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.

Slip sliding away

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding1 Comment

Yesterday I inadvertently entered the “All English Rubbish Driving Competition“. There were some real title contenders especially those enclosed in high chassis’, riding on 4×4 transmission systems, supported by complex electronics and the power of marketing.

Their faith in the brilliance of their vehicles was somewhat undermined by a cruel lack of knowledge pertaining to how the words “Ice” and “Grip” rarely fall into the same sentence. Unless someone inserts a meaningful “no” in the middle.

So I watched in amused horror as ditches became car parks, roundabouts became straight on’s, and a strictly come pranging combination of spins and pirouettes played out in front of me. The downside was it took me three and a half hours to reach Milton Keynes – a place I didn’t really want to go in the first place.

Tomorrow’s journey is both shorter, and the destination far more exciting. I’m tweaking the nose of terror back at the Cwmcarn downhill course to see if I can be this lucky twice. The ice on the roads shall be seamlessly transported to big roots, forbidding rocks and an entire section best labelled “Death by off camber”

I shall report back with manly tales of riding skill and just simple down to earth bravery. That’ll be the other guy obviously, while my contribution shall be nothing more than great excuses and a nice pot of tea.

Some sports psychologists tell their clients to visualise success and “BE THE BALL” whereas I am more of the cowardly “BE ALIVE” school of thought.

Mad dogs and Yorkshiremen.

On By AlexIn Bikes, Other stuff2 Comments

Dog meets Man. Man loses.

If a man is knocked over in the woods when no-one else is there, does he still make a sound. Yes he absolutely does and the noise is “uuuumpppphh”. Murphy has learned “Come” but has yet to master “Stop” or even “Swerve”

Still he does reward your comatose form with a form of slobbery mouth to mouth that would resuscitate any human with even the merest flicker of life left within them. To the commentary of “Geroff, GEROFF, Yuk, Ugh, GERRRROOOOOFF“. This merely seems too encourage the pup who fails to understand that 25+ Kilos and a decent link of speed is likely to flatten anything with less structural integrity than a good sized building.

Low sun You never learn.

Either that or he just doesn’t care 😉 Properly icy this morning which made this afternoon’s ride swing between amusing and bowel clenching. It’s a good job the brakes don’t really work on a CX bike or I could have been in some real trouble.

Just walking the dog Bright light

As it was, I hurtled down frozen roads and scared a few dumb birds in the local woods with some ad-hoc cycle based beating. Not sure they are entirely legal trails, but since no one shot me I have added them to the list for further investigation. That’s the woods, not the birds. I shall be likely investigating those with a nice side of roast potatoes.

Talking of food, two weeks off the bike and a diet based entirely on whatever crap is placed in front of you, while you’re working your tail off, has not given me the turbo sprint or immense stamina I was hoping for. I feel some of the blame for this must be laid firmly at the door of full fat Coke.

You see, the South African’s refuse to accept the existence of fizzy drinks without a thousand calories in them. Or parts of a dead cow that don’t overhang the plate on both sides. “You want vegetables with your steak sir?” “Where do you suggest I put them?* Tell you what bring me a spare plate and a larger pair of trousers and we’ll be good to go”

A man came today and tried to introduce a sub prime bathroom experience by designing a “water based luxury experience” that would have cost about the same amount as the whole house. This did not sit well with my self imposed temperance approach to the weekend.

Still wine is basically one of your five a day isn’t it?

* Thankfully the waiter failed to offer the obvious alternative receptacle at this point.

I wrote something…

On By AlexIn Bikes, Other stuffLeave a comment

.. it’s over there at BikeMagic where Mike was again chronically short of content. I was due to go back and have another go at mincing downhill with truckage the other way, but work got in the way. Which was, too put it very mildly, quite disappointing.

Not quite as disappointing as the train falling to pieces AGAIN this evening, resulting in about 200 people crammed into the two remaining working carriages. And while it resembled the black hole of Calcutta in there, at least the doors didn’t randomly open and spit you head first into some Cotswold stone.

The rest of the train offered that and many other faults including broken heating and a whistling sound which could only have been a precursor to something exploding. I was so grateful to finally get home, only four and one half hours after I’d left London, I fell to my knees on the platform and snogged it – Pope like – to announce my arrival.

I’m starting to get all ‘Chiltern Railways’ about that train journey.

Updated the bike page..

On By AlexIn Bikes2 Comments

… again

Looking for a picture of the Jake, I typed in “Kona” to my Flickr Photostream. What was returned reminded me of lots of dead relatives turning up unexpectedly for tea. I think I’m up to about 30 frames now in seven years. I don’t know for sure as a) I dare not look and b) the spreadsheet of shame has been mothballed onto a memory stick labelled “Pandora’s Electrons”

Can’t afford any more bikes. Have walls to knock down.

