SometimesSansEngine

I'll also add that I'm well aware that I lack as much understanding about the actual workings and underpinnings of our actual currency, and I like to think I know a bit more than most Maybe we should just go back to bartering

At the rate they're being invented, I think the problem is going to be backing the right horse

It was just the other day a colleague was telling me that Ripple was the new currency that was going to replace all card transactions and banks had signed up for it etc etc etc Mind you, he invested back in January.... https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ripple/ ...so is already a bit of money down. He's convinced a few other people in the office to invest so I can only assume that you get your money back by convincing 10 of your mates to invest then trying to sell as quickly as you can

It sounds like for a full on day you did well. 7 hours is a long time by any stretch. Fully expect and accept the peaks and troughs you're going to have. Every time I've felt confident there'll be a little something that creeps in and makes me feel like I'm the world's worst motorcycle rider. Reading lots of stuff on this forum has made me realise this happens to most of us throughout our journey of learning. If you can expect and accept it you'll get through those bits of self-doubt quicker. The thing with riding is that once your confidence gets knocked you habitually do all the wrong things - tense up, get less smooth, stare down at the floor etc. Fun eh The back brake is one that I think I still overuse on slow speed manoeuvres. It'll make the bike stand up and that will play havoc with your turning circle. Hopefully on Saturday you'll reduce your use of it and allow the bike to fall into the turn better.

Not even YouTube though - you'll want a clear view of the number plate for the police/insurer if you need it.

It would have been better if the bike had actually got above 10 mph...... Speedo visible innit

I'll admit I came on to here expecting to see a glowing review. However when it comes to things like cameras I'm not surprised - things like GoPro are expensive but generally speaking the quality (both build, output and how easy they are to use) is top notch. Something on the bike like that fitting would work well for me, but not at that quality. Re. number plates and incidents, if you were to report to the police (eg they hit you and drove off) the number plate would need to be clearly visible in the footage. At least, it's a very specific question when submitting any video footage to my local force. Nag ebay for a refund for not as described!

One of the bits of feedback I got yesterday is "you're exceptionally smooth", and supposedly I move position around the road and adjust speed in quite a graceful way, and everything is done in plenty of time. Which is weird because when you're sat on the bike it can feel a bit different Personally I enjoy working out the micro adjustments I can make in my right wrist to shave off just the right amount of speed, to be honest I often find myself bringing the brakes on just a touch to at least show a light to the vehicle behind. I'm sure I can still improve though, I know there's plenty of bends where I scrub off too much speed too early (yes, I know it's better to do that then the opposite!!) Re. hazards like roundabouts, the method I usually have in my head is "aim to go but plan to stop" which usually seems to serve me well. But as for braking on zig zag hill, I'll still be amazed if anyone could do it with engine braking alone.... but I'm always willing to be proven wrong

You definitely would have to control speed with your brakes I'm sure, I don't think engine braking alone would do it. I'm sure someone with more skills and experience would prove me wrong! I just felt I was on the brakes too much rather than feathering off near the apex and letting the bike fall into the corner. Have you done it? Would love to hear your experiences if you have All the motorcycle youtube vids are of riders going UP it

Absolutely, and it's why I brought it straight up with him. It was totally my fault, one of those you clock but don't react. It did catch me out and the thing that saved me was I was leaving a safe following distance. Like I said he did balance it with a few of the things he'd clearly observed me seeing and reacting to before they got me into a tight spot, so whilst I have definitely reflected on it a lot I'm also not going to let it get me too down. But yes... I did give myself a mental kicking for it, which I think is a better mindset then "wow my mad epic skillz got me out of that one" and finding myself in that situation a lot.

I think I'm approaching all this as "I want to keep learning after passing my test", so see this time as a great opportunity to get third party feedback. And for that I know there's no point in trying to BS my observer. So if I think there's something that didn't go well I'll mention it. Or alternatively I ask "when we were at x would you have handled that any differently?" I guess in a way it's nice to say it out loud and have some feedback, even nicer when it's quite a grounded answer along the lines of "nobody's perfect". I doubt many people could ride 75 miles and not make up the odd slip up after all. As for my speed... My wife asked me that and as I said, I have no fricking idea as I was too petrified to look anywhere else than the road to make sure I got around If I was to guesstimate though, I probably entered them at 10mph and you picked up a fair bit of speed as you went towards the apex even whilst feathering the back brake. I was hyper aware that too much rear brake would keep the bike stood up but it's hard to override that when you're facing one of those tight downhill hairpins....

