Mountain Biking is just not cricket. Although some trappings and traditions do cross over such as stopping for a nice lunch, and being inconvenienced by the occasional stump impact. Anyway, before the somewhat deceitful portrayal of my latest riding heroism, it’s worth a brief synopsis of what I’m calling ‘The Silence Of The Hedgehog’

Holidays, apathy, inability to sort through 2000 digital images, another birthday*, blank screen staring with cursor blinking on ‘Chapter 1‘ – that kind of thing. surprisingly it wasn’t just me that noticed although comments such as ‘Oh God don’t encourage him to write anything else‘ have hardly helped jump-start my muse. So here we are six weeks on, a bit rusty and creaky but winding out that same old stream of consciousness. Except for the terribly pretentious drivel composed on the day – or more accurately night – of my birthday, having staggered back into the house on a float of Merlot.

I’ve saved you from that. I’m hope you’re grateful. Carol had to read it and is still pointing and laughing now.

So returning from holiday and currently retired** after unsurprisingly stinting on absolutely nothing with particular gluttony reserved for (many) local beers, BBQ’d ribs and ice cream. This lamentable lack of self control has left me re-tyred with a midriff storing a couple of the additional kilos and the rest rounding off a pair of man boobs. No problem thought I, being essentially unemployed, every day is a riding day. Within weeks I’ll be a tanned and toned whippet beasting my youngers and betters whilst living healthily on berries and leaves and other things that don’t taste like Stilton.

Well my friends it’s not quite worked out that way. Two main reasons; firstly after returning from a land with only cloudless blue skies, the UK is clearly harbouring every other countries wet making equipment and chucking out 17 degree horizontal rain on a daily basis. This is not motivating. Not motivating at all. Secondly I’m so bloody busy doing nothing. Well not nothing but not anything that pays any real hard cash. Instead I’ve thrown myself into an orgy of manual labour where a smarter cookie would have replaced 19th century agricultural engineering with something sporting a scoop, hydraulic rams and a big bloody engine. Instead it’s been me, a fork and a losing battle against a million bastard plants hell-bent on causing death by stinging.***

Bored of that and in somewhat physical distress, I hobbled to the shed of dreams to deploy some bicycling therapy. First off was a trip to the woods on the trusty hardtail. A woods normally ridden rather lumpily on my cross bike which I’ve had to conclude isn’t a lot of fun. The Solaris was better, but still some way off the dopamine hit of my normal riding. Some of this is because the trails are overgrown/a bit wet/not very interesting but more of it is my riding pals. Or lack of them. As the bastards have apparently better things to do than ride with their mate.

How selfish is that? ‘Sorry Al can’t come riding at 1pm. I’m at work‘. That’s not an excuse, that’s an insult. Total lack of ambition if you ask me. Which I did since there was nobody else to talk to. Oh we’ve been out weekends but that’s just normal stuff you fit round work. For them it’s a paycheck, for me it’s the prospect of two more hours with my new four pronged friend while dreaming of Napalm.

Twice I’ve ridden on the traditional Sunday. Twice it’s pissed down. The second time I was managing that disappointment with many additional issues to deal with – specifically a hangover sharp enough to shave with, a stomach keen to rid itself of last nights alcoholic poisoning, a brain that was a second slower than it needed to be and limbs another second behind that. I spent most of the morning alternatively trying not to crash or throw up.

Today I picked a perfect weather window – in that it was open to let the rain in – and motored off to another wood to try my luck at solo riding. It’s nearly as far as the Forest or the Malverns so been pretty well ignored for a few years. But taught my kids to ride off-road here so it has good memories. Sadly those fading memories fail to cartograph the trail network leading to much cursing and now familiar evisceration from moist waist high brambles.

Then I found an oft-ridden trail. From there a spiders-web of damp tracks came flooding back. And new trails built by others for whom this is clearly their local patch. Including that jump on a revived trail recently destroyed by logging. By this time it really was pissing it down and the ‘trousers of excuses‘ was fully upholstered with ‘no knee pads/slippy wood/damp landing patch/recently healed ribs‘ etc. And, of course, no mates to spur me on or capture my heroism/demise.

