Moz: you realise 1990 was 26 years ago ? Not really "recently"

@Criggie recent in the context of "before that the 1970's, and before that the 1930's"

heheheeh I'm taking the piss.

In terms of significant innovations in bicycle technology, recent is measured decades. I mean, we've seen the UCI accept disk brakes and 559 wheels in the last 20 years.

I mean, with caveats, obviously. The UCI wouldn't want to go completely off the page and just blanket allow radical innovations like those everywhere.

Judkins is still one of my heroes purely because his test was "is it safe" rather than "is it what everyone else does". He did turn Gurney down on a velomobile, though, as he felt it would be unsporting.

fair call. There's nothing wrong with a velomobile race though.

Imagine a pursuit ?

crits are far more fun, if you can keep people from playing dodgems.

well that's why I said pursuit - so there's nothing near until just about the end of the race

IE as soon as one gains half a lap on the other, the race is over

so the whole thing is a two-by-two playoff

The Oz Pedal Prix races are a bit more dodgem-like than I prefer, but then they have little kids pootling along at 20kph on the same track as uni kids doing 70+.

That's no good

@Criggie could take a while, and velodromes are not especially kind to high speed riders.

erm I don't understand that

I thought they were intended for high speed riding

@Criggie unavoidable though, having short team races gets silly (6 hours to short) so the 24 hour format seems to have stuck. But 24 hours with two tracks you start to run into venue issues.

well two-by-two playoffs worked for Mortal Kombat :)

@Criggie "high speed" being maybe 70 at the elite level\, and strictly two wheels and unweight the saddle coming on and off the banking. Velomobiles get tossed around a lot more coz they can't do those things.

ahhh

so you almost want a circular track with consistant banking

A pursuit might be the least awful way to race velomobiles on a velodromes, just coz it would avoid people getting pushed up the banking. On a steep track I swear you get airborne coming off the banking (yes, I have ridden my velomobile on a short, steep velodrome. It was all fun until the pounding started to hurt. I dunno how Jeff does 24 hours at a time)

The Holden test track in Victoria is perfect banking but it's also a few kilometres round, so it's much easier. They run cars on it for 24+ hour tests at 130kph.

Yeah I remember you mentioning that before

Given unlimited funds I would quite cheerfully build a 200m-ish diameter perfectly banked circle just for my own entertainment.

What would you put in the middle ?

a tunnel exit so you can go under the banking instead of over it

Tunnel would be needed, but I could also put my high-G living quarters in the middle. When I say "my" I mean that I'd hire lab rats to live in it, but I would own it. Because what's the point of being an evil overlord if you can't have minions to torment.

My donations to charity this year are once again suffering from the "unusable website" problem. I have my "special" virtual machine that has Ubuntu, Chrome, Firefox, Opera and the default "internet" thing installed, and not much else. Specifically so I can visit badly coded websites with no ad-blockers or anything enabled. And still.... some sites can't process my attempt to give them money. I might have to visit some of the charities with actual cash.

donate with the proviso that it be spent on web devs

or, if you're a masacist, donate some web dev of your own

I wanted to build a velodrome in phnom penh

@alex most of them outsource to specialist "donation processing" sites, so you'd think it would be done properly. But hitting "continue" after entering details edonsw.nationbuilder.com/donate takes me back to the "pick an amount" page. I swear that processor worked for me once, I just can't find the browser that did it.

pretty sure I couldn't afford it though

trying more browsers... if IE doesn't work I might give up

@alex surprisingly expensive to do properly, yes. Our "driveway" when I was on the farm was nicely done and about 500m long, but it wrinkled after a couple of years coz the supporting layers were thin.

Digging down 30cm and building back up wasn't enough... but it was expensive.

I'm sure

That's why it remained a pipe dream

and land prices in PP are bananas

and some joker would take his honda dream on it and gouge it all up when he inevitably crashes

Even though we did a lot of the work ourselves. Oh, and owned the land already, obviously :) If it'd been the steep hill that I wanted (gravity racers FTW) it would have been worse.

Oh, we had idiots in trucks on a regular basis, to the point we put one of these "less than two metres tall" barriers across the driveway entrance to discourage them. That lasted the best part of a year before it ended up decorating a fertiliser truck.

Wow, in IE I actually get to see the error messages! Shock!

And that might actually have worked. My usual thing, BTW, is to put their details in any fields I don't want to fill out. So they get their postal address and phone number (which should be valid, in case they check that). Years ago someone at Greenpeace told me that they were actually getting mail addressed to me, at their office. I said "yup,. and it's from you, too"... they didn't see the funny side.

Ha

nationbuilder.com is a US company, and it looks as though their feedback form is not just well hidden, it's also broken.

@PeteH ordered some very very cheap stuff from Decathlon so that I can keep my good stuff for weekends

decathlon.ie/300-short-sleeve-cycling-jersey-en-s380-S380.html << ordered 4 of them

decathlon.ie/500-long-sleeved-cycling-jersey-en-s179.html and 1 of these

@ynnekkram I do hope you're happy wuth it.

I alyays thought they were excellent value for money.

Right now I'm trying to resist the urge to reply to smart-ass comments on one of my answers.

which one?

@PeteH a link please?

@ynnekkram Weird - within 8 hours the URL was broken. I get a 404 for both, or they're doing something funky with source country.

@Criggie yeah. I will have to try once I'm home and can use the VPN to play with requesting IP.

I have an evil plan. Mwahahaha. And like all evil overlords I will now tell you about it while gloating... only to be foiled at the last minute. Ahem. I am far too smart for that to happen to me.

chortle

you need a white persian longhaired cat

and a big scarey bad guy henchment

plus minions, many minions

Receptionist at work wears lots of clothes in the morning because it's cold here. We keep teasing her about making her wear a onesie. Specifically, a minions onesie. They're about $40 online. Since the girly is willing to wear it if I buy it (she wants a onesie), I'm going to buy one, get it delivered here, then give it to the receptionist and try to get her to wear it. When she rejects it I;ll take it home.

DO IT DO IT DO IT!!!!!

take a photo too

hehehe imagine a bunch ride where everyone's dressed like a minion

Moz: you should probabyl buy two and wear the other one, so she doesn't feel alone :)

mmmm twins. Did I tell you I randomly met this guy once?

dead ringer for my road bike, albeit a year older

he had downtube shifters to my brifters, but otherwise identical bikes.

mongoose is a bso brand here

@Batman It used to be a decent BMX brand but yep, BSO brand here now too

@Criggie girly wants to get the whole house in onesies. I think we buy one and see how shit it is for $25 incl delivery. I'm not optimistic.