Author: Alex

Cows Stop Play

On By AlexIn Other stuff, Photography5 Comments

That’s the kind of nonsense you would expect at Cardiff for the first Ashes test. In fact, I might send this lot down to put the wind up the Aussies. They’ve certainly had that effect on me. It is quite difficult to navigate your way to the car when about 8 cows are giving you ten tons of moo-attitude at 7:30am in the morning.

We know now where they came from. We don’t know when they’re going. As of right now, they appear to be enjoying an early breakfast of my wing mirrors. The dog – brave, stout fellow that he is – has gone into hiding under a chair, and every time Carol or I move they stampede in the direction of something expensive.

I fear for the fence.

And the windows. Short of borrowing a shotgun and setting up an impromptu burger bar, I’m short of ideas. They’ve sorrounded my workshop here and every time I look up from the keyboard, mad cow eyes look back at me.

I can feel a difficult sitution developing here.

UPDATE: We tried the local farmers who denied they’d lost any cows, and anyway it’d be quicker to claim them back from the EEC farm subsidy. We even called the police which was amusing “Are any of the cows comitting an offence Sir?” / “Breach of the Peace? They’re pissing all over the place and I’d like aggrevated looming to be taken into account”. Sadly it seems these are not sufficient grounds for ungulate arrest.

Kids Play

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, Photography2 Comments

Let’s be honest here – there is a bit of Competitive Dad inside all of us. And for some that’s because they had Competitive Dad outside for all their formative years, and never really worked out how to stop. Not for me, my old fella wasn’t so much hands off as completely disinterested. Which is something of a reason why I vacillate between total commitment and tired apathy with my own offspring.

But the parent I’ve never wanted to be is that one screaming from the sidelines, desperately striving to put the Victory into Vicarious. There’s always a positive stop between my frankly pervy love of mountain biking and forcing my kids to try and share something of that. Good reasons abound – they’re girls, they’re (still) not that big, MTB’ing is a tough sport, and they have variously preferred scooters, ex-board, walking and – well – anything else really when I’ve punted a spot of weekend dirt riding.

Today one of them mined the giggle-lode I so cherish, while the rest of the family had a damn fine go, before retiring slightly scared. Random (8, bonkers, untouched by reality) demonstrated a level of focus that made me wonder about alien abduction. She piloted her little 20inch Spesh Hardrock down trails the big boys ride, and showed a level of bravery making me wonder again – this time about adoption.

That’s not her in the photo. Verbal shares her Mum’s terror of hills and my oft repeated maxim that “your brakes control the speed, not the hill” failed to unlock tight muscle or deflate the scary gland. But she had a proper try even though it was apparent the only thing more scared in the entire forest was probably Carol.

Who – having narrowly avoided plunging into a dangerous ditch – rode bridges she hated, survived downhill trails that offered nothing but fear, and a truly, scary off camber bend that gives me the heebies before retiring with eldest daughter to the safety of the fireroads. I was properly proud of them for giving it a go without the hint of a whinge, and riding stuff that was clearly shitting-the-bed scary.

My kids don’t ride much and I don’t push them to do so. I’m always amazed how quickly they pick it up again, and while I was picking up my lovely old Kona having helped Random over a nasty log bridge, it became apparent she wasn’t going to stop. A cocktail of roots, dips and little drops were mastered with nothing more than youthful bravado and a happy chuckle.

I watched her ride it – having stopped talking since she clearly needed no coaching – with a lump in my throat. Where do they learn that shit? Even when she was properly gorse bushed at the trail end, she just picked herself up and got on with it. Well sort of, I had to push her home but she’s desperate to get out again. I may have found myself a sleeper 🙂

On returning home, the hound was walked by bicycle and suddenly these two wheeled transportation devices are the best thing since… the last great thing, but I’m happy with that. We then jumped our fence and went exploring in the stream at the bottom of the garden. Which was way more fun that it probably sounds.

There are times when kids are bloody difficult. Anyone who tells you different is on strong medication or telling lies. This was not one of those days.

Silent running

On By AlexIn Bikes, Other stuff1 Comment

One of the lesser touted joys of cycling is the minimal aural impact as you speed through the countryside. Aside from creaking knees, wheezy breathing and the occasional spittle-flecked invective*, your passage is registered merely as a soft whum of tyre on smooth tarmac. Off road of course, it’s a bloody riot of noise as chains slap stays, suspension squishes and components grind in a strange harmony only broken by the counterpoint of fleshly limb on unyielding stump.