Kona hits the dirt!

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, Photography5 Comments

Kona Kilauea by you.

Although hit the mud would be a more accurate description of the first meeting of old bike and recently squelched trail. It’s a build completed through the scavenger process of beg, borrow and reverse-steal*. The wheels are borrowed, the outer ring offers no toothy service other than stopping the chain falling off and the tyres are a cheeky combination of old and useless.

A lovely warm morning greeted my childish pre-ride enthusiasm. And while I was ready, the Leigh brood were not. And in accordance with the law that any actiivty with Children – up to and including a week long holiday – takes twice as long to prepare than actually participate in, it was rain not sun which greeted our cautious slither onto the trails.

It’s been nearly eighteen months since the kids rode out on proper dirt. A gap only just long enough to ease the trauma of Verbal’s repeated facial braking experiments last time out. And although they both had little falls and the biting back of hurty tears, they also made their old man properly proud with no whinge mud sloppage, some fine turns in leafy singletrack and brave attempts at muddy roll-ins.

At the end of which, demands were coming thick and fast for grippy pedals, mud tyres, cooler riding togs and bigger wheels. All of which were apparently “holding them back”. I cannot imagine where they learned such things.

As 3/4 of the family retired to the inside of the love bus to munch snacks, I took the Kona for a fast run through some sweet rider built singeltrack. The handling is on the lively side of involving mainly due to a stem a full two inches shorter than stock. But the whole experience was about as I remembered it – instant pickup from a pedal stroke, look-corner(tm) steering negating the need for any obvious muscle movement and a wrist battering experience vaguely remembered from 1995.

I’ll leave you to decide exactly how such an experience came about 😉

If I close my eyes, I can see long summer evenings offering up dust and hardpacked singletrack in equal amounts. Riding something like this through the trees toward a dropping sun and a well earned pint could very well be a path to cycling nirvana. Although not until I can find a tyre that is a) less than 2 inches wide and b) points in the same direction as the front one.

* This is where you enter a shop, request a small but vital component only to stagger out some five minutes later having been legally mugged.

I used to think..

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, Photography7 Comments

… I could just about ride a mountain bike. This fantastically filmed bonkers headcam follow shows me I’m only slightly above ‘recently removed stabilisers’ in the cycling food chain.

Great camera as well. Most of the headcam stuff is horribly pixelated and further ruined by changes in light blowing away the contrast. And that’s before the generally shit riding destroys what quality is left.

I had a fantastic night ride yesterday. All two wheel grassy drifts and opposite lock tractionaless descents. By the end of it, I really felt quite good about my standard of basic bike control.

Having watched that, I’m off to get a shopping basket and a Sam Browne belt to properly position my cycling prowess. You watch these guys basically taking the piss, and sometimes you feel inspired, sometimes humbled but always assuming something alien is going on.

This time I just felt scared 😉

This commuting lark.

On By AlexIn Bikes, Road RidingLeave a comment

This week is worringly my third anniversary of an employment period I was absolutely not going to extend past the first twelve months. It is also my fourth winter commuting by bicycle, although the frequency has dropped from four times a week to once a month. Assuming I can be arsed to ride that often.

Which I should as it is now far easier then when I was playing with the traffic in London. The bike friendly train company solves the logistics puzzle of two bikes for one journey. No longer is my commute tediously extended by a half clothed dash between buildings in order to abandon grubby steed, grab a shower and finally trudge over to my place of work.

And this is the first Yuletide period I’m no longer convinced every motorist secretly wants a dead cyclist for Christmas. Riding the Kona is fast, fun, and almost entirely without a high ratio of traffic cockage. So I can only explain my rubbish commuting statistics to a combination of the lazy bastard gene and a nice car parked outside.

Two weeks ago, I made a determined effort to greet the frosty pre-dawn blackness with a powerful light and slightly weaker legs. The lightening sky promised one of those perfect autunmnal mornings with a low sun bathing the countryside in soft glowing rays. I nerver got to see that once my new light comically dived into the bushes, and left me making a speedy – if terrifyingly dark – progress down the biggest hill of the commute.

Five minutes of searching for the remains proved conclusively a rear light maketh not a useful torch. I slunk home, hit the shower and grumped workwards into the car. It’s taken me all this time to raise the enthusiasm to try again. And the faint hope of a repeat sunrise was dashed by the kind of drizzle that doubles suicide rates.

First I was too cold, then too hot, then a bit frightened on dropped bars and wet roads. It was one of those mornings where getting on with it distills simply into counting the alternatives, and finding none.

But then days like this remind me that the choice is really between being dry and warm now or fit and fast come spring. And with a 1000 feet of climbing on silly racing ratios, even one or two twenty five mile commutes a week are going to put me firmly in the second category.

