That is my good mate David caught midway through a detailed examination of the “Ferneography” covering a large swathe of the Black Mountains in high summer. How he got there was pretty simple; dropping a foot into the morass of vegetation while expecting something reassuringly solid to balance on. Didn’t end well for him. For the rest of us, cinematic gold 🙂

How we got there is a little more complex. Simple enough to pluck a route from a well know website promising a big Welsh day out. Much of that route intersected with one I’ve ridden many times, but offered intriguing accoutrements and diverting alternatives to some fairly dull transitions.

Naively stuck it up on the GPS, roped in three other Friday SkivE** clubbers with the promise of big skies, epic landscapes, fantastic descents and an artisan sandwich. The four of us were GPS locked and sandwich loaded in Crickhowel by 1030am ready to tackle a road climb I’ve been avoiding for about 10 years.

On the eBike it’s a lovely way to gain quite a lot of height in not much time rather than a “Oh God Why Did I Have That Last Beer?” purgatory directed trudge sweating out an alcohol marinated will to live. Feeling pretty smug today until karma intervened with an insistent arrow routing us over gate marked “Private Land”.

As we portaged portly ebikes over the locked gate my doubts on the legal veracity of the route began to surface. Best to keep schtum I thought, it’s sure to get better. It really didn’t and 45 minutes later we found ourselves 2 kilometres and endless locked stiles into a double that fern clearing mission.

There was a track for sure. Probably a footpath. Certainly not travelled by foot or tyre for good reason. That reason being head height ferns, hidden rocks, sniper roots and the aforementioned lack of level ground. I mostly forged a path nervously anticipating  a vegetation based involuntary brake incident, pitching me headlong into a landscape cosplaying “Dr Livingstone I presume?”

After enough time for me to consider bad thoughts,  including hunting down the route author and making his or her life a misery with a sharp spoon, the ferns finally released us one third up the grassy track to Rhiw Trimau. I have history with this 3km ascent up the side of an ever opening stunning valley. It’s a proper “well that’s very big and I’m very small” experience in the dry. In the wet, it’s more of a “just leave me face down in this damp grass, it’s the way I’d want to go” experience.

Today it was motor assisted joy leaving us mostly unflustered on the Summit of a Thousand Vistas, and ready to unwrap Al’s Special Sandwich.  Of the 20+ times I’ve rested on this summit about 19 have been “fucks sake let’s get off this hill” as wind/sleet/snow/rain/delete none attempt to fling tired bodies painfully into the next valley.

Not today. Stunning. Just let-me-drink-this-in-and-recycle-it-on-shitty-winter-day stunning. Still existential bullshit and condiment-maxxing focaccias can only take you far. The rest is point and shoot descending through rocky ruts opening up to a glorious mess of loose steppy rock. I love this trail and the big heavy eBike is nothing short of magnificent at dragging you to the far horizon all the time apparently powered by skimming rocks spat from the rear wheel.

And today none of us crashed into the gate I always forget about 3/4 of the way down. So pretty much another first there. As was the discombobulating left turn where I always head right when we hit the road. The route hit back sending us up a rather fabulous sunken road between shady trees. My route concerns diminished I confidently postulated death-by-ferns were behind us.

Yeah. No. It was ahead of us. To the side of us. Everywhere we looked. Although that head height thing barely enabled peripheral vision. Which fired “fern, fern, fern, another fucking fern” at the optic nerve. We considered abandoning this charlatan’s route, clearly ridden only on a computer, before – for reasons between only me and my therapist – pressing on and further into the ferniment***

After far more face based shrubbery than any rider should have to deal with, we arrived at the bottom of the last climb. I rallied the troops “at least it’s not a force 5 gale lashing us with sideways pissing rain and a high chance of benightment“. I like to think this Churchillian address carried the day.

It didn’t. Carrying tho. Oh yes there was a lot of that. 200 vertical metres up something pretending to be some form of trail. It may once have been but time and weather had reduced it to a steep, deep gulley barely cut into the side of a big sodding hill. eBikes have walk modes intended to make pushing easier. Works better if the pedals aren’t permeantly encumbered by the rocks or, and I don’t expect you to be surprised here, ferns.

