Month: December 2007

Is it a bird? Is it a plane?

On By PhotoIn Other stuff, Photography3 Comments
RC Super Cub first flight, originally uploaded by Alex Leigh.

No it’s a flying drill. After the first flight ended shortly after take off – and some twenty feet up a tree – Carol felt that maybe, until a proper adult was present, I should curb my enthusiasm to smash it up again.

But always ready with excuses for why things cannot be my fault, I pointed out that the tail-plane exhibited fifteen degrees of lateral movement, which was in no way controlled by the electronic servos. Although the reason for this sorry state of affairs was a multi-bottled Cava assault on the build from the man with legendary MTB mechanical skills.

Ahem. Er. Moving swiftly on…

After restoring flying status, by exhausting the spares box and bandaging the accident damage with duct tape, we walked over to a field with significantly less in the way of spikey trees. I couldn’t help but be faintly embarrassed that I’d broken the plane, after a fifteen second inaugural flight, not by stuffing it into a tree but by wrestling it out from twenty feet up. Woody bruises and a broken propeller narrated our failure to catch it as it fell.

An yet, the plane is festooned with anti-crash technology. Which is good because – assuming the MTB crossover persists – I have crash technology essentially burned in from birth. However the super clever, sensor driven anti dive algorithm doesn’t actually operate below about a hundred feet.

Now I’ve not flown planes much, but most crashing I’ve ever been involved with tends to happen closer to ground level. And while the manual does trumpet the plane’s forgiving characteristics and apparent effortless flying capabilities, it does go on to strongly recommend your first flight is taken under the wing of someone with an unhealthy obsession of all things miniature fly-ee.

A quick probe into the forums suggest these people are slightly more geeky and even more self obsessed than Mountain Bikers. I honestly thought such a thing was not possible on a planet colonised by humans. Maybe – I’ve occasionally pondered – there is some alien race who are as single minded as a needle and twice as obsessive.

But no, these people are all around you. And they have committees and rules and Gala days. And beards. Lots and lots of beards.

The second flight was great and it went on for ages. The plane was either disappearing over a far horizon or pinging back like a boomerang with a vendetta. Much comedy over-controlling pitched and yawed us back over the field and a landing – that actually made use of the wheels – was affected. Affected by tufty grass and poor skills so the plane had an arse up repose, but amazingly nothing was broken. Except, maybe, my nerve

Flushed with success, of we went again and things went bad almost from the start. As the wind strengthened, my tenuous control weakened and an inevitable nose down furrowing crash followed shortly after. Second prop broke, game over.

But because the company that makes the plane secretly admits that all the anti crash stuff is nothing more than marketing guff, consumerable spares are cheap and readily available. A bit like ISIS bottom brackets except for the cheap part.

Still, this plane is currently costing me about 2 quid a minute to run. Which happily upgrades my Mountain Bikes to a status of “outstanding value per mile”

Build. Try. Crash. Grin. Flash cash to repair. Repeat until broke. Great hobby, sound familiar at all? 🙂

Christmas presents..

On By AlexIn Other stuff, Site StuffLeave a comment

… a number of seemingly insurmountable challenges. First off is how to usefully occupy your time, before it is deemed appropriate to crack open a beer. Secondly, the correct make up and dosage of drugs for children suffering from chronic excitement. And some unspecified lurgey which has Random croaking like a 20-a-day man, and Verbal running a temperature high enough to risk imminent explosion.

I’m sure – come Santa time – a miraculous recovery will sweep through the family and instead we’ll all overdose on chocolate, pop and extreme present opening. I intend to avoid the annual relative cluster-hug by heading first back to work, and then over to a bikey Wales. This is merely displacement activity when faced with the real possibility of breaking Al’s life rule #1. You all remember Rule#1 don’t you?

Assuming I achieve a karmic balance between boredom and alcohol, the many unfinished drafts may bleed into published. Then you too can share the exasperation of your loved ones shouting “Will you get off that bloody computer and get on with vacuuming the cat“. For fifty one weeks of the year, our house is clean, tidyish and welcoming, but imminent in-law arrival triggers an illogical need to turn it into a show home.

This just puts everyone on edge, though you dare not sit down on one without running the risk of extreme dusting. But because this sort of stuff lives in the “never to be understood” slice of the life pie chart, I’ll treat it with respect and a bottle opener.

So until then, Happy Hedgehog from the holidays. Or something like that.

Compensator of all the talents

On By PhotoIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, PhotographyLeave a comment
Chicksands December 07 (3), originally uploaded by Alex Leigh.