Ummed for a bit. Stood on the end. Convinced myself it was bloody tiny – which of course it was – gave it the ‘getting it done‘ nod to let the obstacle know a veteran of the mountain bike scene was about to grace it with his presence. Clipped in, pedaled – not hard enough – felt the tyres squirm a bit but carried on regardless if a little slowly. Sort of fell off the end in a manner most likely to break a collar bone. Somehow managed to convert not enough speed into just enough flight to land safely if rather heavily.

Bah. Rubbish. Go back and do it again I said out loud to no-one. The whisper of the wind and the rain through the trees sounded like hissing. No, it really did. Riding on your own messes with your mind. I love trees and woods and forests. I’m a big old tree hugger. But today it was all bloody Heart of Darkness and brooding stumps. No matter, stop pissing about and get your aged carcass off that tiny jump with a bit of bloody committment.

So I did and it was fine. More than fine in fact. Bloody lovely. Until I landed onto a recently dampened earth-patch which had the frictional quality of glass. The next couple of seconds were far more exciting that I’d been hoping for. I wonder if a middle aged man makes a fool of himself in a Forest and there is no one there to see it, does he still feel like an idiot? I don’t wonder actually because the answer is absolutely he does.

I didn’t fancy a third attempt so drove home just as the sun came out. Sulked a bit until I found cake. Still beats working even if I’ve started talking to my front mech. That’s normal right?

* 47. Forty-Bloody-Seven. And what did I do? I went out and drank like a 19 year old only with a better wine selection. On being asked the following morning how I felt, the answer was either ‘every year of my age and then some‘ or ‘Chunderful‘. With great age comes great wisdom? Someone else has got mine.

** At some point I’ll find another contract. Probably at the point when we’ve started stealing and boiling the neighbours shoes for food.

*** I’ve started talking to plants as well. But not in the traditional encouraging manner. No it’s more of a John-Cleese inspired rant while stabbing them with sharpened garden tools ‘Right you bastard, I warned you, I bloody warned you, come back out of that freshly turned soil and you’ll be getting the rough end of my pitch fork’.

Today brings a real anddefinite need to recalibrate the irony meter. After a week of that ^^ sort of nonsense, I arrived back from the alps with a cemented and enduring love of the mountains, a noticeably 2nd hand mountain bike and – somewhat surprisingly – an entire body full of working limbs not disfigured with scar tissue. Riding the entire gamut of bike parks, walkers paths and unsighted trails on the cliff-edge of oblivion with nary a scratch.

And then today on local trails, I threw myself face first into the dirt off a rock step which conveniently bounced the bike into my shoulder and rib cage from a height best thought of as low earth orbit. An impact that has me taking shallow breaths, avoiding amusing joke punchlines and stabbing the speed-dial for my long suffering physio.

Funny eh? Possibly but I’m not laughing although that’s mostly bruised rib related. Fairly sure I haven’t cracked any as after a single sneeze earlier, I wasn’t immediately whisked into casualty screaming ‘the pain, make the pain go away‘*. Butyeah ride for seven days clocking up 220km and descending 20,000 metres of mind blowing trails with a side order of manslaughter,beforemonging oneself on a bit of singletrack dug out of a familiar forest does feel pretty stupid.

Howeveron a slighter deeper analysis, it’s not quite so simple. Start with this; the alps are big, steep and scary – from where you can draw a straight line to crashing which is equally big, probably for keeps and definitely scary. So the imaginative, fragile and often broken ring fence a safety zone around difficult obstacles by riding at 80{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} of what passes for flat out. This may feel like cowardice or excuses and it could well be either or both. But I’ll take a little angst and a larger gap to the fast riders if it means riding the next day.

Whereas my local trails are slightly less scary, significantly more familiar and ridden sufficiently often to forgo that safety net. Except when it’s a brand new sculpted earth snaking through a dank forest environment. Caused by some rain while I’ve been away which partially excuses my inability to ride the first rocky obstacle on sight. A second successful attempt reminded me that commitment matters as much here as it does in the big mountains, and much as I like my 29er it’s nowhere near as focussed as the Mega on the scary stuff. Which means I needed to be.