And even when it’s all gone a bit dark and horrible, there’s always a guilt free bacon sandwich to look forward to. Or possibly two – this kind of physique doesn’t come without sacrifices!

An accident waiting to happen.

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, Photography2 Comments

Bit chilly, very windy, much fun.

A statement that well describes both an elongated plunge into a handy bush, and the dreadful way I dispatched a vast quantity of decent red, the evening before. The two may have been related. A weekend of much alcohol occasionally interrupted by riding was both fantastic and slightly frustrating.

Before I suffered serial navigational confusion, a tree accosted my riding person and threw me into the squidgy dirt. This was merely an end game which was nicely set up by fat floaty tyres, a trail of tractionless mud, a head still more drunk than hungover and the unpleasant sensation that you’re no longer in charge of the steering.

I’m fine thanks for asking, but still a bit confused.

You see back in the Chilterns, I knew most of the good stuff. Where to ride when it was gloopy – so that’s nine months of the year then – the best descents, the cheeky trails and when it was safe to ride them. Here, I’m still a bit of a trail remembering novice and, with my legendary navigational skills, getting lost happens always as often as getting it right.

None of this is helped by generally riding with people who know where they are going. And mainly in the dark. Attempting to translate light strobed memories into confident trail finding was about as successful as failing to open that ‘last’ bottle of wine. Although the Malverns – with the help of young whippersnapper Tim – was not so much of a problem as the Forest of Dean the following day.

Although “not so much of a problem” may not be an entirely accurate description of “er, hang on fellas, left here. No right, no straight on, ah that’s a quarry is it, right definitely left” and “bloody hell, it all looks a bit different in the light“. A hangover sharp enough to shave with wasn’t the best sidekick for a day when I was nominally in charge.

The Forest of Dean held no such fears. I didn’t even pretend to know my way around there. After a night of incessant rain, the mud was almost as constant as the rubbishness of my route finding. After the Malvern ride, the bikes were merely wiped down to remove splatters of dirt. Once we’d slopped back to the Cafe in the Forest, a full on hose down and relube was required. And that was just the riders.

It’s made me more determined to get out and get exploring even when the weather edges to the increasingly ploppy. Once you’re up to your armpits in winter vegetation, and properly lost half way down a steep hill, getting wet and cold are mere bagatelles to the main problems at hand.

On the upside, I was super confident in the twisties of the wine cupboard, and showed great bravery when presented with a line of difficult beers. Tomorrow I’m going to ride to work and if I don’t arrive, I can probably be found looking lost and confused on the road to Hereford.

Guess what?

On By AlexIn Bikes6 Comments

I’ve bought it! Mike is going to brew me up a rear hoop through the alchemetic art of wheelbuilding, and also provide some pre-loved spiky things to attach pedals then legs too. And I have found some brakes in my spares bin that I cannot remember ever owning.

So either I have been “Sleep-Thieving” or a hole has been wrenched asunder in the space time continuum. Smack bang in the centre of the “Jiffy Bag Of Unknown Bicycle Spares“. I’m basically short of just an 8 speed cassette and a 27.0 seatpost. A delve in the grotty aperture of doom still raises enough stuff to build something else.

Assuming that something else needs three handlebars, two saddles, no transmission and just the one wheel. I think we’re into the realms of a unicycle here.

Things left to do? Well apart from carefully build it when all the bit converge on a time poor Al. Tell Carol, really mustn’t forget that bit.

It must be the cold.

On By AlexIn Bikes, Photography16 Comments

Because what other reason could there be to find myself stroking the monitor, when I saw this:

1993 Kona. Also known as Als Insanity
1993 Kona. Also known as "Al's Insanity"

I used to have a really nice Kona but sold it when the Emperor turned up with some new threads. That one up there is even older. About 1993, which is WAY before I even started riding Mountain Bikes. Although those of you privileged to have seen me ride would probably prefer the more accurate “Short legged man being inconvenienced by a bicycle”

This one was built before the advent of suspension forks, fat tyres and the marketing fallacy that without a ‘integrated component stack of class leading technology” you would die the instant you hit the trails.

It is not without problems. Some of them are technical around old standards and the need for some advanced shed-bodgery. Others are more ethereal, but rooted in a houseful of bikes already and the proximity of a rolling pin. After the Pace, I said no more. Then I bought the Jake. Which reminded me how good Kona’s are.

You see. It’s not my fault. And I have a whole box full of spares – okay none of which will actually fit but that’s just you lot being negative.  Shame on you. Anyway I’m going to sell the Roadrat. And some pedals. So basically we’re looking at the financial instrument of extreme dubiousness “Cost Neutral”.

In no way related new,  those of you wish to read something that is not merely an electronic prod to my vanity, try my friend Alan’s blog. He doesn’t write much but what he does makes good sense. Almost the opposite to me then 🙂