On my sweaty and sweary ascent of this rubbish facsimile of a ridable trail, I found myself consumed with the hate of vegetation. In the same way bluebells trigger a profound sense of wellbeing, ferns are Gods swing doors always keen to slam you in the face.

Eventually it was over. And after yet another navigational challenge best summarised as “fuck this, let’s go to the pub,” we pretty much fell down the Bwlch at quite the rapid rate to find ourselves just a few kilometres from the car. Sorry I mean pub. The route though just kept on giving. Mostly stiles and pointless diversions. But we were – Stockholm Syndrome – committed to see it through to the end.

At which point we made a glass-clinking public pact never to ride it again. Subsequent investigations with a decent map and dodgy AI companion has brought forth a GPX track I’m keen to try again. I’m hoping the promise of posh sangers means I won’t have to ride it alone.

A week or so later we rode the Gap. And that was just bloody perfect. But more of that next time. Here’s the preview.

*A state of agitation or of turbulent change or development. Or an agent that precipitates or is capable of precipitating such a state; a catalyst. So says the OED. And as metaphors start, we might as well end there.

**All of us electrically assisted. Which ended up being both very good… and very bad as well.

***Yes I know it’s spelt wrong. I have petitioned said OED for a synonym 🙂

… and at some point you need to pick up the phone. Because what the old bugger is saying is that you are also an old bugger. Which translates to what has defined the last thirty years of your life is now mutable. The thing you were is no longer the thing you are.

This is not a happy call to take. I’ve been ignoring it even when the beat of reason and rationale was strumming at my door.  Eventually tho, you pick up the receiver and this is what it says.

There’s a moment in every long time mountain biker’s life when you realise the numbers no longer add up. Riding those bigs days, the 50km loops, the 1,200m+ slogs, the one more climb, that used to be a badge of honour, are getting harder. Not impossible. Just… heavier. Like someone quietly added a few extra kilos to your bike when you weren’t looking. And took a similar amount of power from your legs.

And because this is how you see yourself, defines a lot of what you are and makes you not like almost everyone else, you really don’t want to admit that. You don’t want to be that rider. The one who plugs in and goes electric.* The one who “gives up.” The one who turns up on a bike with a motor and a battery and a faint whiff of betrayal. And guilt. You’ve let yourself down, you’ve let… you know the drill.

So you do what any sensible**, stubborn, ageing rider does: Start researching e‑bikes in a curious but not compelled state of mind. Wowser, when did all this shit happen? Torque, power, battery capacity, a whole load of metrics that should not be part of my world.  Purity meets marketing, Really what the hell am I doing here? I can barely navigate electronic shifting.

But you’re not researching, you’re negotiating with yourself.  Strip it back to a simple question: “Can I buy  an e‑bike without losing that rather important part which thinks of yourself as a real mountain biker?”   I have history here, breaking my collarbone also broke the link between what I thought I was and what I was doing. Coming back, it felt way too hard. But that’s going to pass, right? I’ll get that fitness back for those big days, that unbottleable feeling of 360 degree giving zero fucks to those using age as an excuse.

Eight 1000m+ climbs so far this year. Each one leaving me mostly bereft of independent movement the day after. A few teeth grittingly “will I make it home? ” bastards-  way beyond T2 fun. The riding tho is still life affirming stuff- the people you ride with, the places you plant your tyres, the sketchy moments, the bullshit, the sense of  community and place. The post ride beers and the long rides home.

That feels like home. Feels important, feels like a massive hole if it it ever stops. Hard to reconcile all of that with these last two climbs are not worth whatever waits at the top. We already ride in a “mixed environment” of eBikes and non Es. This is only going one way, but I know those in the Non E group will consider my amp-y schism a bit of a betrayal.

And they’d be right. Kind of. We’re all thankfully built different and I’ve always prioritised being clever and lazy over actual hard work.  While there is something righteous about kicking back against the zeitgeist electrically cresting the hill, there is also a discussion to be had around which parts of riding MTBs do I love most.