I wasn’t. A rock step which can either be launched or rolled slid into my narrowing vision at about the same time as the previous rider let out a slightly startled ‘wahhhhaaaah‘ as he successfully dropped off the other side. Well it’s ridable then. It might well be launch-able. But even with a week of alpine silliness, there’s a big difference between blind optimism and blind takeoffs. Roll it then. Roll it I did. Land it I didn’t.

“The line is to the left” was the helpful comment delivered some five seconds after it would potentially made a difference. The line to the right finished in a deep hole – partially filled with stagnant mud and apparently infinite depth. I finished in the same place having collected the spiky bits of the bike in the left hand side of my ribcage while a handy rock dealty my shoulder a bloody parcel of impact trauma.

Sat there for a while wondering when breathing might become a little less painful. Cursed myself for both a) a lack of commitment and b) a lack of sanity for attempting it in the first place which is essentially debating both ends of an argument with yourself. Possibly fell on my head 😉

Rest of the ride was fine. The previous couple of hours were great as well. Transformed my riding world from being a bit grumpy on account of a serious lack of proper mountains and chairlifts to just being contentrolling on mostly dry trails with the prospect of beer in the sunshine. Nurafen for the soul.

I expect tomorrow there will be some wincing, definitely some whinging, a whole load of ‘no honestly it was <——————–> big‘ hand gestures and perhaps a quiet moment wondering if it’s time to find out if DIY hammering your thumb is less painful than throwing oneself repeatedly to the ground. That’ll be a pretty short internal discussion and come Wednesday my focus will be on a mountain bike trail somewhere close.

My day job is all terribly rationale and logical. Evidential based decisions, carefully nuanced and packaged for the widest audience. That I can do with bruised ribs and a hurty shoulder. But it’s not real life is it?

* If you’ve ever cracked or broken one or more ribs, that’s pretty much your life for eight weeks.

Before we get to the riveting topic of holiday packing, I first need to share how our Cappuccino ownership ended. If you imagine a deleted scene from a budget parody of ‘Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels‘ you’d have about 90{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} of the content right there. In no particular order, the frame would be filled with a horse box, a woman touting a shotgun, a confused looking foreign gentleman, an envelope full of used notes, a man slumped – apparently dead – in his car and the comedic unroofing of the Suzuki by two people who showed no sign or aptitude of ever doing it before.

The shotgun was carried by the lovely Annabel who isfrom Liverpool. My brief yettraumatic experience of that city left me in no doubt that running round fully armed – potentially with some kind of Chuck Norris Backup – would be the only way to survive a day. However at 4pm in a windswept lay-by at the arse end of Herefordshire, my working assumption is Carol and I were soon to be bloodied bodies hidden in the horse box before being dumped into the uncaring Atlantic later that evening.

Explanations abounded for these strange circumstances, none of which made much sense to me but soon thethe envelope we’d marked ‘Canada Holiday Cash’ was handed over in return for keys, logbooks and a long explanation of the three card trick required to disarm the immobiliser. We left them attempting some kind of tiny-car feng shui – arranging shotguns, handbags and the confused looking fella into a space about the size of a well appointed bathroom cabinet. Not heard from them since – so either all is well or they’ve robbed the takings from Keele Servicesand are nowon the run in a Thelma and Louise style.

The unmoving fella in the car? Never got to the bottom of that. Annabel promised me she hadn’t shot him and since she was pretty well tooled up, I didn’t feel it was the right time to question her honesty 😉

Moving on and soon to be moving out. The random collection of detritus that’s fallen out of my bike gear store is definitely sending mixed messages. There’s lightweight summer tops buried under a collection of waterproof gear whichspeaks of a man unreconciled with alpine summers after last year. The glove collection is particularly telling – three meshed pairs designed for maximum ventilation rubbing fingers against full on winter gloves, coated with water repelling substances and designed specifically to retain all that lovely user created heat.

