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.

Use your head

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, Other stuff6 Comments

The original title of this post was Drop the Pilot, try my Buffoon but this seemed, even for loyal hedgehog aficionados, an obscure musical reference too far. Striving to be murky or incompressible and possibly windswept or interesting, the point was that the contents of an armoured cranium has alot to say when rather less subtle muscle groups are heading off in a different direction.

I’m thinking of it as the Cowardly Captain Brain desperately resisting vigorous advice from Lieutenant Stimulus and his troop of non commissioned Reactions. Around this time last year, riding the same bike, on the same South Wales trails but with a different Cranial Captain at the controls, progress was fast, unworried and essentially left to muscle memory and a hands off neural officer class under Commander Confidence.

Confidence has subsequently been posted to almost everyone else I ride with, while Captain Cowardly and his mincing management team have refused to accept that any speed about a decent walking pace can end in any way but bloody disaster. An example beckons I think from a dry and fast descent dropping a few hundred feet to the valley floor:

Lieutenant Stimulus Captain, we’re travelling at ˜strolling speed’. All is clear ahead, suggest increase to all ahead frightened
Captain Cowardly Stimulus, there’s a 15 degree corner coming up, ARE YOU ON CRACK, remain at strolling
LT: With respect sir, your friends have exited the trail, had a beer, fathered a number of children and “ in one case “ passed over to a better place. The Reactions are confident we can advance to mincing in a worrying sexually ambivalent manner
CC: Stimulus, I’ll have you on a charge, my mission orders demand that I ride this fantastically expensive trail bike in the manner of a sack of spuds dumped on a roller skate and I’ll take no more insubordination
LT: Having watched Crimson Tide Sir, I’m going for XO override, speed set to terrified, Hands set to Death Grip on Bars, Communications set to 999. ”

Pause. Noise. Sky. Ground. Sky. Ground. Ground. Ground. Sky. Ground. Ow.

CC: What is our position?
LT: Upside down in a bush with speed of zero. Damage stations report Pride badly damaged and Bravery exhausted. Friends have been set to laughing their tits off

Faced with such mutinous behaviour, I abandoned the well trodden path of riding more and stopping being such a tosser, instead buying a new set of tyres and ignoring the problem. A facet of this was a return to the dustbowel that is Chicksands “ a venue which reverberated to the sound of a head bouncing AL on my last visit.

All was going extremely averagely, until the Lieutenant took control of a practical experiment to establish exactly how I’d crashed last time. It took me a while but as the sky and ground swapped places and the Cap’n suffered the ignominy of dealing with a high speed stump impact, we got there in the end.

And having landed really quite spectacularly on my head again, it’s a shock to find the biggest bruise is technicoloured on my arse. Still, as my best friends never fail to remind me, it’s quite a big unit.

You may argue there is no point to this post whatsoever. From which I can only surmise, you’ve read none of the previous 200+.

Breaking plans for Nigel.

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding4 Comments

Today is obscure musical homage day. If anyone can correctly identify the band with a hit single almost entirely similar to the title of this post, a keepsake from my box marked pile of crap, remember to burn shall be summarily dispatched. To help you out there were the best best thing to come out of Swindon since the Honda Civic.

Admittedly a close third was the M4, but the fab three still enjoyed modest success while still living at home with their mums. We did finally manage to break my friend Nige last weekend in Swinley after he’d boffed a hundred and sixty off road miles in ten unbroken days. The previous four had accounted for about half of those and since in the winding forest singletrack every mile counts double, it was no surprise this was the final resting place for his legs.

Bit of a relief frankly; he’s finally free of the robotic host which sent him up hill and over dale while the rest of us had called it quits for beers. In lieu of post ride beers “ which lamentably do not form any part of the café menu at Swinley “ we instead gorged ourselves on high priced ice creams and conceit. It’s clearly fat people wearing Oakleys season already and stretched t-shirts fail to hide pregnant bellies while expensive sporty shades wobble atop jowelled cheeks.

I mean “ at nearly 40 “ there’s barely a man alive who doesn’t have the beginnings of middle English handles some label as love but are really beer and chips but surely being able to see your feet is not simply a lifestyle choice?

