There have been quite a few changes but to be fair the last update was two years ago. Even so, quite a lot of changes. There’s nothing really to add other than every man deserves a hobby. And – in my case – a mental illness.
Author: Alex
Lost and Found
Blokes like lists. We do, it’s just the way we’re wired. Which is exactly why our level of engagement on receipt of ‘the 10 best ways to make something explode‘ is far higher than on being asked ‘so what do you think of this sofa in that shade of lilac?*“. But ask us for a sequence of famous soft furnishes in action movies and we’re your man. As long as we’re allowed to start at one and count no further than the combined sum of our digits.
Primacy in my ‘the worse time to ride a new bike‘ was firmly inked in under ‘the day before a family holiday‘ as explained in a previous post. Which partially** explains a first-up riding performance imbued with sufficient mincing to properly offend a vegetarian. But this entry at the top of the chart was summarily ejected by a ride prefixed by ten days of solid eating and one night of three hours sleep. Conditions didn’t help either. Unless helping has it’s own list where 1: dark 2: wet 3: frictionless and 4:muddy as fuck are universally accepted as ‘things most likely to help a very tired man on an unfamiliar bike‘
They didn’t. Not this one anyway. Riding mountain bikes when every glistening polished root promises violence and every corner is merely a pointer to a nice tree to crash into requires many things. Tell you what let’s lets get our list making skills out; 1: familiarity of the trail, 2: familiarity of the bike 3: familiarity of the tyres 4: confidence that 3: and 2: will overcome the obstacles of 1:, 5: balls of if not steel then some kind of ferrous metal.
I knew the trails but noting else. Couldn’t work out what the hell was going on under the tyres or on the pedals. Everything felt new and awkward. Nothing worked, gentle pushes on the bar or full blooded attempt to take the trail by the tail. I knew exactly where we were but I was lost. No reference points, no feel for the trail, no tactical solutions. No idea at all. It wasn’t a happy ride other than the bit where it finished without a bark splattered Al.
This wasn’t the bike I demo’d. It wasn’t anything fun at all. Clearly the problem couldn’t be with me, so a list of possible fixes filled my head as two days later the bike was unloaded on a blissfully quiet FoD***. First climb, horrid. Bouncy, thrutchy, too much rebound, it was the lilac sofa on wheels. Just nasty. Pack off, shock pump out, few quick inflations justified by the worryingly svelte-not of Al. Better, but still not right. The bike felt heavy and dead, and it just didn’t want to go.
First descent. Nearly planted myself into a tree. I realise there is a common theme here. Lists again; most likely place to have an accident 1: tree 2: tree 3: tree 4:tree …. 10:rock 11: rock in front of a tree, etc. Even in the Malverns where there aren’t many trees, I’ve still hit most of them. It’s a skill. So even less svelte than was my post holiday delusion. Fuck it, get pumping like a porn star and wind out the unwanted bronco. Rode the section again, lots better but still not right. Repeat until the magic settings coalesced into some proper carving turns, a pop off a jump and a big grin.
Close enough. Rode the rest of the trail without a pause. Took it easy on the last descent because mud and new bikes are not speedy bedfellows. Took 15 seconds off my best time. It’s absolutely all about the bike. Even factoring in purchase anxiety, this is a truly phenomenal bit of kit. A frankly ridiculous six inches of travel but not a wallowy uphill mess. Endless traction but still plush climbing over rocks. Mad poppy fun off jumps but still running through the travel. Stiff as a teenage boy with his first copy of the Internet, but low slung and playful in the bends.
I shall need to up my game by some distance to get anywhere near what this bike can do. Designer Cy suggest the simple technique of death-gripping the bars and focussing on some distant dot on the horizon. I’ve been trying this lately with some mildly astounding results. Including keeping up with my Orange-5 shod riding pal who previously gapped me on every descent. But I’m absolutely aware that the bike can only take me so far, and I’m probably not brave enough to meet it even half way.
Still I’m going to have a lot of fun trying. I wasn’t sure what I lost by selling the ST4. And I’m not sure exactly what I’ve found with the Rocket. It’s not a sit down skills compensator. It doesn’t take a trail and sanitise the difficulty so sir can get on with admiring the view. It demands you come to the party and leave your list of excuses at home.
There very little here not to like.
* Illustrative point here. Northern carriers of the Y chromosome have no concept of lilac. The more cultured may believe it is some form of plant. It is never a colour.
** But not totally. For that look in the book of excuses marked ‘lack of bravery’.
*** This was when I could still ride on a weekday. Before a job turned up and demanded my attention. It’s playing bloody hell with my Strava performance.
Blatant showing off
There are times when there is absolutely no justification for shouting stuff from the rooftops at all. Other than what my mum would describedisdainfullyas ‘making a scene‘. This is my scene and I’ve put a bike in the middle of it.
