That’s Frank, Jay, Jason, Nigel, Alex and Timmy the spare liver. We’ll be frolicking around in mid wales with lashings of ginger beer later. In between there may be some riding over glacial remains of high valleys, thousand year old peat bogs and recently crashed mountain bikers. It will look a little like this:

Only not really because the forecast talks of other types of precipitational lashings which may raise the water table slightly over the height of the trails. Never mind, expensive waterproofs and medical insurance should cover most of the bases.

And we musn’t go down the “hidden mechanical, faked injury, tea and cake all day” riding denial, as the Antipodean in our midst has already spotted entire flocks of sheep dressed as,er, lambs and is worryingly excited over the prospect of meeting them.

If at the foot of a descent, there is no sign of him, I expect the following conversation to ensue: “Has Jason Crashed? Nah, he’s pulled”

Assuming there is some improvement in the weather and Jason’s not been arrested, we’ll be off here on Sunday:

There may be some skills on show if any proper riders turn up, otherwise Photoshop offers the valid alternative.

Before we leave this evening, I need to fix my bike. It barely works now but history suggests, it’ll work even less once I’ve crafted deep wounds with edged power tools. Probably best to leave it alone.

Well jumping bunnies anyway. Bunny Hops? Make sense? No? Never mind, only took me ten minutes to think it up.

I appear to have unwittingly signed up to a skills timeshare. Some poor sod has been saddled “ or possibly unsaddled “ with two weeks of crashing and excuses while first trackstands and now bunny-hops have been enjoying an autumnal holiday round my place. I’m concerned that soon he’s going to want those skills back.

However, in the meantime, I could best be described as insufferably smug. For veterans (and I thank you for your continued support in this ˜care in the electronic community‘ project) of this blog, you’ll be well familiar with the ground state of self parody. I like to get in there first so to speak, but also the crushing embarrassment of ever pretending I was any good at, well, anything rightly kills boasting at source. And yet this time a feeling of smugness remains; it’ll all end in tears of course, and probably injury, ridicule and humiliation at the feet of complete strangers. Well, that’s something to look forward to.

In the meant time – bunny-hops, a skill almost anyone with a bike and a single digit age has long perfected. Extremely useful for clearing obstacles such as curbs, logs and vertically challenged pedestrians. It’s only taken me a year to perfect, not one, but three special adaptations of the traditional style. On approaching the obstacle, either:

1: The front wheel remains stubbornly glued to pavement despite spirited grunting, whilst momentum speeds it effortlessly to hit the obstacle square on. The rider instantly dismounts frontwards to hit square concrete some painful distance away.

OR:

2: The front clears the obstacle leaving, this time, the rear to spend quality time at ground level. Inevitably this wheel clips the obstacle in a pacy, vertebrae crushing manner. See adaptation 1: for likely ending.

OR as happens most often:

3: The front rises, like an arthritic elephants trunk, to an epic six inches. A desperate forward lunge unweights the rear sufficiently for it to scrape over the obstacle. The bike then drops vertically hitting the ground to the sound of screaming components and ankles. Around 50{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} of this adaptation finish with the rider lying on the pavement demanding hospitalisation for broken limbs.

This has become somewhat vexing so advice was sought from the anti-grav crowd; Get it up and keep it up” was offered and, while we’re good friends, this felt a little personal. But keep it up I must, so my bunny-hop Viagra was a pedal scooping arc joined by a committed spring backwards raising the front a frighteningly high distance from terra firma.

Once the wheel is scrabbling for the moon, a somewhat lewd rotation of wrists and a retraction of lower limbs unsticks the rear. If you like a righteous life, it will lift and you will fly.

Okay it’s not the 12 inch high obstacle I was aiming to clear; in fact it’s barely 9 inches and it’s been a while since I’ve been able to feel disappointed with that but, compared to playing urban concrete head tennis, it’s progress of a sort.

An art “ you would have thought – as distanced from me as are crayoned scrawls to Monet. Recent history shows me on medication more often than on the bike, and frequent trips to the doctors, the hospital and the shrubbery do little to detract from this picture.

However, if at first you don’t succeed, merely redefine your success criteria. In this case rather than falling off at speed, I’ve seamlessly transplanted my skills to falling off more slowly. Remember my street riding experience being frustrated by an inability to enter the world of string and wires? A world where gravity is optional and graceful slow speed exits from high places end with the merest waft of a landing rear tyre. Not my world, I’m barely even a jealous orbiting moon.

Oh I can slam dunk a few bunnyhops before the inevitable pinchflat. I’ve been known to ride slowly off walls although heard is probably a better adjective. It’s like an aerobatic stall turn without the turn as my nose, navigating a heading due south, plunges groundwards to land at expensive dentistry. Saved only so many times by big forks and the power of chance “ it was time to shape up or, more likely, give up.

