyk reportedly ceases trading – but has it found a buyer? Team Sky sacrifice aero gains for festive spirit; County Down cycle lane cleared by ‘bloke with shovel’ + more
In today’s cheesy festive pro promo vid of the day, Team Sky are apparently ‘cold’ in Mallorca, so the wagon stepped in to give them something festive to warm up…
Thu, Dec 20, 2018 15:19
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Alex has written for more cricket publications than the rest of the road.cc team combined. Despite the apparent evidence of this picture, he doesn’t especially like cake.
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Latest Comments
jasperdog 5 minutes ago
@Borisface With all that experience I find it odd you'd dismiss by all accounts an absolutely brilliant bike simply because of it's frame material. Are you worried what people might think or something?
sheridan 35 minutes ago
@This Wreckage You must have missed that story about a park which has a cycle park with no (legal by byelaw) entry. Hint - it wasn't in London.
sheridan 42 minutes ago
@DS2025 It does make the club look rubbish, if I hadn't had time to have a look in the comments today I'd have been left with a bad impression of the club. Journalism is supposed to involve checking source, researching and following up leads - I presume this article was written by a reader as an opinion piece and not a paid journalist?
Rendel Harris 1 hour ago
@brogs Five years to reply to a comment must be some sort of record. It's a shame that it's absolute nonsense then. Most drivers believe they are more skilful than they are (surveys have demonstrated that up to 93% of drivers believe their driving is better than average) and have an attitude that they are safe at speeds at which they are not. That's why we have speed limits. With 35 million or so drivers in the country it's both hopeless and ridiculous to say "let's not bother with speed limits, let's change skills and attitudes", it's not going to happen and drivers have consistently proved that they are not sufficiently responsible to behave in a safe manner, that's why they need restrictions. Seriously, "speeding kills nobody it's simply the act of exceeding a number on a sign", tell that to the parents who lose their child because they were hit by somebody driving at 30 mph in a 20 mph zone so didn't have time to stop when the child unexpectedly ran into the street.
mdavidford 2 hours ago
I can tell you those are already happening with alarming frequency. Probably less likely to be experienced by those who do most of their running in parks, though, so I'm not sure how they're relevant here.
brogs 2 hours ago
@polainm responding to tone is a waste of your time and mine. If you have an argument, I'm happy to respond.
brogs 2 hours ago
@Rendel Harris inappropriate speed is the better term. This comes from poor skills and attitudes. 93mph on a clear motorway kills nobody. 65mph in bunched traffic with poor observation, distracted, following too closely, no escape route planning etc etc kills many. Speeding kills nobody. It's simply the act of exceeding a number on a sign. Skills and attitudes lead to setting a safe speed, which is the concept to focus on. This is what saves the lives of cyclists.
Pub bike 8 hours ago
If anyone reading this article is looking for reasonable alternatives Decathlon sell a range of bum bags including one with a bottle holder that comes with the bottle all of which are less than £20. I've got a bum bag I bought a few years ago to replace a North Face bum bag that has lasted really well including commuting and cycle touring that was only £10 and that doesn't seem to have any of the drawbacks of the pack on review.
Pub bike 9 hours ago
@Borisface The frameset is similarly priced to e.g. Condor aluminium framesets such as Italia RC Integrato so it doesn't look too far off the mark. Obviously if you dress any old frame up with Campag Record 13 wireless and some decent wheels the final price is going to be somewhere north of £5k.
VecchioJo 9 hours ago
@Freddy56 @hotspanners Hi, just for for starters I didn’t boycott the race, if you read to the end of the article you’d have seen that I decided I was going to attend and try and implement a positive change… Just for clarity, if it helps with the credibility of my words and something I didn’t include in the blog for brevity and fear of willy-waving here’s an incomprehensive list of cycle events I’ve helped organise over the years - all Brighton Big Dog MTB events (about 12 i think), three league CX races and one Singlespeed CX Euro Champs (niche, i know), a few SAMS MTB races - maybe three or four it was a while back now, a Morvelo City Cross, I’ve stood on a corner in a high-vis vest at quite a few MTB, CX and road races too, and just helped wind up tape at last weekend’s CX race. I’ve also had the privilege to design logos, draw images, and create one-off pieces of artwork and give away prints as prizes for enough races and events for me to forget how many, all for free as part of ‘doing my bit’… Also if you made it through to the second half of the article you’ll have read that I have every sympathy for event organisers because of the experience of all the above and also from having conversations with various organisers on a regular basis so I am acutely aware of all the challenges faced. I chatted today with the future local CX race organiser mentioned, face to face in a field, and he has a similar hatred of AI and is more than happy for me to create a hand-drawn image to promote that race and also help out on the ground where possible… Might even draw a duck in there somewhere for giggles…
19 thoughts on “Live blog: Specialist bike shop Ubyk reportedly ceases trading – but has it found a buyer? Team Sky sacrifice aero gains for festive spirit; County Down cycle lane cleared by ‘bloke with shovel’ + more”
Well done Terry, is there
Well done Terry, is there some sort of award road.cc could give him?