At first glance you may struggle to see the similarities between the Brown government and, the man with an unhealthy interest in stuffing the hedgehog with all the trimmings. But if you retune your mental radar to abstract and your belief systems to suspended then – just there – crackling under a random synapse is the faintest of links.

While ol’ grumpy has under his command a widdle of power-crazy, greedy incompetents with a similar intellectual depth as a tea spoon*, I have one of these. So while Gordo may believe he is – borg like – creating the perfect political hive, I am striving to be an average rider supported by the gussets of a fantastic bike.

And while the Government flounces around looking for someone to blame, the SX gets me out of trouble time and again. The plate size rotors are so good at resisting arrest, it would take the entire Metropolitan Police Service to stop them. Probably by emptying the contents of a assault rife into their metallurgy innocent DNA.

And while the bike cannot spin – well not with me on it – it can carve turns at angles of lean way beyond my gyroscopic boundaries. In terms of policy initiatives it proposes a transport plan of hooning off in a downhill direction, while encouraging the voters to hang on for grim death. Niche admittedly, but not without merit.

I can’t remember which sanctimonious wanker sound bited “We are at our best when we are at our boldest” but I have sneaking feeling there may be something in that. Standing astride a stationary bike on the run in to the drop that properly broke me earlier this year, I had the fear. I needed to break the voodoo, I had to get over the irrational terror of crashing again. I wanted to get it done and move on.

But still I stood waiting for the kind of support that doesn’t smile in your face and stab you in the back. And the bike whispered “You may not be much good but I’m pretty bloody fantastic. Just limpit the pedals, death grip the bars, look anywhere but down and hang on. You deal with the edge in your mind, and I’ll deal with the one down there. Come on, let’s roll”

So we rolled and it was all good. And the inter-galactic glow from being bloody terrified but doing it anywhere propelled us to the 4X course. Now I don’t think the stuffed shirts of No.10 have ever ridden a 4X track – I’m sure they tucked into a few 4 course meals – but really, they should. Obviously it’s configured for grommety DNA with Jeans, Hoodies and outrageous skils. But even they grudgingly admire us earth bound misfits – clumsy where they are smooth and scared where they are fearless – because “hey most people I know that are as old as you are already dead”

Driving home, with rock music cranked up to warranty invalidating volume, I couldn’t help pontificating on the not very abstract that riding bikes is fucking ace. Maybe Brown should have take the cabinet on a Chicksands team building exercise. Let’s face it, they couldn’t do much worse, and it’d give the rest of us a well earned laugh.

* This is known as “a Government of all the talents” with no implied irony.

Finger licking cold..

On By PhotoIn Bikes, PhotographyLeave a comment

See that picture? I took this – and the fact that my face had frozen – to mean that a night ride in the Chilterns would be cold, dry, fast and fun.

One out of four isn’t bad. A full report to follow but if the local ranger is poking his nose into what happened to a thousand tons of Chiltern topsoil, you ain’t seen me, right?

God, I’m going to need therapy.

Publish and be…

On By PhotoIn Bikes, Mountain Bike RidingLeave a comment

… a bit irritated.

This article appeared in Singletrackworld magazine. And while I’m all aglow with my words being inked onto real paper, they did rather butcher the photo. Buy the mag – and you should not because I’m in it, but because it is the best MTB mag on the UK market by far – and you’ll see a good size image printed on nice weighty paper. So far, so groovy – but all the contrast has been bled out of it leaving the colours flat and boring.

It’s kind of a lightly coloured monochrome. I’m only irritated because if you’re going to spend time improving the presentation of that article, surely it a higher return could have been made going after the words 😉

Guest Poster – Queen Charlotte Ride

On By PhotoIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, Photography4 Comments
Queen Charlotte Ride (NZ), originally uploaded by Alex Leigh.

Last month my Inbox was full of blue sky and fantastic riding from the other side of the world. The photos were from my friend Doug Todd, and this is his report of the 100k event associated with those images.

I warn you now, there is much descriptive prose of glorious singletrack, super hot weather and miles of dust. If you don’t want to be reminded about exactly what summer is like, look away now. Otherwise over to Doug:

While many club members were enjoying a day out around Taupo, Mark Clansey, myself and 46 buddies from Vorb spent 2 days on fat tyres and plush suspension traversing the Queen Charlotte Walkway in the Marlborough Sounds. Vorb is NZ’s largest on-line cycling community (worth checking out at www.vorb.org.nz) and this ride is an annual event. The QCW is a shared access, mostly single-track trail across DOC and private land, one of the very precious few open to both walkers and Mountain Bikers. By foot it’s a 5-day trek, by bike it’s a tough but highly enjoyable 2-day ride.

