At first glance you may struggle to see the similarities between the Brown government and, the man with an unhealthy interest in stuffing the hedgehog with all the trimmings. But if you retune your mental radar to abstract and your belief systems to suspended then – just there – crackling under a random synapse is the faintest of links.

While ol’ grumpy has under his command a widdle of power-crazy, greedy incompetents with a similar intellectual depth as a tea spoon*, I have one of these. So while Gordo may believe he is – borg like – creating the perfect political hive, I am striving to be an average rider supported by the gussets of a fantastic bike.

And while the Government flounces around looking for someone to blame, the SX gets me out of trouble time and again. The plate size rotors are so good at resisting arrest, it would take the entire Metropolitan Police Service to stop them. Probably by emptying the contents of a assault rife into their metallurgy innocent DNA.

And while the bike cannot spin – well not with me on it – it can carve turns at angles of lean way beyond my gyroscopic boundaries. In terms of policy initiatives it proposes a transport plan of hooning off in a downhill direction, while encouraging the voters to hang on for grim death. Niche admittedly, but not without merit.

I can’t remember which sanctimonious wanker sound bited “We are at our best when we are at our boldest” but I have sneaking feeling there may be something in that. Standing astride a stationary bike on the run in to the drop that properly broke me earlier this year, I had the fear. I needed to break the voodoo, I had to get over the irrational terror of crashing again. I wanted to get it done and move on.

But still I stood waiting for the kind of support that doesn’t smile in your face and stab you in the back. And the bike whispered “You may not be much good but I’m pretty bloody fantastic. Just limpit the pedals, death grip the bars, look anywhere but down and hang on. You deal with the edge in your mind, and I’ll deal with the one down there. Come on, let’s roll”

So we rolled and it was all good. And the inter-galactic glow from being bloody terrified but doing it anywhere propelled us to the 4X course. Now I don’t think the stuffed shirts of No.10 have ever ridden a 4X track – I’m sure they tucked into a few 4 course meals – but really, they should. Obviously it’s configured for grommety DNA with Jeans, Hoodies and outrageous skils. But even they grudgingly admire us earth bound misfits – clumsy where they are smooth and scared where they are fearless – because “hey most people I know that are as old as you are already dead”

Driving home, with rock music cranked up to warranty invalidating volume, I couldn’t help pontificating on the not very abstract that riding bikes is fucking ace. Maybe Brown should have take the cabinet on a Chicksands team building exercise. Let’s face it, they couldn’t do much worse, and it’d give the rest of us a well earned laugh.

* This is known as “a Government of all the talents” with no implied irony.

Last month my Inbox was full of blue sky and fantastic riding from the other side of the world. The photos were from my friend Doug Todd, and this is his report of the 100k event associated with those images.

I warn you now, there is much descriptive prose of glorious singletrack, super hot weather and miles of dust. If you don’t want to be reminded about exactly what summer is like, look away now. Otherwise over to Doug:

While many club members were enjoying a day out around Taupo, Mark Clansey, myself and 46 buddies from Vorb spent 2 days on fat tyres and plush suspension traversing the Queen Charlotte Walkway in the Marlborough Sounds. Vorb is NZ’s largest on-line cycling community (worth checking out at www.vorb.org.nz) and this ride is an annual event. The QCW is a shared access, mostly single-track trail across DOC and private land, one of the very precious few open to both walkers and Mountain Bikers. By foot it’s a 5-day trek, by bike it’s a tough but highly enjoyable 2-day ride.

Saturday Nov 24th dawned clear and calm and we were soon heading out by water taxi across the glassy waters of the Queen Charlotte Sound, bound for Ship’s Cove. Once off the boat, Ship’s Cove has one exit “ a 240 metre ascent, which is rarely ever ridden successfully as the average gradient is 1:3. Most of us walked the tough bits, and so 20 minutes later we summitted to spectacular views over the Queen Charlotte Sound. After a brief stop we tackled a pretty hairy descent back to sea-level, made more treacherous by DOC’s decision to improve the trail by loading it with gravel¦. Much mayhem ensued with tails of people sliding into the banks or off the edge into the bush. I’d fitted new carbon-ceramic brake pads the day before and they were literally smoking half-way down¦..

After a gentle climb back to 200-odd metres we then had another screaming descent into Furneaux Lodge. Quick recovery stop and then a 90-minute trek along the coastline with fabulous, technical singletrack to contend with. The water taxi collected us from Punga Lodge and we transferred back across Endeavour Bay for a night of tall tales and carousing at Furneaux.

Continue reading “Guest Poster – Queen Charlotte Ride” →

.. noise heard as the slapping of the prudence ruler connects with the face of the monetary blind. The complexity of a chain of correlated transactions involving frames owned but not bought, a road train of wheels and sufficient brakes to stop the world, cannot be easily explained.

All I am prepared to say – until the lawyer from the Enron trial comes on shift – is that this financially neutral covenant dovetails perfectly with a bicycle purchasing policy that is far too clever for mere mortals to understand.