This is not merely the latest pointless addition in Al’s rambling pantheon of bike shaped objects. Nor is it some finely honed strategy explaining exactly why the five lovely BSO’s I already own fail to meet a requirement that has suddenly become extremely important. It certainly isn’t an impulse purchase, nor will it immediately punt a previously* loved shed based item into the shivering eBay wasteland.
No this is Al buying Al a present. After every major project, there’s at least one person in the Leigh household who strongly believes – to the point of much whinging – that he is due a reward. Depending on exactly how bat-shit crazy the previous months have been, this may besomethingfinanciallytrivial or an item potentially leading to the Children eating their own shoes.
If you’ve read anything I’ve written in the last six months, or had the misfortune to be the Organic B end of my spittle-fleckedvitriol, you’ll be unsurprised to hear we’re deep into the Clark’s Book of School ShoeRecipes.
If there is ANYONE in the world who can be as focussed and profligate as me in terms of splashing an almighty chunk of cash in less than seven days, please let them step forward so I can embrace them like a brother and assuage some of my guilt. Last weekend I was high up on a Derbyshire hill – in the pissing rain of course – wondering if I could really justify buying a new bike. Specifically this one which had me grinning like a loon and scrubbing crappy work stuff like a massive mental eraser.
I couldn’t. I was fairly directly honest with Carol about this. I didn’t create some convoluted list of dependencies that’d somehow make this cost neutral. I didn’t pretend my current flock of bikes was somehow unworthy of my God-like riding skills. At no point did I mention the word progression although ‘Alps‘ may have crept in during an arm waving view of my riding future.
No. I didn’t do any of that. My position was simply that I’d worked my bollocks off for seven months and come very close to rocking-under-the-desk stress bunnyism, and the only way I could make sense of that was to have something that said ‘you know what, you’ve earned that’**
Carol was as ever understanding if a little taken aback when the full cost was finally blurted out. You could buy a car for that, in fact we did. Or a Holiday, we did that as well. Not satisfied with a brand new frame, I wanted to adorn it with as much blinginess as a large warehouse in East Lancs could post by Friday. Somehoweverythingarrived on time including a massive hangover for the man dragged into the pub on his last day***
The sensible thing was to dispatch all parts to Nic @ Revolutions with a breezy ‘it might be a little more complicated that I explained’ before stumbling off for a second greasy breakfast. A quick call mid afternoon was met with a flowing invective I shallsummarisethus “fucking nightmare, those wheels, jeez what were you thinking, it’s a right bastard of a problem child‘. I hung up happy in the knowledge that someone other than me was dealing with this difficult birth.
Really if it were me, it’d have been hammers and tears of frustration before lunchtime. There are some mentalists of the screaming variety who love to build bikes. I am not one of them unless assembly is merely a percussion arms race with added powertools. Nic delivered the bike with a couple of throwaway comments including ‘tyres aren’t quite seated, should be fine on the first descent or they’ll roll off the rim. No Point dying wondering eh?”
No point indeed. It’s sat over there <— looking as if it’ll be writing cheques my limited skills will struggle to cash. I’ve added some air to the forks before capping my mechanical knowledge right there.
Tomorrow we go and ride. The day after that we go on holiday. I’ve been given strict instructions to arrive home with my shield or on it, after at least one incident where our vacation plans were slightly disrupted by the designated driver spending three days in hospital. Carol doesn’t need to bring this up, she’s just given me a ‘”we’re going without you” look, if you’re lucky we’ll txt you some pictures’ which seems entirely fair.
If, and it’s a big if, nothing goes wrong in the morning and Turkey doesn’t suddenly becomeuninhabitable, then the holy trinity of completing batshit project, riding my new bike and going on holiday with my family could come to pass. Got to be a better than evens chance.
What’s the worse that can happen?
* let’s be charitable and say ‘last week’ shall we?
** Possibly not all of that.
*** WikiAlex definition of dragged “Hey Fellas, I’m off the to the Pub, Credit Card behind the bar, WHOSE WITH ME?”
More light, less cash.
The hedgehog isn’t known for dispassionate reviews backed up by serious real world testing by proper riders*. Which may explain why this one fails at the first hurdle of actually providing an in-use image of the product in question. There is, as ever, a great excuse for this small oversight – a) I forgot and b) it was dark.
The darkness was kind of key to the review. What with it being a nifty little light shipped to me by MagicShine to illuminate the seven months of the year which have a chunk of night riding involved. The control was my much campaigned Lumicycle XPG-3, which was mothballed while riding deep into the cloaking night of the Malvern Hills with the MJ-872.
