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.

Bottle it

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, PhotographyLeave a comment

That’s what I’d like to do with that light. And then uncork a bit every time there is misery or unpleasantness. Because it would remind me of just what a brilliant weekend we had in the Quantocks.

Far too tired to write about it now, but it followed the well ridden path of navigational folly, not very motivational encouragement, ocean-emptying fish and chip portions, beer – natch – and some fantastic winter riding with a top crew of riding buddies.

I don’t know many things really, but I do know this. I don’t want to go to work tomorrow – I want to go out and ride my bike instead.

Get off my trails!

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding1 Comment

The pre-breakfast* Malvern hills ride is full of many wholesome and good things. One of them is the impression that you have this small package of awesome pointedness all to yourself which, considering the barrier to entry must be breached by head torches and frozen knocking knees, seems entirely reasonable. For a good year, we scoffed at the late rising fools playing unhappy slalom with a phalanx of other grumpy trail users.

Until now. Sure we expected New Years Resolutions translating to puffing fatties pushing up hills for a couple of weeks. And there is always the odd introverted rambler lost in his own world so never acknowledging a friendly hello (or a less polite “fck off them you miserable twat“). But these last two weeks, it has gone properly mental.

In the previous 50 weeks, we’ve probably seen a single digit accumulation of mountain bikers before the 9am watershed. Today we say double that in a single ride with a side order of over-wrapped family groups and their mad dogs. And frankly, I find this bloody irritating. Some of it is – I admit – trail snobbery personified by the Colwall Night Riding crowd, who perambulate line astern with ever increasing numbers and ever decreasing velocity. They’re another bunch who cannot find it within themselves to chew the fat with non-groupies, although that may be blindness brought on by an ever escalating Lumen arms race.

Honestly, on a dark night I’m sure the Malvern residents are frantically dialling 999 to report an extremely slow moving UFO. But seeing trail numbers increase by day makes me even more irrationally angry. I want to stop them and demand their cycling credentials “Have you ridden at night EVERY week come rain, wind, snow or creeping apathy?” “What about taking in that extra hill even when you legs are pretending to be un-set jelly” and “Do you know the way of the secret paths? Do you dare ride them when it’s shitty and muddy?”

The answer has to be no, which makes them undeserving in my view, and that’s the view that counts. And I’m counting far too many trail users when only the righteous are up and riding. Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised after a recent thread on a cycling forum had so many authoritative voices on winter conditions in these hills. All I can hope for is their enthusiasm will be diminished, and we’ll get the hills back to those who have properly suffered. It’s that or get out of bed even earlier, for which I am insufficiently motivated.

On the slightly less grumpy side of things, we had a brilliant ride and the ST4 is big-grin central over all terrain. My latest fascination for all things statistical shows 5 rides in 8 days, climbing over 8000 feet in a little more than 105 kilometres. So impressed with my performance, my breakfast choices were bacon or egg. I couldn’t quite decide so plumped for both.

Advance warning, Thursday Night Ride this week. And I’m bringing my list of questions and big stick, so be ready if you’re out on my trails 🙂

* which is good as it’d be recycled noisily within minutes of the first climb.

Heartless.

On By AlexIn Road RidingLeave a comment

That’s what my dusty HRM indicated after I’d harvested it from the foetid outreach of a forgotten draw to which electronic tattery is dispatched. There is all sorts of esoteric shit in there which considering the high incidence of fadderyness exhibited by yours truly is no real surprise. What was that it seems everyone has a similar repository for stuff too expensive to skip, but not interesting enough to use. Mine is larger of course – including strange shaped beepy things with fading displays that don’t seem to do much other than chirp noisily.

Bit like some people I work with. Anyway new batteries refused to kick start my heart as far as this£20 single use monitor was concerned, and dead it remained until I sprayed my nipples with WD40* while threatening the strap with a hammer. I was going to write a bit about the total pointlessness of such devices, only to find I already had. Back in the days when I was a bit more amusing as well 😉

It will accompany me riding come Sunday, for the sole purpose of knowing how many beats my pounding heart is banging out while I’m involved in some unpleasant hill based action. My theoretical max is pretty low now what with me being old and all that, but I reckon I’ll top that even if I have to die trying. It’d be a good way to go.