And with 200 miles bagged since April 1st, a certain sleekness of torso and tiredness of legs have manifested in some belt tightening for the man behind the hedgehog. That sounds almost as rude as I was hoping for. But since my dietary approach to exercise can be summarised as Time for a milkshake and chocy flapjack before the train is delayed?, a barely remembered hollowed out feeling did a Nigel on me trying to get home the other night.

The body is an amazing thing “ even one as abused as this example “ but the mind is even cleverer. While a fusillade of non maskable interrupts briskly instructed muscles to stop pedalling and begin hunting for food, what I’m charitably calling higher intelligence ordered them instead to adopt a rotational approach to foraging. Two miles and a small hill was all that separated an empty stomach and fading legs from an oasis of chocolate and energy recovery drink (clever branded under the Speckled Hen moniker).

But what a two miles that was, nothing really hurt but even less worked. Cars bullied me for the first time in ages because raising a heartbeat, my game or a smile was lost behind a desperate sweaty grimace hiding a broken man.

Even unclipping in sight of food was now beyond me, I shuffled the bike into the barn and inhaled two Nutrigrains while still attached to the bike. On reflection, I probably should have removed the packaging.

In the last three weeks, every bike I own “ (and that’s alot although this is in no way the same as too many) “ has been given a proper outing. Even the 38lb behemoth was dragged up to some illegal jump spot and given a proper thrashing until darkness claimed us some five miles from home. That ride back, chasing a mate with only a blinking LED for navigation, through bar wide forest bumping over invisible obstacles hidden under a blacked-out trail was about as much fun as you can have standing up.

And having spent most of the day juggling big drills, sledgehammers and the FreeRide Frisbee in a doomed attempt to extend the kids play fort, I feel I am speaking with some authority.

Cycling Myth #6

On By AlexIn Bikes2 Comments

A two hour repair takes two hours. No it bloody doesn’t especially when you are a/ in a hurry b/ working with cheap stuff and c/ called Alex. I’ve talked before about my signature workshop skill leaving a stamp of FBA on everything I a/ touch b/swear at and c/ break with powertools. I like to think of it as Fixed By Alex “ others choose a different verb.

Saturday was full of family things leaving me a only couple of stolen hours between Is it light yet? and What do you mean you need a shower, we’re late already!. Sufficient time you would think to swap cassettes, tyres and tubes between the wobbly wheels of certain death and a pair of dubious and previously enjoyed hoops, secured through the power of beer barter.

First task was to remove the cassette from the world’s cheapest wheelâ„¢ that had clearly been spec’d on my London bike after the product managers realised they had only 11 pence left to complete the build. This sphere has a similar weight and specific gravity to a celestial orb but with a wobbly orbit around a set of ovalised bearings. It had made the bike truly dangerous to ride with the half an inch of lateral movement harnessed only by banging into the brake blocks.

Selecting the chain whip and my largest wrench (well that’s put me in line for some interesting meta searches), five minutes of pre-dawn grunting were rewarded by a motionless cassette and a irritatingly animated tool wielder. Changing tack, I attempted to beat it into submission using the business end of the wrench articulating my displeasure with breathy I AM wang NOT IN THE smash FUCKING MOOD FOR THIS. The spikey sprockets of impediment glared back unmoved by my testosterone fuelled discourse.

Plan B “ engage brain before opening toolbox. The donor wheel already had a cassette of about the right shape and size so giving me the perfect excuse to finish off the militant one with the big hammer. Sweating profusely now, the removal of two tyres soon morphed into the removal of the skin from my fingers. I was just reaching for the big screwdriver and small tactical nuclear weapon when, in the briefest moment of sanity, I realised this would put my only commuting tyres on the wrong side of usable.

Muttering to myself put the screwdriver DOWN, walk away from the tyre, I grabbed two additional tyre irons and ambushed the Kevlar bead while it wasn’t looking. A bit more grunting, which probably convinced Carol I was involved in some kind of practical animal husbandry demonstration involving a goat and some double cream, the tyres were transferred to the new rims and some vigorous pumping action was applied.