First things first; the light unit itself. An impressively small unit, much finned but taking very little bar space. Secured with a simple O-Ring which proved stable under the most extreme pounding of rocky trails. Four settings step illumination up from ‘that’s adequately bright for riding’ to ‘wowser, I appear to be the owner of a night sun’. Simple up and down arrowed buttons on the back of the light unit switch between modes.
The back of the light unit also gives a visual indication of the battery status from a fully charged blue through green, amber and red. The manual isn’t very helpful on what this actually means in terms of potential endarkment, but stick in on any level other than the 1600 lumen max and it’s going to last well past two hours. The max setting is definitely a battery killer ,and aside from a quick blast in the spirit of enquiry, I left it well alone.
The four LEDs provide a very strong white light with a distinguishable spot punching out of a wide flood. Compared directly with the Lumi, the beam pattern seems a little narrower but in real world use, it wasn’t noticeable. Definitely bright enough, good spread of white light and solid on the bars. Hard to find anything to criticise other than my preference is to stick it on one setting and leave it there. Two modes would be fine, low and high.
The battery pack however is not quite such a triumph. For the start it’s a bloody monster festooned with a pointless tiny LED screen showing voltage. Since it’s strapped under the top tube and a visual indication of battery status is already provided on the light unit, it’s somewhere beyond pointless.
Secondly it’s enormous. Three times bigger than my lumi battery and an awkward shape with sharp edges aplenty. It’s secured with a strong velcro strap but I really struggled to find a space on my ST4 so it didn’t could the shock mount. I couldn’t shake the concern that if I stacked, I’d be in really danger of eviscerating a key organ while exiting the bike.
Charging with the supplied cable and plug is an overnight process. It’s nicely packaged, everything worked flawlessly under some nasty wet conditions. The light spread and output was nothing short of excellent, but the battery pack needs some work. Lose the voltage meter, package it in something more nut friendly and reduce the size by 50{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} and it’s a winner.
For the money tho – about a£100 – it’s an excellent buy. I know you can import these directly for less cash, but Magicshine were great to deal with and would look after you if you had any problems.
If I was in the market for a new light and they fixed the battery pack, it’d be hard to justify the uplift of the Lumi. In fact if they do sort out the niggles, I’d probably have one as a spare.
Full details can be found here.
* it’s not known for much really.
Whoosh!
That’s the sound a year makes. That’s my best guess anyway. It might go “PING” or “BOOM”, or “YEEHAW” or even “FUCK ME SLOW DOWN I’’M FEELING A BIT QUEEZY” . At the north end of 70,000 MPH it can make any noise it likes. But I”m going with Whoosh because a entire wobbly planetary rotation, with all that messing about in multiple dimensions, appears to have passed in about the time it takes to down a much needed beer.
A chunk of this chronological discretionary is entirely due to me being on project time* which morphs yours truly into a serial problem solver fixing a million things in a sixteen hour day and spending what’s left wide awake worrying about what I’d missed.
Not too much based on the 700 people failing to understand how fucking close we were to opening the office doors with an apologetic “sorry, we did our best it just didn’t work out. There’s your slate, collect chisels from the stationary cupboard.
I’ve missed many things. Let’s take the summer for a start. Still I hear that you all missed that as well once a perfect March triggered a season full of paired animals and sandbags. I missed my family- arriving home well past the point that the kids had long gone to bed. I missed normal conversations with Carol instead substituting “Fuck what a day; you’ve no bloody idea” before unloading a stream of consciousness without ever wondering aloud how she was.
I missed riding bikes although too much of this was meteorological angst wrapped up in vocational excuses. I missed every “not drinking in the week target” by about 9pm on a Monday night and got so very close to a corporate ˜My bat. My ball. See ya” flounce before guilt and a deluded opinion that sheer force of personality could overcome endless insanity**
I missed all sort of other stuff as well. Fairly focussed on delivery when Jessie started high school. Missed her first day and I’m not getting that back. Missed Aid getting suddenly properly full sized human with mostly formed views of the world. Missed the house acquiring proper bathrooms, furniture and paint. Nearly missed Jess outgrowing her bike, but pulled that one back and threw enough money at it to make both her day and mine.
In summary, I missed far too much. Said no to the wrong people. Not my finest hour.
A year ago I walked away from a well paid job that I found stupidly easy and equally stupefying. Initially with a self inflated sense of my own worth, and a view of the world the way I wanted it to be rather than the way it was. I regret neither my decision not my naivety. 13 years ago, I quit a fantastically financially rewarding position as a young(ish) technical director for a thriving firm on the rather up-your-own-bum grounds I failed to believe in what we were doing.
This was exactly at the time our first child was born. And Carol quit work. So really chucking it in last year was methadone when compared to the full on cold turkey over a decade ago. And if I learned anything it’s that ˜something always turns up’. It’s not a career strategy as such but it’s a valid alternative to believing in some kind of full time employment security delusion.
