Hidden in the Internet-Tardis that represents my many years of dead-electron drivel is a post which raises mirth and incredulation in equal quantities. Gasts have been flabbered on bike forums patrolled by hardcore keyboard warriors whocurmudgeonlyconfuse cost and value. And yet hidden somewhere in the ‘more bikes don’t make you happy‘ dogma nestles an unhappy truth.

Lots and lots of bikes HAVE made me happy. They didn’t make me any better. They do however represent my view of the mountain biking world and my place within in. That place being a somewhat chaotic meeting of real geography and the rather more impressionist landscape of my mind. For the Chilterns, lots of twitching eyebrow lock-to-lock steering short travel hardtails seems just the ticket. But that ticketgainstayedany entry to the new world of bike parks where riding was more short-and-mental rather than long-and-unthreatening.

And then there were the blind alleys, the drunken eBay purchases, the niche chasing nonsense all seasoned with a heavy whiff of nostalgia.Somewhereout there was the perfect shed of dreams. I just needed to keep on looking. And buying.

But let’s not look for reasons or even excuses to my revolving door approach to bike ownership. Instead it’s time to bring the story up to date where I hoped to show a new found maturity and laser like focus on a bare minimum of bikes which were well ridden, much treasured, carefully maintained and obsessively retained. This didn’t quite happen. Okay it didn’t happen at all.

Right then? Kettle on? Biscuits ready? Then we shall begin. This isn’t quite chronological. I did the best I could with fading grey matter and Flickr EXIF data, but when there have been so many, owned for so few months, it’s always going to be more of a jigsaw than a timeline.

Summer of 2007 saw Roger joining the fray via a half price fire sale at Sideways Cycles. It was a lovely colour. Manly purple with a bit of sparkle. Jealous sorts refused to accept it was really any colour other than a sexuallyambivalentpink, which I think we can all agree is green-eyed blindness. Sadly my ever more desperate denials were merely displacement activity for a frame that was about 2 inches too short in the top tube. The only riding style for my gibbon like frame was that of a praying mantis attacking a purple (okay pink) frame shaped fish. It wasn’t pretty and it didn’t last.

Clearly it was time to move on. Which begs the question of exactly why buying another singlespeed seemed like a good idea. Especially from the same manufacturer who were on some kind of metal saving top-tube reduction vibe. I rode it exactly oncewhich I think we can all agree fits perfectly in the envelope of long term bike ownership. Then we moved to somewhere hilly, rocky and significantly more like proper mountain biking. Good excuse for some more bikes then.

So abandoning singlespeeds for the last time, I emerged like a man from rehab stating that suspension and gears are a victimless crime. And what a statement the Cove Hummer was. Just a brilliant bike ridden anywhere and everywhere for four years. FOUR years, that’s a bloody lifetime in my riding pantheon, The bloody thing should have been awarded some kind of gold clock for long service. I don’t have it anymore having decided the top tube was a bit short (honestly why didn’t I just chop a couple of inches from my arms? Bloodied stumps would represent a rationale fiscal alternative to just setting fire to tenners which is pretty much my bike buying/selling approach).

But this one has many memories that make me smile. I don’t miss it, but I cherish the time we had together. It was a great bike and I should have chucked fiscal prudence out the door and hung it on the wall.

I accept it’s getting on the dull side ofrepetitive blaming my transient bike collection on a single measurement. Especially when I actually test rode this and declared it ‘the one’, And it was for a while being campaigned both right here and all over the country including a fantastic day on the Cwmcarn downhill course, multiple presentations at Scottish and Welsh trail centres and some awesome natural riding in the peaks and the lakes. Then I rode the ST4 and that was pretty much it for the Pace.

Which didn’t in any way persuade me that collecting more bicycles that really didn’t make any sense at all was anything other than the logical progression of a rationale mind. Firstly there was clearly a hole in my riding life where a cyclocross should be.

I absolutely convinced myself I needed a cross bike. I’ve yet to convince myself otherwise, although what wasn’t apparent to me on purchasing this rather lovely older example was the simple fact that the brakes are merely bar mountedaccoutrementsto tick some legal boxes. It was fun off road until any retardation of speed was required, after which I would either a) fall off or b) nut a tree. Reduced to commuting duties for a while, the writing was on the wall once I’d decided – for the standard period of ‘al-time’ (i.e. not very much) I liked road bikes. First tho, we headed off in yet another direction.