Spoiler: It’s not grinding up a 20 min fireroad. It’s not wondering what else I could do on a Sunday other than lie in bed with legs of jelly. It’s not living a bit of a lie that smashing out massive days stopped being fun quite a while ago. I think coming back from all that time off didn’t tell me anything new, it’s just accelerated a trajectory already guiltily lodged in my thoughts.

As Hemmingway said about bankruptcy, it happens very slowly and then all at once.  And after a week riding mind blowing trails in the South Tyrol, epiphany turned up about day 3. The eBike I was riding took me to places not accessible without a motor. And I was having such an amazing time. It was bonkers fun. Pretty much undistllled joy. I had almost forgotten how that felt.

What I wasn’t having were feelings of guilt. Pangs of which were very much my unwanted companions as I’m whooping up well known hills today in the manner of a twelve year old on his first ride in the woods. There’s probably something trite about ebikes keeping you young, but more important – for me anyway – is the joy of riding bikes can be graded on an exponential curve when climbing is still an effort but not a chore.

Your elevation may differ. And that’s fine. I’ve been in the vanguard of the “point and laugh” cohort whenever some fat bloke pretends ebikes are somehow as “worthy” and “proper” as real mountain bikes. A bit of me is still in there. Zoom out tho, it’s all riding bikes and that is officially a good thing. Maybe I won’t be working so hard, likely switching to my pantheon of fantastic non ebikes shall remind me of the folly of electrical assistance. Regrets wait in the wings, maybe choosing a new way now means no way back.

But for 90 minutes today, I felt 12 years old. Or 25 with endless strength and no boundaries. I’m not sure if it’s the end of something, or the start of something else. But I’m not going to die wondering.

*went well for Bob Dylan 😉

**A stretch I accept.

Last day. Final trail. Fin. Relief was just one of a maelstrom of emotions crashing through my brain, before leaking out into a landscape framing an azure Mediterranean seascape against fractal sky reaching volcanic rock.

Let’s start there. La Palma should be considered less of an island and more a science experiment of shifting geography mostly on fire.  It nestles between European and African continents low on landmass but high on towering peaks. Glued to the window of the uplift van tho, it mostly presents like really shit CGI. Nothing real should look like this.

But it does and for keen Mountain Biker that offers a smorgasbord of riding opportunities easily differentiated by compass points. West and east are black landscapes clearly remodelled by the 2021 eruption of Cumbre Vieja. That volcano does not mess about, EIGHTY FIVE days of lava flow, 3000 buildings destroyed, 850 million Euro damage and relocating approximately 10% of the island population.

Still on the upside, pretty amazing place to ride 😉 North offers geology not entirely black and spiky whereas heading south has at least four different surface types on a single run from high spine to rocky coast.  With the odd bike park thrown in. It’s rather full on especially for the more mature rider with my abiding memory of the first day being “buffer overload” as my (very) nervous system attempted to triangulate a confusion of fairly pointy geography into stiff muscle movements priority configured to keep me rubber side up.

Jeez, this again Al? Overwrought hand ringing amplified by perceived danger. Haven’t we been here before? Certainly have but not for two years what with the “splatterbone incident” stuffing a slow healing fracture into my travel plans. Missed two riding trips and wasn’t sure about this one.

Slumped in the back of the van, a plethora of brilliant bikes rattling on the trailer behind, I fell back into my standard imposter refrain: “what the hell am I doing here? I don’t even want to be here. I’m definitely going to be useless, potentially miserable and probably injured“. I’m not sure how other people motivate themselves when faced with possible adversity, but this has always worked for me 😉

Or not. Spoiler alert, it was fine. More than fine. Bloody fantastic most of the time. And that’s against a backdrop of nothing being easy. The volcanic rock is fantastically grippy and terrifyingly abrasive. The gravel version is just terrifying. Hang off the back and hope for the best. The worst being a skin graft. Do not touch the front brake and really only attempt to steer if all other alternatives have been exhausted.