Because I may be killed anyway by my mountain bike friends, who are already threatening ex-communication after the public debagging of my furtive roadie-lust. Any further mentions of “The Essex Lightening” ** shall bring down the might of previously mild mannered riding buddies. I am concerned by their threats of exactly what I can expect once they’ve had a chance to forge weapons from the carbon frame. The “It’s all bikes, it’s all good yes?” has fallen on deaf ears this time, so I’d be leaving the HRM, GPS and any visible Lycra behind for our Quantocks trip next weekend.

There is a thing here thought – past years have seen January as a boiling over of Christmas excess not lanced by frozen attacks of random hills. Maybe it’s the new bike thing, maybe it’s a not getting any younger thing, maybe its a wanting to get fit thing but whatever it is, I’d ride every day right now if I didn’t have to go to work. Sadly, those new bikes have to be paid for.

Heart Rate now 51 as I sit here typing. I am off to see if there are Elephants’ in our recent ancestry.

* Not strictly necessary, but having already purchased something called a “mini wedgie” today, I felt it was appropriate to continue the smutty theme.

** Thanks to Ian for naming the road bike. I like that very much 🙂

It is about the bike.

On By AlexIn Bikes, Photography, Road Riding2 Comments

Upping the ante is where it is at for 2010. My heroic couplets from last weekend are now cast into shadow, when compared to my attempted-death-by-commute this morning. If you were hunting for a set of circumstances to ensure a proper accident, it’s hard to think of anything more causal than these sick puppies.

Ice and Snow. 23c slick tyres and 100psi. New road bike and dubious battery lights. Zero visibility fog and, oh I don’t know let’s just go with bowel clenching terror should we? An hour earlier than Sunday, a further degree colder and a rider injured from a tripping incident involving a dark room and a black, slumbering mutt.

And in the same way we’ve had proper pre global-warming snow this last two weeks, the fog of this morn was of a type last seen when nefarious Jack was ripping through London. So thick you could chew on it, while waving a hopeful hand in front of a face merely panicked one into believing you’d been struck blind.

I risked catastrophic voltage collapse, with a clumsy grope to high beam, only to see it reflect back at 90{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} brightness and 0{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} improved visibility. And what I couldn’t see, I could hear with that horrible crunching sound of slush under tyre. The new mudguards were almost too efficient, with their low tyre rubbing profile delivering forty minutes of finger-on-blackboard aural stabbing.

The bike is fantastic though. Oh it properly is, light, stiff and flighty. Where the Kona would accelerate under spongy protest, the Boardman springs forward rewarding each pedal stroke with a surge onwards. When you hit any incline on the Jake, your options were a right hand ratchet and a long spin or a black-spotted, rivet-ridden, busted-lung sprint praying the gradient gave out before you legs did.

The Boardman isn’t like that. Because it weighs 8ks plus some commuting collateral, and has a BB junction forged from a pineapple hunk of carbon. I found myself shifting down the block and accelerating up hills. This is unheard of, and made me very proud I’d bested something similar last year.

Don’t get me wrong tho – this bike has the potential to hurt you. Because it is so rewarding to crank out maximum power to bring forth the horizon, then soon your aspirations are ruthlessly gaped by your fitness and ability. But even in sub zero temperatures, blinded by the fog and scared of the ice, I glimpsed that road riding might actually offer something other than non motorised commuting.

Lance was wrong. It’s all about the bike.

Beyond Thawderdome

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, Photography1 Comment

Certain combinations work well together; the world would be a far inferior places if Scones weren’t accompanied by Cream, Spring un-carpeted by Bluebells, or beer not matched with, er, more beer. But the flip-side reveals such horrors Brown Sauce on Bacon Sandwiches and Train Timetables accompanied by Seasonal Emergencies. Feel free to add your own, while I fuse together the grim composites of cold and dark with Seven am and Sunday Morning. It’s hard to be positive over any future experience when you’re clumsily loading the bike trailer, with five minutes vigorous ice scraping to follow. All with a head-torch and a mentally disturbed mutt chewing your tyres – another combination that entirely misses the sweet spot.