So in one week I’m going to stop. And for the first time in approximately ever not start straight away. There is always a clamour to chase the next quid, cash the next cheque, stash loot for a rainy day. I think it’s probably raining.
I’ve a book to finish***, breakfasts to have with the family, people to see about places to go, bikes to fettle, ride and adorn with new shiny bits. And yeah, I’m sure there will be a point fairly soon when making some cash to pay the bills will once again be important.
But it’s not important right now. I’m incredibly proud of what a tiny team of “fuck it we won’t be beaten” people and now friends achieved this summer. That’s gone and until I can remember what it was exactly I loved about doing what I do then I’m not going to do it. Because most of it is fired by a spark that’s gone missing.
It’s not just missing. It’s missing the point. And I’m done with that.
* I wrote a weighty polemic on exactly how fucked my life has been the last six months including a rapier like analysis of the failings of the many. But that’s career suicide. So you’ll have to take my word for it.
** Honestly this is the edited version. The cathartic one reads like a Tourettes diary.
*** Let’s be honest here. Start.
Projects
I haven’t written much lately but, to quote from that famous* Stratford Upon Avon postcard, neither has Shakespeare. The difference is that he’s dead and I’ve just wanted to kill people. Harvesting 700 people from three dilapidated buildings and re-homing them in a shiny new one shouldn’t be this hard.
This assertion is based primarily on having it done quite a few times before. With more people. And less time. And considerably more complexity. The difference being this client has a level of dysfunction which upgrades any project to more of a quest.
All of which has resulted in many, many late nights, a few stand up arguments, a few more sitting down with my head in my hands, the very real prospect of me removing myself, bat and ball on the not unreasonable grounds of possible prison time for extreme violence metered out to the unworthy.
As ever my coping strategy combines alcohol is medicinal quantities and multiple trips to the mental refuge of mountain biking. When it finally stopped raining, the trails responded with a late summer bounty of slop-free hardness and occasional dust.
Most of my riding is prefixed by a mad dash from the office navigating the horror of the Hagley road and three separate set of roadworks** chasing a fast setting sun. And I cannot enjoy the hard packed dirt until my poor riding buddies have suffered the collateral damage of my gapless verbal machine gunning synopsis of another shitty day.
Then it’s been good. I’m not sure if it’s confidence ridden in from many rides this last six weeks or some kind of ˜don’t make me go back there‘ death wish, but my edge has been well and truly ragged. I’ve dragged front wheels slides back from certain disaster, survived endless cased jumped and bar-kissed almost every tree in the Forest. Both my bikes have been brilliant, which is obviously why I need a new one.
That project has stalled with a booked demo bumped by another Saturday in the office. Instead Random has gone from one bike she loved to two she’s not quite sure about. This after moving on her much cherished Islabike, which has taken her from a towpath rider to a full on MTB’r in a fast growing 18 months.
She’s too big for it now, visually demonstrated when she threw a leg over her sister’s lovely if languishing Spesh Myka. However Logic being a hostage to delusion in our household, I received instruction that Abi might suddenly regain the riding bug and that Herefordshire might suddenly become flat*** enough for her to enjoy a family ride.
Seizing on this as an opportunity for more bike buying, a quick scan of pre-loved bargains brought forth a bike with a dodgy providence and dubious history. Originally trumpeted as being custom built for the manufacturers wife, we subsequently discovered that not only was this a massive porkie, but also the frame wasn’t even the same model as advertised.
Not a problem for me as it’s clearly a thing of hand crafted beauty. Possibly a problem for weight-weenie Random who has her sister’s hatred of hills pointing up. My response was “ inevitably “ to throw money at the problem; lightening the frame by hanging boutique bits on the outside and replacing the weighty coil shock with an air equivalent in the middle.
And adding pink of course. Lots of pink to a frame probably designed for being hucked off massive drops. It’s essentially an elephant in drag, but looks bloody fabulous and shall be pedalled into the local woods on Saturday assuming Mr Fuck Up doesn’t visit the project meaning another weekend lost to the insanity of others.
I did manage to find time to take a few photos in between bouts of beating my head against a shiny new desk. Here are a few examples:
Martin on the Worcester Beacon at Sunset
Nig in the Quantocks
Andy in the Malverns
Right I’m going back in. Four more weeks and we’re done. Or maybe earlier I’ve burned the building down to show my displeasure of all things stupid.
* Not really
** I can only assume there is some kind of ˜big data’ thing going on which pinpoints my regular routes and inserts 5 miles of roadworks in the middle of it.. No way it can be coincidental.