Second ride today. About 75 miles of mainly fast roads, I was cream crackered by the end! The first ten odd miles of the ride I followed my observer, we then swapped over at a supermarket, leaving I missed a speed limit sign that must have been at the exit and was doing 30, I could see him do a "crank it up" sign in my mirror, I was still unsure of the limit so upped it to 40, only about a mile later to see the sign up ahead for a change to 40... and it being NSL in the other direction. Ah FFS. His feedback later? "We all miss speed signs occasionally", me: "yeah, but it wasn't great to do it within 20 metres of the start of my ride when you've already told me to crack on a bit if I can" On the way I'm spotting all my cock ups, you try and put them out of your mind but of course internally you're kicking yourself over them, probably more than you would normally because you know you're being watched. The worst for me was a van pulled out in front of me about 50 metres up the road, but didn't really accelerate. My brain noticed it but didn't massively process it and before I knew it he'd slammed the brakes on hard and then suddenly put the indicator on. I had to brake hard and then take avoiding action up the inside. I was properly kicking myself over that. 35 miles in we stopped and I took my helmet off ready for some frank feedback. Ready to take it on the chin I said "I guess we've got a fair bit to debrief there", to which the answer was "not really, I thought it was quite a good ride down". Cue me saying "well here's all the stuff I spotted....." But in the main he was happy, he agreed the van had caught me out and I could have reacted quicker, but that I did the right thing in braking hard then swerving around and simply said "we all make mistakes, it happens" and emphasised the other times I'd shown good anticipation and action. I had a few bits on speed and positioning to work on on the way back, and off we headed for home... but not before he took me down 'zig zag hill'. Yah crikey, steep and with 3 180 degree hairpins... https://goo.gl/maps/saHo2CGb3RF2 (Here's a vid of someone going down it in a car %29"> ) He'd briefed me on this beforehand and emphasised staying in my lane and on my side of the road, which I definitely managed although if I do it again I'll try to use a bit less rear brake, I think the bike would be happier if I let it did its thing and trust it a bit more. Some low sun made some of the final miles pretty hairy, not helped by the specific country roads being quite polished and bouncing the sun off the road into your eyes so I was glad when we parked up back at the start to debrief. Mostly positive and he was pleased that I'd put into action some of the feedback from last time, along with some tips about how to position ready for an overtake.

Sorry if my post was misconstrued, it was based on the assumption that she had the required entitlement. For the avoidance of doubt for the original poster, I don't know the answer and haven't looked into it. I'm definitely no expert at how entitlements have changed over the years. But if she does have the entitlement there I still think it's worthwhile doing some training first.

It's up to her, but I don't think it would harm to do a CBT style course (or approach a bike school and ask about a general training day) if she's never ridden before

We have a 14 year old Berlingo that has been dented more times than the moon. Whether that's a lucky thing or not I'll let the crowd decide

We have a Nextbase one that works well in the car. For something like this, I define "works well" as "just works". It is one of the ones with a magnetic clip that works well, though I leave it attached all the time. You can set it up to start recording if it detects a bump when stationary, although we don't use that feature. Fitting it was easy enough, just dedicate a bit of time to working out how you'll tuck the cable away, I assume some cars are easier than others. I'm not an electrician by any stretch but found plugging it in to the fuse box so it didn't need to take up a charging socket easy peasy.

I think it's safe to say that in your case it clearly wasn't missold... We have a joint Nationwide FlexPlus account that for us is good value, as for the one monthly fee we're covered for travel insurance, mobile phone cover and breakdown. The breakdown alone save us vs getting it separately, and even picked up my wife's motorbike twice when she had a few niggling issues with it.

