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To defend an air lines booking policy is shameful, when the same airline refuses to pay it’s customers compensation for delayed flights under EU rules, cheating them out of compensation they are lawfully entitled to.
As for not using Ryan Air, what if its the nearest and cheapest airline. For me I can get to the Pyrenees (Lourdes) with Ryan Air for £224 return incl the bike fee from Stansted. Its an hour and 40mins from home and this year to outward flight is at 14:00, so I miss the early morning Ryan Air maddness at Stansted
Its always good to come across a poster who sticks to his principles.
Or here is an idea! You could play by the rules instead of trying to cheat the system.Depends on the check in staff asking you about what’s in the box?
You know how pedantic they could be, so get your story straight & don’t use a bike brand box!
He’s not cheating the system, it’s sports equipment and if it’s under 20kg then £35 according to their fee table.
Are you related to Micheal O’Leary or are you employed to write Ryan Air’s money generation ideas, ie the £1 to have a pee fee?
It works both ways
Perhaps you missed the bit of the baggage fee table where individual sporst items are listed in bold type – skis, golf clubs, bikes, all individually priced, actually before you get to the general sports category.
As for me being a friend of O’Leary’s, you jest, they’re a shit airline, but you pay peanuts, and get what you pay for. If a premium operator flies the same route at a convenient time I will happily use them, and very often after add-ons, there is very little price difference. However when you pay for a no refund/no change item, which everybody must by now know Ryanair are, why would you subsequently expect to be able to change it? Is this fair? Well my last trip back to Edinburgh cost me 9 euros, walk on with an overnight bag. That’s Marseille to Edinburgh, circa 1,000 miles, for less than the price of 2 beers. Don’t you think it a little unrealistic to suggest that my 9 euro ticket should also be flexible? Or do you think my ticket should have been priced at 20 euros to cover costs of those who screw up their booking?
maviczap wrote:
Or here is an idea! You could play by the rules instead of trying to cheat the system.Depends on the check in staff asking you about what’s in the box?
You know how pedantic they could be, so get your story straight & don’t use a bike brand box!
H’mm cheat a fixed system, where the OP can’t amend his booking to a bike case without a big hit in his wallet, thanks to Ryan Air (and other airlines) shameful policies.
He’s not cheating the system, it’s sports equipment and if it’s under 20kg then £35 according to their fee table.
To defend an air lines booking policy is shameful, when the same airline refuses to pay it’s customers compensation for delayed flights under EU rules, cheating them out of compensation they are lawfully entitled to.
Are you related to Micheal O’Leary or are you employed to write Ryan Air’s money generation ideas, ie the £1 to have a pee fee?
It works both ways
Not at all. I’m just wondering what you suggest the OP disguises his bike as before lying his way through check-in. Maybe squeeze those 700c wheels into a ski bag?maviczap wrote:
Depends on the check in staff asking you about what’s in the box?
You know how pedantic they could be, so get your story straight & don’t use a bike brand box!
Or here is an idea! You could play by the rules instead of trying to cheat the system.Whilst I agree with the
Whilst I agree with the sentiment of the “Never use Ryanair” comment above, the fact is that for many passengers ryanair is the most direct route and the suggestion that you fly with a different airline is unhelpful. I hate Ryanair, but regularly fly with them Edinburgh to Marseille, simply to avoid an indirect flight.
Ryanair vary their abnormal baggage charges according to weight and to fragility of the contents. To this end skis and golf clubs are cheap, because they can be thrown around, but bikes and musical instruments cost more. Despite a bike being a piece of sports equipment in my book, and therefore eligible for £35, Ryanair see it differently, and it is almost certain that a bike box will be questioned at the airport. Even if you get it through, if your bike happens to be damaged in transit, Ryanair will deny responsibility as the contents were not disclosed correctly. Budget airlines all (even EJ & Jet2) do tend to stick rigidly to their baggage rules. A “proper” airline is more likely to show flexibility. That is why budget airlines are budget!
Note that you can still buy bike carriage. Ryanair are always happy to take more of your mone yfor add-ons, right up to the point of boarding!
BehindTheBikesheds wrote:
I did a 7 day trip in France last year on the road bike using 25c tyres and bikepacking saddle bag and top-tube bag – it’s all you need, the roads are superb.Not everywhere,
Yeah these generalisations about roads in a country 3x the size of the UK are pretty meaningless. I note the OP mentions Ventoux. The national class roads in the Vaucluse are indeed superb for the most part, but once off onto the quieter mountain roads, which is where you want to be to avoid the endless streams of Belgian camper vans, they can be pretty rough, and finger numbness is not unheard of. (Having said that, after 2 years living here I have only just moved up from 23c to 25c, but then I’m not doing 100 miles 14 days on the trot.)
Oddly, my limited experience of the alpine roads is that they tend to be a bit better, which I assume is due to better construction, or better maintenance, to cope with the harsher weather.
HawkinsPeter wrote:
‘Tis the season to be falling…A question that I have is when a helmet wearer falls and the helmet splits apart does that mean that the helmet did its job or did it fail to provide adequate protection?
Helmets used by for eg the military have two distinct requirements to meet: impact, and penetration. Penetration is addressed by something like a kevlar skin, and impact by an absorbing structure. In practice, the two act together for example in the case of impact with a point, or an edge. Cycle helmets only address impact, and this assumes hitting a large flat area where the load is evenly distributed. Splitting of the polystyrene is most likely due to hitting an edge, where the helmet is not evenly loaded. Something very likely to happen if you hit a car, a kerb, or even part of a bike. Bike helmets aren’t designed to cope with this situation.
