Author: Alex

More light, less cash.

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike RidingLeave a comment

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!

On By AlexIn Other stuff, Pretentious nonsense7 Comments

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

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, PhotographyLeave a comment

Bike Build

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
Malvern night ride

Nig in the Quantocks
Quantocks September 2012

Andy in the Malverns
Tim B's Malvern Ride
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

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, Pretentious nonsense6 Comments

Malvern "Ooh I say" Ride.

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

On By AlexIn Bikes, PhotographyLeave a comment

Steeper than it looks!

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!”

On By AlexIn Other stuff, Photography9 Comments

Hair down

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

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, Pretentious nonsense10 Comments

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.

Crash and Learn

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike RidingLeave a comment

Grimace like your whining

Here’s a picture of me not crashing. I’m having a griggle* instead during the brief passage of time at Mountain Mayhem not spend carrying/pushing/slithering/launching myself headlong into trees.

Since then I’d ridden just the once. During which I first laughed in the faces of those complaining that the trails were so horrible and muddy, and secondly beseeching those very same people to carefully right-side-up me after things went quickly wrong and subsequently painful.

Before the inevitable narrative of skilled riding being mistaken for unplanned exits, let us first turn to the wider issue of the history of crashing. I’m not sure that Mountain Biking is a real ‘sport’ but, having participated in whatever it is for more than ten years, I’m pretty much un-persuadable on the immutable fact that falling off bicycles is a nailed on certainty.

For me anyway. Mostly through cowardly mincing, sometimes through over-confidence, occasionally due to nearly-terminal stupidity and latterly senior moments. Take this year; crashed due to a total lack of commitment on a muddy jump, cracked a rib failing to show adequate ‘bristleness‘ over a rock drop, catapulted myself into unsuspecting shrubbery due to unforeseen external factors** and – last week – throwing myself into a muddy abyss with no thought of personal safety.

A singular theme emerges- most of my crashes are on jumps and drops. This is either because the skills and commitment required for these technical obstacles are way beyond my ken and bravery, or a hard-wired brake reflex preventing the bike lobbing itself happily into the safety zone regardless of the klutzy busybody on top.

I’ve convinced myself it is the second, which goes a little way to explaining my frankly heroic – if somewhat misdirected – attempt to clear a favourite jump in the forest chasing much-faster-than-me Matt. It had been one of those nights. Being so close to midsummer, we struck out without much thought of where we were going or how much light we might need to get there. And that’s fine; light we had lots of it even if it was steely grey under a grumpy cloudbase pregnant with heavy rain.

What we didn’t have, summer-wise, was anything close to dry trails. It was more a green winter with every plant straining in the fauna Olympics (biggest, strongest, most stingy) anchored into slimy dirt, itself retreating under the water table. I’ve never been so warm yet so wet and muddy, and it wasn’t an experience I was keen to extend. One more climb, one great trail to finish, decamp to the pub shaking a mucky finger at the weather.

Six hours of Mayhem had sharpened my mud skills to the point of transcending the normal terror of two feet forward, one foot sideways. I placed myself line astern from the fast fellas and pretended not to be frightened of conditions ready to file those playing clever-buggers in a tree-shaped cabinet. All was mostly well, if occasionally rather too exciting, before a jump that is nothing more than a fab mid trail up’pause’fly’over on a normal ride.

What wasn’t normal was the deeply trenched run in, garrisoned by mud soldiers, guarding a dirty protest where the take off used to be. I saw Matt slither over at exactly the same the ‘ego/ability‘ alarm rang loud in the part of my brain I like to think of as ‘the accountant‘. ‘Risk Assessment suggests a 73{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} chance of injury followed by the 100{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} chance of humiliation. Bear right or bare your arse with scar tissue”

I’ve never liked accountants. Six years of working with the dowdy buggers proved that. So after installing ‘Mr Ego‘ in the driving seat, he immediately decided a couple of pedal strokes’d improve things massively. They didn’t, really. Wheel hit the jump on the piss by five degrees – an angle which had tippled all of one nanosecond later. I seem to remember sighing at this point, as it all gets rather linear and predictable once you’ve passed from pilot to victim. Bike leaves the jump, bike hits the ground some time later with the front wheel perpendicular to the frame, rider is framed in perfect parabola before arriving head first in the dirt.