But road riding should offer restful respite to such noise pollution, and yet this has not been the happy state of affairs visited on the Jake. Firstly it’s not really a road bike, too heavy, too soft, too compromised by tyres, angles and components. I’m fine with that because a switch to dirt and it comes alive in a way that pastes a shit eating grin on your face right up until the point when thin tyres beget zero grip. And when the groaning stops, you start smiling again.

Unless you are listening to a transmission of thrashing metal. The serial offender in this criminal approach to noise abatement was the rear mech which had fallen off the straight and narrow. I’d go as far as to say it was crooked – not only that it’d roped in “Big Charlie The Cacophonous Cassette” into attempted GBH on the rear wheel.

So armed with a big chain, these two made light work of a heavy metal noise even the MP3 player couldn’t quite drown out. Recently I’ve adopted a radical approach to bike maintenance in that I’ve not done any. It’s not just laziness – more a realisation that after spending time and money fitting new parts, the problem would be as bad or worse or maybe different, I was always poorer and some poor bike shop owner had again suffered at the hand of my unending stupidity**

Sadly the reverse isn’t true either, and no amount of giving it a stern look was going to kick start some kind of self healing process. A closer examination showed the seven year old components were really badly worn which was rather disappointing. Talk about built in obsolescence – seven years? I’ve got children older than that.

Cash was relunctantly exchanged for things shiny and a mere three hours later, all sorts of precise – yet quiet – clicking noises sold me a belief I’d actually fixed something. It would have been about ninety minutes had I not gone exploring in the dark recesses of the cunning shared brake/gear lever. My random prodding released a tightly wound spring from deep inside the component, and only an outstanding piece of fielding by the dog handily placed at third slip saved me from buying a new one of those.

I’m thinking of putting him up for the upcoming Ashes series. Anything he can’t catch, he’ll retrieve, always happy, positive and a keen team member, can’t bat for shit but that doesn’t seem to be much of a requirement nowadays. And – an added bonus this you’re not going to get from Ian Bell – he’ll have a good chew of the opposing bowlers legs before making off with his sandwiches.

So a happy silence accompanied me on a sweaty ride to the station through weather best described as “hot, damp flannel”. I could barely contain my smugness as a single click of the shifter would instruct the spankers new mech to serve up the next cog. Which was better than good when compared to last week, where the first two shifts did nothing before a third would slew the chain across multiple sprockets without bothering to clamp any of them.

A result then? Yes and, because it’s me on the spanners, no. Firstly I’d unknowingly created the sub-niche sport of “hardcore commuting” having failed to reset the brakes and leaving them lightly gripping the wheel. I thought progress was proving mightily difficult, but was so pre-occupied with my silent transmission I’d failed to investigate.

If I had, I may have noticed the mech was still on the piss. Closer inspection proved this to be simply because I’d bent the mech hanger during on of my many traction-lite moments in the woods. It’s easily fixed at a cost of£4.20. That’s approximately one twentieth of the cost of all those new parts I’d identified as the root cause of the problem.

Maybe I’ll go back to doing nothing.

* generally brought on by a bloke in a BMW/AUDI/Generic Cockmobile attempts absent mindedly attempts to kill. Some of them do it on purpose as well. But only once, and I’m safe until they find the bodies.

** “Did you fit it with the 14mm spanner as I explained” / “Yes, and far from it be from me to tell you your job, it was RUBBISH for hitting it with. I went back to a hammer, and now it’s broken“

Fox Pop

On By AlexIn Other stuff3 Comments

Ken – lost Wurzal and promiser of 100 tonnes of topsoil – stopped me the other night to enquire on the health, or otherwise, of our useless chickens.

Me: “Bloody rubbish Ken, I’m considering eating them, why?”

LW: “Well we’ve been bailing in the field” – indicates large open area of recently cut grass in case I am unaware of what a field looks like “and we’ve seen about six of yon foxy buggers”

Me: (pretending I know about this stuff) “So, haha, did you shoot them hahha hah, er”

LW quizzically “Of course not”

Me: “Ah, well, you know, I thought, farmers, er, you know, er”

LW: “I’m 72 and bloody lousy shot. Your man over on the estate has a couple of hunting rifles and he’s bagged at least four of ’em last night”

Me: “Right…, er. 4 you say, right, that’s er quite a lot, any more left?”

