Grinder Gremlin

The one nobody says out loud: you cannot tell whether an unattended helmet has been dropped or interfered with. That's my actual reason for carrying it, not theft.

Top box changes how the bike handles more than people expect once there's weight in it, especially at motorway speed. Worth a short loaded ride before you decide you love it.

You already wear plugs, which puts you ahead of most riders, but check you're actually rolling and inserting them properly. Most people wear foam plugs half-inserted and get a fraction of the rated attenuation. Custom moulded ones cost about what a cheap helmet does and last for years.

Ask a slightly different question: can you get your data out. Some of these let you export a file, some have an open API, and some give you a chart and nothing else. If export exists, subscription creep is survivable because you can take your history elsewhere. If it doesn't, you are renting your own history and the rent can go up.

I've owned cheap and expensive. The cheap ones were fine, and I stopped wearing one of them because the visor mechanism was so stiff I couldn't open it at a light with gloves on. That's how a safety purchase quietly turns into the helmet you leave at home on hot days.

Roughly normal for a soft 1000, and the firm pressure is why it is at the fast end of normal. Two habits fix most of it.

Use the whole stone. Most people work a 4cm strip in the middle and that is exactly where the dish appears. Move up and down the length deliberately, including the ends.

And drop the pressure. Heavy pressure on a 1000 mostly generates a bigger burr, not a faster edge: the abrasive does the work, you just hold the angle. Medium pressure, more strokes.

Mostly though, flattening should become a 30-second thing you do before every session rather than an event. Then it never has time to get bad.

Own three, regret two. Both regrets were bought online because they were the same size as my old one. Sizes are not consistent across brands and they're barely consistent within a brand between models.

Small thing nobody mentions: get the pan off the burner entirely rather than leaving it on a switched-off gas ring. Cast grates hold heat for a couple of minutes and that has broken more of my sauces than technique ever did.

Same story with hinge mortises in hardwood doors. 35 for anything I hit with a mallet, no exceptions.

Drag the edge very lightly across your thumbnail at about 45 degrees. A clean edge bites and stops. A wire edge skitters one way and catches the other, because there is a flag of steel hanging off one side.

Second possibility worth ruling out: you may be leaving a wire edge rather than removing it. A wire edge feels shaving sharp for the first ten seconds and then falls off, and what is left behind looks exactly like a rolled edge under a light.

After the 6000, strop on plain leather with a little compound, alternating sides, about ten passes each getting lighter. Then slice through some scrap end grain before you start real work, if it was a wire edge, that first cut takes it off and the edge you feel afterwards is the honest one.

And drinking water at a stop. Sounds trivial until it's 35 degrees and you're peeling a full face off every 40 minutes.

This plus the deburring together got me somewhere I am actually happy with. Thank you both.

Confirmed, clear drag on the right side. Stropped it out and got through a week of normal cooking before it needed a touch up. I had been treating arm hair as the finish line.

Go to the store. Not because gait analysis is scientifically airtight, because it isn't and people will tell you so at length, but because a decent fitter will put five shoes on your feet in an hour and you will immediately learn what too narrow feels like on you. That knowledge is what the 40-minute drive actually buys.

I keep circling back to in-ear and finding reasons not to. Third person to tell me and I think I'm out of excuses.

Mine are definitely centred on my ear. Trying the reposition tonight before I spend a euro.

Mild contrarian: I started it, then changed jobs, and the salary sacrifice arrangement did not follow me. Sorting that out cost more hours than the benefit was worth on my numbers. If there is any chance your employment changes in the next eighteen months, factor in that the mechanism lives with your payroll, not with you.

Small correction to the usual advice: a pinch of baking soda does speed browning dramatically, but it also turns them mushy and faintly soapy if you use more than a genuine pinch. I ran with it for a while and went back to time.

One check worth doing anyway: after the 1000, are you fully removing the burr before you move up? If you carry a burr onto the 6000 it gets thinner and floppier rather than disappearing, and then you cannot feel it because it has folded flat rather than because it is gone. Light alternating strokes on the 1000 first, until it stops flipping side to side.

Weight on one side of the head is what got me. A camera plus a comm unit on the same side and you'll feel it in your neck by hour two of a motorway run.

Halfway up the ribs is fine, for what it is worth. I go lower than that deliberately so the exposed tops brown while the bottoms braise.

One caution: new plates cut aggressively for the first few uses and then settle down. Do your worst knife first, not your favourite.

Plan around the weak burner explicitly. Put the small pan on it permanently and stop expecting it to sear anything. Trying to make a weak burner do a big pan's job is how people end up believing they cannot cook.