I’ve packed winter base layers, waterproof socks, three – THREE – waterproof jackets one of which can easily repel rain, snow and probably borders. I may be over-reacting to nearly freezing to death last year but would rather just put it down to experience. There’s a theme emerging as we segue into the extensive spares collection piling up in the back of Matt’s van. A van which is taking on more of an ‘A-Team’ motif every day with forks, brakes, wheels – so many wheels – tyres, chainsets, shifters and saddles, augmented by every tool known to man and some clearly stolen from aliens, more fluids than an A&E ward and strangely shaped objects the purpose of which entirely baffle me. Maybe it’s another shotgun.

It’ll probably all go in a bag. And maybe then fit into the back of the van. If not Matt’s got a tow bar and I’ve got a trailer. As for the pilot, well he’s reasonably fit for a specimen of such antiquity, and mostly uninjured. That was pretty much my plan on riding out the first day of 2014 and I’ve made good on promises to slog through many, many miles of shit and drudgery to get my withered body into the kind of state that might survive a week throwing it at mountains.

Preferably on the bike. If not, hidden in that clothing bundle, are knee pads, elbow pads and an armoured shirt best thought of as resembling a geeky man attending a TRON revival convention. All this pre-alps non-crash rhetoric failed to stop me wheeling the bike out for one more ride before our Tuesday departure. Longest day and all that* with the kind of perfect conditions entirleymissing for the last six weeks.

60{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} commitment on velcro-grippy trails passed a pleasant couple of hours and the Alps bike is running beautifully. I rode all the jumps and drops because it’s so damn good rocking off stumps and landing with barely a trail caress. And this is with me riding it. The man whose jumping technique was once memorably described as ‘drops like a feather…. attached to a rhino‘

Today I remembered my family might miss me a bit so we did lots of all that kind of stuff which probably fills the diary of those fathers not quite so obsessed, nowhere near as selfish and not desperately clinging onto something that’s probably long gone. Still as we’ve said many times before, no point dying wondering.

I am going out. I may be some Alp.

* That’s all I’m saying. If I even mention in our house ‘bah, the nights are drawing in already‘, my future existence hinges entirely on an abilityto dodge an angrily flailed rolling pin.

This is the ‘after‘ photo of my friends’ Jason’s mountain bike. I don’t have a ‘before‘ shot, and even so the medium of photography couldn’t begin to convey the horror that wobbled and graunched into Matt’s garage accompanied by a mildly injured Jason. He’d stuck a knife into his foot for reasons far too complicated to explain here, although it just about holds as a metaphor for what he’d previously done to the bike.

It’d hold a whole lot better if he’s accidentallybeaten himself mostly to death with rocks and stumps before immersing his remains in five metres of gritty mud for a year or so. In Jason’s defence his small London flat is missing any kind of space for mechanical maintenance. It does however have a space, or to be more accurate a sort of sunken gimp hole, into which stuff can be carefully lowered and abandoned.

Which is exactly what happened after last years Alps trip. Jas broke himself rather impressively after a single handed attempt to remove an ancient stump with most of hisribs. Some days before – ON HIS FIRST RUN – the poor old Spesh made something between a cry for help and a suicide attempt once a buckled chain ring died tryingto saw through a tired frame. This was fixed with big bolts and the same hammer later applied to a burping tyre and a set of wobbly pivots.

Jason reckons he was entirely responsible for his accident. The rest of us genuinely believe the bike went a bit ‘Christine‘ to get even. I was amazed we didn’t find it on fire. What I’m telling you here is it was fairly knackered on the first day and lamentably fucked by the end of the week. At which point it became a forgottendeposit in the gimp hole- whence it stayed until last week. Do you think it might have somehow ‘fixed itself‘ while being down there? In an environment best thought of a cross between Alec Guiness in the Hotbox and Steve McQueen with his baseball glove.

No is the answer. Well it’s a partial answer. The real answer is somewhat more lengthy and goes something like this; everything that was meant to move, didn’t. Everything that should have been tight was loose. Anything normally filled with wet oil was dry. Almost everything else was sprayedwith the emulsified detritusfrom previously sealed units. It was beyond seized because that noun suggests a long lost time when some venerable and ancient sage remembered it working.