LW: “Yeah get the vixen’s first and then come back for the cubs as they’ll be milling about lost. Easy Kills. So if you see lights and hear pops tonight, don’t worry it’s JUST SOME FUCKING NUTJOB WITH TWO SODDING ASSUALT RIFLES WHO HAS THE FULL BINDERED SET OF “GUNS’N’AMMO” UNDER HIS BED, AND THE MENTAL HEALTH PROFESSIONALS TELL ME HE HAS SOME SIGNIFICANT VIOLENCE ISSUES, WILL BE RE-ENACTING THE FIFTY PLUS BODY COUNT SCENE FROM RAMBO.”

(I’m paraphrasing here, but let me tell you this is a pretty accurate transcript of how it entered my head.

Me: “Right, appreciate it if he doesn’t break in in a berserker frenzy and shoot the dog, cat, children, that kind of thing”

LW laughing “Oh no, he’s a lovely lad really… ” PAUSE “lock your doors tho” LONGER PAUSE “He can get a bit” SCRATCHES CHIN “enthusiastic”

The fox has the chickens. The nutter has the foxes (and I’ve spared you on exactly what they do with the remains) and I have to go and get a large glass of something soothing.

Bring back foxhunting that’s what I say. As I’m unlikely to suffer a visceral killing from a bunch of ponces with stupid accents, and a body clock which stopped in 1873.

It lives.

On By AlexIn Other stuff, Photography3 Comments

As opposed to Michael Jackson whose unexpected croak-age has completely upset the celebrity dead pool. It also knocked Farrah Fawcett off the front pages – a major disappointment for those of a certain age who had THAT PHOTO on their wall, and in their minds during periods of lonely sexual activity.

Or so I’ve been told. Anyway, not old did Jacko supplant other dead celebs, he also managed to subvert the entire news agenda for more than twenty four hours. Watching the Sky rolling news, I saw the same grainy picture of an ambulance informed by voxpop scrolling messages “I still have the paper cups from the 1984 Bad Tour, and they are my greatest treature. Michael, you were my life and you’ll live forever”.

No he won’t. Let’s face facts here:

He was a kiddie fiddler. He was such a proper nutter I’d grudgingly award him Hedgehog Loony Status. His best work was some twenty years behind him. He’s dead and/or working in a chip shop with Elvis. Okay I accept he made the odd decent record*.

But now he’s dead from an overdose of painkillers or chimp jism or who gives a fuck. He’ll live long in the memories of those people who have no life of their own to cherish, and the rest of us will remember the “Thriller” Vid being pretty cool and not much else.

So get over it 🙂

Anyway I’ve had a day of fixing things. Bicycles, children’s toys, gliders, lawns, etc. My first foray into soldering for twenty years proves – once again – how completely clueless I am with any tool other than a big hammer. Still the glider flew, didn’t catch fire even once and even came to land somewhere close to the house.

A bit too close really, Carol was starting to panic a bit as I began to hum the Dam Busters theme tune, when the big yellow winged incendiary was locked onto the perfect flight path to smash through a window. I was never really worried, but then I did have a beer in one hand.

Flying the Electric Glider. And it not catching fire. Again. Flying the Electric Glider. And it not catching fire. Again.

Important to relax I’ve found during times of stress I’ve found. And on that note, I have many half written, half baked, quarter arsed things to say about lists, London and loving the summer. I shall committ them to the unwary readership as soon as the next batch of beer is appropriately cool.

Until then, have you noticed the nights drawing in? 🙁

* Don’t push me on this. I’m struggling to think of one, but 65 million people can’t be wrong, can they?

Burn’n’Crash

On By AlexIn Other stuff, Photography2 Comments

Right, for the uninitiated – and noticeably unwashed from those of you who I’ve met – in all things silly modelling, this is the business end of a glider than thinks it’s a proper aeroplane. With the sort of low cunning we’ve come to expect from marketing types, they offer up a flighty solution to days when you’re short of time/wind/appropriate hillage.

Fire it up, chuck it, make it a speck up in the sky somewhere, shut the engine off and glide for a bit. Run out of height, lean on the noisy stick and start again. Great idea, and absolutely necessary for me to add such a niche to the ever expanding mass of winged foam in my workshop.

