That’s a rubbish picture. But it’s illustrative and may save a 1000 words such a picture paints. So be grateful. We’ll be back to it in a bit. But first I feel the need to talk about plans.

John Lennon said it best “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”*. It wasn’t so long ago stakes were grounded in a heartland of what’s important, and I genuinely subscribed to a short term view that Christmas would be upon us before the world of work impacted on something I’d labelled as recuperation, but felt like sloth.

Lazy I can do. Slobbing about is pretty much a core skill. Tinkering in a fettling manner worries me not a jot. Until the room housed elephant trumpets a noise like guilt. Got to make ends meet, got to prove something, got to give in to the notion that working somehow has more value than everything else. Too many of us have the meme of the breadwinner and it’s a hard habit to shake.

Even so, distanced from the world of work by four hours, many miles and a different culture, our holiday was rooted in a strong desire to concentrate on stuff I’d missed not stuff I might be missing. Which worked well until TurkCell fired up the iPhone SMS feed and an offer of possible work hit the screen. I vacillated a while before replying in a non committal way and expecting – as is the way of these things – any vacancy to be long filled before I arrived back on rainy UK tarmac.

It didn’t. I ended up filling it. Two long interviews, the second conducted in a rather unbalanced Al v a panel of five. So my proposed rest was usurped by something properly interesting, but basically rewarding behaviour I was trying to shake. Next year, I’ll sort that out. Important to keep telling yourself that.

Mitigation of a sort was to run away from all things vocational and see if my new bike works with dust on it. Yes, I did indeed use that very rationale for why a very long weekend to Tenerife was more than required. Known as the ‘land of eternal spring‘ I care not if this is marketing nonsense, as I’m desperately keen to get away from the ‘land of the eternal flood‘

Since arriving back from warm and sunny Turkey, I have been enveloped in weather that could summarily be described as ‘more than a bit shit’. Accepting November is perilously close to real winter, it still seems more than a little unfair that it’s done nothing but piss water onto saturated ground on a daily basis. Surprisingly I’ve ridden loads and more surprisingly I’ve managed to do so without serially nutting local flora an fauna. But it’s been close, especially with the Rocket sporting a tyre selection that has the rear desperate to instigate a conference with the front every time the trail turns sideways.

Superb selection I keep telling myself for dry and dusty rocks come a week Wednesday. There’s a counter argument suggesting I’ll never get there, if the God Of Survivable Slides looks in another direction. Two recent rides provide context; the first was back on the carbon hardtail as it wouldn’t rust after bonkers rain. Shod with mud tyres, it performed superbly in the cheeky woody trails under the Malverns. One descent I was elevated from back to front by sheer dint of beingthe only man left riding. My buddies were in various hedges and ditches having gone with a rubber selection marked certain death. Back on the rocks tho, those fantastic tyres came close to fetching me a face full of wet granite.

Next ride, grab the full-suss and hope for the best. Which hill clamping fog and sideways rain clearly wasn’t. One of those rides where getting to the end without a major blood injury tastes like success. It’s still fun, but Christ I’m bored of slogging through the mud. I was bored of it in August and now it feels as if it’ll never end.

Except it will. On December 5th. When me and my pal Martin will land on an island that’s basically an African archipelago. Four days of sunny and dusty riding await. Along with four days of tall tails told over cold beers, while sitting outside watching the sun go down. That’s what that picture is all about. Riding mountain bikes is absolutely a four season sport, but don’t delude yourself that endless muddy death marches are the only way to get through the crappy ones.

* He may have said it better in the Beatles Back Catalogue. Possibly in Yellow Submarine. But you’d probably have to be amp’d off your head to be sure.

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.

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?”

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.

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.

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.