With 30 minutes remaining, this seemed the perfect time to change the brakes. Lately I’ve been reduced to a child-like SPD sparky foot on the floor when attempting to arrest my progress. Ignoring the traditional advice which witters on about changing the entire braking system, I cleverly bastardised the worse parts of two suspect brakes to create a high performance stopping arrangement.

So successful was it, that now neither of the wheels would actually rotate. Backhauling some distant memory on how to set up non disk brakes outed a pointless small screwdriver with a big hammer for backup. At the exact point when my precision approach has passed the point of fuck it, close enough, the front wheel exploded.

I’m not being lazy with metaphors here; honestly the reaction between a high pressure tyre and an emaciated rim was both noisy and spectacular. The ensuing shrapnel and swarf convinced me that this wheel was probably no longer fit for purpose. I then spent an additional twenty minutes I didn’t have putting the tyre BACK ON THE WHEEL I’D TAKEN IT OFF IN THE FIRST PLACE.

Now – some two days later – I’ve calmed down, the result of my rudimentary spannerwork no longer perambulates in a random crab like schism towards certain death. Four finger braking and a brief prayer are no longer required when attempting to remove a taxi door from an immediate future, and the gleaming drive train now completes a gear shift within the time of a single commute.

This is clearly bad karma. Anything that has been FBA’d always “ and I mean always “ detonates in some kind of uncontrolled explosion. It’s just a question of timing.

So that’s something to look forward to then.

P.S. Other cycling myths are available

When I am world dictator..

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding2 Comments

.. and it is only a matter of time before my inauguration as supreme ruler of the planet, every citizen of earth shall be forced to wrap up their working week by riding a mountain bike quickly and then drinking beer a little faster. Trust me on this, world domination through the structured agenda may appear slightly less raffish than the movie bred mad media barons with their cackling laughs, but it is going to happen.

So if you are a traffic warden, a Chiltern Railways employee or the person who invented the automated call director, the world is soon to become a far harder and more painful place. With more scorpions arranged in a pit ensemble. May I just be allowed a small cackle at this point and some deranged exclamation marks? !!! Thanks, that feels good.

But not as good as riding two gears faster than two weeks ago on a local loop much loved for its secret singletrack, yet less appreciated for its nine months descent into gloopy hell. It’s generally unridable much before May as clay subsoil and winter rain turn fast summer curves into wheel locking ciphers. Even dried by a rain shy March, it tempted us fourteen days back but still rolled out the muddy, leg sucking carpet for around half its length. We nodded as wise trail sages and cautioned a few weeks delay before trying again.

But we slipped back tonight under cover of a sustained dry period of dry weather and found hard baked trails broken with enough cracks to make a fast bowler smile. Seventeen miles and a little over ninety minutes later, we too wore the dusty grins of men not quite sure how we got so lucky. Friday the 13th it may well have been but the only bad luck we suffered was the death rattle of an empty beer barrel at rides end and that was simply circumvented with a simple “pint of anything else then and throw in a few whelks for our trouble”

The trails are back pummeling dry as identified by me and another change of bike, after last weekend when my approach to happy gravity could only be called riding because I couldn’t remember how to spell portaging. Today back on familiar trails with my nutty hardtail and a style best described as “non braking bar death grip“, we shimmied between gasping trees and ducked under springy branches. I worried less about falling off and more about staying positive except for two incidents which triggered a Kryton like “Panic Circuits Engaged“.

Didn’t crash tho which as world dictator incarnate seems about right. I mean what kind of leader of the free world falls off his mountain bike? Well apart from George Bush but since he has been almost fatally injured attempting to digest a terrorist pretzel, I think we can agree he is a special case. As in special needs.

The last trail was a insanely fast dusty descent, tyres whumming on a six inch ribbon of joy banked in by an imposing hillside. I had almost forgotten how much I love riding mountain bikes faster than I should but slower than I can, then stretching the post ride glow with a couple of cold beers. If I could bottle that feeling and spread it out over a week, almost everyone I meet would have a somewhat nicer experience. And that’s important if you’re going to have four billion employees – you need to be a people person.

Right I have some European boundary planning to attend to. If you’re interested in being the “Duke Of Good Cheese and Smelly Frenchman“, drop me a line and I’ll see what I can do.

Right now I’ll be writing later..