Had something similar last year, with overgrowing foliage blocking the local paths, so I got the battery powered hedge trimmer out and sorted it myself, didn’t even bother wasting my time asking the council.
burtthebike wrote:
The cordless Hedge Trimmer is the tool of power for those in a similar position, you can do so much in so little time with them and they re about as safe as they possibly can be to use… weve kept a 7.4km long greenway clear for over five years using two of them !
scrapper wrote:
Nice one.
I’m kind of hoping that you use two of them yourself – one in each hand, swinging your arms in great circles whilst letting out a rampaging war cry against foliage.
HawkinsPeter wrote:
The cordless Hedge Trimmer is the tool of power for those in a similar position, you can do so much in so little time with them and they re about as safe as they possibly can be to use… weve kept a 7.4km long greenway clear for over five years using two of them !
— scrapper Nice one. I’m kind of hoping that you use two of them yourself – one in each hand, swinging your arms in great circles whilst letting out a rampaging war cry against foliage.— burtthebike
Juggling them surely?
Whilst rending the air with screams against the austerity that means the councils don’t have the resources to trim a hedge anymore.
burtthebike wrote:
Technically, it only counts as juggling if you use less hands than objects, so for two hedge trimmers you’d have to use one hand (which to be fair is quite feasible – ex-juggler here).
HawkinsPeter wrote:
Sorry, but that picture would only count if it was a squirrel juggling the shears or the man juggling sharpened squirrels.
burtthebike wrote:
Tough crowd!
HawkinsPeter wrote:
Oh no it’s not!
CygnusX1 wrote:
Is this some kind of joke to you?
HawkinsPeter wrote:
All a bit soft really that, a real man juggles chain saws in a ring of fire
burtthebike wrote:
Please send that man my road.cc socks, which I am going to win of course.
Elf and Safety gone mad,
Elf and Safety gone mad, innit?
If its not safe for a council worker to walk along with a broom then surely it is not safe as a cycle lane / pedestrian footway either. Ciouncil effectively admitting that the infrastructure they built is not fit for purpose.
Or if its safe enough for pedestrians and cyclists surely a bloke with a hand cart and broom or even a snazzy little pavement sweeper EV could manage to negotiate it without dying a gruesome death?.
Astonishingly, are not liable
Astonishingly, councils/authorities are not liable for “accretions” on the highway, and councils hide behind this to avoid keeping roads clean.
(Section 41(1) of the Highways Act 1980).
I wonder if tory Cllr Susan
I wonder if tory Cllr Susan Webb also considers the billions spent on building more roads to encourage more people to drive everwhere “vanity projects”? Or is that particular epithet only applicable to schemes to get people out of their cars.
^^ forget the ring of fire,
^^ forget the ring of fire, real men wear a neckerchief and no shirt ^^
Ubyk saga on STW. Long read
Ubyk saga on STW. Long read but the new owner appears to discuss the situation in more detail.
hopster wrote:
Aside from the shittyness of losing money to a fraudulent company, that’s an amusing thread in the typical STW competition for stupid prize and other internet stalking (for the wrong person, obvs) wankery.. Hat off to the new owner, even after the demands that he pays out for the previous owner’s shenanigans, and suppliers stepping in.
Head down TTing kills. Not a
Head down TTing kills. Not a great advert really. Plus, his helmet with the head down is so un-aero that he is being overtaken by a lovely lady on her shopping bike! Pahhh!
The old Ubyk owners seen like
The old Ubyk owners seen like scam artists after reading stw. New owner seems daft wanting to use a name with much bad will associated.