You want specifics? Right then; the cassette was laughably wobbly not because of a lack of tightness, no more a lack of thread in the hub which had been stripped by the elliptical rotation of the wheel. A total of 10 bearings were all removed through the kind of excessive percussion last seen at an Anthrax gig. When Matt fired up the blowtorch, I wasn’t sure if those bearings were getting the heat treatment, or the whole bike was being torched in a Viking Burial type of ceremony.

Three hours and a few beers went by before something emerged we could actually bolt some new bits too. Quite an extensive collection of ‘The Shiney‘ was waiting to go – an entirely pristine 2×10 drivetrain, big brakes with those new fangled working pistons, a right-on trend short stem and wide bar and the enduro-favourite dropper post*. Which proved to be a bit longer than Jason’s leg leaving Matt to scratch his stubble before working outthepossibly optional components to remove.

While all the clever stuff was going on, I stripped the remains of the broken stuff including a bottom bracket that, to absolutely no gasps of amazement, was seized solid, and a set of forks which -against conventional wisdom – had all the lubricating oil on the outside. By about 11:30, we’d scrawled a list of missing parts to be collected from the bike shop come morning, and an even longer list of jobs which – for me – had ‘go home, get another beer in‘ underlined as a priority.

The next morning – having triaged Jason’s bloodied toe – we motored back to Matt’s where he was happily fillingforks where oil had allegedly once been discovered. A quick damage report suggested the rear hub was toast, but everything else could be mostly hammered back into shape. Two further trips to the bike shop and the loan of a spare wheel had us pretty much at the photo up there. Eight hours work turned something totally, completely and entirely fucked into something super plush and bloody good fun to ride.

And here’s a thing; Jason’s bike was manufactured around 2007. It’s a beautifully engineered frame with 160mm of travel both ends, great geometry, decent angles and all the kit you need to go ride in the big mountains. My Mega is not beautifully engineered, but aside from that it’s pretty damn similar to a bike seven years its junior in almost everything including weight. Aside from the weight saving of carbon**boutique-ness, one could reasonably argue that progress hasbeen overstated by the marketing cock-wombles.

And so it proved when we took it for a ride. Everything worked, it climbed absolutely fine and descended with some alacrity. It missed not at all fat head tubes, tapered forks, funny sized wheels and all that other bollocks we’ve been mainlining on a yearly basis. And now it’s ready to go to the Alps in two weeks in the perfect configuration and without worries about things falling off. Except for Jason, but that’s pretty much normal behaviour.

Sadly when we return, it’ll be another long spell in the gimp hole. I have a feeling forcing it back down there might be similar to coaxing pit ponies into a sun-less coal mine after their two week holiday outside in the fields 😉

* Jason only bought this because of my intense lobbying. One ride in he couldn’t work out how he’d ridden so long without one. They really are the bollocks of the dog.

** I cannot ever think of the word ‘carbon‘ without thinking of the words ‘shards‘. I’ll stick to metal thanks.

It’s been a while since I’ve had a proper crash. Which considering the asymmetry of the stuff we ride against the skill of the rider, that’s quite a surprise. Examples abound – from avoiding gap jumps due to the apparent need for wires and rocket boosters to getting them done in the dark*, and lobbing myself off increasingly uppity rock steps at a dusty Afan last week. I became aware of quite how big the last one was after my good mate Ian behind me explained ‘I decided to give it a miss after you disappeared from view‘.

So much of this is riding lots on fantastically accomplished mountain bikes with bloody good riders on increasingly risk/reward trails. But this isn’t progression, it’s the confidence/ability circle. And if your riding skills are basically a bit shit then eventually you’ll breach the stack radius. Been close a few times lately, deluded myself that honed bike handling skills were saving me, before truth drove itself into my skull through the simple method of beating it with slimy dirt.

Ironically it wasn’t even a big jump. Historically that’s not a surprise, I’ve been throwing myself dangerouslyoff stuff for many years, and yet persist in thinking eventually I might get good at it. Stiffening muscles and burgeoning bruises suggest otherwise. In fact it was such a tiny obstaclethe puny height suggested it was candidate for some of that mild front wheel tweakage the bigger boys are good at. Tweak I did, untweak before landing I did not.

