ALiteralCabbage

Glad you made a start!

And good luck with the install of new bearings - best done with the right tools, but please know that even professional techs occasionally resort to a suitably sized socket and a hammer to install them in a pinch - they can be a pain but it's hard to go dramatically wrong; you shouldn't need to use massive force to install so if it feels like you need to take a beat to check alignment etc.

My only real recommendation is mount them wherever it feels comfortable for you.

I've run a variety of flares (30 degrees to 12 depending on my mood) and i tweak them a lot in all cases. I run SRAM rival for what it's worth. I aim for as flat a surface for my palms as possible, while still maintaining decent grip on the levers from my riding position on the drops.

If your flares are wide it will be a bit weird and may might want to play with the rotation on the bars as well as the lever position.

Knowing what bars you're running would help with advice but ultimately it's going to depend on how they feel to ride - everyone rides differently!

A new bearing (especially a cartridge, like you have) is absolutely not the end of your wheel unless there's other issues you haven't divulged!

Bearings are generally pretty cheap so you're in luck there (and you have a full bearing totally off the axle so you can measure and ID it to make sure you get the correct ones to replace).

I won't rehash what everyone else has said, but the leftover of the original bearing (the"race") might be a bit of a bitch to remove. With that said you don't really need bearing pullers. If it's causing issues then there's a few things I'd try at home:

1. If there's any gaps you can work a skinny screwdriver in and wiggle against the 'stop' of the axle and one edge of the race.
2. If that doesn't work then get a vise or mole grips on the race, and see if you can wiggle it free, or if possible, try to smack the axle with a hammer - some penetrating fluid might help here
3. If it's still stuck, then a lighter and vise or mole grips - heat then clamp and twist. The bearings are brittle so this can cause it to crack and split so maybe wear glasses while doing this.
4. If none of the above work, then I'd carefully use a small rotary cutter to gently cut into the axle which (again) might crack and split.

Worst case a shop with a friendly mechanic would probably do this for a small fee (or source you a new axle if it's totally FUBAR).

M&S jeans are great - last me as long as stuff like Levis ever used to and cost less than half as much.

Love it.

Do they release these as a podcast anywhere? I used to get them back in the day, then they moved to playlists on Spotify (which fucked my algorithm - I still get their intro tracks recommended to me) - I miss having them in my podcast app....

I don't know why I never considered this.

I work for a German company and wondered why our internal prices were so high!

That thing (it's not even a BSO) is precisely why tech startups need to get the hell away from bikes.

They are the future but stuff like this (and any number of weird bike renders from car manufacturers) just don't make sense.

Bikes aren't complicated - and they don't need to be!

We have some in the South West, and there's plenty in that London also.

Can't have debt after this administration if there's no more administrations!

There's still plenty around! All full of titty ads, fag ends, and smelling of piss.

It's like the 90s never left us.

It's always farmers. There are some good ones, I'm sure, but for the most part their 'stewardship' of the UKs outdoors extends only as far as their ability to make money from it.

Fuck 'em, until they do what they like to pretend they do.

And as far as Lynx are concerned I'm still salty about the escaped lynx from the Borth Animalarium that was killed rather than recaptured because of farmers' concerns (despite the fact that to get a shot at it would require the same work either way).

The majority of the wealth in creative industries isn't in the hands of the creative workers anyway - it's not a big change in that respect.

The 'creative' employers will just pivot to churning out content and using underpaid staff to make them workable.