Driving in the midst of a thaw/freeze cycle scores nought when compared to the warm bed and wife you’ve just abandoned, and riding in such conditions seems as impossibly dim as the halo of road illuminated by frozen lenses. I expected things to improve as the sun struggled over the horizon, and – as usual – I was wrong. Firstly the temperature actually dropped back below freezing before a chirp from my mobile phone triggered barely repressed fury that my frost bound pal was bugging out. Not so, he was merely late and tremendously hungover* which improved my lot no end.

Malvern Ride - Jan 17 Malvern Ride - Jan 17

Improved is not a word that you could even charitably apply to the trails after bucket-loads of snow, weeks of icy temperatures and a thaw so fast we’re twinning Herefordshire with Atlantis. The first climb used to be a tarmac road but was now a stream of broken aggregates flowing between banks of slush and ice. Heading quickly onto dirt, we were soon slowed by sideways action mud clearly imported from the Chiltern Hills. Struggling past that, we were eventually un-horsed by a ribbon of ice too challenging for the latterly unridden and recently hungover.

Malvern Ride - Jan 17 Malvern Ride - Jan 17

Dawn made a grudging effort to punt the sun skywards and we headed down through woods offering mud, ice and snow all within in a 100 yards. Three seasons in a single trail – this was obviously going to be our lucky day, proven once more after a much reduced pace gave sufficient time to stop before being decapitated by a fallen tree. Hitting that at normal trail speeds would have ended with body parts flung about in a post-modern ironic interpretation of the phrase “Blast Radius“.

Malvern Ride - Jan 17 Malvern Ride - Jan 17

Half way up the next climb, suffering for our art seemed an entirely appropriate metaphor as we discussed the questionable benefits of re-instating the 7:30am Sunday ride. It ticks all the boxes in terms of poaching trails before the rambler hoards are even poaching breakfast eggs, and being done and dusty before our own families have found time to complain about absent husbands and fathers. Again. In summer, it rocks as well as ticks, early sun drenched blasts on firm trails with hard muscles and seasonal fitness. In winter, it’s winching up buckets of karma from deep, frozen wells, sticking two fingers up at the three seasons MTBr’s, and pumping miles into legs that’ll hate you now but love you come Spring.

Malvern Ride - Jan 17 Malvern Ride - Jan 17

On days like today, it’s quite scary too with every descent offering multiple ways to impale you on a rock or tree of Fate’s choice. When the snow finally gave way to a different trail surface, this was invariably wet grass which needs no introduction as the mountain biker’s most hated ground condition. I remember covering the brakes on some descents then thinking I’d be better off sorting out coverage of a different sort, namely insurance and specifically hospital cover.

Malvern Ride - Jan 17 Malvern Ride - Jan 17

I loved it though. Not in a “yeah was good, glad we put a shift in, reward in future, feeling worthy” kind of loved it. Nope, was just bloody happy to be riding my bike with a good mate, and soaking in the slither of sunlight on offer. Having the new MTB is of course a novelty that has yet to wear off, which considering how much money it cost is a damn good thing!

Malvern Ride - Jan 17

More of that please. Less of the 0553 to London tomorrow. Ah well, one out of two ain’t bad**

* After promising abstinence on Saturday night, I switched to white wine as it’s less dreadful come morning. Jezz, and far play to him for this, had downed about half of his entire alcohol stock in a single session. I’m assuming he was drinking to forget the insanity of a decision to enter the Etape.

** As Meatloaf would have said if he could have counted properly.

Right, that’s wrong.

