JT!

My ridding buddy had one of those long before I was into trials. Does it happen to be orange? It was the first trials bike I ever rode.

5g would be worth it but not available in my area. 4g services seem to cost double what I'm paying and are not unlimited.

Yep. How much is internet in the UK these days? Yeah this might be what we have to do although it looks like we'd still be paying $50.

I'm paying $65 now and it's going up to $75. 100mbit. It's solid service, but they have a bunch of tiers lower than this for less money, but they're for new customers only. If I cancel and come back a month later, I have access to these cheaper tiers, but I have no other means of getting internet for that month, so as they upgrade their tiers, and give me faster internet, they charge me more and more.

My ISP has a monopoly in my area. They know this and are using it to f**k me hard. Constant price increases.

Yeah that fatbike video was nuts. When you just think it's gonna be some "basic" stuff, riding up and down steep banks etc then the first big move on the tree stump shit gets real.... and he's only had the bike for a couple of weeks or so.

You're exponentially more likely to die from covid the older you are. The older you are the more likely you are to get vaccinated, and the more likely you are to get boosted too. What they're trying to show in this article is that the vaccine actually has a negative affect. That's simply not true. What is being shown here is that older people are still more likely to die than younger people even if they're vaccinated. Very dishonest article.

This is why studies use thousands of people, and run multiple of them. It means it's statistically impossible that, in a study of 4000 people, 2000 with an active drug, and the other 2000 with a placebo, that the half who're taking the active drug all just happen to be taking vitamin D supplements. Obviously the results from any study are going to be the results of the average person tested. Sure, if you're young and fit such as yourself, you have very little to worry about when it comes to covid. And if you don't want to get vaccinated, that's your right. But the problem people have isn't with people choosing not to get vaccinated, it's all this right here. Spreading doubt, suggesting other methods, conspiracy theories, anecdotal evidence and just pedaling nonsense. That's where the hostility comes in. Well, you've been ill since 2019 and you didn't get tested so you don't know that for sure right?

I think covid 19 and how we've dealt with it is one of the most heavily studied things in the last 2 years. You kind of make it sound like there's one vaccine only, and one study from the maker of that vaccine, which obviously isn't true. Why are you presenting it as such? All studies clearly show that the vaccine prevents covid deaths, by massive margins. I'm not sure why you have such a staunch aversion to the scientific process when it comes to determining these things, and then just throwing out anecdotal evidence like everyone else in here who's questioning the vaccines safety and validity. I've heard about Ali's girlfriend (fiancée?) dropping off Ivermectin at some guys doorstep and he was doing better the next day, I've heard about Adam's group of friends who all know someone who've had very serious effects after they took the vaccine, and now I'm hearing about your family and fiends and some vague casual comparison between those that are vaccinated and those that aren't. What exactly am I supposed to do with all that information? Why even bring it up?

I think we're going to learn a lot about how effective the vaccine was in years to come, I think it's very foolish to disregard it so heavily. What we do know is that the vaccine works against covid, it makes antibodies that stop you from getting as sick, if at all, and it reduces the chance of death. The only real downside to the vaccine other than mild side effects is presupposing that the vaccine its self is harmful. But I agree that the vaccine wasn't solely responsible for reducing the spread, lockdowns, sanitizing, masks, natural immunity all played a part too.

The link you posted shows a request for all the deaths caused solely by covid 19 where covid is the only cause of death listed on the death certificate. So if someone was listed as dying from pneumonia when positive for covid, that wouldn't be included in that list. Honestly, it's a garbage question, you ask a garbage question, you get a garbage answer. Let's say I wanted to know how many trials bikes Tartybikes has sold, so I email them and say "Hey, could you tell me how many bikes you've sold that have no saddle?". I'm going to get a number back, but I've asked a very specific and tailored question because I might happen to believe that a trials bike is only a trials bike if it has no saddle. Then taking that number and announcing that as how many trials bikes Tartybikes has sold would be inaccurate and dishonest, especially given that Tartybikes considers ALL the bikes they sell are trials bikes.