Back before a beer fuelled sabbatical of a few years, one of my first mountain bikes was a Kona Kilaueu which somehow I survived some real off road rides in the peak district. But soon it lost its lustre and was consigned deeper and deeper into dusty sheds before being abandoned in a house move around the turn of the century. Always regretted that which gave me an ample excuse to buy a rather fine example off eBay one drunken evening. Being just a frame and fork, time and money were thrown at recreating afacsimileof my long abandoned bike,.

And it rode great. Lovely. Just like the old one. Right up until the point of pointing it off road where, after only a couple of rides, it was clear that I wasn’t close enough to a man to ride fully rigid off endless roots and rocky steps. So I sold it to a man who thought he was and moved on. Lesson learned? What do you think?

So back to that ST4 then, remember the one perfect bike – but before we talk about that, let us bring out our dead and prostrate ourselves apologetically in a desperate attempt to avoid censure. Okay, here goes, road bikes. Two of them. For commuting and, well, commuting. I tried road riding and frankly it was slightly more dirty than the darker arts of animal husbandry. Somehow I managed a few 100k sportive’s with a scary bunch of chest-toast-racked billboard-lycra-wearing aliens but it’s not my world. Not even a little bit.

 

The latter commuted me to my office over nine months and a thousand miles saving me/the planet/randoms on the trains I would likely have killed until I decided that job was about as much fun as a 24 hour testicle slamming in sharpened drawer and moved on. As did the bike. Ihesitateto admit this but I sort of liked it; sure it was heavy and unsophisticated and a bit ordinary but that fitted me pretty damn well on all sorts of levels and we grinned our way through some truly epic commutes full of rain, wind and snow.

I still have the boardman. One day I’ll ride it again. I expect I’ll be about 84.

Right back to the good stuff. We’re not done yet, but we’re making damn good progress. I finally found a bike I really loved which was heavy, flawed, flexy but otherwise perfect. Rode it, rode it, rode it and finally bonded with something that suited my riding and strange dimensions. Lavished love and cash making it perfect and then the ungrateful fucker exploded into un-fixable pieces after aPyreneestrip.

Orange were great and sent me a brand new one that wassignificantlymodified, considerably less flexy and somehow less fun.

 

This one didn’t break at all and rolled 2000 kilometeres under my ownership before being moved on. By this time I’d got a pretty good handle on what I wanted to ride and a plan of sorts was formed. Not before this happened tho.

On selling the Cove, I decided a long travel carbon hardtail was missing from my life. The gap was filled by this on-one Carbon 456 which was essentially blameless if a little crude. Had lots of fun riding it which was far better than having to look at it.

About the same time, it became clear i’d failed to fully mine that niche that was cyclocross. At no time did I consider myself close to adequate enough to complete – instead I felt it would be an ideal companion to speed into the local woods and explore the myriad of tracks discovered through years of dog walking. Assuming I could buy one with some real brakes.

And in a spooky realisation of some random thought process, that’s exactly what’s happened. I absolutely love riding this bike and it keep me more than honest in rooty singletrack 10 minutes ride from our house. I’ve changed exactly nothing in over a year making this something rather unique in the shed of dreams. A bike that’s ridden and not modified? It’ll never catch on. Because…

Since that photo was taken in December 2012 (Mount Tide in Tenerife if you’re interested), it’s had a new fork, mech, tyres and bars. An astonishing bike that takes me so far out of my comfort zone I’ll near to get a taxi back. Fast – oh so very fast – composed, carve-y and on at me all the time to be a whole lot better rider. I love it like addicts love crack-cocaine. It’s probably going to hurt me quite badly but what a way to go.

And being a fanboi, I had to have another Cotic.

Having dismissed 29ers as a fad that not even a niche-chaser like me would ever be interested in, my position softened a little bit after riding one. The Solaris is fast and fun. Belying its little 100mm fork, stuff just gets rolled over at silly speeds until the terrain goes the other way at which point it just eats that up as well.

So that’s it. I think. There may be a few missing but that feels about right. For those not paying attention, I’m left with the Rocket, Solaris, Boardman CX, Boardman Road and long serving DMR Trailstar LT. So of the thirty or so once owned – however transitory – we’re left with just five.

I’d like to say that’s absolutely it. But of course, it absolutely isn’t. The bloody industry is throwing every more diversive platforms at us – long travel 29ers and 650b for a start, while writing off the 26inch wheels size that’s served us so well. An intelligent rider would declare ‘stop the world, I’m getting off’,

Honestly, I wish I was than man. But realistically I’m not. See you in a year with an update 😉

… you a bit better that average. Possibly. There’s not much evidential measurement in mountain biking unless you categorise improvement by shaving seconds off your Strava times, or extrapolating a downward curve when plotted against A&E entries.