On By AlexIn Bikes4 Comments

It’s not often I ask for either help or forgiveness on the hedgehog, but tonight both are definitely required. Firstly forgiveness, because earlier I was reminded of a throwaway comment during the “Moses Rains” back in November. Endampened, frustrated and cursing the inclemency of never ending wet I may have whispered quietly “GIVE US A PROPER WINTER, ONE WITH SNOW AND ICE AND COLD“. To make things worse there may have been “AND NOT ONE DAY OF IT EITHER, P R O P E R WINTER I SAID, SNOW ON THE GROUND, SNOWMEN, SLEDGING ALL THAT KIND OF THING” as a shouted verbal addition.

And now something that rarely, if ever has happened before, a public apology. I am so very, very sorry. Because as I write this the thump of avalanching snow falls from the roof and white stuff surrounds us in every direction. There is a proper ladies* six inches out there on top of compacted ice, all of which shall make my trip to London tomorrow something of an epic. I would happily swap 18-20 hours of delay, excuses and boredom for repeated stabs in the eye from a sharp object. And the way our ongoing feud with eON is progressing, that sharp object is likely to be a lawyer.

Okay apology over, I’m over it now and it won’t happen again. Now to your advice – and I do realise asking a random collection of web-washed RSS feeds who’ve run out of things to stare out of the window at is taking the “Wisdom of the Crowd” to an razors’ edge not oft visited by Occam but- on a matter of great import. It’s nothing so tawdry as employment advice, or whether sex with vegetables is always wrong**, no something far more emotive, more heart wrenching and the subject of much hand wringing.

Not long ago, I wasn’t going to buy an ST4 as I had the Cove. Then I wasn’t going to sell the Cove even after I’d raped it for parts for that ST4. And then, an opportunity came up to do just that and I nearly have. My rationale is that bikes should be ridden, not hoarded in a fit of metal kleptomania, nor abandoned in rafters, gathering dust and being nothing more than a vague mental trigger for the shinier things you now have. It’s a good rationale but not one I’ve often followed, yet the cross bike went when the road bike came and now the Cove should go because it’s been usurped, replaced, upgraded.

And yet as I cleaned it up, every scratch brought back a joyful memory. The three inch scar on the chain stay etched by a terrible line through steep rocks, the scuffs from endless road trips, the dink where first ride chain suck attempted to eat the frame. And then I remembered all the brilliant days I’ve had on this bike even when my back cried enough but my mind refused to listen, the carelessly thrown bike at the end of a monster descent, sweat glistening on the top tube after a bastard climb on a hot summers day, flashes of frame as trees whipped by.

This isn’t just a frame, it’s a memory bank. I can’t sell it.

Can I?

* A man, and I mean any man, would stare into the middle distance before declaring “Yep, two foot there love. At least”

** It is, whatever my friend Dave says. And he says it with relish declaring such an act as “a medley”. I wish I were joking.

Customer Service

On By AlexIn Bikes, Other stuff2 Comments

A topic oft returned to on the Hedgehog, although even I must admit to being surprised at the litany of frustration aired in the last four years. And not only that, but tail-gating that thought was the even more scary mental scribble that this blog has somehow limped into its’ fifth year. The only thing that sustains me is the knowledge that – collectively – you’ve wasted more time reading it, then I’ve spent violently plunging forehead to keyboard while writing it. But, really, five years – come on that’s not a bad lifespan for a pet, you’d get four hamsters, a couple of Gerbils and a neurotic rabbit out of that. But enough of my domestic ménage a lot fantasies, and let’s press on.

So we shall – predictably – begin with a complaint. A banker post for those wankers who have heard the phrase mentioned around their job description, yet it continues to pass them blissfully by. I’ve bought and paid for a collection of bike parts to finally complete the new ST4 project. For this week anyway, and a goodly number of them actually serve a purpose other than the pursuit of cosmic blingery. Yes another Internet transaction easily completed some time ago except for the tiny matter of delivery. ParcelForce’s tracking system appears to have been designed sometime during the first flushes of computer software, so spews out unrecognisable codes and truncated messages instead of actual information.

