Dr Ferrari's Camper Van (off-topic discussion)

That red line is winter The nice warm air we've had the last few weeks getting pushed south by the cold. Temps on met eireann are 4-6 above it, 10-13 below it. Amazing that it's so obvious.

sunny here now upto 7.5C, some weather

RobFowl wrote: »

Snowing in parts of North West according to RTE !!



yep snow on the hills round donegal town, that might be the errigal road

'200 yds' on the sign, that's in NI (or Scotland or something)...

RobFowl wrote: »

It's the Glenshane pass in Durry...

that was my first thought but i'd seen this first

As a result of some boredom/goooogling, I've come up with some cycling monumental teasers/questions, so without resorting to gooogling/books/wiki's etc yourself, try and answer as many of the following:
/answers on a postcard to: Santa Claus, North Pole

1. Only 3 men have won all 5 monuments in their career, Merckx is one, who are the other two ?

2. The 5 monuments are: Milan-SanRemo, Tour of Flanders, Paris-Roubaix, Liege-Bastogne-Liege, Giro di Lombardia, what are they also (individually) known as ?

3. Sean Kelly won 4 monuments, which one is missing from his palmares ? where he agonisingly finished 2nd on 3 occasions !!

4. Fabian Cancellara has won X monuments, what value is X ?

5. Put these climbs with their respective monuments: Passo del Ghisallo, Poggio, Koppenberg, la Redoute, Kapelmuur. /easy

I hope they kept you entertained/guessing for a while anyway Hermy
The spoiler is a good idea, I'll give all the answers later in the week. PS. you're didn't do too bad

Both wheels nicked off my bike when I went into a market.

Raging, only had them a week. Not that they were that nice, but the feckin' English*! They will steal anything. They were bolted on, not QRs, and in a public place under cctv, but "nobody seen nuffink" as I was informed. I had, in a moment of gentlemanly-ness given my cable to my GF to make sure her shiney new wheels were locked, and, to be fair, they were untouched.

That said, went down to the nearest LBS, which coincidentally was where I had got the bike from in the first place, and got wheels, tubes, tyres and handlebars for 100 quid. They were also going to give me a rear light which had also disappeared, until we worked out that it was my other half who had nicked that. So that was sound. Miche hubs on the new wheels too, which sadly makes my hipster d**khead bike even more hipster d**khead-y.

Kryptoflex is now permanantly attatched to the bike.


* - As opposed to Dublin, where they will just stomp on your wheels if they can't get them off. Much more civilised.

Nice article about the recently deceased Dennis Ritchie, for those of you who are interested in computing history:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/oct/16/john-naughton-dennis-ritchie-unix

Dopeology : it does exactly what it says on the tin

Idleater wrote: »

Violates rule 35. Get a cap.

yeh right i doubt the light extension mount, rack and panniers on that bike, would make mincmeat of those rules anyway so not gonna worry about a helmet peak

CAR crashes dropped 40% in Middle East during Blackberry outage
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2050656/One-giant-crash-BlackBerry--40-fewer-CAR-crashes-motorists-Middle-East-smartphone-outage.html
disclaimer: it is the dailymail

briano wrote: »

* - As opposed to Dublin, where they will just stomp on your wheels if they can't get them off. Much more civilised.

I thought bike wheels in Dublin just melted or got tired when locked for long periods to lamposts or raillings.

Sorry to hear about your wheels :mad:

Is it normal for wiggle to create a tracking number waaay before they ship an order?

Interesting idea.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/how-congress-shapes-your-commute/2011/10/19/gIQA7GHOxL_blog.html?wprss=ezra-klein

Even our daily sojourns to the office are affected by the twists and turns in the U.S. tax code. If you drive to work, your employer can cover up to $230 per month in parking costs tax-free. And in recent years, if you take mass transit, your employer has also been able to reimburse you, tax-free, for up to $230. This latter program was part of the 2009 stimulus bill, and one Businessweek survey found that, when companies do offer it, many workers really do shift to public transportation.

It’s clear why the parking subsidy is popular — transportation is already the second-largest household expense and the vast majority of American workers drive alone to work. But, as UCLA’s Donald Shoup has detailed at great length , there are real costs to offering “free” parking. It’s a market distortion that leads to more driving than would otherwise be the case. Until recently, workers who drove got a bigger benefit than those who rode the bus. People who bike to work get an even smaller subsidy.

An alternative approach, introduced as a bill earlier this year by Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), would try to smooth out some of these distortions. His bill would cap the benefit for parking and transit at $200 per month. It would increase the benefit for biking (to $40 per month) and “van-pooling.” But here’s the big innovation: Blumenauer’s bill would require any employer that offers the parking benefit to allow workers to take cash instead.

It would have been nice cash for me in a previous job, but it probably also would have persuaded a few people to leave the car at home and pocket the cash. At least, I think my employer back then rented car spaces from the business park, since they had the company's name painted on them.

Do employers generally pay out for parking in a business park, and even so, is it included immutably in the rent? That is, is there an assumption of what percentage of employees will need parking and that's the only way they calculate how much to charge the occupant of a unit on the business park?

EDIT: I realise that this article is about US taxing practice, but I'm just wondering whether there would be any room in Ireland to turn benefits enjoyed by car-driving employees into cash so that they can be transferred to non-car driving employees.

Thermal trousers? Lined bib tights ftw.
http://www.wiggle.co.uk/dhb-pace-roubaix-padded-bib-tight/

These will keep the cold out down to -5. After that you might need some leggings over them.