On By AlexIn Bikes, Site Stuff2 Comments

… so much drivel to share, so little time to do it. Can someone have a word with my boss who has loaded up a new e-mail rule entitled “forward difficult and time consuming task to Alex, he’s clearly a man with too much time on his hands”

As well as my robustly argued treatise on the importance of pissing in a compost bin, there’s an oblique reference to Joan Armatrading and a ruinously honest description of some other thing that seemed incredibly important at the time, but I seem to have forgotten it for now. But they’ll just have to wait for a while.
In the meantime, here’s a picture of a man who has stolen Rupert the Bear’s undergarments.

A poor choice of trouser

Have a fun weekend. I shall be taking the kids to London and, if they continue to behave in the same manner as this previous holiday week, I shall be leaving them there.

It has all gone off!

On By AlexIn Bikes, Other stuff3 Comments

A parade of strangeness lined up for inspection this morning as – in no particular order “ I was confusingly confronted by a pink folder, a coat hanger and a set of weighing scales.

Last year about this time a whirling dervish, defined by big hair and powerful limbs, speeded a crinkly facsimile of a proper bicycle leaving me worsted at the end of a three mile race through the centre of London. So imagine my delight when, earlier today, the pink persecutor flexed its way into Hyde park, travelling slowly on silly wheels and making the same kind of pointless fashion statement as puff ball skirts.

Eagerly I chased down my nemesis ready for another battle of the sexes, only this time with even less fitness but even more cheating. But the only person cheated was me since “ amazingly “ some other asylum escapee had purchased the pointless pivoter in a garish shade of pink. Nevertheless, this was too good an opportunity for revenge and in barely an irregular heartbeat, she was consigned to the bin of the bested.

I’m pretty sure she was impressed, I know I was.

Still whistling a happy tune, my mood was further enhanced by someone having else having a crap day. An angry post-it note traded as a modern day thrown gauntlet “ hung as it was to a damp towel “ and promising any philanderer making wet and merry with said drying garment a set of broken legs.

I love this kind of machismo nonsense and, finding myself alone in the shower room, sorted myself out with a vigorous rub down using his non consensual communal towel, making sure it was properly damp even at the corners. Don’t look at me like that; after suffering the heinous theft of two shower gels and a underarm smelly, the gloves (or possibly gauntlets) are well and truly off.

And because everyone knows good things come in threes, I approached “ still with some trepidation “ the weighing scales of fearful truth. However, having already passed the qualifying ˜third hole in the trouser belt’, I was insanely confident that the fat burning combination of a bit of cycling and a lot of beer would reap the benefits of reduced poundage.

Although I’ve yet to fully research the weight loss properties of a daily dose of half a tube of Pringles and a man sized Yorkie. That’s the chocolate bar not the small dog in case you were confused.

But that research has been canned in a celebrity lager as “ and I’ve absolutely no idea how this could have happened “ half a stone of AL has left the building since Christmas.

Being an eternal optimist, I can only assume that I have contracted some wasting disease.

Good Lord, a post!

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike RidingLeave a comment

Hello and welcome back. As you’d expect after a fantastic weekend weatherwise, the hedgehog is going to reverberate to the sound of photo inspired ego bumping. Here are three to be going along with.

The first shows Jason in Brechfa forest deep in the middle of Wales. A fun trail if loose enough in its top surface to engender a similar looseness in the bowel regions.

The second is at Afan (near Port Talbot) showing firstly the wind farm and secondly a stationary bike that pretty much matched my average over the weekend. More of my mincing later.

Finally, one of Andy playing silly buggers when he’s old enough to know better. I was going to have a go only to find the sun was incorrectly aligned with Venus. Bugger 😉

If you’ve really nothing to do, lots more will be posted in here including two shots of me entitled “my life as a dwarf” and “What are you doing with that can of Stella?“.

Worth waiting for I’m sure you’ll agree. But wait you will as work I must 😉

That’s what the world needs…

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike RidingLeave a comment

… more pink bikes. I can see my kids riding these in a few years time. The first is a good effort especially the tassels which, I’m sure you’ll agree, add a certain class.

Now that's pink!

This however is properly done, any pinker and it’d be offered as an official barbie accessory.

And that is even pinker!