Onto dirt that had until this point been pleasantly surprising in its non horridness after much rain. The patch I landed on however had morphed into something best thought of as moistglass liberally sprayed with silicon. An ideal place then to plant a slightly skwiff front wheel, which immediately displaced its unhappiness to the rest of the frame in the manner of a bucking bronco. For half or second or so, I stayed with it before being unceremoniously unhorsed out front.

The bike wasn’t done with me yet. Further displeasure could be measured at impact points of elbow, hand and – as always seems to happen – groin where various spiky components took their opportunity to exact revenge. External contributions to bruised body parts came in the form of various bits of dirt viewed in a sky-ground-sky-ground kind of way and an exposed root which thankfully impacted my knee pads rather than the delicate and important limb underneath.

I lay there for a bit. Damage report called in without anything critical although my bollocks were keen to express pain at a level last felt when a vicious free kick on a wet football field was bravely stopped by the left back’s unsuspecting testicles**. Friends being friends immediately dispensed all their pallative care on the bike while treating my injuries with laughter and piss taking. Since no sympathy was being shown to the pilot, I hauled myself upright at which point it became clear I’d hurt the bike a bit more.

The left hand side of the bar had hit the ground hard, and then attempted to pivot a 30lb bike and a rather heavier 165lb rider up the nearest tree. It failed but not before failing itself via a rather natty bend and crease. Matt’s professional opinion was ‘it’d probably be fine…. but don’t do any more jumps’. No danger of that sunshine for twosimple reasons 1) attempting to execute such a skill has just left me with a Viz Comic Buster Gonad Parody and 2) landing a jump thenhoisting a shattered handlebar end in some kind of suggestion of surrender before smacking myself into an unyielding part of the forest wasn’t terribly fucking appealing.

But thanks. That’s the kind of advice much needed at times like this. I soldiered on, uncomplaining*** riding around all the jumps and generally riding in the manner of a blind man recently introduced to the pastime of leisure bicycling. It’s unlikely anyone else really noticed but – here’s the thing – I did and in a good way. Not barrelling into corners at high speed before bottling it, grabbing a handful of Shimano and blowing the apex**** was mildly cathartic and slightly interesting. You can be smooth and fast, but not the reverse. There might be something in this if I could be arsed to practice proper braking, body position, that kind of thing.

Sounds like hard work tho so I think we’ll continue with the ‘clench‘ technique starting with brain, passing down to every limb before finishing with arse. Strangely in our interconnected world there’s no instructive videos on this technique – I know mysaved search on ‘crouching hamster, hidden terror‘ hasyet to receive a hit. Other than the trail. That hit quite hard in case I haven’t mentioned it.

The more frustrating thing was mincing around these jumps and drops while really wanting to chuck myself off them even based on very recent historical experience. There’s still much that scares me on mountain bike trails, but this stuff isn’t any of them. Yet a few years ago, that’s EXACTLY how I used to ride. Had I no idea what the hell I’d been missing? Clearly not but I missed it now which made this whole episode a bit of ‘crash and learn’

Crashing I can do. Learning I’m less accomplished at. Except for this; even as middle age suggests brittle bones, long recovery times, sport ending injuries and all that grown up shit, I just want to ride my bike better than I did last week. Even if I’m just kidding myself. But there has to be a point at which you stop starting. When the risks heavily outweigh the rewards. It might be death by a thousand cuts – backing off more and more until you’re so filled with self-loathing you can’t face being undeniably shit on trails which previously raised you to adrenaline Valhalla.

That day will come. It wasn’t today. And it doesn’t feel close. It’s almost worth stacking to find that out.

* One tiny helmet light. Following someone with a better one. A manoeuvre clearly perched right on the line between bravery and stupidity.

** Must be twenty years ago. Still remember it like yesterday. Rather wish I didn’t.

*** Ish. For me anyway. I only mentioned it every 30 seconds or so.

**** Perfectly legal as long as no minors are watching.

Or more specifically, out. Which, again if we’re striving for any kind of semantic accuracy, was a right bastard. And a left bastard. Bastards all round really. Odd really since the Pyga has clearly been carefully designed to continueworking after the purchase transaction is completed*. There’s clever little design touches tucked away all over the frame – from neatcable routing solutions to delightfully thought out pivots and bearings. The covers of which are stencilled with the recommended torque setting – sadly merely code for the mechanical savages amongst us to lean on a long lever until muscles start to shake.

