Category: Bikes

Tens of thousands of words and the odd blurred picture of fast moving vegetation rehashing one of two tenuous threads. Spliced together using random punctuation and alcohol.

Are you sitting comfortably?

On By AlexIn Bikes, Photography, Road RidingLeave a comment

Bike Science

Then we shall begin. The working title for this post was “Weird Science” which created a rampant Kelly LeBrock fantasy putting me back a good half hour, and generating outpourings of 1980s teenage angst not suitable for the Public Internet. So sitting then, that’s far more respectable and middle aged.

Which is exactly how I was depicted during my fitting at Bike-Science so I’m not sharing those photos. Instead here’s Jez -half man, half Sasquatch- attempting to wrest his huge frame around that all Carbon Time Trial bike. I couldn’t decide if it was flexing or quaking.

Me? I was quaking at the prospect of being wired up to the mains, rendered in 3-D then gently let down that no amount of precision bike fitting could compensate for my injury and age ravaged collection of stringy bones. First tho, Jez was fitted up on his new TT and older Road bike. This took a while which played to my secret hope we’d run out of hours before I could be humiliated. Sadly unfulfilled, my time would come.

Andy – the man behind the camera and concepts of BikeScience – takes you from your existing riding position to something more precisely engineered through a combination of tests, fitting and adjustments. Some of it is about angles of knee, hip, back and wrist. Some more looks at tweaking out wobbly pedalling actions all in the pursuit of efficiency and comfort. The changes don’t feel that great, but the results are really quite outstanding.

For me, the experience started on the bike pedalling away but going nowhere. Turbo Trainers are for proper roadies so I didn’t put much effort in. Andy kitted me head to toe with electrodes and motion captured my hunched back turtle posture. I assumed his frown was for my frankly pathetic effort at pedalling, but no it was more about how I’d shoehorned my organic gibbon frame into the carbon road bike one.

He then dispatched me from bike to bench to test my flexibility and core strength. Unsurprisingly none of those three things were easy to find. And between my grunted exertions on being asked to wrap a foot around a ceiling light, I could feel the smug grin from Jez whose been secretly manning up with daily core exercises for a month.

So the synopsis after ten minutes of failing to do anything other than excuse my piss poor performance through a rambling history of my broken bones, Andy determined I lacked hamstring flexibility, hip rotation, any obvious core strength plus one leg was shorter than the other, both of which were pointed inwards at funny angles. Yes I was paying good money to be told this. It’s like a dentist visit being castigated for a rubbish cleaning routine.**

I lifted my now trembling body back onto the bike – in a manner best thought of as an aged seal making landfall on a slippy rock – while Andy worked his magic with the numbers. Firstly he threw my seat post away lacking as it was sufficient layback, moved the huds and saddle up, had me pedal a bit, moved a few more bits, checked his stats, pondered a bit more, turned me around and stared on the other side.

At the end of this witchcraft, I was actually enjoying the turbo because the new position transmitted what little power I can generate to the rear wheel without me rocking about or gnashing in pain. Simple stuff maybe, but clever. It’s the difference between owning a hammer and knowing what to hit with it**

A quick 90 minutes on the road bike the next day was significantly more pleasant than I remember with none of the shoulder and back aches normally associated with the black stuff. The proof will be on longer rides and only if I keep up the seemingly easy but actually bloody difficult exercises Andy set me. And modify Wog the Wibbler to the same dimensions, currently it’s a million miles away which may explain why riding that one wasn’t always that comfortable either.

It’s a great setup Andy has and well worth the money if you want to ride longer and harder. Put me in mind of the session I did with Tony last year; for the price of a wheel, you get something that makes a real and long lasting difference for your riding. It doesn’t translate so well to MTBs, which doesn’t in any way explain why I still had a hankering for this hanging on Andy’s wall!

* not that I’ve been to the dentist for three years. Teeth haven’t fallen out yet. Are dentures expensive tho?

** In my case of course, that’s “everything”

Does anyone have a flamethrower?

On By AlexIn Bikes, Photography3 Comments

Decapitated tyre levers

Look closely. See the decapitation of those innocent tyre levers pitting their pathetic tensile strength against the might of a swiss roll. A set of wheels designed by a bored Geneva physiotherapist short of broken thumb/bloodied elbow business. Aided and abetted by a pair of tyres with all the mallability of a religious nutcase.

A combination best dealt with by ignoring the traditional process of firing sharp plastic into your eye at somewhere beyond the speed of light*, and instead moving straight to the flamethrower. Because if I ever get a problem outside of my hammer equipped workshop, there is absolutely no chance of wrenching these rubber limpetsfrom the wheel. Short of going postal with an chainsaw.

