While I find the Canadians honest, open, enthusiastic and fun loving, there is a certain whiff of smugness about them. And with good reason – a thinly populated sports playground, clean air, low crime, vibrant economy and a work/life balance that sees everyone knock off at 5pm. Ottawa is a good example of this. It suffers the same urban sprawl that circles most UK cities , but nobody really cares. Because there is just so much land to build on that even when a thousand houses spring up in a place where there use to be forest, a million kilometres of bugger all still extends in all directions.

My friend Andy was an hour late picking me up from the airport because the local bike shop had forgotten that I’d hired a bike from them. Despite two phone calls remind them; Welcome to Canada the land of the occasionally smug and extremely laid back. We still had time to go riding straight from his house with the woody singletrack, nestling under a rain lashed sky reminded me of home, but home on steroids and free from people.

Still this was just a warm up (or more a rain down) and less than twelve hours later, we drove 10k to Kanata Lakes, a well known MTB mecca squeezed by encroaching development. More rocks, more roots, less mud, more fun. Andy’s shock exploded about 10 yards in but he gamely carried on.

The North Shore is there for a reason, to transport you over bogs and streams. I found the best way to tackle it was at walking pace. That was me walking and the bike being pushed. I wanted to hate the Specialized Epic for the race bike it was, but a combination of bling kit and a singletrack missile hidden behind the graphics meant I ended up really loving it. Except for the insanely low bottom bracket which with fat flat pedals installed made it a bit of a handful in the rockier sections.

Not even slightly sated, we sandwiched in the extreme oddness that is Canada day with another ride in the evening. True to form it pissed down again but only for the first ten minutes. After that, a long lost feelings of fitness and bravery propelled me flying through the singletrack which quickly ended in yours truly getting properly lost. Thankfully the fellas came back looking for me or I was bear food for sure.

Our last ride was to Camp Fortune on the far side of Ottawa deep into the Gatineau mountains and super bike friendly with marked trails and chairlifts. Sadly the chairlifts were only servicing the big rig downhill trails and the nice lady at reception felt the cross country trails would provide more options in the staying alive phase space. So we winched up hot fireroads and plunged down double black trails peppered with north shore, steep drops, monster roots (see above) and endless ways to properly hurt yourself.

As can be seen Martin with his twelve year old canti-braked, lead lined wheeled grip reaper rode most of it. The bits he didn’t ride, he fell off on but this strangely didn’t deter him from getting back on again. When he gets a proper mountain bike, he’s going to enter the ratified stratosphere of “super nutter”.

We even found a safe little jump to play on and regressed to teenage years until Martin – what a surprise – hit it so fast he totally missed the trail on the far side. Time to leave, drink beer in the sunshine and reflect on four rides that’ll live long in the memory.

British Columbia it isn’t. But if you boat is floating on woody singletrack, fantastic views, endless trails – right on your doorstep – and just damn nice people to ride with, Ottawa and the surrounds takes some beating.

So there’s a brief trail review. As the Canadians would say “You’re Welcome“

…. a thousand words. Jetlagged, busy but with much to tell. Until I can string a few amusing words together, you’ll have to make do with a few pictures. These were taken before many arduous and difficult days of dawn to dusk work. In case anyone from the firm is reading 🙂

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A few more here:

Many more words to come including Al’s one page guide on how to get home when jetlagged and abandoned at Heathrow 😉

Right, I’m going back to bed.

Since I’ve given up racing – although this may overstate the actual amount of laps I ever completed – a feeling of relief, tinged with the tiniest slither of envy, falls upon me whenever there is a big event weekend. But not today; a few of my outwardly sound but inwardly barking at the moon chums are preparing for the biggest 24 hour race of the year. With snorkels and fast boats if the weather forecast and – more importantly – the actual weather right now is to be believed.

Now you could argue that 20+ ten mile laps circuitously shared with a thousand other muddy riders while fighting fatigue, hunger and the sound of exploding bicycle components is an odd way to spend quality drinking time. And if you’re in the non racing, dry under roof corner I’m currently occupying you’d be right.

But these aforementioned thousand, soon to be unrecognisably broken, riders feverishly embrace the promised pain and suffering – lighting forums with the fiery ignition of their unhinged enthusiasm. And afterwards, threads spread like wildfire “you really had to be there“, “it was fun really even after my lights, bike and body failed at 3am in the morning” and “I can’t think of the best bit, except the end, that was a really good bit“. I have the greatest respect for the body tented and their ability to remain cheerful and positive way past the time the rest of us would have stropped out of the event demanding hot showers, cold beer and a red cross parcel.

So with the weather sages predicting horizon-to-horizon wet briefly punctuated with tempting bright spells and the real possibility of Navy divers being helicoptered in to rescue sinking competitors, it is going to be bloody horrible whatever people say afterwards. Yet in a ill judged moment of moist solidarity, I felt that my epic ten mile commute should identify with my braver cycling brethren.

Grumpy already with an early start, the tipping rain did nothing to improve my black mood. But with sufficient wet weather gear to waterproof a small elephant, there was no proper excuse not to just get on with it – other than “fuck it, I really can’t be arsed”

Trudging a mental path somewhere between the plight of the poor buggers in a sodden field and the spirit of Victorian exploring, I struck out anyway. My Conrad like “Bloody annoying – an univited Croc boarded my canoe and attempted to serve me up for lunch. I was forced to fetch the blighter a sharp clip across the snout until he desisted” stiff upper lip approach to the increasing wet lasted all the way to the end of the road.