Hence this exchange at the bottom of a trail: “Alex, you appear to be bleeding copiously from your nose” / “Yes, well that’s because I rode through a tree” / “Why would you do that” / “The alternative was considerably worse. Do you have a dressing to hand? And maybe a restorative brandy?”

Oh but it’s all so good. Especially on one of those days when you focus only on what’s happening, not what might happen if one is at home to Mr Fuck Up. Do not associate with that man, he has no place here. Because this place is just magical.

Rodrigo – our guide – would often laconically describe the next trail as “a bit tricky” or – and it’s important to pay attention here – ‘ride the right of the rock garden, because the left side…. well just ride the right side“, Right, right it is then, fucking hell is that boulder strewn dry waterfall the right line? How bloody bad is the left? Don’t look, just ride and follow. Do not stop, do not prevaricate, do not allocate ever decreasingly brain capacity to uncertain futures. Just get in the tow and out of the way of your bike.

Steep and technical, harder to split than electrons and protons, it never got much easier but the probability machine in my brain tilted the odds as we rode deep into the week*. Top of an obstacle, deep breath in, whisper the mantra “not had a proper crash yet, do not break the streak“, Hit go, collect 200 dopamine points, do not collect spare body parts. Breathe out, repeat.

Keep landing on black. With two riders having – thankfully brief – A&E visits, red was not a colour you’d be betting the (F)arm on. Crash anywhere here and there are consequences**, mostly of the “oh where did all my skin go” kind. So don’t think like that, don’t look at what scares you, lift your gaze, raise your hips, rotate forward and tune your senses to the trail mix. Rock strikes on the bash guard, buzzing tyres hunting for grip, rotors squealing in protest and maybe an involuntary “fucking hell, what just happened?” from the rider.

Mostly good things. On and off the trail. It’s been my long held maxim that half the utter joy of riding mountain bikes are the amazing places we get to do it, while the other 50% are those other riders you do it with. Having ridden an epic trail which dropped nearly 1500m to the coastal lighthouse, we incautiously leaned bikes against the sea wall before trying to explain just how fucking brilliant the last 90 minutes had been.

Right then the van rocks up proffering beers distributed from a carrier bag. Leaving you toasting your riding crew with that look in your eye. Yeah we get it, we’re not like everyone else because they don’t do this. They don’t get to see what we see, feel what we feel, overcome whatever comes. And every one of us is desperately trying to bottle that feeling for all those grey days ahead.

Sure it’s affirmation bullshit but I’ll take it every time. The knowledge I can still do this, and – other than the first uplift – absolutely love doing this feels so damn important. Best not to dwell on what happens when I can’t.

Back to those emotions. Relief yes, but also sadness, melancholy even. Standing apart and looking out to sea I tried to make sense of  the last seven days. Was still trying when someone gave me a beer and a hug and asked if I was okay. Oh yeah, more than okay.

Where do we go next? Still alive and desperate for more.

*Except the last day. When after lunch I went for a lovely walk with my bicycle 😉

**Unless you’re Steve “Leaky” Lewis who appears to have around 900 cat lives. I have no idea how he is still alive to be honest. Bravest man I’ve ever known 😉

Six weeks post a purchase event best described as “What? A new bike? With my reputation“, a rather more significant milestone has passed under wheel. Actually rode the bloody thing. To the cynical* amongst you hypothesising that period conveniently brackets a slew of upgrades best characterised as a drunken man power sliding through a parts catalogue, let me offer a seasonal defence.

This winter is precision tooled to methodically strip away your will to ride. Endless waves of low pressure systems delivering rain on target with military accuracy**. Fifty days of moist+ weather leaving you feeling damp even when on the dry side of a water slashed window.  The entirety of the UK is a muddy puddle occasionally accessorised with the odd dry spot.  These are not prime mountain biking conditions.

Certainly not for something Californian born with sufficient mud shelves to outfit a decent sized Aldi. That’s before we get to the bearings with a lifespan similar to a wine gum in a blast furnace.  Eventually tho my superpower – poor impulse control raised to the power of misunderstood secondary consequences*** – wrenched agency from the land of much dithering, and new bike ride day finally happened.