Quite a while ago, Tony Doyle rebooted my mountain biking world by breaking down riding into a small number ofcongruent techniques, which was as much about stopping what was wrong asconsistentlyattempting what was right.

Tony’s continued success is atestamentto – generally – older riders accepting that no amount of travel and technology will ever cover for an approach that is little more than ‘hang on and hope‘. And that’s great, more people riding, for longer, on harder terrain without hurting themselves.

But this hides a dirty little secret. Away from the bubble of a skills day, those bad habits creep back in. We all know that to be fast you first have to be smooth, to carve corners your body positon and weighting are everything, to ‘attack‘* steep, technical sections needs speed management and clear focus. Right up until your best mate starts to ride away from you, and – BANG – Mr Cahoonies elbows you out of the driving seat and we’re back to wild eyed desperation, naked terror and consequence delusion.

There’s nothing wrong with this of course. Adrenalin spikes and Dopamine hits never fail to raise the silly grin of the recently spared. Having fun does not always mean riding faster. Accepting your limitations is part of growing up. Our riding reality is never close to the minds eye view, so why not kick back, hang on and tweak the nose of terror with a technique that has so far kept you above ground.

The answer I think is because one day you’ll really, really hurt yourself. The difference between learned and instinctive skills matter most when it’s all gone horribly shit-canned, and the next two seconds are the difference between riding home and not riding for a long time. Since buying my Rocket, it’s absolutely clear it puts me into situations that are beyond my ability to get out of with any degree of safety.

Most of these are likely to be in the Alps. Where we’ll be in eight weeks throwing ourselves down mountains day after day, with ego, testosterone and big bikes for company. My riding is a mash up of half remembered techniques, sloppy copies of internet videos and burned ininadequacies when things get tough. Strava – we will be back to this very soon on the hedgehog once I’ve finally decided if I hate it or like it – tells me I’m fast compared to my peers. But that’s mostly the bike which is very capable. I’m not even sure I’ll ever get tocapable, but I’d quite like toachieveadequately brisk and relatively safe.

Which is where Ed @ Great-Rock comes in. A Calderdale based skills coach who impresses with his easy manner, outstanding riding ability and legendary beard. It’s worth the price alone for a front row seat to view robustious facial hair last seen during the Victorian era. Behind it is an intelligent bloke with the knack of making hard things seem easy.

First up this is a very different approach to Tony. Not better, not worse, just different. Ed’s training ground is the steep sided valleys above Hebden Bridge, full of West Yorkshire’s finest rocks and roots. He sized us up very quickly, me – too far back on the bike**, Matt – too ‘closed in’, H – not loose. By then we’d ridden two or three great trails in the manner of those ‘travelling far too quickly for their own ability‘

This is where practice comes in. Ed doesn’t reconstruct your riding, instead he focusses you on a few moves to make it somewhat more fit for purpose. Firstly a more open body position combined with better management of speed before letting it all hang out on technical sections. This act of faith to abandon the binders means taking more direct lines and committing 100{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} to the terrain. There’s some soundbites around ‘chin up, elbows out‘ but it’s more subtle than that.

It’s also not easy. Trying to unlearn everything that’s so far made you a bitsuccessfulis frustrating and a bit scary, but the reward is when it feels right, it is right so even if – when – you screw up again, at least there’s something to go back to. The same with drops and lips. Ed has us attempting to bunnyhop – not as a car park stunt – but because it’s a brilliant way to launch over trail obstacles without losing speed. Years ago this was one skill I actually had, back in the days of flat pedals and short chain-stayed hardtails. Today – not so much.

A fast top to bottom run putting it all together was great right up until the point that crashing somewhat interrupted my flow. At attempt to clear an entire root section with a committed un-weightingmove was scuppered by a distinctlyuncommitteddab of front brake. The same error had me over again a little later while attempting the kind of steep, loose off-camber corner we’ll see a thousand of in the Alps.

My increasing frustration at being a bit shit was mitigated by Ed’s calm explanation of what was going wrong and how to put it right. Which I finally did on another steep switchback, but this time with a proper line fixed by looking a long way down the trail, a flick of the hips to drive the bike round and a committed body positionthat had my head somewhat nearer the stem than the rear axle.

There’s lot more here mostly around being less of amannequinand more of a man on the bike. The realisation of all this were a few more fantastic trails at the end of the day where my riding yo-yo’d between really quite good and really quite tired. Sufficient energy barely remained to throw ourselves off a concrete slab demonstrating new found confidence and technique. Even if in my case it came after a few attempts where Ed’s kindly instructions couldn’t quite eclipse the sound of a 160mm travel fullsuspensionbike being rocked against its stops, as Herefordshire’s answer to the Kango drill honed his skills.

