First things first, that’s a bloody good effort at an in focus photo of a fast moving rider using a cheap camera in crap light under woody darkness. I’d thought I’d mention that in case nobody else had noticed.
Other things probably passing unnoticed by the non bike obsessed public are the Ying and Yang of Christmas riding. Ying means the Winter Solstice has passed and we’re half way out of the dark, Yang the unfrozen trails that are epically muddy.
2009 and 2010 were snowy enough to force cancellation of the Malverns Ride Out/Drink Sloe Gin/Eat Mince pies/Mince home seasonal peramble. This week, we had no such problems in Spring temperatures but ploughing through non-Spring filth and slop. This made not for a particularly joyful first hour with much sliding about and removing suspicious looking moist dirt from every crevice and both eyeballs.
Apparently there’s a market for that kind of thing and having passed lots of noncelantly parked cars with dashboard lights on in the last few night rides, it seems to be quite a big one*. Finally we stopped, cracked open a cubic ton of Mince Pies which we happily washed down with a warming dram from a stirrup cup** Things improved immeasurably from there.
A post ride analysis of various empty containers suggested ten mince pies and 700ml of Sloe Gin had disappeared from our Camelbaks. For a total of three riders. Probably a wormhole or something.
Slithering onwards, a slurred enquiry demanded an answer to “are you finding this singletrack a bit narrow?”. I provided a Charades like response bouncing from tree to tree before declaring “Singletrack? I can barely keep it on the tarmac”.
Perfectly metabolically balanced then for a drunken assault on the Antler Trail where I became lost and confused in the manner of a senior citizen circumnavigating the M25. It seems this season’s navigational method of choice is bark. Wiggling the bars didn’t seem to make any noticable difference to the direction of travel, so I just went with the flow. Or with the tree.
Survived that, which seemed an excellent precedent to try again today in the light. 26 kilometres of slop was way more fun that it sounds. Certainly compared to pointless last minute shopping. Or dealing with bored kids. Or peeling vegetables. Staying alive was the guiding premise, something I was reminded of when later making an incautious dash to a Morrisions brimming with a Zombie/Locust hybrid making mud-surfing through crowded trees feel like a safer option.
We finished on something dry and fast before moving onto something wet and slower in the pub. This is exactly how any sane man would spend Xmas Eve. And possibly Christmas Day- but even I can see that is taking the piss.
Talking of which, I’ve run out of beer. And words. So nothing left to do but to wish my deluded reader(s?) a Merry Christmas and promise more nonsense in 2012.
* insert own smutty joke here. The whole dogging thing has passed me by. Surely that’s what the Internet is for?
** No point in slumming it. Next year, I’m hoping for white linen, china plates, silver cutelry and a butler.
Riding with Martin has always been more about the smiles than the miles. Our rides are measured not in kilometres covered or metres climbed, because such dry metrics cannot record the pleasure of hiking up unpromising trails, only to add a hidden gem to the map of cheeky.
But we’re worried. Worried about middle aged porkiness, worried over lost winter fitness, worried watching the “Malvern Labrador“* chasing his fitness goals with the kind of single minded determination we really don’t understand.
Decisions were made – cold smelted in mud – in an airy hand waving manner that we’d try a bit harder, ride a bit longer, drink a bit less tea and eat a lot less cake. No dicking about, plan a route and get on with it. So I did just that; bypassing the midday hoards and iced up peaks – a hard tramp through multiple peaks that just happened to orbit around two cake stops.
Important to ease ourselves gently into the new regime. Which probably excused an off trailexcursionall of five minutes in when a thinly disguised dirtrivuletheaded off in promising direction. That direction being directly into the abyss of the worked out quarry that has many fenced off entry points – all of which are vertical.
We made those fish-hand-movement indicating a ridable line before running away should any suggestion of attempting certain death be made. Conditions of mud and ice – both offering more grip than expected, but less than required – felt scary enough with sections ridden brakes off/eyes squeezed closed hanging on to the edge of scrabbling traction. Properly absorbing.