The main pivot bearings though must have skipped all of that design process nonsense – so while proper engineers rotated 3D FEA models searching for perfection, some lowly oik wieldedthe ‘bearing nuancing tool’** and twitted the bloody things into place. Which was absolutely fine until the frame was campaigned through a British Winter short of snow but long on rain, wet, damp, mud, rain, crud, rain, downpours and – if I’ve failed to get my point across, endless fucking rain. The bike didn’t requirea sealed bearing cover, it was much more in need of a twin and an arc.

All of which took a disastrous toll on a bearing pair located at mud-shit ground zero, and further abused by endless post ride hosing best thought of as ‘I know there’s a bike under there somewhere’. I probably left it too long because a) preventative maintenance is boring b) it looked hard to fix and c) how bad could it possibly be? Because of a) and b) c) was unsurprisingly ‘quite bad indeed‘ as discovered after removing the shock and finding the swing arm didn’t move much. And when it did, the noise and grittiness would – were it a human – suggest booking an emergency limb replacement.

It still looked hard to fix, so I handed it over to a proper engineer in the form of Matt and his ‘garage of ArchaeologicalSignificance‘*** My contribution was to buy some replacement bearings and remove bits of the bike in a Russian-Doll manner until the problem could be reached by a decent sized hammer. Which Matt wielded with much skill attempting to chase about a millionth of an millimetre’s worth of bearing race out of an entirely seized housing. Steel rusts fast in Aluminium and at one point, when we’d run the full gamut of tool selection, I wasconsidering explosives.

Eventually through careful but repeated twatting of fragile unobtaium, what was once a bearing flopped apologetically on the floor where it was immediately lost to the sawdust and oil monster. I cast about with no thought of personal danger as Matt explained we’d need to somehow reuse some of the remains. While he did stuff with files and vices way above my pay grade, I spent a happy half an hour whipping off bearing covers and filling them with what was allegedly some space age grease, but to the uninitiated had a far closer affinity to strawberry jam.

Some kind of home-brew bearing press was, er, pressed into action to carefully insert the strawberry spheroids which didn’t work at all. So instead Matt selected a hammer from his extensive range and careful swung from a great height to ensure a ‘tight interference fit’. My only job was to reassemble the bike from various parts now flung to all points in the workshop, and ensure important bolts were nipped up.

And then go ride. Which was placebo fantastic as I gushed to my riding buddy how stiff and buttery smooth the bike now felt. A phrase I came to reflect on with some chagrin later that evening on realising one of the shock bolts was held by a single thread and habit. Easy mistake to make I’m sure you’ll agree.

So that’s one bike fixed. Leaving only two cars with internet-diagnosed issues that I’vepretty much given up on before starting, leaving me to concentrate on the minor damage inflicted on the Mega when some funky cable routing appears to have eaten the swing arm. That one I’m good with – covered it with a sticker and pretended it hadn’t happened. The alternative is me attempting to fix it which would only make the situation catastrophically worse.

I’m going to have a beer instead.

* Contrary to intuition, this doesn’t represent best practice in Mountain Biking. Offset, bevelled bearings anyone? They should sell such bikes with a complementarysix week therapy course. And a special hammer.

** Hammer. Again.

** I keep expecting Time Team to turn up and find stuff long buried under where – in a normal garage – the floor might be.

Which wise old sage once foretold ‘before you can truly appreciate Spring, you must first suffer heroically through the bleak winter’? That wise old sage was me, and I proclaimed it yesterday while basking under the sun’s rays and burning my thin bits. Not that wise then. But quite old before you feel the need to chip in and remind me of that.

We’ve suffered alright. As have the bikes. Heroically might be a stretch unless shivering by a pub fire, pint in hand whilst bleating about the misery of endless cold and rain counts. Which in Al’s book of winter fables, it bloody well does. So it is most welcome that signs of spring are everywhere – increasing ground cover, decreasing mud, flashes of leafy trees, endless birdsong and the blissful silence of Matt’s new drive train.