Good advice is something I find easy to ignore but in this case, the simple instruction to start small and work up made perfect sense. Although I’ve generally been a start small and work down kind of guy until now. The base of many gravitationally illegal moves is centred around balance, but since my inner ear only talks to my other balance centres through lawyers, I’ve favoured gyroscopic effect over stationary magic.

And yet the simplest balancing skill is the track stand; where your bike remains almost motionless at zero miles per hour. You’ve probably seen stationary bike couriers supping coffee and rolling fags while their bike sits under them like a favourite armchair. If you noticed a bloke rolling randomly forward and backward, grabbing first brakes then a legful of crank before falling into the gutter, then that was me. Thanks for your sardonic applause.

Falling over here. Very bad indeed.

First lesson, no brakes. Roll to a stop using a slope to still momentum and then engage 23^rd century anti-grav. If that isn’t available, shove front wheel one way and hips (they mean arse, come on be honest here, it’s a big counterbalancing body part and should be used appropriately) the other. Rock gently forward and back on the pedals and marvel at staying level rather than crashing to ground level.

Obviously it took me a while. Well about 30 years since riding first entered my life but concentrating so hard on a monster 45 second trackstand, I didn’t notice a dog walking couple in awe of my skills. Until he uttered from about two feet away I wonder how he does that“. I was by this time chewing berries in the verge as my trials status came to an unplanned and abrupt end. They wandered away looking over their shoulder, proud to have been present at the inaugural fakie track stand to holly bush, extreme swearing to finish“

Flushed with success, a flowing coasting manual followed which promptly dumped me on my counterbalancing body part. That’s the problem with gravity, it waits for a moment of boastful overconfidence and hurls you onto your arse.

Life mirroring art? Life mirroring gravity more like.

It’s a direction in which I cannot really turn.

Not sure if you’ve noticed but it’s pretty dark out there. Most of the time now it seems and the clocks have yet to as retarded as BST-1 actually is. Autumn is here, and with it final garden maintenance shackled to the ˜mower than will not die‘ stubbornly ripping up the lawn in a non collection style. What remained was about a ton of wet grass and nowhere to put it, offering up the joyless prospect of a long hard afternoon with a spikey rake.

Sod that, moss is the new lawn, I’m went riding instead. And since the Autumn Chilterns are twinned with a easterly valley centred around Passchendaele, the local trails are sliding around below a layer of bike eating mud. Thankfully these conditions don’t tend to extend beyond spring, or early summer at worst.

So a exciting trip to Bedfordshire with planned; now there’s a phrase you’re not likely to hear very often is it? Oooh Flitwick, Can we go? I really can’t wait, can we go now, please, pllleeaaasse�”. Only an inspired piece of urban planning involving a large uncontrolled explosion could improve the place. But in this flat land of dull, lies the cheery little hillock of Chicksands, a riding spot where woodwork rules the woods, air is the new ground and ambulances are on standby.

Last time out, a very large bike allied with a very small amount of bravery launched me over the log-drop. Since then, a small accident I may have mentioned, did rather more long term damage to my head than my knee. Cornering has been a problem exacerbated when the trail leans left, I tend to lean straight on instead, ploughing headlong into a waiting tree on the grounds it’ll probably be less painful. However many times I tell myself tree bad, corner good“, the message just isn’t getting home.

The only corners at Chicksands are generally bermed allowing even Mr. Timid here to corner by essentially riding into them. So all that time and effort headbutting trees has not been entirely wasted.

Continue reading “What’s left?” →

Random construction of never ending sentances can be found on the excellent MTB site that is BikeMagic.

It’s all post crash headgames on the flint opening trail.

Saves me having to write anything for a bit.

I hope you’ve noted the seamless evolution of the medical title theme, started last Friday. It’s not all beer and skittles in here you know “ rather a more complex game of blogging chess where moves have to planned three posts ahead. It’s hardly classy to juxtapose grouting lyrics with a forthcoming anal probe reference. You would be rightly irked by such lazy linkage and on that tangential note, here are some words that should never be seen together.

Marketing Budget, Holiday Slideshow and, my personal Armageddon, Alcohol Shortage. Feel free to add you own while I suffix Weather Forecast to this list of unholy couplets. The finest computers which advertising revenue can buy, predicted firstly dry but cold conditions, then localised flooding before settling on dreary and prolonged showers. These meteorological charlatans have clearly shunned their electronic doomsayers in favour of a glance out of the window following an intense study of the tea leaves.

We had a fantastic ride in what are considered the lesser lights of the Peak District. A cheeky route plotted by Andy TrackLogs” Shelley “ a man who has spent three years hunched over a computer developing mapping and GPS software. It was with a little surprise and not some alarm, we noted his total lack of navigational aids other than Google maps. This Guerrilla niche double bluff marketing is clearly more subtle than I thought.

Continue reading “Feeling Peaky.” →