Upsides? Bike didn’t hit me. Helmet took the impact. Didn’t Die. Downsides, smacked my shoulder, gouged a hole under my knee and received a double helping of arse rash. Oh and smashed my helmet as well. Got Up. Made UUURRRGGH sound. Sat down again. Worried faces swam into view. Hearing okay as laughter very evident. Mooched about for a bit looking for excuses. Kicked bike. Kicked Jump. Hurt toe.

I rode back to the car rather gingerly before dispatching myself to A&E located at “The Anchor, Lydbrook” where medicine and ribbing were provided in roughly equal amounts. On waking in the morning I could remember the crash really well, but not the bit where I’d been hit by a freight train.

Twice since I’ve had the chance to get back on the steely horse. Twice I’ve looked at the rain, the cloud, the mud and concluded ‘fuck that’. It’s not the accident that’s keeping me off the bike, it’s the fact that April, May, June and now July have piled on so much rubbish weather, it’d wear even the unbloodied down.

I’m consoling myself that this is ‘happy crashing‘. Because falling off while having a go in the great British Tradition trumps a comedy mince or craven obstacle refusal.

It’s not much of a consolation if I’m honest. Roll on Winter. At least the mud is frozen.

* Cross between a Grimace and a Giggle. Anyone raced at Mayhem will know what I mean. The rest of you count yourselves lucky.

** Rider crashing in front of me. Leaving me just to choose exactly where I should have my accident.

Just a walk in the park.

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, Photography7 Comments

Mountain Mayhem 2012 - Race Days

This was team-mate Martin’s analysis of how easy next years race would be as compared to the 24 hours of circular insanity we’d just participated in. I couldn’t help but point out that a) I had absolutely no intention of testing that theory and b) a ‘walk in the park’ well described my time out on the course.

Eastnor is many things. Spectacularly beautiful nestled as it is under the stunning Malvern Hills. Ideally set up for large scale events. Sufficiently lumpy to create interesting mountain bike courses*. All of these things and more. What it isn’t is particularly weatherproof, especially on the end of the wettest spring since Noah was a lad. The estate doesn’t allow for built trails, leaving the course to be cut through wood and shrubbery all joined by stony tracks.

So with rain comes mud as water floods off the hills creating a thousand rivers funnelling into freshly felled singletrack. 700+ riders out on the course for the full twenty four hours will deepen ruts in the middle and extend the mud out to the trail margins. That mud will either turn your bike into a static 40lb brown behemoth or you into something from a low budget swamp monster flick.

Mayhem being a bit muddy isn’t a new thing. But 2012 will be a high water mark for as much dread and horror mixing rain and dirt can bring. Some people love that kind of challenge. Team Mate Sean is one of those nutters who relishes challenging himself in yet more terminally stupid ways. His event bike sported a set of race tyres, bugger all frame clearance, a rear brake some ten years old and steering geometry even more venerable that that.

He was our fastest rider, the one who had the best accident, the muddiest after a spectacularly grim final lap, the most innovative in terms of bike washing and personal hygiene** and the man most likely to declare himself ‘fit and ready‘ to get back into the rain and shit, the damp and slip, the pain and suffering. And all the time he’d be smiling, grinning, absolutely loving it.

I’m not like that. Wish I was. But my attitude can be pretty much summed up by the ethic that while I accept working hard pays off in the long run, cheating works right now. Give me a challenge to hurdle and I’ll run round the outside clutching a book of excuses. Pit me against difficulty when there’s an easier option and find me slacking off, beer in hand honing displacement techniques.

Don’t like racing. Don’t like being crap at racing. Don’t like tents. Don’t like rain. Don’t like carrying my bike. Not bustingly keen on sliding head first into trees. Can find other more interesting things to do than ruining a hundred quids worth of drivetrain in single digit kilometres. And mud, especially that endless five foot river of slime and slop? Christ no, I’ve clearly been reincarnated from a Californian.

My laps (yes there was more than one, no not that many more) had a number of highlights. T-boning some poor rider who fell in front of me some five minutes in was the first; an accident which would have been more amusing had I not performed involuntary keyhole surgery with a brake lever as I exited stage front. The mud quickly closed over my bleeding knee but failed to offer any anaesthetic qualities. I am unique in my ability to ride while limping, which is as close to anything famous about the rest of the laps.