Reading between the runes, it became apparent that the delivery driver had three times loaded up my parcel, only to decide he really couldn’t be bothered with a 300 yard stretch of road that’s been successfully navigated by fleets of tractors, 4x4s, family cars, small hatchbacks, bicycles, a loon on a motorbike and even an octogenarian white knuckling a beige mini metro*. Being the kind of person who always first thinks of others (assuming there’s something in it for me of course), I spent ten minutes I’ll never get back trapped in the ACD** offering me all sorts of spurious services while not-very-gently redirecting me back to the informationally embarrassed web site.

Then it caught me out by a human cheerily announcing “Hello this is Susan, how can I help you?”. Two things sat behind a bitten lip; firstly “is it in your power to eat the person responsible for programming the IVR?” and hard on the heels of that was “Why if my local depot is 10 miles away in Hereford am I talking to someone with a fine cut Geordie accent?”. But no, remember I’m here to help, save them a trip, don’t put yourself out, let me collect the package, that kind of thing, so I opened with a pleasant “You can, I’d like to collect a package please”

I think Susan – lovely as she was – may have been a frustrated secret agent as she pumped me for information*** specifically around “the contents of my package” (Frankie Howerd had nothing on me at that juncture I can assure you), any secret tracking codes I may have fought some Germans for, and the exact nature of the request urgency. I lied – obviously – and told her I was a heart surgeon and budget cuts meant NHS patients didn’t get a bike courier any more. But since it’d only been there three days, it’d probably be fine. And then the conversation stopped being odd, and started being annoying.

“I’ll call the Gloucester Branch for you and see if that’s okay Dr. Leigh”

“Er, okay but my package/heart/bunch of lies is in Hereford”

“Oh I know, but” (Showing her inner workings of Royal Mail) “they never answer the phone there, so we’ll try Gloucester”

I may have gone on a bit here pointing out that the alternate approach of setting fire to the staff at the Hereford Depot until one felt compelled to answer the phone would be my preference. After a minute of this, I paused for breath only to realise I was on hold.

“Dr Leigh? Hello, yes I’ve spoken to the depot and there is some good news and some bad news”

“Right, well I’m looking at the patient, and frankly I wouldn’t want what’s going to happen on YOUR conscience if we can’t sort this out”

PAUSE: “Well, you could get it from Hereford normally no problem, but I’m afraid it is too icy for collections”

“I shall be the judge of that as I am in possession of the might X-Trail that laughs in the face of sheet ice”

“Oh no Sir, you don’t understand, it was too icy for THE DEPOT TO BE OPEN. There is no one there, Health and Safety you see They were afraid there would be falls and bruises”

And I thought “What a bunch of workshy slackers. Scared of falls? Really? They seem to spend 99{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} of their time on their arses anyway, so already pretty bloody well practised I’d have thought. Can hardly tell the Post Office is still bloody nationalised can you? Because while normal commerce has happily carried on outside our door for a week, the postman’s been sat in the depot drinking tea and wondering whose turn it is to fetch more biscuits. Jesus, how bloody hard is it? When the bloke does turn up, it’ll be sodding hard suffering as he will from the lashing of my tongue followed up with the sledgehammer of unhappiness”

But I didn’t say it even when provoked with a “And they don’t expect to be in tomorrow, or Wednesday. Some hope for Thursday or Friday apparently if the weather improves”

Because really it’s not that important. I’ve other bikes to ride and I already have. It’s not Susan’s fault the Hereford Depot doesn’t think we’re worth breaking a leg for, and really there are a load of shit things going on in the world and this isn’t one of them. That’s a train of thought that has me cognisantly derailed though, because I don’t do reasonable nor do periods of the serene and the sanguine ever visit my much ruffled person.

I thought on and further realised I’d gone a whole week without a drink, and not for some pointless resolution but because my preference was for a nice cup of tea most evenings. Put this together and I find it troubling. Which is what I’ll be doing to the real Medical profession if it continues, specifically the Mental Health department.

It’s all new for 2010. I’m clearly going mad.

* Okay he ended up in the ditch, but that’s hardly statistically significant.