Tempting. So very tempting.

And when the tyres do finally wear past the point of usable tread, the kindest thing for everyone involved shall be to ritually burn them in a viking style burial. This may be sooner than planned with Maxxis’s ever so amusing random sizing meaning the large volume tyre bought for the back would easily fit in the forks, currently occupied by something suffering from compound bulimia.

So probably a perfect combination for nutting trees and receiving a friendly wave from all the staff as I’m wheeled back into Hereford A&E. But while this is a better than evens chance of how this might end, it plays well against the nailed on certainty of me malleting myself senseless should I undertake anything other than kicking the bloody things occasionally. And giving them a meaningful glare.

Much of the evening was spend grunting while knelt on the floor and sliding around in a sea of washing up liquid. There’s good money to be had pedalling such things I’m told, but I’m struggling to see the pleasure it in. It wasn’t until Carol wearily answered my cry** for help that any potential personal Armageddon was averted.

In the previous two hours, I’d managed to fit one tyre. The wrong way around. Having checked it twice, busted a thousand blood vessels squeezing it onto the rim, fernangled air into its carcus through the simple dint of shouting at it, and triumphantly marked it as complete. It would not be an overstatement to consider my mental state to be somewhere between extensively vexed and borderline psychotic.

Carol spent exactly 10 seconds looking at the problem, having already suffered a 90 second spittle flecked rant to the tune of “it’ll never fit, I’ve hit it an everything, every time I stuff that bit in, that bit falls out***, that bit doesn’t work even if you hit it with this sledgehammer here and the whole fucking thing is fucked. And yes I am sulking. And no laughing at me isn’t helping”

Her solution was both simple and elegant. Two minutes later we had something I assumed could only ever be mocked up with CGI. I was neither embarrassed or relieved just resigned to the never-more-obvious fact that I am a mechanical numpty with the patience of a special needs horsefly.

I tidied up in an old mans shuffle, wondering if my days of opposed thumbs were over. And while the overall plan of having a set of Mud specific wheels for the Forest augmented by rather more Malvern based hoops has come good, one has to consider the cost in pounds, injuries and penance.

It did make me wonder though, if there might not be a market – for those of us on the ‘under no circumstances give them a spanner‘ side of mechanical incompetence – for pneumatic tyres. Could make me enough of a fortune to fund reconstructive thumb surgery

* All that money spent attempting to disprove Einstein’s theory of relativity. Far easier to track the progress of a slippy tyre lever exciting the orbit of the rim and accelerating into the face of the poor bastard JUST TRYING TO FIT ONE SODDING TYRE.

** Oh FOR FUCKS SAKE, if there is a God, will you please manifest yourself preferably with some kind of duck-billed platypus tyre lever.

*** This, I assume, is how fat people get dressed. Either than or it’s a pretty good description of first sexual experiences.

If you want mud, you’ve got it.

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike RidingLeave a comment

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.

Have spade, will dig.

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, Photography2 Comments

Trailbuilding afternoon
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.

Trailbuilding afternoonTrailbuilding afternoon

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.

Trailbuilding afternoonTrailbuilding afternoon

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.

Trailbuilding afternoonTrailbuilding afternoon

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.

The mist is clearing

On By AlexIn Other stuff, Photography, Pretentious nonsense7 Comments

Autumn mist

A picture paints… no forget it, you’re getting the 1000 words anyway.

A month after quitting my job, I find myself almost hysterically happy at not doing some of it. Or, if I’m striving for honesty, most of it. In fact apart from the bits with friends in pubs putting the world to rights, let’s remove the fence from our arse and declare “all of it“.

Four weeks in which riding of bicycles, seeing of family, London not going to, and affirming of what’s important has put me in a very happy place. Exhibit A was last night’s ride where a much-missed pal re-joined the nocturnal pack after a knee injury had him sidelined for six months. A little wet had fallen from the sky, leaves were plastered heavily over now slippy trails and the air was full of impending winter.

Absolutely the best ingredients for an organic exploration of the hills. Ride a bit, check Martin’s knee for potential explosion, ride a bit more, get chilly chilling out, modify routes, point out flaws in everyone elses, grumble on extra climbs, then head out into territory so cheeky it should get it’s bum smacked. Ride stupid loose, steep stuff and join grown men giggling at bullshit to the power of shared experience.

Rides like that tend to ramble on. I can feel a certain empathy there 😉 But 10pm had been and gone which generally alarms the misery gland with London not many hours away. Get home, sort bike and gear, assemble corporate stuff for the so-near morning call, shower, set alarm don’t sleep much. Today I woke refreshed three hours past that 4:50am start and God it felt good. Lazy but good.