It is indeed Mike, feel free to drop me a direct message

I'm an idiot sandwich and ordered replacement Osram Night Racer 110 bulbs for my bike and got the H4 bulbs rather than the H7.... and opened one before I realised my error. If anyone could make use of it I'm more than willing to post it on if you just pay the postage, which shouldn't be much. I'll even wrap it lovingly in bubble wrap Offering here first before I offer it elsewhere because you lot are lovely

As I report incidents that threaten my life, and one day could prevent me returning home from a journey to my family, then I will continue to report. Speed traps or not.

Today, I saw someone waving and I wasn’t sure whether they were waving at me or at someone behind me. In other news, I was fired from my lifeguard job.

Oh, I just remembered one of the things I was going to post. I presume this is Nextbase? When they first launched this portal the T&Cs had a line that gave them full rights over your footage for any purpose royalty free. Could have made a tidy mint selling submitted vids to the various 'bad driving' TV shows and tabloids. After a bit of a social media storm they did change it.

My old boss constantly impressed on the whole team the absolute importance that we were always well aware of everything going on in the company. Our job first thing Tuesday morning was the read the senior leadership meeting slides which were in a shared intranet folder.... ...until the week that the potential upcoming sale of the company was mentioned on a slide. Which of course got talked about (and had started to make a lot of things make sense, including why he was constantly at off site meetings and asking us for lots of detailed reports) Cue him on the war path, taking us all in for individual one to ones to demand to know if we'd read it, who'd we discussed it with, reminding us that the meeting slides were confidential and not for mere mortals like us to read, demanding to know why we were reading it. Me not being the shrinking violet reminded him he was big on this and that's why we read it, to which I got back that clearly I misunderstood what he had previously said and not to make out to any senior leaders that I'd ever been told this (ie he had already got a bollocking for it and denied all knowledge of his team reading it). I did say in that case they probably shouldn't be in a public folder. Anyway, fast forward a few weeks and the sale went through and the morning it was announced we found out he'd been made redundant. I didn't cry about it because I am completely sure that if he had to make redundancies he wouldn't have lost any sleep over it. When he was allowed to come in to say goodbye to the team (which was mega awkward because he spent most of the time asking in a David Brent style if everyone in the office was shocked when his redundancy was announced when in fact no one really batted an eyelid) he even used the words "this is what happens when you try to play at the big boy's table"

So my dirty little secret: I'm one of those cyclists who uses a GoPro, and occasionally do report to the police. My last was just last week. However, in the main it's there just in case to avoid dispute of liability in an incident. When a car turned across my path and hit me off two weeks ago I was glad I had it when I realised I didn't get any details of witnesses at the scene. The dashcam we have in our car is the same. Having joked about 'my dirty little secret', I probably report two incidents per year to the police, and that's with doing around 5000 miles by bicycle per year. Not really much at all. Most rides just see the footage binned. I see bad driving a lot, but most I shrug off. It really is reserved for the specials, the ones that truly are going to hurt somebody, and I hope a quite word from the police will at least give them cause to think. The most serious outcome I've had is a charge of careless driving, although that then got changed to failure to notify because the owner didn't respond to the NIP (and the traffic officer advised that was going to be a larger punishment and easier to nail via CPS anyway). Even with footage dealing with the police can be a struggle, often it's a non-traffic officer who reviews and I've had all manner of initial responses, such as: - The Highway Code is just general advice - The police don't the right to "have a word" with a driver - It's your word against theirs (this is usually when they haven't even bothered to read the report and don't realise you've also uploaded footage) - Untaxed and uninsured cars are not a police matter - We all just have to accept that most people's standards drop after they pass their test A couple of times I've had to push back to actually get anything meaningful done, it really does depend on the police force you report to and then the person that reviews it. The other issue is the CPS and magistrates, who can be notoriously bad at acting on the work the police do sadly I don't thin we should inundate the police with footage, but I do also think if you see something truly dangerous the right thing to do is to report it. I haven't worked out yet where I might mount my GoPro on my motorbike. edit: having said all of the above, never ever start yelling "I've got a camera" or "smile for the camera". I cringe every time I hear anyone do that Second edit: I've also never sent in any footage from the dashcam of my car, probably because when you're on two wheels the potential outcome of bad driving around you is much more serious

My dad always said "the first rule of theatre is to always leave them wanting more". Great bloke, terrible anaesthetist.