Sitting in the pub afterwards with a well earned recovery pint, it was clear that there’s a pragmatic way of going fast and having more fun while all the time reducing the fear factor of that speed.

In six hours you’ll learn why that is. And what to do. And a bit of how that works on every trail you ride. But you won’t leaveproficient in those skills – certainly not if you’re starting with me. You will leave with a head full of ideas and a very sore set of muscles unused to being included in the great sport that is mountain biking.

Ed’s a great conduit for this. He’s a very approachable fella with a quiet passion for doing things right. It was a six AM start and an eight PM finish to squeeze in this skills day, but it was time perfectly invested. We’ll be back to ride those trails, and to borrow Ed for another day so he can teach us ‘olds‘ some the dark arts of proper jumping. Until then, I’m digging out the old jump bike and practising.

Because average is the new fast.

Pics here and here for those wanting to see more. Better still, speak to Ed and get yourself booked on a course. For the cost of a couple of tyres, you get to see a whole new world of awesome 😉

* I find that word a bit insincere when considering my riding. Honestly would replace it with ‘mildly menacing’ or ‘desperately trying’

** Removing my head from a perceived place of terror, i.e. the trail ahead.

 

A glacial epoch back or so, I expounded my new found theory of cyclonomics, at which point – work being pretty much done – I smugly awaited multiple nominations for economics awards, Nobel prizes and global lecture tour invites to wow the world with this unheralded insight into why riding bikes was both fantastic and fiscally stimulating.

As even the most delusional – even those barely tethered to reality – would quickly ascertain, any letterbox widening on my part was somewhat premature. For me it’s been a one man credit card crusade to prove a theory that has so far delivered not much more than ‘bloody hell that’s a shit load of stuff I appear to own now‘.

Take the Goshawk 50 for example* where any treasonable thought of Gym membership was usurped by freezing my cods off on a weekly basis to ensure a result somewhere at the respectable side of mediocrity Saved myself thirty quid a month for at least two months before spending the balance and quite a bit more to actually participate in the event.

£20 to enter of which a chunk is donated to charity feels like a fair swap. That lot ^^^^ up there less so. Best described as analogous to a hated visit to the dentist. After pondering it for a while, you sort of feel you should, but you rather wish you weren’t. And then you get to pay a huge chunk of money for the privilege of having a shit time. I’ve always assumed this is how posh status-concious people feel about the private school system.

So what we have here are purchases that represent nothing but survival. Some items shall be eaten, some will be drunk, some shall protect important squashy bits from collision trauma, and the remainder may partially protect ones derrière from a Welsh enema.

Let’s start there; on leaving the Chilterns and their 10 month mud cycle, I swore that never again would any proper money purchase another mudguard. Gopping horrible aesthetically reprehensible objects best left to those with map boards and a wardrobe full of Ron Hill. Really, just BTFU,**, splash out on some splash resistant shorts and embrace the dirty protest served from your back tyre. Then I considered the enduring misery of a 50k pebble dashed arse, and a quick about face suggested twenty quid was an excellent investment. Sadly that budget wouldn’t stretch to my first choice, which was obviously a Navy Frigate.

This Welsh forest is trumpeted by the organiser as “all-weather.” I assume because that’s what it receives on a daily basis with a very clear emphasis on rain. Dispatching even David Attenborough to this latitude, he’d be bloody lucky to find any plant or creature which needed even a glimmer of sunlight to survive. And, as anyone whose ridden a bike off road in any kind of wetness, we can all agree on the almost limitless traction provided by wet roots. Right up until the point where we find ourselves somewhat embarrassed half way up a tree.

What else; well you the more keenly athletic of you may have spotted a collection of expensive placebo cynically marketed to our roadie brethren. My consistent if not always successful response to this nonsense around fuelling and hydration was to simply drink beer with bits in it. But always looking for a cheeky edge, I had my time trialling mate write me a plan on exactly how to prepare, what to eat, when to scoff it and how much to stuff in.

Absolutely nothing in there about a nice sit down mid ride with a cheese butty washed down with a cold lager. Worse still was his advice which suggested I’d need to find space in my bulging pack to bury my ego. Apparently any attempt to keep up with the fast/quite fast/a bit slow/one legged people on pogo sticks would torpedo my shark like assault through the pack some 10k from home.