I think we can all agree something had to be done, and I also think we can all agree that we shouldn't have done absolutely nothing. The real question here is if what was done, and what is still being done falls into area of reasonableness for something that is unprecedented. They were never going to get it perfect, but was it reasonable? I feel, if a poll to the nation went up tomorrow, with two options. One being "The government didn't place enough restrictions to control covid" and the other being "The government placed too many restrictions to control covid". I think it would be a fair split which to me means the level of restrictions put in place was about right. Well the point you made was that deaths aren't being accurately reported. I would argue they are being reported accurately, it's just that the organizations who put the 6k and 150k numbers out there are interpreting those deaths differently.

That's quite insane. To start with your math means nothing. You're evenly distributing covid deaths over people with and without preexisting conditions. Even though you're trying to show people with preexisting conditions are more likely to die from covid, you ignore that premise when you're distributing the deaths. Realistically you're chances of dying are MUCH lower that what you state if you don't have a preexisting condition. But "being healthy" means nothing anyway because covid kills old people. You can't hit the gym and eat right to get younger. And even if you could, it's almost impossible to do that over such a short timespan. And even if both those things were possible, good luck trying to get people to change their habits. You comment reeks of "Well I'm young and healthy so why should my life have to change?".

Well, on one extreme you have any death that happens in a period of time after a positive covid test gets counted as a covid death. Then on the other extreme you have deaths from covid that are considered to be death solely by covid with no other preexisting conditions or medical vulnerabilities. This is how we've ended up with two numbers 25 times apart.

Well, sure but that's neither here nor there. We're talking about what is considered a covid death or not. The numbers 150k and 6k aren't due to an inaccuracy, they're due to two different definitions of a 'covid death'.

Sure, but that's down to what we quantify as a covid death right? Like, no one dies from a car accident, they die because they've lost too much blood, they stopped breathing or their head is no longer attached to their body, but we list it as a death due to a car accident. Kind of the same thing with covid. Sure, a lot of people who died from covid in the last 2 years would have died from something else anyway, but if covid was never a thing, I'd certainly imagine there'd be closer to 150,000 more people about now as opposed to 6000.

Has anyone ever really doubted getting covid will make you immune to it? The whole point of getting the vaccine is to become immune and not get sick from covid, as opposed to getting sick from covid and becoming immune. Graph shows women live longer than men.

Fatbikes are amazing. They're kind of bad at everything but they're just so goofy and fun, I had to steal the derailleur off my hardtail to fix my fatbike. Turns out the derailleur I got with my fatbike was defective. So I was without a trail bike all last year, ended up putting a dropper no the fatbike and rode the trails on that. Had a great time! Obviously tire pressure is everything. I've ridden my fatbike at 4psi on groomed snow covered trails and at 30psi for gravel trails. The hardest thing to get used to is how they autosteer when you get going fast. Best thing about them is how amazing they are whenever you need grip, whether that's going up wet rocks on a techy trail, going through mud, even sand. And for someone like he who's never been able to afford a full suspension bike, the volume of the tires are great for absorbing the small stuff.

Consultation went well, now we really just sit and wait up to two years for the right home to show up.

The King's Man is actually very good. A very subtle origin story. Much less gratuitous action, but better in every other aspect than the first two.

I have my consultation with 1roof on Tuesday. For all those who didn't read my comment about 1roof it's an organization for lower income people to get them into homes by selling you the home at a discounted price by them keeping ownership of the land. The downside is you're obligated to sell the home at a discounted price if you decide to, but it's better that our current arrangement or renting. It's going to be a little annoying though because the consultation is really more of a financial planning session on what needs to be done in order for a family to be able to purchase a 1roof home. Budgeting, credit score building etc. But we already have the down payment (which isn't even required) and killer credit scores, so it might be a really quick phone call.

Haven't been able to get out much this winter. -10c is about as cold as I'm willing to go for safety reasons, it's been way colder than that most mornings, -30c being the coldest this winter season, it's been a rough one. When it does warm up it's usually snowing making it almost impossible to ride even with 4" tires. But this was one of the rare days where it warmed up and wasn't snowing too hard.

I'm not, it was a throwaway comment. Honestly I thought meatloaf had died of a heart attack on stage years ago. Amazed he was still alive.

If I wasn't saving for a house I'd throw some money in. Damn responsibilities.

Oh wow there goes my money, what caused this downturn? Edit, oh it was Biden.