Saturday Nov 24th dawned clear and calm and we were soon heading out by water taxi across the glassy waters of the Queen Charlotte Sound, bound for Ship’s Cove. Once off the boat, Ship’s Cove has one exit “ a 240 metre ascent, which is rarely ever ridden successfully as the average gradient is 1:3. Most of us walked the tough bits, and so 20 minutes later we summitted to spectacular views over the Queen Charlotte Sound. After a brief stop we tackled a pretty hairy descent back to sea-level, made more treacherous by DOC’s decision to improve the trail by loading it with gravel¦. Much mayhem ensued with tails of people sliding into the banks or off the edge into the bush. I’d fitted new carbon-ceramic brake pads the day before and they were literally smoking half-way down¦..

After a gentle climb back to 200-odd metres we then had another screaming descent into Furneaux Lodge. Quick recovery stop and then a 90-minute trek along the coastline with fabulous, technical singletrack to contend with. The water taxi collected us from Punga Lodge and we transferred back across Endeavour Bay for a night of tall tales and carousing at Furneaux.

Continue reading “Guest Poster – Queen Charlotte Ride” →

Travelling, Man.

On By AlexIn Other stuff6 Comments

Right first past the post with the pop artist who sang that un-comered title receives… something. No goggling, because I’ll know, and anyway it’s like falsifying your golf scores so you’re only cheating yourself. Although playing Golf* automatically cheats you out of most things anyway, except possibly life membership of the social cripple and comedy jumper societies.

Anyway enough of silly pastimes. And no, not for a minute could Mountain Biking ever be labelled silly. Bikes that cost more than cars, figure hugging lycra barely constraining middle aged spread, riding round in circles, getting muddy, spending the family savings on pointless pimpery and occasionally breaking out into “Dude, I railed that berm, pumped the jump, sent it over the drop and would’ve shredded the switchback except the rebound spiked the rotor arc. Bummer“. Whereas golf, don’t get me started.

New Zealand sits behind nine weeks of winter darkness, the liver damage triggered by in-law angst and New Year resolutions. Now the latter are funny, Icarus like in the face of a blazing sun, born in alcohol, crafted in imagined degrees of separation from the last time and burned in the fiery death of the real world. January brings train journeys long in faces and radically free salad, but short on joy. Roll forward a month and the comforting fug of pasties and Silk Cut once again envelopes the carriage.

Right the point. Don’t get excited, it is hardly worth waiting for but it does have novelty hat content. Because the concept of a package holiday – embedded with schedules, cracked out smiley guides and an atmosphere of Brian “grumpy as fuck” from Wolverhampton – resonates with a happiness frequency similar to the sticks and ball brigade, we’re pitching for a camping experience.

Without the actual camping of course. After a day of the ‘world is the wrong way round’ jetlag, we’ll be taking 14 day possession of this confused truck. Is it a car? A caravan? An integral part of a Blitzkrieg armoured brigade?

Like a stuka. With wheels A truck mates with a caravan.

No this Mercedes is the latest in touristy mobile homage, with an upstairs bedroom to banish the kids, LCD TV, DVD Player and some cooking stuff. And a fridge to keep my beer cold. It’s also the thick end of eighteen feet long which suggests I may need to practice with my car towing the trailer, and Carol’s wagon roped on behind.

So I’ve taken soundings from my friend Martyn who is all things camper van. His sage advice can be distilled into this:

1/ There’s a lot of truck out back. Think about that when turning, reversing and – most importantly – overtaking

2/ Keep an eye on the “dirty water“. The consequences of a high pressure blow back are really too horrible to contemplate.

3/ Procure a Driving Hat. On donning said headgear, a chain reaction of packing outside stuff, expensive electronic goods, and – if time – the children shall be triggered. Anyone not on board in 60 seconds is hitching.

Sounds good to me. And the kids are belted in so far back from the cab, they could easily be in a different country. And while I like the sound (or lack of it) of that, I’m hankering after watching TV while I’m driving.

I mean, really, what could go wrong?

* I refuse to accept that Golf is a verb. My American colleagues insist on twittering on about “I’m off for a weekend golfing”. But – because I ensure that Bad Grammar Hurts – they never make it. Honestly, if we taught English with a copy of the light program and a baseball bat, the world would be a simpler place.

Morning blues

On By AlexIn Bikes, Pretentious nonsense, Road Riding5 Comments

Step carefully into the darkness. Grope for a frosty door guarding the entrance to the hard transport option. Shiver and fumble, with cold fingers, for riding gear. Add an extra layer and wheel out into the pre-dawn light. Clip in and fire shotgun audio – bang, bang – into the still of an icy world.

