Pasta!

I brought a pasta machine when i visited my sister in Italy last year:





Fresh tagliatelle for lunch, vegetarian lasagne for dinner... twice!

Walk across Kinder

The weather was very cold and sunny last Saturday. The snow had not had the chance to melt yet, but the roads were clear so we took the chance to drive to Edale (2 hours). We started to walk at 11am and 5 hours latter, made it back to the car having crossed the Kinder plateau on solid, frozen ground. Have a look at the pictures:



note: there seem to be a problem uploading the picture on the blog, but you can see the whole set by clicking here

Question for Tom... Lloyd... Matt... those who know about bike brakes

I've replaced the old fashion handlebar on my city bike with something a lot more comfortable:



Here are the bits:



And what it looks like:



Problem: I don't have any brakes!

The original plan was to reuse the V-brake/shifter combo that came with my mountain bike. You can see the right hand side one on the last picture.

Not having a new brake cable, I tried to reuse the old one but it's too short. So I don't know if it works yet.

My questions are:

Is it possible to use V-brake levers with cantilever brakes,

Is it possible to drive the rear and front mechs with indexed shifters? The rear cassette has 5 rings and the shifter 8 speeds, have i got any hope to make it work?

Chineese New Year

We went to the Chineese new year celebration on the university campus yesterday. We met Louise's Friends Kate, Gordon and Beth - who's not on the picture:



It was dark and only a handful of pictures are worth showing: the legend of monkey puppet show, one dance, the drums and the fireworks. We did miss a couple of acts when we retreated to the union for a hot chocolate in the warm!