Things you were shockingly old when you learned

oiling up my chain rn tbrr

Yeah keeping things oiled, greased and properly tightened very useful.torqued even.

Putting on new handlegrips

I have an old Raleigh 3-speed and it's true, if I keep the chain & hub oiled up and the tires fully inflated, it's a joy to ride... if I don't, it's a workout

i mean I know it sounds completely obvious but I honestly did not realise the magnitude of the difference

"magnitude" keeping this week's theme going

pop pop!

Hearing horror stories about lack of recognition of basic bike maintenance for teh last few months. NOt going to have to face it over a protracted period. But basic basic standards appear to not be kept.
THis apparently also includes people power washing bikes and not replacing grease they've washed off. & not greasing places where aluminium and steel are in close contact and bond due to lack of grease preventing them from doing so.
& using WD40 on brake systems if they do actually try to clean things. Rendering them useless.

Need to ensure points where there is going to be friction will have grease to prevent wear/bonding etc.

Air in innertube acts to stop you feeling the road as bad as you might. & there are punctures that you can get from having tyres at too low pressure where bits that would be kept apart if there was enough air in there are n contact so can both be spolit through contact with kerb etc. Works as suspension to some extent also, aids ride.

& making sure your break blocks have enough block present helps you stop bike. Having a wheel trued also helpful

I struggle with gears though.

What you say is true, but a key benefit of tire inflation is saving you work. A tire that is flat is deforming on every rotation; it takes more energy (from your legs) to keep it going efficiently

"magnitude" keeping this week's theme going

― satori enabler (Noodle Vague), Friday, March 17, 2023 1:47 PM bookmarkflaglink

pop pop!

― kinder, Friday, March 17, 2023 1:49 PM bookmarkflaglink

Lmao

This is the one “Mickey”-related detail that stood out for me: http://www.clubdevo.com/portfolio-item/11409-toni-basil-jerry-casale/

Also, are you people familiar with the original lyrics to “Tutti Frutti”?

Good booty

If it don't fit don't force it

You can grease it, make it easy

Clearly they're talking about a party melt

They're talking about putting on new handlegrips.

I've only ever had Cynar 70, and haven't been too clear on the taste difference compared to regular Cynar

Lol, jimbeaux

Joan Miró? Not a lady.

Dominique Leone? Not a lady.

Wait till you hear about Leslie Howard and Leslie Nielsen

Leslie Mann? Not a man.

(Leslie is always a man's name in the UK btw)

Leslie Ash might claim otherwise.

Curses!

I have wasted decades imperfectly frying bacon in a frying pan, it is so much easier to just put it in the oven

Yes, same. Started baking it 2-3 years ago and life is much easier. Also, the resulting bacon fat is cleaner and less burned, good for frying things later.

right? Realised that only about 2 years ago as well!

i'm gonna harsh your buzz a little bit on this one cos firing up an entire oven to cook some bacon for a few minutes seems incredibly wasteful

But what if it's many a bacon

if you guys ever want to try going back to the stovetop try starting with a cold skillet, medium-low heat, keep it moving, nothing should burn

this is me at the moment with eggs 👍🏽 and bacon 👎🏽
TCB, talk to me of induction cook tops (and maybe other cooking appliances)

I e-mailed a kitchen expert last week to ask what the best way to season a cast iron was, and he replied "fry two pounds of bacon"

My bf is veggie so I did not do that (but I imagine it would be spectacular)

I get equally good results in both the oven and on the stove. Up to 3 slices, I'll generally use stove, and I'll use the oven for a lot of bacon. One thing that helps a lot is that I always use thick cut bacon.

If you have a poorly ventilated kitchen the oven method is quite appealing. I’d rather my apartment smell like bacon for 12 hrs via the oven vs 48 hrs via the stove. I imagine the stove method makes crispier bacon though

Bake in the oven on parchment paper or a grid rack for crispness.

