Here's a thread for those things you love and think others should try - food, drink, shop, etc whatever your latest obsession is. To start off. Munchie people try M&S's Organic oat bars with raisins, cranberries, strawberries & apricots. Very juicy (the strawberry bits are lush!), incredibly more-ish. Probably full of calories, but yummy! £2.49 for 5.
No particular obsessions per se, but I do have a tendency to gorge upon things unavailable elsewhere when I return here. Current favourites include Eccles cakes, gypsy tart, custard tarts, and Double Deckers... not all in the same day, every day of course. (this might not be entirely true!)
A cargo bike... Recently my car died and I've decided to not replace it, do my bit fer the planet etc. The only thing I'm finding is a bit tough on my fixed gear bike is carrying a lot of shopping so my solution is the cargo bike, you also get trike cargo bikes with two wheels at the front for added stability (see below). Not only can they carry shopping you can also carry people in the wheel barrow bit at the front. I want one so bad I may have to go to Denmark to buy one and ride it back!
Yup you can buy them in the UK http://www.dutchbike.co.uk/ but they start at £1000 so I was hoping to make a holiday of it and get one secondhand (with the help of a Danish work colleague) and hopefully save my or at least spend the same amount of money but get a nice wee trip out of it. Plus it appeals to my thrawn nature to go to all the trouble of cycling to the ferry and then cycle from Newcastle back to Dunfermline with it. Josie Dew (writer /chef and cyclist) rode Lands End to John o'Groats and onto Orkney on a Wheelchair bike (looked like a conventional bicycle after having nose-dived into the back of a conventional wheelchair) with her camping gear plonked in the wheelchair seat in front of her. She said it was the hardest thing she ever did and she's done a lot of cycling! Down in London there is a cycle courier who use cargo bikes. http://www.zerocouriers.com/ Of course the cheapest option for me would be to get a wee trailer instead but then where would my Granddaughter go?
I think the bloke riding that bike should be done for using his mobile phone while riding it (in charge of infants in the front, by the looks of it).. Damned irresponsible! Bob
Yeah! Yeah ! One day it will be illegal to fart in public because of the methane footprints you pollute the planet with. I'm still of the opinion that Guy Fawkes night / fireworks should be banned purely from environmental points of view let alone social considerations. God I sound like a grumpy old curmudgeon these days don't I? Bring back hanging I say! That would make Johnathan Ross behave himself! chrs andi :wink:
From one youthful curmudgeon to another It seems in America we have fireworks for every holiday, graduation, big parties, hangnail removal... What about the good old days when it was just on that big holiday when we celebrated our independence from... never mind:biggrin: I used to think fireworks were something special. That was back in the good-old-days when we in America mostly banned the death penalty (on a state-by-state basis). Now it's all twisted around... I think it's a crime that man wasn't wearing a bicycle helmet! The kids should probably be wearing life vests in case he accidently drives into the Thames!
a) its Copenhagen,more laid back than Dylan in the Magic Roundabout. b) the kids get seat belts with their seats in the front. c) he was pedaling slowly through a quiet park d) I knew as soon as I posted this that someone would point out the moby. I had an alternative photo (this one)but I decided to go with the one above as I had seen more silly things being done with or on bicycles while in Copenhagen such as a guy riding a bike with a huge suitcase resting on his handlebars and it kind of summed up the laid back approach. For real laid backness / insanity though checkout this movie
Cardiff A few years ago students from Cardiff Uni started their own bike transport business [not sure if it's still going] and they would hang out touting round the Railway Station next to the taxi cabs and charge peanuts [not literally] for cycling people around in versions of pedal powered charabancs. Brilliant enterprise which should be encouraged all over methinks! chrs andi :auto: [Have we got any bicycle smilies Paul?]
Why? A helmet isn't going to help him if he cycles into a canal. If a car hits him even at 30mph it's not going to protect the rest of his body. A friend of mine (wearing a helmet) was hit by a speeding motorist, my friend now has a mental age of a 10 year old and still hasn't regained the ability to walk some two years later. The helmet didn't survive the initial impact and so when he rebounded off street furniture further down the street he had no protection. A helmet will protect him from injury if he falls off under his own volition but he is riding a tricycle slowly ie no more than 6mph through a park. Copenhagen is pretty flat but the best speed I saw a cargo bike do around town was 10 to 15mph. So I don't see much potential for a speeding motorist to be a hazard in a quiet park. There is an argument that with all the safety features around nowadays that people take more risks as they think the safety devices will protect them. Whereas if you don't wear a helmet you will ride accordingly. In the case of my friend he choose to wear a helmet but as the car driver was being selfish and thoughtless of other road users the helmet didn't make much difference due to the speed the car driver was going at. I had a low speed impact with a car (due to him doing the classic "I didn't see you") despite being lit up like a christmas and wearing a bright yellow "safety" jacket, since then I generally but not always wear a helmet. The ocasisions when I don't are when I have assessed the risks and made a choice to not wear a helmet as the risks are low enough not to warrant wearing a helmet. Look at the cycle couriers of New York many ride bikes which have no brakes other than the fixed gear with which they control their speed (just as I do when racing on the velodrome) and they ride accordingly (albeit in some cases pretty outrageously/horrendously ie like this) but hey if they remove themselves from gene poll through their own choices then I'm not going to moan about it, as long as they don't take out or injure some innocent person in the process. Climbing off soapbox now :leaving:
aren't cycle helmets made of polystyrene? and therefore...floaty? so, if he did drive into the canal... anyway, back to obsessions..... electricity pylons! make of that what you will! i'm gonna mention it next time i see my shrink!
Ooops! I forgot the sarcastic smilie emoticon. Hope you enjoyed the opportunity to vent. I really would prefer people use their own common sense when it comes to personal safety, without government intrusion. Just imagine the tax bill putting everyone who doesn't wear a helmet into bicycle safety rehab!
