Looking for a romantic night away in Chester

After loosing the kids for a week at PGL we booked ourselves into the Dragonfly boutique hotel in Chester for a romantic night away.

Absolutely fantastic. It was just what we wanted, a small personal hotel with just 5 rooms in a gorgeous Georgian house 5 minutes walk from the town centre.

Thoroughly recommended.

Maxle lite rear axle problems

My current mountain bike has a Maxle Lite rear axle.

I got this because I was led to believe it would be alot stiffer than a conventional axle.

Sadly in 6 months I have managed to brake the axle twice.

Looking at the components and talking to Hope and Biketreks I can see that this is a design flaw in the quick release (QR) Maxle sleeve made by SRAM. The sleeve has a waste line at the very point where it needs to be full diameter.

Hope have been very informative and helpful and gave me a replacement axle free of charge.

Biketreks have also been extremely helpful and having been stone walled by SRAM have agreed to supply to me under warrenty a replacement QR sleeve made by Goldtec. My guess is that SRAM know they have a problem and will eventually get a fix out, but like many other similar issues they will not want to admit to it publicly because then they will be admitting liability.

I have also written about the issue on the STW forum.

Thank you Hope and Biketreks for excellent service.

Very refreshing to be treated so well.

squirt - dry chain lube

I have tried many chain lubes, ones for wet weather, ones for dry weather, oil ones, wax ones.

However, following a recommendation from Ed of Great Rock, the latest I have tried is squirt lube and it is easily the best.

The chain and cassette stay clean of dirt and all that claggy mess that normally builds up and it is biodegradeable. Note. You must follow the instructions for the initial application but after that it is great. Also it appears to last alot longer than a conventional lube.

Better still order from their website and it is sent P&P free.

They also offer nice little free sample bottles.
see the Squirt Contact Us page.

Just don't try googling for 'squirt', the naming is unfortunate!

thomas cook airlines - a disaster

just got back from a great week's skiing in Sestrierre, Italy courtesy of Neilson.

Sadly the flights were with Thomas Cook Airlines.

8 hours delay outward,

13.5 hours delay return

never again

Great Rock Skills with Nigel Page

Just had an awesome w/e with Ed Oxley of Great Rock and Nigel Page and a great group of riders.

Two days skills training in Gisburn Forrest and excellent food provided by the Dog & Partridge.

What did I learn:

• that I need to practise alot more instead of just riding
• most importantly propper bunny hops and before that wheelies/manuals.
• fast turns
• drop offs (need the wheelie & bunny hop)
• skids
• body postion (i'm all wrong) - I'm too far back and not tall enough on the bike.
• posture - I need to be in what I have dubbed the silver back position - elbows up and out - not down & in
• keep my fork pressure pumped up !!!

One amazing thing was that doing the turns is just like skiing

• does that sound bizarre ?
• unweighting
• then weighting the tyres by pressing down especially on the outer foot.
• then unweighting again

first Blog

This is the sister blog to my techy blog Bill Comer's Blog

Wanting to keep techy stuff and owt'else separate I thought I would create this.