I found myself laughing a lot tho. Because there were many brave riders working harder than I and none of them were crying, so I settled for a happy grimace. I laughed at pro riders falling over and struggling to get back up. I laughed at how bloody accomplished these same riders were carrying speed through sections I was hobby-horsing through – testicles on the top tube and feet quicksanding into bottomless gloop. I laughed at and with everyone else being mostly sideways almost all of the time.

I even managed a grin when I was overtaken by someone who was walking. While I was still riding. That’s classy Al I thought, can’t even beat a bloke who is carrying his bike, if you were a racehorse they’d just shoot you now. Something I’d have gladly accepted – nay begged for – come the climb out of the campsite for the 2nd half of the lap. I know this area very well, yet never realised there were four obelisks on the top of that hill. Either than or we attacked them in some kind of bastard pincer movement.

Quite slowly it has to be said, except for a triple-arrowed ‘DANGER‘ marked rocky descent which us Malvern-boys eat for breakfast*** where great satisfaction was had blasting past those on the mincing line. However such was the uncontrolled speed of Team Antler (long story, now I can’t pass any of my team without making the sign of the horns. It’s not something a 44 year old man should be doing apparently) riders that the normal instruction of ‘passing on your right or on your left‘ was not really appropriate.

Which is why I’m fairly sure, in the entire history of mountain bike racing, any poor bugger has had to content with “ON YOUR BEHIND” before a wild eyed man barely clinging to the bucking ugly-stick bounced flashed by jauntily punching him in the ribs with the handlebars. He overtook me on one of the endless climbs between then and post lap beer therapy. It was him all right, I could feel the hate.

The rest of it was fairly bloody miserable. There’s all this bullshit that ‘you take your own weather with you in your mind‘ positive thinking, but my counter-argument is the ACTUAL weather is waiting for you on arrival. It’s hard to get excited about a 16k lap which takes nearly two hours, the reason for which is simply that walking in knee deep mud takes a while.

If it was just me, it’d have been just me going home. Assuming I turned up in the first place. But my team was simply too brilliant to let down even by a man rarely troubled by any feelings of guilt. Sean – we’ve established – team nutter, relentlessly positive supported ably by his wife Kay who makes the BEST BREAKFAST IN HEREFORDSHIRE, and can be relied on to locate the ‘you know long metally thing with a spike on the end‘ during periods of desperate pre-lap maintenance.

Martin is impossible to faze. I think it’s spending his working life with sheep that allows him to suffer sleep deprivation, seas of mud and broken machinery with unfailing humour. While, like me, he didn’t enjoy much of the lap, the good bits were more than good enough to make up for the trudgery (new word, OED informed!) of the other 90{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2}. Sean’s Lad – Kieron – was impervious to dampness and difficulty tackling the course in a pair of tractionless trainers, while attacking the descents with the immortality of youth.

And with various friends popping in to point and laugh, it made for a brilliant atmosphere that was reflected across most of the teams. We were parked up next to Team Sumo who – with their glitterball and 80s back catalogue – cheered us during the exceptionally trying periods, as did their incessant “JUMP JUMP JUMP” chant as riders passed their hastily assembled ramp.

Me? I was essentially bipolar; going from adrenaline fuelled machismo to chin-in-hands depression hating everything that was hard. Until I gave myself a talking too, got my arse out of bed at 4am and went back out there not because I wanted to, but because everyone else was doing so without complaint. And you know what? It wasn’t quite as fucking awful as I expected. There’s probably a lesson to be learned there.

So in summary- Fucking Dreadful. Slightly less summarised – as I slithered out of a car park full of wrecked bikes, marooned cars and endless – and I MEAN ENDLESS – mud, I found myself somewhere between happy and relieved. Happy that it was over, relieved I didn’t really let anyone down. Happy that I’d been a part of something that will soon pass into legend, relieved it wasn’t because I’d smacked myself in the head with a tree. Happy to see so many riders of all abilities just bloody well get on with it, relieved I had a team of friends who made sure I did the same.

Oh yeah and this. Somehow – and I place 100{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} of the blame on my team mates here – we ended up 40th in our Category. From a pool of 180. That’s so inadequately slack I’m quite upset about it. Something I might have to put right next year.

If I wasn’t retired.

H’mm.

* Some of you would argue that the Mountain Mayhem course is not interesting. I would then direct you to the Marin Rough Ride and rest my case.