Martin had clearly solved the numbers game refusing – for the first time in living memory – cake and tea after nearly forty minutes of riding, instead shipping us back into the busy hills on a cheeky mission to access the “antler trail“. Named not formarauding stags fighting over gene rights, rather a branch/camelbak incident picking out the “holy horns” in a tight night-riding beam a few weeks before.
It’s not legal. Not even close. A footpath would be a paragon of trail virtue compared to this well shrouded tree lined bounty below the hills. What it is though is unique within the Malverns – loamy singletrack hard pressed by mighty oaks starting fast/steep but mellowing to a perfect trail gradient snaking on a flow of sinuous curves.
Come summer it’s a perfect test of weight distribution and tyre grip. Fast as you like if you’re as brave as you say. The rainy season pits your wits against slippy but predictable dirt and moist roots. Chasing Martin – for it is his trail and he’s bonkers fast in any conditions – I had both tyressimultaneouslybreak away which would normally trigger a panic/brake lever/crash process. This time I hung on and, for about the third time in a 12 year MTB career, drifted perfectly through an apex.
I’d pay good money to do it again. Really good money. Even some of my own. It was that good. The grunty hoik up the valley was made easier by fadingadrenalinespikes especially now tea and cake were definitely in the ‘training plan‘. This new regime ensured only half a pasty each washed down with hot tea knocked back quickly as the day rapidly cooled.
A final tramp over and around the hills finishing on a descent predictably full of people mostly incapable ofindependentmovement. I’m a huge advocate of shared trailetiquettebut if a mountain bike is heading down a trail you’re perambulating on some 15 MPH slower, it might be a good idea to move aside. My internal laser beams were fully paid back by karma when Martin received a free puncture half a mile from home.
Being a proper mate, I left him so to enjoy the remainder of the descent, dropping into icy steps, taking a deep breath, surviving that before freewheeling back to the truck. Martin turned up about a minute later which somewhat ruined my perception of just how fast I was going.
We had had a fantastic ride. Standard Al and Martin messing about and not taking it too seriously, But the GPS coughed up a nadge under 20k and quite a bit over 2000 feet of climbing. I toasted such amazing statistics with a beer or two. Softly Softly Catchey Monkey.
Training then. It’s just riding until your legs give way then is it? I’ll give that a go.
* That’ll be Jez, the third MalvernMusketeerwho has time trials on his mind and a training plan clearly dreamt up inGuantanamobay
There are times when nothing other than riding a bike makes any sense. Endless sunny days where the trail is polished, buff-dry singletrack and you’ve discovered your inner riding God*, when you’re best mates are on top joshing form and all that stands between you and a few cold beers are hours of high speed, endorphin pumping mountain biking nirvana.
Those are the days when you absolutely have to ride. Then, right in the middle of your cycling bell curve, are days when you should be riding. Be it a ‘get-my-arse-out-of-this-comfy-bed‘ commute, or an evening blast when you’re so tired from work, or slashing your weekend to-do list with a sword of selfishness and getting back two hours after you promised. Rides that are easily bypassed by thin excuses, but everyone missed is a lament, a regret of what might have been.
And then there’s riding when you’re sick, it’s dark and wintry, cold hands fumble easy summer tasks, legs hurt from the start, breath rasps in a death rattle on every climb, tyres squirm and slide through mud and grime. Drivetrains visibily erode under corrosive grit forged from wet dirt and rock. You’re half as fast as the summer and twice as knackered. Descents that are baked into a sun kissed ribbon of joy become desperate ‘hang on and hope‘ under the grim clag of winter.
You return home totally done in, but long gone is throwing the bike in the shed and grabbing a cold one. Now it’s a logistical sequence of frozen hosepipes and clammy clothes. Standing in the midst of steaming ride gear and dripping bike, a beer is the last thing on your mind. Or at least behind, a bath, an excuse for why the washing machine is going to be broken, a mental tally of components needs replacing and the worry that non responsive toes might be a symptom of frostbite or trenchfoot.