Including me. Although my head is still spinning from removing the three ride new* singlespeed freewheel from its threaded prison. Great design in that it affixes itself ever more firmly to the wheel every time your turn the pedal. Making it an absolutely bugger to remove – honestly it’d be quicker to wait the few millennia for the surrounding components to rust away.

I’ve never seen the vice flex before, as I hauled on the wheel in the manner of a hairpin facing bus driver before the advent of power steering. And when the workbench began to twitch, so did I with the world rapidly slipping from focus.

First rule of committed physical tasks – remember to breathe. Second rule, consider the effect of potential energy as – with a satisfying ‘paaatang‘ – the sprocket is freed with a final violent wrench. I found myself turning perfect circles in an increasing ripple of perambulation.

My ‘Dancing with the Wheels’ foxtrot came to a painful end as the radius of my spin intersected with a spikey workstand. Didn’t stop me performing a little encore running around the barn – freewheel held aloft – chanting “got you, you little bastard, who’s the daddy now?”

I am now faced with a choice. Stalk Ernie the Postie on Friday and rush the build knowing I’ll probably need to remove/sell/rehome about half the components or wait and do the job properly. Oh yeah, fridge some beers and set the grinder to stun, we’re going in.

In almost related news, we’re having a frank and open discussion around sizes of things. Carol wants me to have a smaller one that’s easier for her to manoeuvre, while I’m keen on something both longer, wider and with a bit more grunt.

Once I accept that Camper Vans for driving around New Zealand are not scaled up mountain bikes, I’m sure we’ll come round to her way of thinking.

* It’s important to distinguish between “old and worn out” and “new and knackered” because the former adheres to some quality standards whereas the latter satisfies the modern law of cheap, shit, useless; pick 3.

As head slopper-outer of the dark and fetid corners of other peoples’ inbox’s, I feel I am suffering enough. But what – you may well ask – is my reward for this tireless mopping up such a litany of disasters? A thankful pat on the shoulder, perhaps? A kind word to still my weary angst?

Not a bit of it, that picture is what. Time differences with our antipodean cousins ensure that this image is projected up front and personal in my to do list. It was captured and digitally flung across the electronic oceans by my friend Doug. The fact he was just off the ferry on the South Island and heading into 100k of New Zealand’s best singletrack didn’t exactly make me feel better.

On the upside, in ten weeks we’ll be enjoying a similar view with – oh please let it be so – similar summer weather. On the downside, the world outside our door appears to have exploded. My commute is now jauntinally nautical with storm force gusts and horizontal rain.

I no longer corner, I tack. Tomorrow I may have a go at jibbing although I’m not absolutely sure what is involved in that procedure. Sounds vaguely sexual “Yes indeedy, I gave the wife a damn good jibbing last night“.

Right I’m off to baton down the hatches and splice the mainbrace. But in a contemporary twist, I shall be using powertools.

You may think – and the weight of evidence would be with you – that this blog is nothing more than a barren wasteland of desperate words, with occasional punctuation helicoptered in. And yet in a circumstances as mitigating as “it was dark, I was drunk, how was I supposed to know it was your sister?”, I offer up the post title as testament to the unheralded research and grinding attention to detail each article undergoes.

What are the chances of a rhyming quadlet** segueing from Alexander Pope*** to a braking system design to erode momentum regardless of lever position? Not bloody likely and that’s pretty much my purchasing attitude to any further products from that fabrication shed nestling in the Derbyshire hillside.

For those of you not afflicted with the incurable disease of mountain biking, Hope Technology produce all manner of interesting components including brakes with a default position of always on. No amount of shimming, swearing, beating with a mallet or – in desperation – prodding with a baked Spurnal (Capital Letters Fully Deserved) will release the needy pads from the spineless discs.

And while squeezing the brake lever does force the Vichy caliper to collaborate with the overrun pistons to bring a final ‘halt‘ to proceedings. This loftily assumes you are still in motion at this point, rather than resting quietly in a bush awaiting the arrival of an oxygen tent. El Verty Monstromo was pitched into the muddy bath of Chiltern trails after a week of rain. From which it emerged a couple of hours later fairly plastered – a state its’ rider was now thinking of as much needed therapy.

The retarded rotation made the climbs a little harder, the descents less freewheel friendly and the occasional flat bit rather overwhelming. The mud didn’t help much. Or the cold. Or my frankly whiny attitude brought on by the mardy realisation that everything brake fixing was not about my person. Still with the gurning, swearing and grunting, there wasn’t much room for it.

It was still great though. Frosty in the first half, wearyingly thawing in the second, my pal Dave and I romped over some favourite trails knowing that twelve hours of drinking lay ahead. A 40th birthday bash which passed from drunken into legend – around 8pm – when the band struck up with “You’ve lost that loving feeling“. Too damn right, plus any feelings of maturity, responsibility and balance.

I don’t remember much but that may not be enough to protect me from the advances in digital photography. I might as well give myself a kick in the Spurnals and wait for the worst.