Stolen from this thread on SingletrackWorld.

For a couple of seconds last week, I was possibly taking myself too seriously. Normal service is resumed. When I get a minute, I’ve a fascinating theory to share with you regarding the best way to wee into a compost bin.

April Fools…

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding1 Comment

… the lot of us for believing barely past winters icy clutch, dry trails would abound, and the forests of the North Downs would reverberate the to the whoop, holler and occasional cry of pain from a happy mountain biker.

Here’s a spoof photo. You see, I can tell you that is from last Sunday but I know you won’t believe me.

I don’t have any decent ones to show you as that would tax my photoshop skills. Other lies include we traversed the ridgy Surrey Hills this way and that, diving off onto bar wide, secret singletrack and riding old favourites such as “barry knows best” and “telegraph road“. We were occasionally lost, mostly warm, adequately replete after a major raid on the Peaslake stores, and appropriatly refreshed after Marty supplied some post ride beer from the depths of Daisy the camper van.

In terms of lies, damn lies and statistics, the route was around twenty miles, ridden in a relaxed four hours with much stopping for a brief chat or a rather longer lie down, having breathlessly bested some of the tougher climbs. Marty brought his girlfriend along for only her second MTB ride, provided her with a heavy bike that was two sizes to big and swiftly introduced the concepts of terrifying bombholes about 20 seconds into the ride.

Amazingly she didn’t kill him afterwards but only because she was too tired. Fantastic effort tho and put some of us rather more experienced riders to shame. If I may, for one moment, remove my prism of cynicism, it is great to see someone else starting in the sport and seemingly getting the tiniest bit hooked.

It was all too good to last of course. The “sore throat of annoyance” upped the viral ante last night and now I have some kind of unspecified but quite miserable lurgey. And a sore throat 😉

Perfect preparation for four days riding this weekend. Still it’s good to get the excuses banked early.

Smooth Criminal

On By AlexIn Bikes, Road Riding4 Comments

It is a bit of a stretch to pass yourself as a member of the hardened criminal classes if you are hurtling towards middle age, wear a suit to work and rarely dismember associates with an iron bar. Unless you’re a lawyer which, in the strangest of ironies, is practically a vocational criminal offense and yet provides the legal means to defend your colleagues. No wonder it’s known as being called to the bar.

But this morning, I too have stepped across the slippery line to become a law breaker. My route out of the station is a cheeky pavement sprint in the wrong direction on a short one way street. Blinking out stinging rain, my vision was filled by two yellow jacketed, importantly hatted members of the pretend police meaningfully pointing an arresting arm in my direction.

Please stop Sir, you’re in breach of the highway code the large, rotund one intoned in a voice clearly trained to strike fear into the heart of aforementioned desperate criminals. And please vacate you bicycle as well shouted the second slightly smaller but no less self important upgraded traffic warden.

Well dear readers, I did as anyone with a social conscience would “ I took a hard look at the consequences of my illegality and, after just a moments pause, put the hammer down and scarpered.

I was amazed, on glancing rearwards, to find them giving chase. Suddenly my charge sheet was reading assault with a light battery, followed by the involuntary homocide of two fat policeman, and further lengthened by leaving the scene of an accident (there was going to be one in a minute). At this rate I was looking at incarceration for almost, well, the rest of my life and Panorama would be running sobering documentaries in years to come on the Stone 1

Slightly less amazing was their swift realisation that two fat policemen are significantly slower than one desperate rider screaming You’ll never take me alive copper over his shoulder. The lights changed and I charged over the Marylebone Road in the style of a Thelma and Louse cliff side plunge.

And just to prove that I have now entered the seedy world of the habitual criminal, my status as Rebel Without A Decent Haircut was confirmed with a lawless shimmy past the startled security bloke guarding the firms’ car park entrance. I shot him with a nasty grin that may have lost some effect as I rapidly had to come to terms with an illegally parked van abandoned on my line.

Honestly, some people just think that the law doesn’t apply to them. Stringing ˜em up is all they understand with their terrorist traffic violations.

Hypocrisy is the new tolerance for 2007 “ you heard it here first.

POST EDIT: Ah I was going to write something on why I really can’t take pretend police seriously only to find I already had!