But this one is special because it has been on fire. A late night chuck should have brought twenty minutes relaxing stick twirling, followed by a cushioned landing in the field of wheat a nice farmer has provided as my makeshift runway.

What actually happened was a perfect launch, a fast climb and then… well… nothing. The motor turned off, the transmitter was no longer talking to the receiver, and my frantic twiddling had all the effect of asking a ten year old to finish their homework. Unlike recalcitrant children, the glider was blissfully serene at this point – merely heading off downwind from a height of 100+ feet, and destined to crash into some poor innocent minding their own business in a spot of cow tipping. About four miles away.

A gust of wind changed that and gravity rapidly brought on terminal velocity, which thumped the model hard into the crop and cartwheeled previously attached parts to all corners of the field. This crashing been happening rather a lot lately, but in this case it wasn’t my fault.

Not that I was much cheered by such thoughts, as I trudged through waist height wheat heading for the scene of the accident. After some searching I found that the model mostly undamaged due entirely to the springy, vigorous crop cushioning the impact. Honestly we’re taking a vertical dive at high speed followed by significant deceleration trauma, and most of the bits were still the same shape.

They should make airbags out of this stuff. Anyway things were not so good up the front with the small, yet eye wateringly expensive, motor controller on fire and – until I took swift action – in danger of setting alight thirty acres of uncut crop. The smell was terrible, and that was just from my shorts after they’d be on the arse end of a thought process that ran something like “How the fuck am I going to explain setting fire to a field?”

Anyway it’s easily fixed. When I get time. Which I have none of, and even should some magically be presented, it’ll be eaten up by pond dredging*, removing broken forks, hammering the transmission straight on the cross bike, peeking inside the budget spreadsheet and fixing myself. With a large G&T.

It’s nice to know my “skills crossover ” from MTB to models is so seamless. Crap building? Check. Excuses? Lots. Rubbish ability? Oh yes. Crashing? Big sodding tick.

That’s a comfort of sorts.

* This weekend I’ve been up to my armpits in smelly, rank and sticky mud. I’ve had terrible flashbacks to riding in the Chilterns.

Hedgehog Service Broadcasting

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike RidingLeave a comment

We don’t do requests on the ‘hog. Mainly because we don’t get any. But, if we did, we wouldn’t because we put the Hedgey into Edgy. Clear? Good.

However, a shout out needs to go to all round good eggs, riding pals and confirmed 24 hour nutters Jezz and Ian who are competing in this years Mountain Mayhem. It’s just round the corner at Eastnor Castle and I shall be playing to me strengths, by pitching up with a pitcher of beer tomorrow night, and applying some liquid therapy to those riding in ever decreasing circles.

I popped up there pre-race start and it’s a) a bloody huge event and b) bone dry with a good forecast. Which is a bit of a relief after last year*, when the best way to complete a lap was by helicopter.

Ian is riding a very light race bike he has RUINED by removing all but one gear and any vestiges of suspension. Jezz has foolishly packed mud tyres, and therefore inadvertently invoked “Hailstorm’s Law”. Honestly I don’t know why he didn’t just travel to Chile with a butterfly and let it flap it’s wings. Next thing, tornados in Swindon**

Anyway, best of British to the pair of them. Nutters they may be, but they are hedgehog reading nutters. And – as we’ve said before – that’s a SPECIAL type of nutter.

* and almost every one before that. The term “European Monsoon” seems lost on race organisers.

** Inspired piece of Meterological urban planning that.

That’s just wrong.

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding1 Comment

Pretty much sums up my thinking, as I solved the mystery of why the British Army can’t source sufficient body armour for the front line troops. Because we’ve nicked it all, and were variously unpacking it, dusting it down and strapping it on at a trail centre car park.

When I say we, I am referring to weekend biking warriors in general and not me specifically. Because after giving my knee a repeated percussive workout at CLIC 2008, it became clear that my body was pretty well healed, and any perceived protection was addressing the wrong organ. The mountain biking part of my brain needed armouring up and a bit of a cuddle, while acting Mr. Plastic Fantastic was merely other limb placebo.