*** It appears to be my fault that we live in such a hilly county.
Old, but not bold
An attempt to describe my age as the composite of a fit 32 year old man with the mind of a 13 year old failed to illicit the hoped for response. It was strongly mooted that only if I paid random passers by to shout ‘hey Al you’re looking damn good for 30‘ and really upped my maturity game could this age denialfantasycome to pass.
Even then, it would be a stretch. But that’s the problem with growing older without growing up. Most of us in our middle years still feel about sixteen inside unti we try something physically difficult. Like bending down. My favourite definition of middle age is ‘you cannot stand up without making a noise‘, which in my case is the grunt of effort accompanied by a creaking knee, clicking ankle and graunching shoulder.
Again the hoped for wisdom, gravitas, having the slightest clue of how I should run my life failed to be mentally unwrapped on my birthday, so – listening to that inner teenager – I went to play outside instead. Because, while the weather had continued to moistly disappoint, the summer is moving on and with it the evening light and elevated temperatures. If I don’t shift my ravaged carcass now, what chance come winter?
Another joy of advancing years is as what little remaining hair makes a run for the shower plug, karmic balance insists on adding the tyre of fadingmetabolisms around the middle. To be fair even the most active fifteen year old with a hummingbird genome would struggle to work off my Scone, Cheese and Wine diet greedily imbued on holiday.
A shifty glance in the mirror suggested bigger trousers were on the horizon unless I fancied grooving the middle aged sloping chest/straining button look so seemingly cherished by many my age. I’m sure that as I turned away in disgust, the fat bit over the belt hung about for another second before centrifugal force wrenched it back. Bit of a relief the ensuing Newtonic reaction didn’t throw me down the stairs.
So shorts snugly fitted, a bike selected from the ‘shed of dreams‘ and a tootle out to the Malverns where fat bodies/tired legs are found out in the turn of a pedal. A quick up and down suggested the few rides shoehorned in this last ten days had at leastgainstayed the rasping breath/burning legs of a non riding man. Still always room for improvement of bike if not rider and, as a birthday present, Martin lent me his very capable Orange 5 for a quick blast.
Not so quick uphill. It’s a bit of a pig frankly. But shod with what I assume are recycled tractor tyres and with a frame welded by a blind man working deep in the remains of the Ark Royal, it’s never going to be a sprinter.Aestheticallyit’s somewhere between industrial chic and mind-bleachingly ugly so the best place to view it from is definitely on top.
I wasn’t feeling much love even from that position tho, with Martin sprinting away on my ST4 declaring it ‘fast, fun and poppy’ which is everything the 5 isn’t. Having finally winched myself to the top of a rocky descent, the time had come to remove ever withering brain, pick an object on the far horizon and see what a super stiff frame suspended on six inches of clever shock trickery could do.
It could scare me that’s for sure. Only at warp speed does this bike make sense. Any less and there’s nothing apparently happening as fat baby-head rocks and wheel sized drops are dispatched with nothing more than a feeling of sinking gently into a sofa. I knew the ST4 was a little bit flexy, but this thing is stiff beyond belief. The only feeling of speed – other than landscape being thrust at overrun optical nerves – is the noise. It’s very much like piloting an old steel filing cabinet being thrown down a metal fire escape.
As I watched Martin find the limits of my ST4, it would have been easy to go quicker. But foolish. In a moment of clarity, I realised the reason the ST4 is such a great bike for me is exactly because it does have limits that provide a perfect excuse not to go any faster. The 5 is a brilliant – if simple – piece of honed engineering, but it only makes sense if you are the type of rider who craves speed over everything else.
I’m happy to say that rider isn’t me anymore. Probably never was. Swapping bikes back, I watched Martin create an effortless gap between us on the next descent clearly defining him as exactly that type of speed freak. Fast I like, insanely fast I’ll leave to everyone else including my younger self. But that’s not going to stop me getting on a bike at every opportunity and tweaking the nose of terror. Before running away.
Ten years ago when I fetched my old rigid mountain bike out of the shed and set out , helmetless, clueless and without a thought where this may lead, the only thing of certainty was this pastime couldn’t extend beyond 45 years old. I couldn’t have been more wrong. And on that basis, it’s probably time to go and play outside again.
Don’t make me cross
So raged Ben ‘the hulk’ Ainsleyafter some charmless rogue accused him of cheating. Channeling that same Olympic spirit, I too became cross after a brave – if methodologically idiotic – decision to leave my rain jacket at home while taking my bike for a tour of rain-shielding trees in the North Devon countryside.
After a road ride on Saturday,characterisedby shivering, the onset of hyperthermia and a real risk of drowning, I was satisfied if not sated so needing to pedal again before venturing somewhere indoors and expensive with the family. Setting out again with optimism replacing proper waterproofs, the holy trinity of rain, cold and the great British Summercoalescedoverhead in a storm called ‘Al’s Stupidity’.