Somehow he’s eeked out vaguely cog shaped swarf through the grit’n’shit of winter, before the inevitable collapse of key components forced fitment of bright and shiny new stuff. So no longer are we accompanied by the discordant cacophony of slipping chains, grinding cogs* and associated whines, groans and hisses of disintegrating transmission. There may be many meteorological and horticultural markers to herald the arrival of Spring, but for the Forest Of Dean Mountain Biking Community, it’s when Matt fits a new chainring AND replaces his bald rear tyre.

So three hardy perennials sprouted short sleeve tops and dark sunglasses at a rather un-springlike 9am, where a cold wind was more than a match for a peeping sun. And anticipation of spring conditions were tempered by a night ride some three days back where the trails were winter-wet, from which me and the bike returned much in homage to a dirty protest. I don’t mind that kind of thing in Jan, but it’s getting pretty old come BST and April.

12km on road on off road tyres at 25 PSI** warbles on a bit as a 2.5 inch contact patch attempts to rip up the tarmac. But riding out means an extra pub stop on the way home ,and that’s worth a 20km return trip to the drinking hardcore of our little group. Such were the solar powered high spirits, my navigational numptiness was ignored as I promised some fantastic trails ‘on the other side of the river‘. Where there may be monsters – probably a better chance of meeting those than me finding a track I’d ridden once, a month ago, in the company of many others.

No monsters were harmed in the making of this post; no instead after the tiniest location error – okay I missed the trail completely – we found not one but two perfectly loamy trails – dark earth shouldered by emerging bluebells and twisting perfectly through a green screen of burgeoning fauna that is almost as good to look at as to ride. Almost, but not quite.

Mountain Bikers categorise the dirt under their tyres into sub groups and niches; grip, sloppiness, colour, slippiness, smell, likelihood to punt you into a waiting tree, that kind of thing. And while summer dirt is a light, dusty brown with a crumbly surface marbled by cracks, that’s brilliant only if you like dust motes over grip, but dirt aficionados search for Spring Loam where the ground has a bit more give, a lot more grip, the ability to hold a tyre at almost any angle and – if you are righteous – harvest mini clods to flick at the bloke behind.

It’s perfect dirt. It’s the dirt you see in Mountain bike videos. It was the dirt we rode on Sunday. And we rode an awful lot of it pretty damn briskly. Seven ups, seven downs divided – as ever – for me between ‘before‘ and ‘after‘ the infamous ‘double drop‘ which is a moderately vertical drop onto a concrete fire road. On a bike with oodles of travel, it should be nothing more than a point, relax, close eyes, brake when it flattens out – but having nearly claimed me a while back, I’m bloody glad to get it done. Without having to send anyone back up the trail to locate missing teeth.

After that, pretty much floor-to-sky bliss. Mainly because there’s so much more speed without the associated risk of the front end washing out. Swinging bikes left-right-left between trees on this perfect dirt is as close to the Jedi Speeder chase you can get to without CGI and Cary Fisher. And having dragged out the Purple Minion, the bag of excuses for not riding all the jumps and drops (within reason, there’s some stuff I’d need a crane and a trampoline to even attempt) was pretty much empty. And that’s fine, because they disappeared under wheel before I could even form my normal whimper.

And then Matt fell off on the easiest trail of the day. Which was funny enough to displace the thought of tired legs with ‘Ice Cold in Alex’ type Beer Hallucination. Thankfully we only had to cross a couple of kilometres of family-walker-slalom before attaining the rather splendid locale of the Saracens Head. Beer was drunk, bullshit was legion, fish type trail reconstructions were made, sunglasses were worn, smiles were baked.

Arriving home some 8 hours after sneaking out, my thoughts sadly turned to a day in the office. A day spent wistfully gazing out of the window wondering when I can go outside and play on my bike with my friends. I appreciate this presents a mental age of about 12.

I’m good with that.

* No not that kind of grinding cog. I’ll get round to the Penis Museum very soon. Until then we’re on a Fnar moratorium.

** Except for H who cheekily pumped his up to 50PSI for the ride into the Forest. That’s fine, we let him take the wind as punishment.