Mentalists will regale you with the joys of winter riding. Fitness, blah, deserted trails, Yeah Yeah, amazing moonscapes, whatever you fucking hippy. They miss the point, the reason we ‘normals‘ ride in winter is simply because we need to. Not have to, not want to, not should do. Need. Riding bikes is a balance to the lunacy of what we spend our day doing. A see-saw with frustration, angst and irritation that needs a wheeled offset to leave you refreshed and level headed.
It is far to easy to attempt equalisation by kicking the cat, shouting at the kids, grumpily watching TV clutching a grape placebo. None of this stuff works like a mud splattered two hours with those who share your weekly therapy session. This week, one new bike was sailing on a muddy maiden voyage accompanied by two hacking coughs, one set of recently serviced forks, a non working rear brake and our Malvern Labrador SuperFit team member knackered by lots of training.
So we didn’t go that far. But we didn’t go to the pub either which was my first, second and oft repeated idea. Instead slithery progress was made on trails glassed with tractionless dirt to the inevitable accompaniment of poorly a-tyred mountain biker on tree. My lack of rear brake was easily offset by a mud tyre on the front which carved inside a man on all-weather** rubber to set up perfectly for a) a fab jump over a tree route and b) an accident.
A committed if foolhardy approach to a) failed to result in b) only because Fate clearly believes I’ve suffered enough lately. No way that closing my eyes and bracing for impact kept me on a trail bounded by sharp fences and eye-pokey branches. The fact that I then nearly wiped Martin and his new bike out in the ensuing “whooooaahhhsshiittnooooIvegotit………..probably” slide shows that particular God has a sense of humour.
As did we on our heavy legged return to the warmth of inside. If I had control of Wikipedia then the Mountain Biking entry would read lit 1/to gain a sense of perspective, to remember what’s important 2/to prevent obsession of unimportant things 3/ to stave off comformity.
20 kilometres on a Mountain Bike while racked with cold can do that. I’ve changed my mind about it being therapy. It’s better than that.
* who may still be a bit rubbish. But he’s better than you are that’s all that matters.
which – whatever your non wiki’d history teachers may have told you – MarieAntoinettenever actually said. So 250 years or so later, the mantle of cake eating has been vigorously grasped, forked and shovelled by none other than “no not another slice, I really couldn’t, body is a temple you know, oh go on then, just a small one… er not that small” porky Hedgey here.
But first I had to earn it.
Today’s ride went something like, apathy, rain, cold, wind, giggle, cake, grind, giggle, cake. The longer version started with me motoring into the hills through a curtain of rain hanging from an endarkened sky. Further reasons not to leave the safety of the car were a swirling wind and biting cold that speaks far too loudly of the Winter to come.
I was only half joking on offering an alterative indoor beer serving location for the ride to Martin, but he is made of stouter stuff and off we trudged up one of the many steep, grinding climbs that define the difference between the valley floor and the peaks.
“Martin and Al” rides lack the discipline, pace, distance and general seriousness of the mid-week night rides. These worthy tenets are replaced with exploring, silliness, careless line choice and – often – thumps of rider into fauna. Today we had all of those in a smidge over ten miles, with even that short distance split by tea and cake at St Anne’s Well.
Cake wasn’t foremost in our minds what with survival filling all the available space on a descent from North Hill that was even more sideways as usual. Two key factors; one a sizeable cross wind cheekily punting us into a rocky void, and two my choice of tyres which are the “go to” excuse of any proper mountain biker.
“Yeah would have ridden that, but these tyres (point vaguely at rubber which looks suspiciously like everyoneelses) are rubbish. Wrong trousers as well. Bad egg for breakfast. Honestly lucky to be here at all“. Secretly I’ve always viewed perceived tyre performance as marketing fluff, but in the case of Ignitors, Maxxis really aren’t kidding in labelling them not suitable for mud. Unless you’ve a penchant to lob yourself off the trail into the nothingness of a semi-vertical drop.