I made a desperate diversion for some likely looking trees which goes some way to explaining my navigational confusion some two kilometres into the ride. The rest is – of course – entirely due to my internal compass always pointing to ‘lost‘. No matter, a damp map and electronically-bristling GPS confirmed I was still in Devon and heading towards the river.
A river being violently fed by the steep rocky and rooty trail I found myself staring down in the manner of acondemnedman facing the scaffold. No matter, the Internet insists that you can ride a Cross Bike down anything easily dispatched by its MTB cousin. This may be true if a) the ‘net wasn’t populated my blowhards andcharlatansand b) the rider in question had a modicum of bike handling skills and courage.
I set off with some determination and some more fear, quickly becoming at one with the terror as the bike bucked over jagged rocks and slick roots. Deciding braking would mean certain death, I hung on to the drops and idly wondered if the local dog walkers were skilled in first aid. Such displacement tactics had success written large in jingoistic gold until a patch of wet grass triggered first blind panic, and then a more focussed emergency dismount into the waiting verge.
No real damage done. Only lightly bleeding, I pushed on towards my destination some 3k away. This proved to be aprecedentverb as the footpath *ahem sorry holiday bridleway *deterioratedinto a clay-based slop that had me mentally revising quicksand-releasetechniques. Luckily a local monsoon had me back under a tree, GPS in one hand, OS map in the other desperately wondering if any of the symbols represented easy to access local hostelaries.
Eventually the rain slowed long enough for a navigational triumph ending in a road climb steep enough to encourage nasty little thoughts that in fact I was climbing the side of a house. Eventually the house ended back in the same village from which I’d departed some 4k / most of an hour earlier. Much as ‘going home and cracking open a cheese and tea medal ceremony‘ seemed the best option, instead I hit the tarmac and headed off on a road that was wider than the bike and didn’t plunge up and down vertical valleys every 15 or so seconds.
And what a road it was. Flat, fast and – for the first time this week – sunlit. Even on 50 PSI knobbly tyres it felt fantastic with that lovely feeling of endless power as you tear up the horizon. This later proved to be the result of a significant tailwind. On and on we went, my genre confused bicycle and I, on the drops, pushing a big gear and engaging in what we middle aged cyclists like to think of as ‘a light shovelling‘, It’s like ‘burying yourself‘ in Olympic parlance only for people with beer guts and some sense of realism.
That hurt a bit, so I abandoned the lovely smooth road some 10k later in favour of the winch and plummet of rain soaked broken tarmac lost under misty tree cover. It was therefore a while later that I presented myself to the bar at the ‘Stag Inn‘ some five kilometres from where we are staying. Still bleeding from the odd abrasion, extremely muddy and clearly in need of a pint.
The barman wandered outside a little later and looked first at me and then at my bike in some confusion. “How did you get so muddy?” / “I’ve been riding off-road in the woods” “How did you get here then?” / “On the road obviously”. “So is it a road bike then? Or a mountain bike?” he asked pointing at the dripping, gloopy mess of my faithful aluminium pal.
Neither, I replied. It’s called a cross bike. But it makes me very, very happy.
“You bought me a car!”
Gather round, there’s a bit of a story here. It started nearly eighteen years ago, before Carol and I had even met*, and ended with an incredulous look on her face that I will treasure to my dying day.
Carol is many things; exceptionally tolerant of my generally selfish behaviour, a proper parent to our two rather lovely daughters, a calm head in crisis’ generally of my making and the glue that holds our little family together. After fifteen years of marriage, she knows me better than anyone so stoically deals with a level of spousal impulsiveness than would have left most males by the age of, say, 11.
All this and attempting to steer the good ship fiscal probity through the rocky rapids of Al’s toy obsession surely merits some reward, other than often muddy andoccasionallybloody husband pitching up late at night to break the washing machine. While many of these toys have passed through my hands, the only materialpossessionCarol ever came back too was this tiny two seater sat in at some obscure car show back in 1995.
This, in a rare moment of introspection, was the line of thinking which arced from way back then to right now and sparked an idea perched on the exciting ridge separating brilliance from total stupidity. Logically complex and financially tricky, this secret project could still be absolutely fantastic if I could pull it off. But, based on my history of over-promising/under delivering, it was more likely to the Wikipedia citation for a cluster-fuck.
So instead of careering off alone with my somewhat limited knowledge of how cars actually work and what stops them working, I roped in a number of long-suffering friends who’ve all been burned by a ‘project Al‘ sometime in the past. Yet they still came to the party, bringing with them short term cash loans**, proper mechanical knowledge, ownership of a large warehouse and contacts for serious tradespeople skilled in the arts of stuff that seventeen year old cars need.