* Spurnal (Spur-nl). Noun, Verb – eld -ing or led.
1. A little known vegetable found only in Yorkshire. EX: He was found dead hanging by the spurnels.
2. A now defunct Irish sport derived from the petting small furry animal and gailic football.
3. A disc, specifically a steel braking surface for a mountain bike
4. A lie.

** I’m on a ROLL here.

*** This one is true I promise.

At what point do we stop going home? This isn’t some kind of existential probe of a mental navel encrusted with half-baked, self important cheesy life metaphors. There will be plenty of time for that sort of thing later. No, the idea of home shifts on foundations that prove remarkably yielding when exposed to distance and age.

No longer is the Peak District home in terms of houses, streets, people or parents. And yet, there is a certain straightening of the shoulders, a thickening of the accent and a hiding of the wallet that’s triggered by entering the mortal Pearly Gates of “Welcome to Derbyshire“. But that has almost nothing to do with being here as a kid or a yearning for halcyon days; it is a contemporary recognition that the adrenal gland is about to get a good shooing.

Heretics may offer false Gods while talking up their own riding spots, but this rocky parcel of middle England represents the epicenter of mountain biking in the UK. And to quiet the wailing of those damned to ride elsewhere, let me explain why. You could persuasively argue that nowhere in the peaks lays out endless woody singletrack, or that it lacks trail variety or the sheer popularity of the national parks dulls the pleasure of riding.

And you know what? You’re absolutely right. But this place is like a traction beam to me – every time I hit the trails, I’m blown away by the elevation, the challenge, the bravery needed to conquer the rocky tracks and the rugged beauty of a three hundred and sixty degree panorama. You are not the king of the dirt here because every descent is an act of survival, every climb has the potential to break you, and the weather changes fast enough to render you cold, wet and frightened.

It’s just about perfect and while riding bikes is great, writing about them can be repetitive. Or dull. Or if you have a certain talent, both. So, on a gray day, clamped in rain cloud and promising nothing but cold, flat light and windy bleakness, let me just tell you about the last descent of our ride.

This is standard Peak District fare – rocky avenues policed by slabby sleepers and rewarding pilot error with hard times on sharp edged gritstone. Even in the softer, southern Derbyshire Dales, you must relax your limbs but not your mind. Complacency or contempt will deliver the kind of pain which familiarity breeds.

And yet We were tweaking the nose of terror by testing our steely metal in hardtail form. Yet failing to match my friend Nigel, I cast around for advice on what I was doing wrong. “You’re just not riding fast enough” was a response that caused me to nod in a “good point, well made” manner.

My badly written lines through sunken, rocky motorways – broken by glacial action – resembled a child following a particularly tricky dot to dot pattern. This awesome display of spacial awareness combines a fixed stare just beyond the front wheel, and a refusal to believe that the bike may be about a million times more capable than the pilot.

Flipping the mental mirror, I ignored the lesser lights of past performance and searched for some inspiration from a million airline movies. “We’re a mile from the car park, it’s raining, we’ve got five inches of suspension travel and we’re wearing sunglasses” seemed close enough as my friend Andy “John Belushi” Hooper sent three hard pedal strokes and a committed expression downhill at the speed of scary.

I dropped in behind and spent the next three minutes plagurising his lines in between remembering to breathe. The trail reeled out a rock strewn ribbon on a perfect elevation; steep enough to encourage floating over braking, but shallow enough to give up the height in lung busting longevity. There is an fat tyred myth that faster is better; lighten the bike through perfectly timed weight shifts, think nothing of boosting over a jagged drop into a cluster of loose rocks and brake only when every other option has gone.

It’s a high risk strategy on a single sprung end but it’s a good one. With speed comes gyroscopic effect and with that comes stability. Then you focus completely on momentum and lines; ignore what’s three metres away – you have a big fork and suspension limbs to deal with that – look up and out at the blur of never ending trail. Feel the bike spring and squirm in the great game of rock, bravery and wizards. Right now, that wizard is Andy and he’s picking insanely good lines at high speed whilst I’m doing nothing more than desperately hanging on to his splattered coat tails.

Internal commentary records the unfolding action: “fuck that’s loose, shift weight NOW, drop coming, shiiiiiiit, bang, foot back on the pedal, fade to the outside, pump that, lift over this, push hard on the bar and feel the carve, get back now, shit that’s the fork bottoming out, look up, look up, walkers on the trail, push left, push right, they’re gone, set up for that lip, bollocks it’s big, too late now, silence, silence, Jesus I’m a passenger here, hold on tight, gate coming up, brake, brake, brake HARDER, clip gate post and it’s done”

And laugh. And thank God you’re alive and unbroken. And bask in serial hits on the adrenal gland. And try to distill why a cold day, a muddy facepack, a wet arse and a three hour drive home make this worthwhile. The sum is so much more than the parts, even when another friend tells me this descent broke the arm of one rider and sent another into the river on the same ride.

But so what? If I can’t do this then what is the point of staying fit, breaking bones, being an absent parent and treating too much stuff as Any Other Business? Answer, none.

Riding in the peaks is like coming home. There’s a part of me which never left.

A few more photos here.