It was dark. But not too wet. Let’s not confuse that with dry- we’re at least a season away from that mythical dry line. A far too familiar climb reminded me that 160mm enduro race bikes are not XC race light. Geometry and suspension trickery negates the misery of bobbing long travel bikes, but gravity still has a say.

What it was mostly saying was “good luck stopping this bugger unless you’ve selected a handy tree as an emergency breaking point“. The Bronson has suffered a parts dart bait and switch including a set of stoppers left hanging off a wall while my collarbone was merely hanging. My good mate Steve jumped on the bike then jumped straight off summarising the experience thus: “that front brake” / “Yes?” / “would have liked one”

They improved a bit. As did I relearning the joy of two sprung ends and non creaky knees. Not sure I learned much more other than the bike felt pretty well sorted, that coil shock out back was a thing of immense loveliness evenly matched by a professionally fettled fork.

I took it home, hosed it off, chucked some new brake pads in and loaded it onto an uplift trailer. Been a while since my last trip to Bike Park Wales. And while the day dawned chilly and grey, this was a major upgrade to the sleet lashing down on us the last time I paid good money to swap pedalling for a motorised uplift.

It was still filthy tho. The bike however shrugged all that off and was properly awesome on a day that started stiff and confused, but ended with a “that’ll do pig“. In between a creative line choice which shimmied a rear wheel all of 15km old, an inability to properly pre-load that coil shock and a couple of refusals which reinforced the axiom that ‘it’s not about the bike‘

But it was about the bike. Or at least the fun I was having riding it. Runty rear wheel has a fab turn in, tuned dampers doing their thing, sorted geo whispers sweet somethings in your ear “you could go a bit faster, it’ll be fine, I got you” and it has, never got close to crashing and that’s beyond a high water mark for me at a bike park.

Strava tells me we did quite well. Not smashing my previous 10+ visits but a few crowns entirely unexpected with my pre-9am whispered mantra of “new bike, we’re not chasing anything here“. Yeah well that lasted about one run. Not the run chosen by Em who dispatched us down a “natural trail” represented by 50% mud and a similar percentage of terror.**** Still give me a few months and I’m sure I’ll be able to talk about it again.

Two days later we switched internal combustion for external computation. How many meters left to climb? How big is that hill? Is that a pub I can see? A difficult combination of Gym sessions,  riding and – ahem – alcohol made this a tough day where giving myself a talking to was a lonesome task based on how far ahead everyone was. Got it done, but fuck I was properly tired.

Downhills were good. Felt pretty confident on the bike. Well mostly forgot about the bike and that’s a great metric for evidencing good frame choices. After a much needed 12 hours in the pit, a post ride examination revealed binding pedals and rubbing brakes. Fixed both of those and I’m sure those extra 10 watts or so will make a massive difference:)

Then a night ride over the border. Extra pretend finger strapped on and fully aware electricity is considered a dangerous luxury, we ticked off some of the steeper and harder trails. Because we thought they’d be dry. “Thought” is doing some heavy lifting here. Surprised myself by riding 50/50 features rather than reading from the book of extensive excuses.

Fifth ride tomorrow. Trail conditions may have been affected by wind/hail/sleet battering our little storm tossed island these land 48 hours. That’s fine,  I have mudguards and a long suffering washing machine.  And I just want to ride my new bike. However old I get, that never does.

*how can that not be an acronym for “devastatingly accurate“?

**Not the US military. Unless schools count as legitimate targets. Hey vote in a cognitively impaired narcissist with an emperor complex and be not surprised when global fuckwittery follows. Well done America, we’re all very proud of you.

*** There is must be a use case where this could actually be a superpower. I’ve just haven’t found it yet.

**** She was “banned from the trail board” for the rest of the day. Whatever Em wants to ride, we’ll go and do something else 🙂

Sorry, not sorry, for bastardising Norm’s masterpieces. Cut me some slack here. It’s been raining constantly for a month. Never stopping to consider the Dementor level motivation crisis inflicted on those of us to whom outside is their best side. And okay it may not be full on Paired Animal vocalising navigational confusion as to the location of an Ark captain colloquially known as “Noah“, but nevertheless “fucking grim” is a baseline summary forecast for us Slitherati going mostly sideways.