Yeah you read that right, this was a one year import of the Japanese Kai Class Suzuki Cappuccino which totalled just over a 1000 cars. Since 1995, that number has dropped to about 350 road-worthy examples – most of which are never going to be for sale and many of the remainder in what we shall call ‘restoration project state‘.
Like I say, logistically tricky but rather than spending the rest of this post describing the web ofdeceit/tales of Al’s low cunning and downright heroism in the face of all sorts of difficult shit/the so-many-almost-disastrousslip ups/the sleepless nights wondering if she’d even bloody remember why she wanted one, let’s concentrate on what’s important and that’s how it was received.***
The only way I’d managed to keep this a secret from Carol for the best part of a month was to tell everyone else. It was what we call in the industry an EFK (ever fcker knows) secret which included both the kids who share their father’sinabilityto keep their traps shut. But having recruited an entire support team to make this happen, my only job was to get Carol out of the house long enough for ‘package to be delivered‘
So day off booked. Unseemly haste to get Carol on the Mutt Walk. Furtive phone glances showed nothing and I was running out of excuses to drag the hound round yet another field. Finally ‘The Eagle Has Landed’ confirmed it was time to Wake Up Little Suzy leaving Carol mildly confused as I strode off in an entirely different direction to the one advocated some four seconds earlier.
I have to say I was shitting it. For so many reasons; firstly it’s not the most practical present. It is the size of a well apportioned shoe with a roof that you candetach- with a week or so’s training – in about an hour. There’s a tiny boot but you can’t use that because that’s where the roof goes. It has no power steering, no brake servos, no ABS, not much other than a tiny 700cc engine with a big fuggin turbo strapped on all driving a pair of ickle rear wheels. It’s a proper little sports car and I’d no idea if that’s what Carol liked about it.
Secondly it’s Tiny. I know I’ve mentioned this already but honestly somebody asked me if it’d fit in the back of a VW T5. It’d fit in a T5 GLOVE BOX. During aparticularlytraumatic motorway journey in the pissing rain, my friend Jason remarked from the loftiness of my Yeti that you couldn’t actually see the Suzuki at all as it was all below the window line. Chances of getting crushed by a lane changing BMW X5? About 100{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2}. I didn’t want to give Carol the motoring equivalent of ACME bomb with a burning fuse.
Thirdly, it’s not the easiest thing in the word to drive if you’re a *ahem* normal sized human being. At six foot, I found it a bloody trial. It’s about an inch off the floor which precludes anyone over the age of seven entering or exiting with any dignity. Pretty sure if I checked the manual, the official entry procedure would be 10 quick steps onto a Gym Horse finishing with a double pike into the front seat. Remembering to take the roof off first. Assuming you ever do manage to find a driving position where both your knees and arms are in the same side of the car, your eyes will focus around four inches above the windscreen giving an excellent view of the roof lining.
As for exiting the vehicle, the only thing I’ve found thatconsistentlyworks is to open the door and just fall out. Try and park near some soft ground and take your chances would be my advice.
Anyway you now have a share of my worries as we rounded the gate only to find my enterprising younger daughter had covered it in various tarps and blankets exposing just one wheel. Carol’s quizzical look translated to a verbal ‘have you hired us a sports car’. Me ‘Not exactly, take a proper look‘. She did while Mr. Smug here bathed long in the joy of knowing he’d actually done one bloody thing right for someone else.
“You’ve bought me a car” / “Yep, it would seem so”. “You’ve bought me the one car I always wanted and we couldn’t afford” / “Indeed”. “How did you manage that?” / “I had a bit of help, anyway get in make sure it fits”
She did and it does. Soon after we were spinning along the local lanes with the roof off under – for once – perfect blue skies. All my fears were unfounded; this is a car that fits Carol in every way. And while I’ve always had her down as quite a sensible driver, within 15 minutes I was genuinely in fear for my life. Comparing notes with Jess later on suggested this experience wasn’t a one off.
We had a fab day. No room for the kids of course. The two things might be co-incidental but probably not 😉 I think – and I’m not sure because my understanding of this stuff isn’t much more than guesswork – Carol loves it because she’d never consider buying one herself. It’s impractical, it’s certainly not going to replace her Honda****, you probably get to drive it with the roof down 30 days a year and it needs proper looking after including a place to hibernate for at least four months of the year.
But it puts a massive smile on your face and dishes out joy with every bend. It’s not a tool to go from A to B. A to B is the journey with the destination being largely optional. Of course it’s silly. I like silly. Always Have. Really bloody brilliant to find out Carol likes my kind of silly too.
As an anniversary present for 15 years of marriage, it’s pretty cool even if I’m somewhat biased in that opinion. It let me take all the mad stuff I know drives Carol nuts and make it work for her. It hopefully says something I’m not very good at saying.
And for that and the look on Carol’s face when she realised it was really hers, it is worth ten times the time and money spent to get it on the drive.