I wasn’t. So installed Mr. nesh&frightened and his brakey/slithery descending technique. Which left the rest of me time to worry if those bloody tyres were about to explode having been wrenched on with the force of a million newtons. At least it had stopped raining, which would make it easier for the emergency services to collect me from wherever the fall line ended.
Fun though, oh so much giggly fun that ended near the cafe. Which was open. And Martin had cake funds. Never one to look a gift-horse in the mouth, we stuffed some chocolate cake in their instead. Suitably replete, the horror of a climb all the way to the Beacon was mildlyassuagedby a speed of ascent on a par with an oak tree. And quite an old oak tree at that.
Switchbacking to the Beacon, a rather wonderful vista opened up with blue sky backlit by a fast approach twilight. Views across the Northern hills down to a twinkling Malvern below wereuninterrupted by many humans who had long scuttled back to roofed safety. From the top we rolled fast, chasing the fading light with the kind ofunreconstructedjoy you envy your kids for.
Just a great flow down a brilliant decent chasing a fast mate knowing that 20 minutes away awaited a steaming cup of Tea perfectly accompanied by a slice of that rather fab cake mostly made by Jess. That’s a good a way to finish a weekend as I can think of.
And if you don’t… probably best to stay inside. Until about March. It seems only a couple of weeks ago* we were hanging on the tails of fantastic weather and still dusty trails. Then the sky broke and poured rain with a frequency which sends religious types to pairing up animals.
My response was somewhat more pragmatic. Hang the bag of expensive bearings on the wall and prepare the Ti hardtail for the muddy season. Not everyone’s idea of a winter bike, draped as it is with expensive / notoriously un-bombproof stuff, but to me merely lacking the right tyres.
There is a right load of old toss talked about tyre sizes, pressures, spread patterns and TPI by those who find themselves in a group internet session where everyone else is wrong. The rest of us happily acknowledge the days of the murderous knobbly are mostly behind us** And yet, we cannot resist a bit of a fettle with the European Tyre Mountain we’ve erected over a few riding seasons.
My approach was to take advice from a friend to whom I’d already bequeathed the last set of tyres he’d recommended me. Always a man ready to give out a second chance, a shiny new set of bristling rubber adorned my mighty steed ready – if not able – to face the challenges of water mixed with dirt.
Mostly water to be fair. And wet leaves. And dark. And more rain. It’s like winter with the cold replaced by more dark and more rain. But things started brightly with laser beams reflecting in tarmac puddles as we pulled our way into the hills. At this point my bike and tyre choice were spot on – fast and direct gaining me pretend fitness as we steamed ever upwards.
Stuff only started to go wrong when we replaced road with trail. I didn’t have time for a proper panic as the front wheel headed off in a direction no way instigated with anything I was doing with the bars. Because the rear tyre bypassed the whole grip/slip/slide sequence instead just barrelling sideways at 90 degrees on contact with a small but moist root. My defiant battle cry was – as rated by those who heard it – more akin to a choked off whimper.
So I fell off. Obviously. Crashing is too kind a word. Crashing sounds as if something difficult has been attempted and the failure penalty was a huge stack. Battered but worthy. This is not a description that can be applied to a man lying on his side fetching globules of mud from his ear. The first time it was slightly amusing, although I found my humour mostly exhausted after the third soft thud into trailside vegetation.
“These tyres are shit” I pointed out looking for some one to blame “Why did you say they were any good?” / “Good for Summer” came the reply. Right. Could be a misunderstanding. Could just be my riding buddies are all bastards 😉 It was like riding in a minefield, every so often some innocuous obstacle would explode sending the – now fatalistically weary – pilot into the comforting arms of a tree or barbed wire fence.
A week passed and some of the bruises faded. So disregarding historical precedent, I accepted a part worn tyre from the “rubber expert” after sealing the previous incumbent of the rim in a locked box marked “Under no circumstances, open before summer 2012“. Heading back out with the attitude that it couldn’t be any worse, my joy at a fantastic moon-lit ride was occluded by a pea souper of Dickensian proportions.