** Automated Call Director in case you were interested. Oh you were? Well actually, that’s a bit of a generalisation as ACD Is primarily for out-dial. What I was dealing with here was nothing more than a bog standard IVR on a closed loop. I know about this stuff, and you could too. No really, it’s terribly interesting, especially to girls.

*** At my age, that’s as good as it gets at 10am on a Monday morning.

Need cheering up?

On By AlexIn BikesLeave a comment

More snow, getting less funny by the minute. Even the kids are getting bored of sledging, although that may be – at least in some part – due to the extensive bruising suffered flying off the “Snow Doubles” I built on the downhill track. Although the sight of them apparently levitating some two feet from the ground with the sledge a further twelve inches below them certainly made me laugh quite a lot.

Not quite as much as when the dog decided to join the younger members of the pack in the sledge. From the front. While it was hurtling downhill. I think I hurt myself laughing more than the kids did being unceremoniously dumped into deep snow, before being revived by the “slobber of life”

I forgot to take my camera, but the Internet is a wonderful medium for sharing others’ misery. Take a look at this proper mountain biker showing exemplary technique for riding in deep snow

Monday eh? I think the Boomtown Rats were onto something 🙁

Feeling the pressure

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, Photography1 Comment

I’ve always admired the type of mind that doesn’t really have a lot of time for instructions, recommended settings or any type of measuring equipment. Individuals of this class will merely prod, spanner, poke or eyeball anything from a simple bolt to a quantumly physiced quark* before confidently declaring “That’ll do, lad“. I am a wannabee member of such a social group, but my application would surely be rejected on the not unreasonable grounds that I’m both mechanically incompetent and habitually lazy.

My view of fixing stuff not quite broken tends to run something like this; start off with all the correct tools, optimal settings and clear instructions, then – after at least ten minutes of increasingly frustrated getting nowhere type of actions – sweep it all to one side before selecting the biggest hammer off the tool wall. Assuming that doesn’t go well, I’ll up the ante by reaching underneath the bench for the fire axe.

So my pre-ride check of the not much ridden DMR went “Bars attached, wheels on, chain not totally brown, it’s good to go“. I further decided not to offer any kind of mechanical sympathy to the bike on the grounds I wanted to use it in a few minutes.

Dymock Woods Snow Ride! Dymock Woods Snow Ride!

Want being a good verb, need being a better one. After a week of “Shed Fever“** where leaving the boundaries of our property was limited to some food foraging and an icy blast depositing the kids at school, I desperately needed some two wheeled action. There’s only so many times you can re-arrange the tool wall or sit in front of 500 unsorted photographs thinking “No, I really can’t be arsed, I’ll just stare at the floor instead“. The snow and ice seem entirely undiminished, and while this provided much smugness as my happy truck motored past low profile tyred and single axled snow blowers, it’s not been brilliant for Mountain biking.

Dymock Woods Snow Ride! Dymock Woods Snow Ride!

Snow is ace for the first 12 hours before becoming cut up and thin, so making progress difficult and largely unrewarding. The Malverns are currently an unhappy combination of deep drifts and overtrodden tracks leaving little for the MTB’r to enjoy. The woods however are a little different, attracting less traffic and sheltering favourite trails under an organic, evergreen roof. Without a 4×4 you’re not getting there either, so I abandoned the ten legs of family and dog to strike out on two wheels through a snowy, tamped down and mostly deserted Winter wilderness.

Dymock Woods Snow Ride! Dymock Woods Snow Ride!

Which in the trees was a lot of fun. Like riding in mud without the muck, grip comes and goes, bold moves are needed to make the turns and – I find – it’s important to clench everything while murmuring “I‘ll vote Liberal Democrat, Be a nicer person, help old people, just let me please end this corner on the inside of that tree and not in it” to the Gods of the Trail. They seemed entirely indifferent to my pleas, and yet it took quite a few sky-ground-sky rider exits to take matters into my own hands. Those hands incautiously whipping off gloves and getting jiggy with the presta valve reducing pressure from not much to a smidge more than bugger all.

Dymock Woods Snow Ride! Dymock Woods Snow Ride!