Crank carefully on white roads. Imagine a painful future through squirming tyres. Feel the freezing sizzle of 23c of slick on nature’s glass. Then, carefully risk upping the power needed to heat freezing extremities. Watch a crescent of fiery orange imperceptibly ascend over the low hills. Marvel as the layers of primary colours – reds and blues – push back the night.

Frozen water from autumnal storms forms winter crop circles. Long shadows are cast from bovinely stupid but contextually perfect cattle. Stop, dismount, abandon the bike to spiders busily icing Mandelbrot patterns. Marvel at this planetary show of fire and ice, until freezing hands and leaving trains drive you on.

Snick a couple of gears. Pity those unknowing stuck behind airbags and fiddling with heater controls. Sweep into the station and catch a little slide on untreated tarmac. Ignore the warmth of a stuffy waiting room. Grin at a hundred identical city coats and useless patent gloves.

Feel the morning blues. And reds – freezing fingers and hot blood mirror the colours of the sky. Stand on the platform now, savour the feelings of being warm and worthy. Remember why you ride a bike. Smile.

And as if by magic…

On By PhotoIn Bikes, Photography3 Comments
Voodoo Wanga, originally uploaded by Alex Leigh.

… the bike frame appeared. Well not actually appeared as Teleporting is still a young science. But an almost unheralded advantage of silly one geared bikes is how quick they are to build. I accept this doesn’t make up for their many disadvantages, but work with me here.

90 minutes from bare metal to beer medal. This included Helicopter tape that didn’t stick and a three bike brake bodge after some otherwise lovely 2nd hand stoppers were missing in action. Or possibly Acton from where they were sent.

Even a brief ride – in the pitch black that is wintry mid afternoon – revealed a frisky persona mated to a Tigger like springiness. Whereas the Love/Hate felt solid and all a bit GRRRRR, the Voodoo is all skippy and fleet of wheel. It’s light too 🙂 Still after the love/hate, fitting casters to the barn and pushing that would probably qualify for such a description.

Obviously, my level of riding skill transcends geometry, frame material and component choice. But now I can be rubbish in a fetching shade of red.

Downsides? Apart from missing 26 gears? The disc hose flays around the top tube as an angry python, for which a superglue solution awaits. And worryingly, the full complement of brackets, flanges and associated paraphernalia for full gear transformation are all present.

Which means conversion to a proper bicycle is possible come trails above the water table. Let’s not go there eh? Not while I’m still clinging onto this sacrificial testicle.

Wang! A…

On By PhotoIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, Photography3 Comments
Wang! A, originally uploaded by Alex Leigh.

.. noise heard as the slapping of the prudence ruler connects with the face of the monetary blind. The complexity of a chain of correlated transactions involving frames owned but not bought, a road train of wheels and sufficient brakes to stop the world, cannot be easily explained.

All I am prepared to say – until the lawyer from the Enron trial comes on shift – is that this financially neutral covenant dovetails perfectly with a bicycle purchasing policy that is far too clever for mere mortals to understand.

Including me. Although my head is still spinning from removing the three ride new* singlespeed freewheel from its threaded prison. Great design in that it affixes itself ever more firmly to the wheel every time your turn the pedal. Making it an absolutely bugger to remove – honestly it’d be quicker to wait the few millennia for the surrounding components to rust away.

I’ve never seen the vice flex before, as I hauled on the wheel in the manner of a hairpin facing bus driver before the advent of power steering. And when the workbench began to twitch, so did I with the world rapidly slipping from focus.

First rule of committed physical tasks – remember to breathe. Second rule, consider the effect of potential energy as – with a satisfying ‘paaatang‘ – the sprocket is freed with a final violent wrench. I found myself turning perfect circles in an increasing ripple of perambulation.

My ‘Dancing with the Wheels’ foxtrot came to a painful end as the radius of my spin intersected with a spikey workstand. Didn’t stop me performing a little encore running around the barn – freewheel held aloft – chanting “got you, you little bastard, who’s the daddy now?”

I am now faced with a choice. Stalk Ernie the Postie on Friday and rush the build knowing I’ll probably need to remove/sell/rehome about half the components or wait and do the job properly. Oh yeah, fridge some beers and set the grinder to stun, we’re going in.

In almost related news, we’re having a frank and open discussion around sizes of things. Carol wants me to have a smaller one that’s easier for her to manoeuvre, while I’m keen on something both longer, wider and with a bit more grunt.

Once I accept that Camper Vans for driving around New Zealand are not scaled up mountain bikes, I’m sure we’ll come round to her way of thinking.

* It’s important to distinguish between “old and worn out” and “new and knackered” because the former adheres to some quality standards whereas the latter satisfies the modern law of cheap, shit, useless; pick 3.