High powered lights are pretty useless in these conditions. For all of their technology and night-sun reach they lack a fog setting and are merely reflected by the clamping fog. The first descent perfectly skewered the Venn intersection of Danger/Blindness/Sort of Fun. It is known merely as “terror“. A quick “fuck that for a game of soldiers navigational conference” saw us dropping into cheeky wooded singletrack right on the cusp of usable traction.
Great fun especially if you make motorbike noises as the back end steps out. Important not to take yourself too seriously at times like this. I mean we’re a bunch of middle aged me plastered head to foot in slurry while everyone else is tucked up in front of the X-Factor. Hah, more fool them.
I didn’t crash. Everyone else did. This cheered me up enormously as did the lack of landmine action with the new tyre selection. Less joy was derived by the pre-loved tyre puncturing in spite of my mincetastic, brake-heavy riding. It was at this point I realised I didn’t have a pump. Which became less of an issue when it became apparent I didn’t have a tube either. Saved only by those very mates I was laughing at earlier.
And, to be fair, there was a bit of an Atmosphere after Martin and I refused to follow a man training hard for next years Time Trial Season back into the hills. While Mr. Labrador seemed keen and determined to fetch the entire North end of the Malvern Hills, we felt that time had already passed Beer O’ Clock. He did go for some distance before accepting that our mugging “You’re going the wrong way” wasn’t some kind of motivational instruction.
All’s well that ends well. Which of course it did, because being out with your mates in shitty conditions means guilt free school night beer and affirmation that Gyms are for people who don’t understand that outside is always more fun than inside.
What’d have been even better was a weekend in Coed-Y-Brenin currently being ripped up by the boys from the Forest. Sadly, and in an entirely unexpected turn of events, work got in the way and I had to quit before a pedal was turned. Still I’m sure they’ll tell me how great it was. At some length 😉
* The chronological evidence suggests the answer may be that it was exactly two weeks ago.
** First bike I ever had was shod with “Tioga Pyschos” – never had a product been so aptly named.
This is about as much fun as a middle aged man can have armed only with a spade, a small bicycle, a wood with a status of “probably legal” and an afternoon running away from other stuff that is apparently more important.
More important than riding bicycles? A strange concept that resonates somewhere between “hollow” and “not at all” in my world. So armed with a mate, a foldingentrenchmenttool and a mental age of about 7, we set about clearing trails in a bijou landscape filled with bomb-holes, steep sided run-ins, leaf-fall and apparent abandonment.
For about three years, the mutt and I haveperambulatedalong the main track, occasionally exploring by shuffling down banks and fighting through brambles. At no time have I come across anyone showing an interest in the acres of non-coppiced trees, or – in fact – anyone at all. One snowy December, twenty happyminutes were passed by Murf and I arse surfing down the banks into the bomb holes. It’s may not be much of a wood, but it feels like mine.
Surroundedby larger wooded areas – all of which are filled withpheasantshoots – and bookended by the main road in the valley and the crumbling one on the ridge, this little bit of green seems largely forgotten and neglected. So perfect for some trail poaching.
In my lunatic cross-bike days, trails were scoped out but largely ignored mainly through fear of death. And with so much brilliant riding 20 minutes away, it’s easy to understand door step ignoration of something half as good but twice as convenient. But today we had a proper look and were consumed with “Line Disease“*
Poaching trails not entirely without cheek has a certain etiquette. Pitching up sporting petrol driven chainsaws for example is frowned upon. As is chopping down anything that’s still alive, although selective pruning is fine. Drop-Shipping home built planks and north shore isn’t on at all, but smoothing soil over a likely stump is absolutely the ethos of cheeky trails.
We scoped a lot but built only a single trail before the call of night, tea and medals. It’s a pretty fun 20 second drop off the ridge, cranking right between two trees on off camber loam, bit of speed into a corner needing a berm and then two jumps, the first little, the second merely a trail pimple.