There’s a good argument for body armour, but it’s not the lame one trotted by those who confuse adrenalin with danger. And we’ll be back to that, but first this – the right time to strap yourself in a shock proof cocoon is when you think you’re going to hurt yourself. Back at Chicksands when multiple feet of whistling air separated squidy organs from hard ground is a good example. As was giving it some humpy on the downhill course at CwmCarn.

Here the body untalented – into which I absolutely place myself – quite rightly try and balance the risk/reward gig by piling plastic on the “staying alive” side of the seesaw. I crashed so many times back at Chicky which that was fine because I left my comfort zone in the car, and forced myself to try stuff that was beyond my meagre ability. That armour has the scars of those rough campaigns – full face helmet dented, leg pads in natty lion-savaged motif, pressure suit compressed where otherwise my spine would have been.

But trail centres are purpose built to roll out thrills without any spills. There are no walkers to cross your path with danger, no unseen obstacles to pitch you eyeball first onto a pointy rock, no trails apparently hewn by spiteful Gods trying to kill you. In short, much fun, bugger all risk. And the facile argument which runs “I can’t afford to hurt myself, I have to go to work on Monday, I have a family” misses the point completely.

Points really. Here’s the first; Mountain Biking is dangerous, Christ I should know having been hospitalised twice, and bruised a million times*. But if it wasn’t a bit spicy, we just wouldn’t do it. Sorry but we just wouldn’t – we’d ride the Sustrans, head out onto broad leafy cycle paths, squeeze into roadie tops and pound out the miles, but we would not risk possible and permanent injury whizzing between trees and banging over rocks.

So if you don’t want to get hurt, the solution seems to be body armour. But it’s not a solution, well it is but it is looking for a problem that doesn’t exist. I found the best way to avoid crashing was to slow down a bit. Radical I know, but riding at 90{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} of whatever ability you have has many benefits, some subtle, some less so.

You don’t crash for a start – that’s a big one. You’ll still take risks but they’re calculated and the important part is you don’t think you’re going to crash. And when you back off, interesting stuff starts to happen as panic braking and desperate pedalling give way to looking further ahead and using the trail. And with that comes smoothness, and with smoothness comes speed.

It’s a beautiful thing, man. Seriously this became clear I was chasing a super smooth friend of mine at CwmCarn a few months ago. There’s a section before the last climb which has little gradient but more than compensates with a river of flowing left-right-left bends. I’ve always enjoyed it, but following someone who can clearly ride a bit, you begin to realise that to be fast, the most important skill is to think fast.

And when you’re thinking of better lines with faster choices, there is no time left to think of crashing. You don’t need body armour because it’s going to slow you down, both in thoughts and in deeds. Don’t get me wrong, it absolutely has its place, but trail centres aren’t any of those.

And last night, riding with the same friend, we were ragging down some local cheeky trails into the deepening gloom. These are MY trails, and I know them well enough to take a few risks, but not too many. Only twice did I open the taps and go beyond 90{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2}, and both of those shot me full of adrenalin and full on fear.

The rest of the time, we were having a bloody fantastic time, by not crashing. And by not thinking about crashing. That’s my problem with body armour – it’s not an ego thing, or a macho thing, or an image thing, It’s an attitude thing.

I could be wrong. But – let’s face it – that’s pretty unlikely 🙂

* This could be because I’m rubbish. I concede that point. Before you make it!

Hitting the wall

On By AlexIn Other stuff, PhotographyLeave a comment

This is not, as it may first seem, the beginnings of my burial chamber. However, the way things have been going lately, the prospect of a long lie down in a cool, shaded spot is rather becoming. As opposed to what I am becoming which is bloody irritable.

My fully synchronised electronic diary failed to interface with its’ analogue sibling on hosted the kitchen wall, so curtailing my long looked forward to weekend of riding in the Peaks. A duplicitous plan, built on the need to fix my Mum’s home PC, was revealed for the web of receipt everyone knew it was, after said parent arrived at our house late last week.

Diaries you see, I have several but Carol has “the one that counts“. And I have not time to bore you with rambling whinges on house progress (not enough), budget situation (not enough), fantastic days of riding (not enough) and work (far too much).

In fact, I am being dispatched today to actually go and talk to some real clients. It’s been over three years since I had to go and earn a proper living. I’m quite looking forward to it, which is probably more than both those who have asked and those who are to receive my wise words and flailing hand motions.