“That’ll do, Lad” I parodied in the manner of One Who Knows and struck forth is quite a few different directions as the rear tyre fought for traction, but at least I was still sat atop it. I briefly toyed with a practical experiment testing thin lake ice by prostrating heavy bike and *ahem* mid weight rider on top of it. But instead settled for a photograph and a double scoot round the lake side trail that was somehow even more brilliant in the snow. Possibly because again I didn’t fall off, but soon I was off the bike again of my own violation as the freeze/thaw cycle made the busier fireroads to much effort for too little reward.

Dymock Woods Snow Ride! Dymock Woods Snow Ride!

Back on the singletrack, the thin white line between carving success and tree banging failure was perfectly demonstrated by whether your awesome two wheel slide ended in a “Brappp Brapp” stamp on the pedals to bring the flicking beast back into line, or the thump of man on bark. I crossed that white line a number of times but somehow this hardly devalued the experience, and on rendezvousing with my family the world had become a nicer place and my place within it more tolerant, forgiving and significantly less grumpy.

Short of stuffing yourself full of Class “A” Drugs, I cannot think of a single way in which 90 minutes can transform your perspective of what’s important. I don’t just love riding bikes on buffed, dry trails, or perfect flits through the warm moonlight, or even fast and loose with my best friends and the promise of beer to follow. I just love bikes, and my whole hand wringing about which ones to keep is absolutely bloody irrelevant.

All of them, of course. And to ride them as often as I can. That’s a simple enough concept that defies any measurement.

* This is not the not the noise a posh duck makes. And don’t get me started on bytes and nibbles.

** Like Cabin but for smaller buildings.

New Years Play.

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, Photography2 Comments

Blue skies, frozen trails, tea and cake to finish. What’s not to like? Well there is the ongoing digestive conundrum of our dog who – having eaten one of everything at Christmas – started to spray liquid from both ends at high velocity. Mostly in the house. The vet – after spending some time calculating exactly how large the bill would be – recommended a pasta diet and a course of Dog imodium.

Such a get well strategy has resulted in Murphy’s normally happy and loyal demeanor being somewhat tested. Nothing looks quite as sad and depressed as a hungry Labrador on starvation rations and unable to poo. If he doesn’t go soon, we’ll be needing to consider a cesarean.

Malverns 2010 - New Years Day (2 of 19) Malverns 2010 - New Years Day (4 of 19)

Sorry, nobody eating was there? Anyway with the dog plugged, I snook out for a quick ride that ended up being not quick at all. A route away from the crowds on some fantastic frozen trails was one reason, my mechanical incompetence another. Why I ever though that two new chainrings and one new chain would mesh perfectly with an old – and if I’m honest somewhat ground down – rear cassette is a mystery to me.

Malverns 2010 - New Years Day (6 of 19) Malverns 2010 - New Years Day (10 of 19)

Less mysterious was the cacophony of ill fitting teeth failing to establish any kind of interference fit, even with my meagre thigh power applied to the pedals. Eventually I ended up with about three working gears carrying the rest around as mere fitness ballast. The fellas took pity on my plight with a slew of their own mechanicals including a case of such magnificent chain-suck, I thought we were going to have to go in through the stay to release it.

Malverns 2010 - New Years Day (12 of 19) Malverns 2010 - New Years Day (16 of 19)

And with the New Year bringing out the Malvern Hoards to overflow car parks and perambulate on every major off road thorough-fair brandishing new cameras and old fat glands, we embarked on a cheeky tour of the lesser known South Side. Some good stuff there as well accessible only by granny-ring grinds and much facial gurning. For which Tim H of this parish may very well have usurped me as champion gurner.

Malverns 2010 - New Years Day (9 of 19) Malverns 2010 - New Years Day (7 of 19)

We retired after a few hours for the aforementioned tea, cake and medals. I wish I could retire but after spending yet more cash on wide-bar love and boring bits of metal to make the gears work, I reckon I’ll be sharing Murphy’s diet soon.

So 2010 is officially off to a superb start. Just the next 364 days to ratchet up the grump-o-meter.