But with a bit of thought and a lot of effort, there is a loop to be made here. It might not be the 100k of sublime singletrack hidden in the Forest or the steep and deeps of the Malverns, but it’s right on my doorstep and I’ve a winter to get through.
My deeply held view of legally-ambivalent trails is simply this; we’re not destroying anything, we’re not breaking anything, we’re not nailing stuff to trees**, we are merely making use of dead space, forgotten land, abandoned acreage. I almost think of it as a public service – although I accept other views are available. Wrong, but available.
But the very best thing about creating something from nothing is this; while you may be 44 on the outside, it males you feel about 11 years old. And only someone with a less developed sense of humour than an accountant would see this as a bad thing.
* Many MTB’rs suffer from this: Look at something clearly unridable by you, stroke chin, rotate wrist 90 degrees describing the line through a shark like wiggle of the hand and declare “that’ll go”. Pause. “Probably“. Pause. “Fancy trying it first?”
** Until recently, a practice exclusively left to Christians and Canadians.
What we’re not talking about here is my endless quest for the the “right” tyres, or some nonsense around “rebooting a franchise“of a tired old brand. The former, I’ve mostly given up on and now pursue a strategy based entirely on “what’s on the rim” while the latter is just marketing speak for “if you want some new ideas, you’d better pony up some more money. Lots more money”
What I am talking about is the search for lost cycling Mojo. Which was last seen back in April just before I spanged my elbow, and has only surfaced through fleeting sightings since. For which I’m entirely blaming having to travel to London. Because otherwise it might be my fault, and we can’t be having that.
London is toxic in all sorts of way beyond just the fug and smog of ten million nutters. It has engendered sufficient evening of benderage that means – even if I live another 50 years – my liver will never be a candidate for transplanting. And outside of treating boring hotels with liquid medicine, the early mornings, late nights, crap food snatched at stupid hours ruined my riding week. And London extended way beyond geographical boundaries however much I kidded myself otherwise.
Excuses not to ride were not just vocationally based. Other stuff to do at the weekends, sometimes with family, occasionally with paintbrush, probably too often on a hillside hunting down composite shards. And even on the bike, it wasn’t always as enjoyable as I remembered. Road biking nudged in for a while until the Dartmoor was done, after which the road bike came out exactly once in three months.
I wondered about this. What was missing from my cycling experience. And came to the worrying conclusion it was me. Or at least my enthusiasm and drive to get off my arse and go do stuff I’m sure I loved. Riding is always better than not riding – that’s an established “fact” here on the hedgehog, but sometimes rings a bit hollow from the comfort of a sofa.
It could be the repetition of too many tyred old rides. It could be the pace, too slow or too fast. Let’s be honest here, too fast is probably the issue. Once the goal isn’t some kind of peak fitness, the whole blowing it out of your arse suddenly looks a bit silly. It’s like those lists that you will never every get done. There is no finishing line, no point when you can put your feet up and say “I’m done“, no time when you ride because you absolutely want to rather than because you feel you should.
Whatever it is, a few things will change. Or be added. Injuries in my case, a couple which have slowed me down even further. So managing muscle groups against the twitch has seen me taking the climbs a little easier and trying to make up the time on the descents. Given a choice between riding with my friends or riding with the kids, I’ll go for the latter option every time. The road bike has a place and that’s not hung on the wall. It’s great for that stolen ride when you need to create that space in your head, and as an antidote to a winter of drudgy mud.
But mostly the change will be about what I’m riding for. I’ve never been short of guilt (either perceived or warranted) as a motivation for all sorts of stuff, riding included. Every ride is one that you won’t be able to do when you’re old(er) and (more) decrepit and should be viewed thus. We’re stupidly lucky to be able to combine our love of the outdoors with bikes.
Tucked away in doughy cerebral loaf are a number of passably articulate posts. They include the rather racy “we’re all cyborgs now“* requiring translation from a spidery scrawl- forced upon me by our continuing love/no love relationship with the Internet. Directly related is a spittle-flecked invective-fuelled open letter to Ian Livingston, apparently head gibbon at the gloriously incompetent BT. This sweary rant has the potential for a few laughs especially if you find pithy offering such as “what the fuck were they doing back there? engaging in a spot of unionised dwarf tossing” amusing.