I’ll admit to a slim possibility occasional dry spells may have intersected with my coping strategy of hiding under a blanket while whimpering gently. Previous strategies repurposed the shed roof as my rain jacket of choice as January dove Dante deep into “Fatman to the ShedMobile” turbo sessions. This year I’ve sacked that never-less-than-hurty contraption off with zero kilometres recorded. Some 400 under purgatory distances disguised as base fitness.

Can’t say I’ve missed it. Childish V signs represent my only interaction on passing the dusty static bike made ever more static through my non participation. The treadmill gets an easier ride especially as I’ve borked my knee having a) declared an aspirational target of a sub 50min 10km and b) attempting to run outside to see how well that went.

Not well. Not well at all. Running out of options, going to need to ride MTBs. Can’t even pretend with an MTB adjacent gravel ride having sold that hateful bastard child of a proper bike and something ruinously tarnished by the lycra fetishers. Usefully I have a shed full of bikes long on knobbles and short on tarmac.  Less helpfully only one of these is really suited for a winter campaign in the the FoD cosplaying as Flanders Fields.

It’s a good one tho. Fourth winter and absolutely the most fun you can have outside while avoiding a potentially lethal enema*. The rider tho is somewhat less committed. My good friend Matt firmly believes winter riding is the book of genesis in our riding calendar. See the mud and achieve righteousness though rain, cold and enduring misery. Suffering for the sunshine. Skills for the summer.

I tend to nod politely while wondering if medication may be the answer. Instead I offer a persuasive counter argument laying down the axiom that riding in winter is the embrace-the-grim bullshit we sell ourselves between being clean and being drunk. Shrink us to diodes and we’d gate ourselves in an electrical storm before being pulsed out to any pub rocking a lax policy on customers heavily encumbered by their own soil harvests.

So I’ve been getting out. Mostly in conditions characterised as “Greasy Snot Death“. GSD is a unique combination of soil and wet offering all the traction of moist glass. Sideways is mandatory, lying down often the best way to deal with what goes next. No tyre is going to save you.  it is enormous fun right up until the point it isn’t.  Especially when the forecasted “one dry night” was a misspelling of “Sleet? Fucking Sleet? Again? Is this some kind of test?

Shaking fists at an uncaring sky gets old pretty quickly. Talking of which, Haydn celebrated another successful rotation of the planet with an outing of his never less than amusing fat bike. We headed out in conditions best described as “bloody minging” but showed great fortitude not diverting straight to the pub**

We picked our trails carefully. And they picked us right back up. Fun times on loamy sand mostly impervious to 30 days of rain. We had a bit of a train going with H generating tidal surges with the woomp-woomp-woomp of his trail based paddle steamer way closer to my arse than I was entirely comfortable with.

“I can offer you a soft rubber interface” is not really the kind of thing you want to process when the cerebral loaf is attempting to pick non punt-y lines between sniper roots. Then “If it makes you feel better, think of it as being violated by a 70s space hopper”. I’ll be honest here, this did not make me feel better with the prospect of a 4.8 inch T-Boning probably increased my pace more than any skills course ever could.

Conditions being so perfect, we decided to head over to the next valley where the dirt was mostly hidden by seasonal streams. There were quite a lot of mildly concerning noises coming from behind, mostly in the hysterical giggle range and thankfully not so many scored for arboreal percussion***

A quick body count confirmed all bodies and no hanging limbs, which felt exactly the right time to head to the pub. The rain felt it had offered us enough respite and spattering quickly turned to potential drenching. More importantly my liver was 32 days distanced from a proper beer. I asked Matt if he’d consider closing the distance between rides end and a handy pump at 100 MPH.

First beer was off. That is God Level Trolling. The second one went down quite a lot better. The whole day was one of those where low expectations are the catalyst for fantastic memories. Nobody who doesn’t ride bike gets this. And I love it more exactly because of that.