At which point, God emptied his bath tub and I took the least soaking option of hiding under a tree as sizzling lighting BBQ’d lazy, unmoving clouds and smashing rain rebounded to eye level. I scuttled closer the the protection of my friendly tree and waited for the world to break.

It didn’t but my resolve did. I crabbed a fast sprint home, dumped the bike and made a guilty grab for the car keys. But sat here now, I’ll raise a beer to the proper racers defined by their mental strength, mud enemas and crazily unbalanced hardship focus.

Rather them than me 🙂

Mark lamented on a previous post that he “wasn’t even a proper nutter”. Now that’s between him and his analyst 😉 but if one took a dry dictionary definition of the term nutter and transposed it across to a 3-D environment, it would look something like this.

(with an appreciate nod to my friend Mike who was all things stitchy in Photoshop)

Momentary insanity saw me add the hefty weight of the camera to my over-hefted form, which was already struggling to push the SX Trail about at Chicksands. Riding in the style of “scared shitless sack of shit having a shit day being shit” was not totally fulfilling, so instead I whipped out the vanity cam and started randomly clicking.

Even flushed with the success of my previous efforts, it’s obvious that there is more to this proper photography than just adopting a squinting position close to the action, then stabbing the shutter release when something passes through the viewfinder. Entire continents of knowledge pertaining to pre-focussing, exposure compensation, positioning and panning require proper exploring.

And so far, I even barely understand the language.So nuttercam(tm) missed some of their almost balletic ability to ride in a third dimension that would have most of us wibbling for our mums and booking extended stays in dirty hospitals. What struck me most about these guys (not a girl amongst them which must make for excessive masturbation amongst dirt jumpers) was their age (from young back to barely developed embryos), Clothes (street threads hiding occasional body armour), attitude (laid back to the point of catatonic) and unstinting enthusiasm (try, crash, dust off, grin, try again).

Check out the guy below. He must have tried this trick (whatever it was, tailwhip to fakie, dirt-face finish) twenty times and never came close to landing it. Well not with the the bike anyway. Didn’t seem to bother him tho.

Back over the other side, older blokes who should know better were having it stupid off the recently rebuilt “little” ladder – Yeah it’s “little” like the Sahara is “a bit dry”. Two Irish guys with huge springs, counterbalanced by smaller brains, were taking a hundred yard run up to ensure they disdainfully avoided the downslope and, instead landed on the flat bottom of the hill.

Go big or go home was their of repeated mantra. And so I did; go home that is. I’m putting up a reward for my bravery last seen around November 2006. It’s pretty small and hard to spot but if you’ve seen it, I’d still like it back 🙁

Click here for a few more examples of the nutters day out.

Well no, of course I didn’t. Short course XC racing is for those students of proper training, garish lycra and a single minded focus on winning. So clearly not for barely fit, inappropriately biked fun-poker-at-ers who scratch their head/balls when faced with sixty or so Race Faces on bulimic bikes. Instead, I ambled round a couple of practice laps with all the speed needed to hunt down a lettuce. Fun course though and after two laps totaling an epic 5 miles, I abandoned any pretense of being a proper racer and sloped off with the camera instead.

It was dark and scary in the woods and that was before around 50 kilograms of zero body fat came screaming round the corner. Still revenge was mine, blinding them with the flash and having the odd cowardly snigger at silly narrow tyres and rigid forks. Unfortunately for my world weary cock snooping, almost all of them were competent bike handlers, smooth and fast in the twisties and propelled uphill as if a Saturn five booster had been strapped to their shorts.

Here’s a representative example.

To balance out the fast guys (and girls), there were a few that even I could have given a run for their entry fee assuming it was over one lap and uphills didn’t count. A few nutters were even on singlespeeds. Away from the podium hunters though were the fun category and the riders decked out in flowery shirts and big grins were exactly that.

Here’s a guy who was taking the whole thing with an appropriate amount of seriousness.

Here are a few more of my favourites. That’s pictures not riders, in case you think I’ve fallen foul of some man lovin’ lycra action.

There are a few more in much the same style here

It was an enjoyable evening even in the rain with the real prospect of expensive electronics giving up with a damp hiss. I much preferred the picture taking that the actual riding but you can’t fault the enthusiasm of those organising and taking part.

Apart from one guy who was just way too serious and after serially pissing me off with trivial complaints as befits a proper prima donna, I weed on his car on my way out.

I am striving for middle aged tolerance but sometimes I can’t help backsliding.

Right. No easy way to say this. I’m thinking of buying another stupid one geared bike and while it is obvious to anyone not booked in for special needs cognitive therapy that this is insane, it’s even worse that that. You see last year, this article was published in the SingletrackWorld magazine and attracted a fair amount of hate mail. Which is fine, because it was written in the style of baited hook to frenzied biters. But spin the world a few short months, and I have my hand on the “buy another pointless bike” button although Carol may have her hand on the rolling pin if I do.

If anyone has a petard, I’d like to borrow it for a bit of personal hanging. Oops. Click over the page for the full story.

Continue reading “Turncoat.” →