Having mused on this during long dog walks and some strategic looking out of the window, clearly the only issue with this life-choice is simply that no-one will pay for you being a slacker. Which is how I have always viewed my approach to life. Honestly, where others saw hard work and dedication, I was internalising slights of hand, a stupidly good memory and the belief that everyone else was just a bit more shit. Really, my finest work would have been a treatise on “the importance of being idle” had not Oasis got there first.

It seems this may not be the case. Feelings of guilt shocked me into tense mutterings about what next. Suddenly every expense becomes an agony, best get the car serviced*, can’t let the kids watch TV all half term, really need a new front door – it has been pointed out to me that this is the way most people operate without a vastly inflated salary. And while we’re not exactly fiscally destitute, any environment reigning in bike spending for a whole month probably has some merit.

So it was back to the evil marketing shed for ideas around legal larceny. Riding bikes and writing nonsense seemed attractive until my old Pal Dave Barter explained that while taking a year off to complete a cycling route guide had been challenging, fulfilling and a fantastic life experience, it hadn’t actually made him very much money. And he’s far better at it than I am. So examining the few skills built up over *christ how much* 22 years of paid employment, it became clear the rut most travelled probably held the best prospect of paying the mortgage.

Half of those 22 years, I have worked for other people. Frankly, it’s not been an experience either of us has enjoyed. Jumping back into that was on the testicle slamming side of entirely delusional in terms of how it might be different. So I crossed that straight off. Not true actually, I never wrote it down in the first place.

So with Hobson and his uni-choice in the chair, working for myself appeared to be the only realistic option. Done it before, quite enjoyed it, rarely were security called to escort me from client site, people seemed on the satisfied side of invoice paying. And I have a certain passion for work which might sound pretty damn stupid when it’s just IT, but let me ask you this… if you spend 3/4 of your natural life spending every day doing something you don’t care about, how dumb is that?

If nothing else, my MacBook and iPhone become legitimate expenses. I have enough contacts and – apparently – credibility to ensure days will not be spent waiting for the phone to ring. And while London looms large in at least some of my working life, it’ll be on my dollar and for someone who’ll probably notice whether I’m there or not.

It’s not much of a plan, but it’s a start. And having just re-read my unpublished vitriol written the day I left, it’s not just a start but a step in the right direction.

Wish me luck, I’m going in.

*£250 only to be discover than “nothing to worry about” means “yeah it needs a new condenser and the brake pads are knackered, shall we just keep your credit card?“

Choices

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike RidingLeave a comment

I chose to go riding

I chose not to look at the weather forecast

I chose to embrace the rain and the slop

I chose not to worry about wet roots and viscous mud

I chose the right bike

I chose not to whinge when the rain went torrential

I chosecommitment as a riding style

I chose not to find excuses to quit early

I chose good riding buddies

I chose not to treat Mountain Biking as a three season sport

I chose to ride

Good call 🙂

Reboot

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, Photography2 Comments

Throwing Shapes. What kind of shapes I am not sure

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.

Sometimes it is good to to remind yourself why

Over and Out

On By AlexIn Other stuff, Pretentious nonsenseLeave a comment

Nearly six years ago I took this job for six months. That over-run casts many of the projects I’ve worked on in a far more pleasing light. Sure we’ve missed the odd deadline, a few months, maybe a year, okay a bit more than a year late on occasion – but FIVE YEARS late on a six month project. That’s appalling.

A bright future in project management awaits then.

It’s been a week of many lasts; last time on this train, last time lost in the swarm of the tunnel rats, last time to use my security pass, last time to fabricate my timesheet.

Not the last time I’ll be going to the pub today. Because Lunchtime and Evening should count double, unless they blur into one mad drunken slur from midday to midnight.

I feel the very best I can hope for from this evening is to retain a smidgen of my dignity. And even that would be a bonus based on my dismissing tolerance to alcohol allied with an absolute belief I’m still about 18.

So this would probably be a good time to worry. Not about the prospect of being trundled home in a wheelbarrow or shopping trolley* as that’s mostly pre-destined and beyond my control. No, about what happens next.

I look into a diary that is normally crammed full of meetings, conference calls and other stuff pertaining to be useful. And I see nothing but ‘dead air‘, white space and endless days filled with bugger all. And yet I’m curiously unbothered about the prospect of unemployment.

And while my primary emotion is not as strong as exultation, it is certainly stronger than relief. It smells like freedom and that’s my kind of rarefied air. I’m swinging between lunatic-asylum giggling and wild thoughts on the farming of lettuces.

I suppose it comes down to this; I’ve spent 20 years+ working and have at least as much again to go. I’ve not enjoyed that much of it, so it seems pointless to continue to plough that particular furrow.