It’ll make some kind of sense with a little context. Possibly not too much.
This is none of those things. The closest it comes to previous rambles is the shameful photologue** cataloguing the rambling pantheon of my bike collection. In that it dusts off some pre-digital photography, lampoons my many dodgy parts within the frame, and wistfully recollects halcyon days with a focus on jumpers-for-goalposts, respect-for-your-elders beer-at-a-pound-a-pint, rickets and the poorhouse.
Cast your mind back to 2002. A year – for me – much closer to 30 than 40. Still on the backslide of trying to save the world by depriving it of alcohol, and newly obsessed with two wheeled mud plugging. Beer and Bikes at the NEC MBUK show intersected with the Macmillan Cancer stand and a thirst for some new adventure.
That adventure proved to be closer to home than we suspected. On falling through Mike’s front door to be confronted by both our watch typing wives, we drunkenly explained that – in less than six months – we’d be off to Ecuador having raised vast amounts of cash for a fantastic charity, and – in my case – abandoned the mother of my very, very young children. This unexpectedly did not play well. While you wince and tut, I may as well add “missing Jessie’s first birthday” and “explaining it didn’t matter as she wouldn’t notice” to the lengthening charge sheet. But we badgered on, entirely free of guilt, and eventually received grudging approval.
First some basic maths. 1000 kilometres, 11 days, mostly road, middle of the monsoon season. Fly into Quito (via Spain, that was one hell of a trip in itself), ride to the pacific. All sorts turned up, proper cycling men and women with gleaming bikes (me, natch: shame about ruining it with the yellow tyres) to bar-bag strapping recreational riders having no clue at all what a 100k a day does to your arse. And that’s before the suspected dysentery.
It was quite a trip. 100 people stuck in a bubble for two weeks. This was pre-smartphone so we didn’t get too much iPhone separation angst, but it still messed quite severely with your head. Stuff that was previously complex and important proved to be mirrored smoke, instead we lived simply and prayed for the rain to stop, paying (in rum) for others to pitch your soaking tent, pitting desperately tired legs over proper mountains, firing down tarmac roads outbraking the huge trucks into the bends and forging amazing relationships in a shared white hot experience.
And shitting in holes in the ground. And Dodging mosquito’s the size of sparrows. And eating terrible food. And suffering horribly with “the runs” that make every previous dose of diarrhoea seem nothing worse than cutting a noisy fart. And with all of that and more, it was an experience that I can feel/taste/smell/see as I write these words and look at those images. And it becomes evidently clear that we don’t get enough of those.
The sense of achievement as we hit the pacific – and then hit the bar twice as hard – is indescribable. And I’m not being semantically lazy here, especially since somehow I was the first one home, five minutes ahead of everyone else having gone a little mental in the last 30ks. Beer in hand, toes in the ocean, sun on my back, maelstrom in my head, it really did feel like being between two worlds. One that was new and fresh and impossibly exciting, against the old version that felt small and silly and a little bit hateful.
That trip taught me many things. How insanely fucked up the world was in terms of the have-lots and have-nothings. The way kids are the same the world over, every hopeful and always laughing. Unless the poor bastards were crawling about in the dirt and starving. The unfathomable greed of Western oil companies. The endless, wearisome corruption of governments and those who govern in their name. What a bloody disaster the deforestation of the rain forest was, but just how much was left.
It also taught that me stupidity has no limits, and neither does mankind. It made me grow up a bit and realise that black and white are merely shades of grey depending on who is doing the talking. That right and wrong don’t really exist, the best you can do is find a decent place to stand. So when watching only-slightly-grown-up kids shifting oil with their bare hands for $7 a day I thought that was terrible.