FGTI - cold-pressed flaxseed oil works really well to season cast iron. Rub all over to coat, wipe off excess with a paper towel, bake inverted in a 350 deg oven for 1 hour min then turn the oven off and let the pan cool in there overnight.

when I'm bakin' bacon it's 2 sheet pans' worth for several meals
shrugging takes effort and it's sunday, so
*plays dead*
xps

El-P appears prominently on The Veils album Total Depravity

Bacon cooked in an oven on parchment > bacon cooked in a skillet > buying already-cooked bacon

I don't think it's any more wasteful than using an oven to bake cookies or heat up a pizza; why would it be?

Well, a stove is not so suitable for the other things …

I guess because bacon is usually considered a side. presumably you are also cooking something else when you are making bacon

microwave for 20-30 seconds

boil it in an electric kettle, fuck it like

Fry it with lard.

ideal place for bacon is the grill aka broiler

EZ bake oven

"basic bike maintenance"

On a tangent, I've managed to avoid learning how to drive right up until my forties. It wasn't very useful in London, and now I'm fortunate enough to live within cycling distance of my workplace. But I'm reaching a point when I will probably need a car, so back in February I did my CBT. This is a day-long training course that teaches you how to ride a motorbike. At the end of it you can ride a 125cc motorbike for two years with L-plates. Which explains why there are so many Deliveroo drivers buzzing around with L-plates.

And so I am now the proud owner of a Peugeot Tweet, which does about 140mph and costs about five English pounds to fill up (the tank capacity is about a gallon). This gives me two years to learn about roundabouts and toughen myself up mentally for the inevitable time I crush a pram or something. And I now have a legitimate excuse to own a pair of leather trousers.

I remember the first time I went to Italy, I felt inadequate because I was surrounded by kids buzzing around on scooters. Crowds of them. When I was a kid I didn't buzz around on anything. This is a photo I took in Genoa last month, where even scooter drivers have trouble parking:
https://i.imgur.com/i7nNdAh.jpg

It's a massive culture shock. For a mixture of reasons - climate, the law, the distances involved - scooters and motorbikes are a tiny tiny minority thing in the UK. We all have cars instead. Cars upon cars, parked on the pavement and all over. And tiny stand-on electric scooters. Of which there were masses in Genoa, sitting unused on the pavement because everybody already has a scooter. The problem is that it takes a certain amount of money and commitment to learn to ride a motorbike, so why not learn to drive a car instead? I'm digressing here.

I grew up with a bicycle, and one thing I learned is that the brakes are different for motorbikes. On a bicycle the right and left handles control the front and back brakes. And that's true for an automatic scooter. But for a geared motorbike the left handgrip is actually the clutch! Not the brake at all. You control the brake with a foot pedal instead. And the gears go 1-neutral-2-3-4-5-6, which makes a certain amount of sense but feels weird. I also learned that motorcyclists are legally allowed to pull trailers, but only if they have a proper licence. And that my dreams of riding a motorcycle with a sidecar are likely to remain dreams because (a) the Ural is a 745cc motorbike (b) it costs £21! But there is still time to buzz around Morocco on a two-stroke.

The discussion of bacon reminds me that there is some debate as to whether you should spray cooking oil on the exhaust pipe. To season it, in the same way that you season a cast iron pan. It sounds like one of those things that might possibly work but wouldn't do any harm to try.

in that last scenario are you cooking the bacon rolled up inside the exhaust or laid in strips over it

it's hilarious that Linkin Park's founding bassist doesn't play on Hybrid Theory because he left the band for a year to focus on his other project, a ska punk band called Tasty Snax. might be one of the luckiest guys in rock because they let him rejoin after they sold millions.

— Al Shipley (@alshipley) March 19, 2023

Re: cast irons, I was shockingly old when I learned I didn’t actually need these cumbersome implements that are fussy as hell and don’t actually make the end product that much better.

(They are not any better than other cooking vessels, sorry yr in a cult)

i gotta dig out/reseason/start using my cast iron pans to try & up my iron intake, and they're convenient for recipes that go stove-to-oven, but yeah generally speaking fuck those pans. oooh i'm a fancy frying pan and i'm prone to rust and i don't like soap, oooh! like get over yourself cast iron, you're not all that.

and so heavy, god, and the handles will burn your skin off!! fkn cast iron!