We seem to live in a world – from childhood to retirement – in a state of delayed gratification. Work hard, get good grades, work harder, get promoted, work longer for your pension. Retire, Die.

I’m sure there’s a better way. I’m just not sure what it is 🙂

* Not home exactly. A friend’s in Ealing. Or East Slough as I like to think of it.

Old light through new windows

On By AlexIn Bikes, Other stuff, PhotographyLeave a comment

 

Through the square window

So it appears we’ve finally finished painting the Forth Bridge, which should free up the contractors to start on the other three*. And when they’ve finished those, I’ve a proper job waiting that’ll offer a job for life. No fancy paint technology is going to save us here.

On being asked “when will your house be finished?”, I wearily respond with “a) the day I die b) the day I file for bankruptcy or c) “What d’ya mean finished? Fridge works and rain’s not coming through every ceiling. It’s not a bloody hotel you know”

Progress of a sort barrelled in through the medium of Martin our Polish builder. A man who converts”Health and Safety” into his mother tongue and finds no direct translation. He’s the master of disc-cutter juggling, and the beer crate scaffold. Still he’s not a particularly young fella yet lacks no obvious limbs or appendages, and for as long as he is topped up with sweet coffee and cash envelopes, the man is a machine.

Through the square window

He needed to be after we were caught by surprise with the windows only turning up one week late. This is an 11 week improvement on the first drop where clearly we were waiting for a sapling to sprout into a mighty oak. The boys from the rather splendid sawmill/workshop nestling on the Welsh boarder are also sustained on sweet hot beverages and rollups. While Martin chopped out old windows and big fuck-off holes in the wall, they sallied forth with chunky frames representing a cost associated with a rather nice holiday we didn’t have.

Through the square window Through the square window

Finishing way after dark without complaint, but furnished with a couple of beers and a few more funded by my withdrawal from the bank of Carol, we have a ground floor resplendent of windows that let in only light, not wind and rain. This is in direct contrast to the tiny shitty, blown, brown-stained apertures clearly robbed off a third class cruise-ship cabin.

It’s fun watching the dog perform a “Tom and Jerry” nose slide on the glass after his retrieve genes are fired by something moving in the garden. I guess he’ll learn eventually although I keep opening the door just to confuse the poor mutt a bit more. Said it before, man’s got to have a hobby.

Of which DIY isn’t mine. Powertools however, even in the pursuit of a less than manly end product, are my metier. Or downfall. Or item named on A&E form. Carol is either making planters or a sea going wooden fleet to rival the Vikings. I’ve certainly felt more than little berserk when a vigorous sawing session ended in the blade being nicely arrested by me leg. Apparently these shrubbery coffins** will contain organic stuff that’ll be set off nicely by the new patio.

New patio? The bike fund is looking a bit bloody threadbare I can tell you. Still after deep pre-breakfast Malverns Incursion followed by a lap of the FoD Blue with Jess this afternoon, I find myself – peculiarly – more about riding than buying. And I’d best do some more because Jess is getting parentally-worryingly quick. She even crashes better than me – a little over-exuberance on the final berm saw bike and smallish person locked in a rolling embrace.

“I’m fine Dad, no damage. Too much front brake. Don’t tell me I know“. She does indeed. Now let’s see if she’s quite so good with a paintbrush.

* Don’t ever cross the border and talk about the Forth Rail Bridge unless you’re ready to be lectured on the tedium of estuary crossing from 1890 through today, with much emphasis on how the bridge wasn’t designed for cars and should only be referred to as the “Forth Bridge”. I find a polite “oh do fuck off” works well in such circumstances.

** It’s not our fault. Much of our garden has been a riot of colour*** this year. But anything planted in pots or veg-beds is insect buffet or pathetic wilting stalk. Water them you say? Did you spend the summer in England I would reply.

*** green mostly. Dandelion invasion from the field. Next year I’m ditching the roundup and going straight to Napalm.

Smoke me a lllama, I’ll be back for breakfast.

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, Other stuff, Photography1 Comment
Ecuador Mcmillan Challenge - 2002
Pacific Rims.

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.
Ecuador Mcmillan Challenge - 2002 Ecuador Mcmillan Challenge - 2002
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.
Ecuador Mcmillan Challenge - 2002 Ecuador Mcmillan Challenge - 2002

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.
Ecuador Mcmillan Challenge - 2002Ecuador Mcmillan Challenge - 2002

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.

Ecuador Mcmillan Challenge - 2002Ecuador Mcmillan Challenge - 2002

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.

Ecuador Mcmillan Challenge - 2002Ecuador Mcmillan Challenge - 2002

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.