* well we had met, but she had me tagged as an immature show off and I had the hots for her best friend. Not much has changed. Except for the bit about her best friend. Just to clear up any possible misunderstanding there.
** Carol and I have nothing but shared funds. I’ve never worked out why you’d want to operate differently. But this did present a potential financial hole that ‘Wow, that was a big shop‘ was unlikely to cover.
*** There will be later posts covering off these points in probable tedious detail. But you’d expect that.
**** Wow more vehicles than you can use at one time. I wonder how I could have thought up such a concept.
Thunderstruck
With comic timing, my ropey music collection threw this track up from the legendary if aged rockers AC/DC* as a ferocious storm was thrown down from under a brutal sky. The car rocked to the beat of a stubborn jet stream as endless rain cascaded manically seeking out something dry to wet. It was at least a month too late with everything horizontal either saturated or already under water.
My resolve to ride wasn’t tested though. Sufficient time had passed to dull the memory of a desperate trudge on washed out trails being chased by vengeful weather systems. Since then, scheduled rides have taken rain checks with the only sunny evening spent instead getting fat on summer beer. I had worked out that waiting for the rain to stop would mean my next ride might be in October. Or Spain.
So it was with low expectations I headed deep into soaking hills fully grim-equipped with winter boots, waterproof socks and shorts, stout rain jacket and full on mud tyres. These expectations were more than met with the full shitty experience from trenchfoot through gritty arse crack, 6 foot or organic mud pack, boil in the bag sweating and occasional progress hard earned on slop where dust should be. This was setting up to be one of those death marches which fully tests the rule that ‘riding is always better than not riding‘
It didn’t. And not for the reasons you might think. After an hour of sliding around in obvious distress, we found a track deep in mud and possibility. Tracing it back through face high stingers, we were rewarded with a line of jumps and drops that – with a little light shovel work – have the potential to be full on shits and giggles. But that’s not the real reason either.
Ask any rider what they love about Mountain Biking and themes will coalesce around rock-hard trails, dust, drifting tyres, jumps and drops, perfect sunsets, summer breezes, a thin ribbon of dirt snaking through the bluebells, the bullshit of your friends, the oh-fuck-me not quite crash moments, the glove-tan, the oh-so-earned post ride cold ones. the craic, the new bikes, the old bikes, the places you’ve been and those you will one day go.
If alcohol is involved, a whiff of pretension will waft eulogies on being out there, being something others are not, surfing on the wave of differentiation, the impossible to explain joy of riding bikes. I get all that, of course I do, and if you’ve ever ridden a bike for fun not transport you’ll get that too. And we’ll talk of mountain biking and an antithesis of our stressful lives, every pedal revolution unwinding the ball of weekday angst bound tight in heads too full of the wrong stuff.
And we’d be wrong. Absolutely and utterly. Missed the point by about 30 years. Because if you distil riding bikes into its purest form, you won’t find any of those things. It is nothing more than playing outside with a bit of the possibility of adventure thrown in. This base element is packaged for 11 year old children and that’s why we love it. Well it’s why I love it anyway and if you don’t, there is nothing you will read next that can convince you otherwise. And for that you have my sympathy
Mountain Biking is marketed as an arms race. New is good, different is better, you’re one credit card transaction from nirvana. You’re one skills course from riding perfection. You’re one winter training ride from the podium, one muscle supplement from a perfect athlete, one visualisation from a perfect downhill run. Spend, Train, Work your way to being the best you can. Because when you’re there, then you are absolutely there, nothing can make it any better. Except maybe hitting reset and starting the whole thing again. No wonder it’s called a cycle.
I’m calling that bollocks and bullshit. It’s about feeling eleven years old. It’s about playing outside when you should be doing something adult and responsible. It’s about exploring and making fishy ‘new line’ gestures, giggling and pointing. I’m lucky enough to be a parent of a child that age and I envy her view on the world; it’s exciting, it’s ever different, it’s relentlessly positive, it’s going to change and I’m ready to change with it, it’s simple and I know what I like, but I might like something else tomorrow. Bring it on.
Next month I’ll be 45 years old. I don’t care about that while I can still ride my mountain bike. Because that connects me to the eleven year old that laughs when he falls off, tramps off up unlikely looking paths with a spring in his step, rides back down them foot out and grinning. Christ, I’ll go and build a den if I like. It’s not a middle aged crisis or a second childhood – it’s making bloody sure you don’t lose sight of the first one. It’s not serious and it’s not competitive, and it’s not a salve for a distressed moral conscience.
It’s playing outside with your friends. And a bicycle. There is no mud, rain or cold that can touch that.
Thunderstruck? You bet.
* A bit like myself. Old, passed their best, living on past glories, quite loud. Difference being the ‘legendary’ bit.