Until they explained that this was “proper money” and – while it may shorten their life by 30 years – it gave them access to western consumerable shit; playstations and the like. That shouldn’t make you sad, it makes you so bloody angry that we’ve got the poor fuckers coming and going. Then I came home, full of the righteous urge to do something about it.
I did. Forgot about it mostly. Maybe changed the way I looked at the world and that’s a good thing. And it started me writing properly. Which may not be. There’s 10,000+ words*** on my hard drive recording the whole trip; some building rants and right-on observations, while the rest appear to be documenting poo-pits and how shit tents are.
And because I’m stupidly busy leaving one job, and trying to work out what the fuck I might do next, I feel a few well chosen chapters could fill the gaping maw of vanity publishing.
Sod the content, smell the whiff.
* a concept explained to me by my friend Will. Will – be clear that’s the only namecheck you’re getting. Everything else written on the subject shall be unashamedly plagiarised.You should know my lawyer is so genetically close to a shark, he has suit-fins. Consider yourself warned 🙂
** Not a word? Must be. If not, damn well should be. Surely there’s money to be made here. And it’s better than “Chillax“. And less likely to get the speaker silenced with an axe.
*** You think I’m wordy now? Christ I shall introduce you to some of my back catalogue. That’ll make you a bit bloody grateful for my more recent personal sub-editing.
During a long-forgotten bicycling epoch I think of as my “klepto-insanity” period, nine partially assembled MTBs covered a few niches and quite a lot of floor space.
My coping strategy was to occasionally sell one, even more occasionally ride a few and far too often add yet more by simply mixing eBay with beer. After a particularly difficult whittling session, this approach left me with four 80mm forked hardtails. Two of which had only one gear.
I cherish the memory that my honing strategy had cured me of bicycle buying obsession. Which it had in the same way a 50-a-day man proudly explains – while not exactly stopping – he’s cut down. To 48.
The revolving door acquisition policy now mostly rotates around a paltry remaining five. Four of which have realised “faithful old retainer” status after clicking round multiple years. And the young buck of the bunch celebrates a year in the shed next month. This happy news is somewhat mitigated by it being a second road bike of course.
But Woger Wibble has been the mainstay of my commuting life, and the second incarnation of the ST4 the same when dirt is involved. The Boardman only comes out on sunny days, the little DMR diminished to a kids accompaniment, and the Cove largely forgotten.
Until last week. The Orange had put me into the red with post Pyrenean component replacement, and was left sulking in Nic’s workshop waiting for, well, everything to be fixed. So out came the Cove sporting ambitious summer tyres and spiky flat pedals.
The occasion was my birthday; a ride which started in the Forest and ended in the pub. As all proper rides should. 30km+ of lush singletrack finishing on the final descent of the new blue trail. It would have been a fantastic ride in any circumstances because dust, sunshine and drinking/ridding buddies will guarantee that.
Yet this felt rather special – and not just because of my surprise at being able to still turn the pedals having had another year creep up on me – a stolen ride, loafing about on deserted singletrack while others were at work, new trail nuggets being shown and falling back in love with my hardtail.
Far from my worries around a lack of talent compensation and unclipped feet being ejected trail front, the whole experience was nothing short of fantastic. I had forgotten the whole ‘corner by thought‘ tautness and simplicity of a well sorted hardtail. Sure you work a bit harder, but the reward is more than worth it.
Back on flats, I rode at least one nasty little roll down that’d have me pausing for thought on the ST4. And a light Ti frame draped with nice bits is pretty quick in any direction, including sideways on well sculptured berms.
More fun as well on the final rollers and zip-line like descent. Properly involving especially with the Avid brakes offering all the modulation of an rear thrown anchor.Over a number of beers, I enthused what a superb reconciliation ride that had been, and how the Cove would be the bike of choice for a while. If only to delay financial ruin triggered by endless bearing purchases.
That was a week ago. Since then I’ve ridden four more times. And every one on the newly repaired ST4. Come winter tho, the hardtail will be sacrificed to the gloppy gods.
And it does just go to show what we’ve always known; while all bikes are ace, some bikes are just more ace than others.