Just the two little problems with that approach; 10k from home the real Al will be tucked up in the pub with a recovery pint and a bag of nuts, having decided that 25k of that winter madness constituted more than enough. And secondly the idea you’ve even sufficient energy to get in the way of any proper athletes when only single metric digits are between you and sweet, sweet non bikery lying down computes not at all.

Still the way he tells it, it sounds a bit like cheating so on that premise alone I’m up for it. And it validates going very slowly indeed, which opens up the possibility of taking a DFL position before hiding behind a tree then sauntering back to the start and turning the car heater on.

The rest of that package is mostly for the Alps trip some two weeks distant where body armour, van shuttles, big bikes and almost no pedalling at all shall take the place of pretending you can still vaguely hack it amongst your cross country peers. Ying, Yang and lying face down in the mud with bark abrasions are what make up this mountain bikers’ life. Could be worse, could be facing the same but worth next month with the HONC.

Oh. Shit.

* I’d very much like to take it and place it somewhere in the seasonal cycle where hypothermia is less than a 90{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} possibility.

** Bottom The Fuck Up.

Or wagon wheels as this new niche/the emerging standard/the ONLY wheel size you need – delete as per your standing in the internet-blowhard wheelsize jihad. All of my bikes seem to have a difficult birth, and – unsurprisingly as Random’Al was left in charge of collating all the bits – this one was no different.

However some things were exactly the same. Firstly my protestations that a busy man has many better things to do than build bicycles, even if that means occasionally riding them. Result being a desperate husbanding of likely looking parts being carefully thrown into a box before being presented to a wary bike mechanic with a breezy ‘all there Nic, everything you need, absolutely no issues whatsoever, really can’t see a problem. Pick up at lunchtime?’

Things didn’t go smoothly from there. Although almost fifteen minutes passed before a bemused Nic telebonged me with a polite enquiry on how exactly he was to transfer the donor headset from a bike of entirely different dimensions. The ugly stick, in a last act of defiance, disgorged bearings and the like with it being built to a set of measurements clearly translated from English to Chinese by a man with only a vague understanding of both languages, and a specialism in camel selling.

I left Nic to serially problem solve the many other issues my desperately time poor assemblage of possibly useful bits and pieces had left him with, to motor across the county with strict instructions to return only with a part best thought of as unobtanium. Amazingly, skills honed on long winter nights* presented me impatiently at a counter manned by a nice man called Dave who opened about a thousand boxes before an Alan Partridge ‘AH HAH‘ signalled success.

Back in the car, and back to Ross for a second time having taken in the lovely environs of Hereford’s world famous Saturday Traffic Disaster, I presented Nic with my find in the manner of Darwin – recently de-beagled – stunning the scientific world with a slightly bonkers theory on why Church Building may not be a wise investment. He took this opportunity to regale me with certain ‘issues‘ my motley part collection had caused during what should be a simple build.

At times like this, I find it best to nod apologetically and wander off to Lunch before to avoid being roped in to any actual work. Returning an hour later, a bike shaped object was more than taking shape even if my choice of BFFT** demanded a micrometer to measure the gap between front mech and rubber nobble. Still with trail conditions being essentially dusty right now, what can possibly go wrong? Failing that, I’m firing up the dremmel and customising Shimano’s finest.

On my THIRD trip to the bike shop, I reflected on an approach which selected parts by colour and shinyness probably needed some work. The bits I’d left out I now shamefully handed over, and the bits that were wrong we silently replaced. But at the end of this painful process – well for Nic, I’d basically spent the day with Jess making jokes and eating cake – the result is something really quite pleasing. Even if it appears to be missing 50mm of fork travel that’s clearly been lost in the wheels.

A quick spin down the road confirms it has the ride characteristics of ‘a bike‘. There’s definitely something odd going on with gyroscopic effect which makes me wonder if I should have fitted a speaking tube ‘ENGINE ROOM, ALL AHEAD FLANK‘ – that kind of thing. But what’s done is done, even with the rider that the remains of the ugly stick nestle malevolently in the rafters above my head in case the clothes of this new emperor are entirely fictitious.

Tomorrow I’ll go ride it. It’ll be an experience similar to lying face down in a muddy puddle for four hours, so empirical data to support the big wheeled apologists is likely to be lacking. On the upside, it’ll be riding a bike in the sunshine with my friends, with beer to finish. That’s significantly more important than what you are riding.

Lance was right about something. It’s not about the bike. Of course it isn’t. It’s about the beer. Bloke was clearly an idiot 😉

* that’s surfing the Internet for bike bits. In case there was any doubt.

** Big Fat Fuggin Tyre. I’d rather be slower uphill than upside down in a tree. Grip over Weight every time. Probably a life statement right there!