Forecast shows fourteen more days of rain. Turbo gives me the side eye. Not interested. Outside is where the magic happens. Keep sending him up 🙂

*appreciate that’s a fairly low bar.

**mostly as it was 10am and nothing was open.

***not the case on Wednesday when Simon first smashed his love plums on a new trail probably not best ridden in those conditions, and then his still healing shoulder on the exit of the same trail. Being supportive types of chaps, we blamed his tyre choice 🙂

Remember Feng Shui? If so, you’ll remember how to confidently attune your Chi to furniture arranged in assured positions according to the principles of bagua.  Very popular in the 90s before we had Wellness, Influencers and TikTok taking up the slack for monetised grifts selling maximum benefit for minimum input.

I’m sure there is something in it, but mostly for those emptying the bank accounts for that cohort of spiritually curious true believers. See also those of us allegedly immune to bike marketing 😉

And while I may be all cock-snooping at genres entirely un-researched and lazily stereotyped, I am a firm fan of the tidy shed. Couple of reasons; firstly with the chaos strewn world outside the door, an environment of order inside offers peace to troubled souls. Especially if the beer fridge occupies one of those confident positions.

Secondly it means no bicycles have been injured in the making of this photograph. It is an unchallenged truism in our riding group that any maintenance undertaken by Al, will trigger a second and far more complex repair, undertaken by a registered adult with more than the vaguest grasp of tool use.

Tools on the wall and parts in the drawers are marked safe from the collision site, where the blast radius is ring fenced by a random selection of items, all repurposed for idiot level percussive engineering. A bit like this:

What, I hear you ask, is going on here? Some kind of major frame surgery? Multiple bearing removal perhaps? Disassembly of a complex sequence of shims, axles and bolts previously masquerading as a working suspension linkage? Something unquestionably nasty involving tubeless tyres?

Not even close. This avalanche of tools have been pressed into service for the changing of a single gear cable. Well two actually because when you ride through three and a half grim winters with nary a thought to preventative maintenance, the action of selecting a gear and the actual gear selected are no longer following the traditional rules of cause and effect.

Instead something – probably quantum* – happens which is either the mech stubbornly refusing to shift at all or cascading noisily across the cassette like a mechanical spider high on bad Meth. Sub optimal, so with a long Dry January afternoon at odds with a ever present wet sky, I attended the shed with a strong mug and tea and a determined expression.

I won’t bore you further with the non linear path from investigation to resolution, other than to say that – while mistakes were made – it was a triumph for a man who lacks patience, basic mechanical skills and no access to his normal medication. So proud of my endeavours, I sent Matt a picture of the finished work, after which he gently pointed out all the things that were wrong.

In my defence, I was occasionally distracted. Mostly by the job at hand. Rather than pick up any tools, I felt time was better spent dusting off an old MacBook and inserting a new operating system forcefully on its aging hardware. Now it acts as an 80s juke box projecting tinny audio to a bluetooth speaker. Sure I could already do that with my phone, but we can still all agree this was time well spent.

Running out of other shed based activities, I attended the matter in hand which quickly escalated to filth-encrusted bolts, scabby cables, mud cloaked parts, followed closely by an assorted collection of questionable adjustments I convinced myself would noticeably increase ride quality. **

Anyway job done, cables installed, shifting returned from the quantum realm and bike prepped for the next filthy outing. That filth is why I’m ignoring the extremely worn drive train and associated parts squeaking out requests for a mercy killing. Not happening until Spring is firmly anchored to the ground conditions.

And even flushed with this limited success, the prospect of attending to more difficult jobs reminded me that being lucky is a privilege not a right. Instead I went on a shed tidying spree that was both mostly pointless and extremely satisfying. By the end of which I couldn’t help but ponder “you know, there’s almost room for ANOTHER bike in here”

Hold that thought 🙂 Until then the hardtail with all the gears is to be pitted against the trails with all the rain. Best I can hope for is a score draw.

*After watching Oppenheimer, I have fallen down a Quantum Mechanics YouTube hole. I didn’t expect to emerge any smarter, which tracks closely to the reality of each video somehow rendering me even more stupid 😉

**I think we can all work out how well that went.