I have just enough time to notice that Mountain Mayhem this year appears to be set fair. This I find slightly troubling as the entire world weather systems seems finely balanced on the predication that MM is ALWAYS piss wet through. Maybe the CLIC this year has drained the clouds of all their water.

Anyway I shall return in the manner of Arnie, although with more words and less shooting people. Unless London gets the better of me again.

Margins

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding4 Comments

Of all the senses, smell short circuits synapses with such breathtaking speed it sometimes does just that – rewinding the minds eye to a vision of something so joltingly real it pushes the physical world away. For some fresh cut grass triggers a memory of long – and long ago – carefree summers, others will walk into their kids’ classroom, and be instantly transported back thirty years into a world of short trousers and tall teachers.

For me it’s the smell of warm gravel. Rubbish you say, gravel doesn’t have a smell – ah but it does if you’ve ever given it a proper nasal examination from close quarters. My approach was a high velocity, low level pass- ramming gravel up a nostril until it was piled sufficiently high to create a never-to-be-forgotten mental bookmark.

It didn’t really register at the time, because all my organic processing was being diverted to having a large accident. And while the memory of flint slicing my knee directed my riding bravery for far too long, that was much more about a sense of fear rather than the smell of it.

Until now. The weekly night ride split my brain neatly between then and now with a sensory throwback of scrabbling tyres hunting for grip on smooth granite marbles. The malevolent sound these mini Grim Reapers hissed sat somewhere between an analytical explanation of fat tyres on loose rock, and an imagined disaster movie with me being nothing more than a painful passenger.

You see the thing that pissed me off more than anything back in 2006 was my stupidity in ignoring a stand-out warning of what was to come. I’d had some proper wiggly feedback through the bars on the corner before, but I pushed it just as hard anyway into the subsequent gravelly arc.

And paid for such bravery with first a month off the bike, and then two years when riding became so much of a chore I so nearly packed it up for good. So last night put the Vu back in Deja after I’d spent most of the ride letting air of the tyres so carefully inflated some time earlier hunting for some grip. I was riding the big bike for a change, and that change made for so much silly fun, so much more downhill speed, and so little purchase on big fat 2.5inch tyres better suited for proper sized rocks in the Peak District.

The start of an accident inevitably comes near the end of the ride when reflexes are not quite as sharp as confidence is high. We ride a fantastic ridge which funnels into a steep, loose gulley, guarded by a natural berm that shoots you wide of the tyre sucking danger of the eroded centre. Instead you stay high, stay off the brakes, push out over a tree root before committing to a properly shaley left hander.

Fail to make it and you’re in the quarry, get it wrong and rapid, full body exfoliation awaits. Get it right though and you’re pumped out at high speed, grab a chunk of usefully located bank and ping off into something a little flatter and safer. It’s ace, but loose and looser than ever with weeks of nothing falling in there other than the occasional mountain biker.

I entered that berm at a speed entirely inappropriate for a man of my limited skill, which unsurprisingly compressed the next few seconds into a mental riot of terror, acceptance, amazement and relief. I avoided the root by simple dint of ploughing into the gulley. My tyres felt it was important to bring the absolute abscence of any grip whatsoever to my attention by starting to slide in a manner worrying reminisant of a long stay in hospital.

I caught the first slide with stiffly frightened muscle memory, but by now the only manner by which I could be classed as “in control” was still being on the bike. While this was going on, that left hander loomed tight and fast and my options narrowed to nothing. Had to stuff it in, had to push the bar, had to find time to pray it wasn’t going down.

The slide was properly mental. In so many ways of that word, as I could hear the echo of a bike crashing groundwards, the shhhhhsssshing noise of fast gravel at ear level and the sound of body bounce. Yet it didn’t happen, and I still don’t know why. In the same way I still cannot understand how I lost a different bike in a similar corner, but with a younger God of Fate looking on.

Margins. That’s what this is about. Two situations, starting the same, finishing entirely differently. It’s made me think about the accident again but in a good way. Because for every crash that smashes you up and leaves you wondering if it’s bloody well worth it, there are a hundred mirrors that you don’t hold up for proper examination.

So I know this time I got lucky. But what I’ve worked out is that I’ve been sodding lucky so many times before. Only when you understand the margins do you finally comprehend the massive deficit of risk to reward than mountain biking serves up every time you go out and ride.

I’m feeling pretty damn good about that.