** By throwing the bike into the lake and diving in after it. I love Sean, he’s my kind of bonkers.

*** Sometimes through the simple approach of smashing into it face first.

Summer Rain

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding3 Comments

MM2012 - The precursor of horror!

Study the picture. Find the fun. Imagine what happens. Laugh at Al.

On entering a slimy pit of mud sliding down a Herefordshire hillside, jaunty banners and long faces insist this was indeed the spot for a prestigious 24 hour mountain bike race. What? Really? This ankle deep mud? Those tyre flailing cars digging themselves into the saturated earth? Just there you say? Right.

We were lucky enough to whip the massive tent of impossible assembly into some kind of shape, before the inevitable storm, centred directly above Eastnor, exploded in moisture. Huddling inside, I was pretty damn glad there was nothing left outside to get ruined by the rain. Only during a brief respite did it become horribly apparent I’d failed to close my drivers door. Now the experience of the next 36 hours is available both inside and outside of my car.

A quick slither into the signing on tent lined us up like reluctant prisoners being informed that soon they’d be standing on their heads in the ooze. That’s going be pretty much the default position of any rider attempting something ambitious like riding a lap. A lap I decided could wait until tomorrow on the reasonable grounds that there was nothing to be discovered today that’d make any difference.

Already the bike sports thin mud tyres and a mild infestation of mudguards. That’s the ugly stick of course, there is NO WAY I’m going to subject the ST4, with it’s expense of multiple bearings, to the disastrous mechanical collateral damage a single circuit would clearly inflict. And even with a decade of bike gear packed*, the prospect of a full on mud enema with added crashing scored a big fat zero on the joyful stakes.

Instead I asked a mate how the course was riding. It’s not riding he told me. It’s pushing. That section over there (waves in the direction of the notorious Plasticine Wood) is absolutely unridable. Get off at the bottom and climb up. If you can. And all the descents are basically sideways assuming you’ve sufficient energy to get back on the bike. As you’ll be carrying it up half of the climbs. Oh and watch out for a fencepost right in the middle of the last descent. We’ve asked St. Johns Ambulance to set up there.

“Oh come on, it’ can’t be that bad” / “It is” / “It CAN’T BE” / “it’s worse than you can imagine” / “I have a pretty vivid imagination” / “Twice as bad as that. Maybe three” / “Oh Fuck” / “You got it”

We had this conversation shivering under the headline sponsor’s banner while rain blew in sideways and looked for something dry to wet. It didn’t find much. Maybe the ludicrously optimistic ‘short sleeve summer race jerseys’ being punted out to exactly no-one. Still lots of brake pads, mud tyres and more brake pads being locust’d to an increasingly desperate flange of brown-legged riders. The bloke selling the pressure washer was doing a roaring trade as well. He did his absolute best not to look smug, but never got close.

My 2 wheel drive not really a 4×4 at all got me in and out through some superb driving** – especially when compared to the endless beseeching arrivals begging for a push. Rear wheel drive is it? No offence but if you’re going to keep burying the throttle, I’ll be fucked if I’m standing behind that. It’d be like squatting under an incontinent elephant. I might drown.

At least I did get out. Those left camping are enjoying the whole first world war trenchfoot experience. Including several of their number on suicide watch, and a spattering of self inflicted injuries to be spared tomorrow’s battle. I shall be going back even as I’m known for running away and making excuses when things get tough. Or even mildly unpleasant. But not this time.

Absolutely my last race. Too many horrible days and nights riding to get fit. Too much bloody mindedness to quit before the start, even tho it is going to be unfathomably shit. Too lazy to think of any decent excuse. Too damn stupid to know better. That’s one lap we’re talking about. After that all bets are off.

As I loaded the car, the rain started again. I started laughing. It has gone beyond silly now. In twelve weeks, we’ve had two of summer and ten of autumn. At times like this, knuckling (or possibly bending) down and taking it like a man is where it’s at. Hardship to be had. Obstacles to be conquered. Stiff upper lip to the fore, a spring in ones step and your hat at a jaunty angle.

And a full cheeseboard with two decent ports of course. A chap has to have some luxuries.

Wish me luck. I’m going in.

(for those with a lack of imagination, try here)

* I had to dig out the fashion crime items from my early riding career. No matter, they’ll be brown within a single minute.

** after I worked out how to turn the traction control off which was amusingly swapping between driven wheels at about once a second while I stayed absolutely stationary.