Once over 30mph on a descent, you’re in comfortable freewheeling territory” – no you’re not on a 3% descent. eg Gorge de la Nesque, 15km @ 2,5% average. If I had a higher gear than 52/11 I’d use it.Ive ridden Gorge de la Nesque both ways. The desecnt is not super fast because of lots of blind bends, until the latter part where it staightens outs a bit.
La Nesque is my back yard. From the viewpoint on the North side, travelling West down to Auzon, there are only a couple of blind bends, for much of the route you can see the road snaking down the valley ahead of you. The South side is more twisty.
Notwisthstanding that, your comment “once over 30mph on a descent, you’re in comfortable freewheeling territory” doesn’t make sense on long shallow gradients. If you can generate power through the crank at 110 rpm, that’s fine. I can’t.
Griff500: I’m almost your age. (Where do you live exactly..? I’m in Beausoleil)
The Luberon. (A long way from you)
or anything less than 50-34
or anything less than 50-34 front, and you aint going to keep up with your friends on road bikes as you put it.How fast do you think he needs to go. Once over 30mph on a descent, you’re in comfortable freewheeling territory. If you want to push the speed along then, 100 rpm on a 48-11 is 35mph, remember freewheeling :)
Presumably fast enough to keep up with his mates. All I can do is speak from experience. Granted, I am a below average cadence rider, being much happier grinding up a hill at 75rpm than at 100. My area (The Vaucluse), is characterised by long grinding ascents followed by long sweeping descents. Despite my age (60), I set upper quartile Strava times on those long climbs and wait for my mates at the top, and lower quartile times on descents where we are all spinning out and they wait for me at the bottom! “Once over 30mph on a descent, you’re in comfortable freewheeling territory” – no you’re not on a 3% descent. eg Gorge de la Nesque, 15km @ 2,5% average. If I had a higher gear than 52/11 I’d use it.
You don’t mention tyres. I
You don’t mention tyres. I moved from MTB to road 5 years ago, and coincidentally live in the South of France. I found that the simple act of moving from knobbly tyres to slicks made a huge difference in ability to make rapid progress on the road. I don’t however use tyres on the road which I would also want to use on gravel. (I am on 25mm GP4000).
In terms of gearing, I am on the 52-36, 11-28 setup you quote, and at the age of 60, that will get me up any hill I am likely to encounter, including Ventoux (or some shorter, hills of close to 20%), at a fairly decent speed. When it comes to cassette replacement however, I will probably go to 11-30 next time. But to be honest, any lower than that 11-32, or anything less than 50-34 front, and you aint going to keep up with your friends on road bikes as you put it.
Kapelmuur wrote:
It’s not been mentioned that cars have grown too big.
…. And too heavy. Despite advances in materials and manufacturing processes, each revised Golf or 3 series is heavier than the one before. “when I were a lad”, a family saloon weighed a tonne. Now there are few less than 1500kg. Whilst some of this is undoubtedly safety related, some of it is stupidity. Who needs a self closing boot for example, or electrically adjusting seats? All this extra weight in electric motors and gadgets, just makes the car harder to stop, and of course burn more fuel.I did 300 miles in a rented
I did 300 miles in a rented Nissan fitted with lots of gadgets a couple of weeks back. At first I was impressed by the lane change warning lights which came in if anything was moving in the field of view of the door mirrors. This being an attempt to stop you switching lanes if anything was over, or undertaking you. Then out in the country, the system fail lamp started flashing, which seemed to broadly coincide with passing forested areas close to the road. Not a failsafe system then. Then the self dipping headlights, whereby in the best case the car had a second of thinking time after you switched to main beam before the lights changed. Worst case, which seemed to be right hand bends with the headlights reflecting off trees, embankments etc, it wouldn’t allow me to put main beam on. If I need main beam, I don’t expect the effing car to stop me! There may be an override, but being a rental, I didn’t have time to check it out. Not impressed with any of it. And this is all pretty basic compared to the level of intelligence a fully self driving car needs.Simon E wrote:
I’m puzzled. You and I probably don’t have any opportunity to assist either of the ‘dickheads’ you or the OP encountered. It looks like you’re putting words in my mouth there. I don’t appreciate that.How is it you don’t want a dickhead in dark clothing, unlit in poor visibility to do any more to help themselves and those around them, but you have a raft of suggestions to improve the activity of those who are actually getting out and selflessly contributing to their community and trying to improve our lot as cyclists?You are doing something constructive, which sounds great. But if you simply hand out sh*t lights to (possibly clueless) kids will that really achieve what you’re hoping for? How do you know they’ll even be fitted to the bikes?
Where did the OP say it was a kid? Aren’t you putting words in the Ops mouth? The OP was travelling to work. Aren’t hoody clad junky kids in bed at 8am?FluffyKittenofTindalos wrote:
All it actually does in practice is imply an endorsement of the dangerous idea of collective-blame.
Why would you think collective blame to be a dangerous idea? If you study accident analyses either by insurance companies, or by coroners, you will find that the majority of accidents have a primary cause and contributory causes. Perhaps the best example is that of young drivers who in addition to having a higher rate of primary fault accidents, are also involved in a higher rate of non fault accidents. In other words, the 80 year old partially sighted blithering idiot was the primary cause, but the young driver he hit put himself in a more dangerous position than a more experienced driver would have, who evidence suggests is better placed to anticipate the risk. What you suggest is that only the singular responsibility is of significance, and that we should ignore any notion of contributory factors. What you suggest in fact goes against all safety risk mitigation advice and methodology.
