Sometimes a day is not enough.

On February 25, 2007 By AlexIn Bikes, Other stuffLeave a comment

It is surprising how much pain and suffering can be fitted into a single rotation of the planet. Okay, it’s not proper pain and suffering, merely angst and irritation on speed further accelerated by the power of faffing.

Friday 6pm
My trusty drinking buddy and mechanical genius arrives. He takes a long, hard look at my nervously presented first built bike offspring. In the spirit of honesty, I offer him a double digited list of known problems well beyond my mechanical ken. A good example is the front mech’s reticence to shift the chain onto the big ring, an action that only rarely happens with me at the controls.

Simple to explain, complex to fix and soon spanners are twirling and large parts of my once proud build are being deconstructed. Talk of chainlines and ˜Q’ factors sail above my head which, is by this time, nose down in the beer trough.

Next on the agenda is a brake spongy enough to loofer with. This provides a perfect opportunity to imbibe toxic hydraulic fluid through the process of osmosis. Three times we followed the German maintenance instructions, three times the brake stubbornly refused to offer anything more than a token grab of the disc. Still we did end up with a turret attachment and a device for invading Belgium so every cloud and all that.

Thankfully we were saved from fixing the same problem with the other brake when Frank diagnosed the problem as it being totally fucked. The brake worked in a unitary manner, in that the pads would happily grip the disc but weren’t so keen in actually releasing it.

Friday 9pm
Rain starts

Saturday 9am
Rain stops

Saturday 9:15am
Rain starts again after brief pause to collect another million gallons of water.

Saturday 10am
Unload the bikes at Swinley Forest “ a location that remains largely mud free even in winter because of a unique combination of sandy subsoil and thirsty pine trees. Not so today, a sloppy mud fest cunning designed to grind away anything that moves and bleach the will to live through miles of pedal heavy trails.

After sometime not much longer than an hour, the manky shoulder cried enough leaving me to blaze a solo, moist trail back to the car park. This was helped not at all by a basic lack of navigational skills and the loss of a contact lens. The bike pitched in as well with the cranks secondary picketing the front brake and becoming “ in modern HR parlance “ rotationally challenged. The much faffed with rear brake went the other day and has brought a whole new meaning to the word Bleeding.

Saturday 3pm
Random’s party begins with a window rattling shriek as eight excited six year olds rip through the house like a happy tornado. The subsequent two hours was a blur of kids trying quite hard not to throw up an acre of trifle. Any of them refusing to accept that my alternate version of Simon Says wasn’t the best bit will not be invited again.

Saturday 5:10pm
Silence falls on the house. I take this opportunity to check the football scores to see that Sheffield United have been narrowly defeated 4-0 away to Liverpool. This provides perfect context for the Ireland v England Rugby international where a single half is enough to brutally differentiate the great from the not very good.

Sunday 3am
Maybe riding wasn’t such a great idea. As an precursor to three all day adventures in Morocco next week, it’s not looking terribly promising. Only an illegal concoction of pain killers finally dulled the throbbing pain long enough for me to sleep. Unfortunately by this time it was morning.

Still on the upside, the hated folder has left the building “ not, as I had hoped, in jagged sections characterised by axe marks but rather in my brother’s car. He attempted to evangelise the efficacy of the this hinged nonsense, but a single terrifying outing confirmed my suspicion it is not a bike at all. Merely a clever way of unfolding a set of tiny wheels that replicate the sensation of riding a tall freezer on some skateboard wheels.

Today I am visiting relatives. I fully expect this to be at least as much fun as yesterday.

It’s tool time.

On February 20, 2007February 20, 2007 By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding5 Comments

For those of you neither of mountain bike or mechanical persuasion, I heartily recommend you look away now. For the rest of you, I am seeking re-entry through the bolted door – double locked with nailed wood – which bars entry to “the tools of war“. Yes after a day where I was forced to self-harm with the “spoon of hurt“, it seemed apposite to explode violently creating a blast radius where there was once expensive bike parts.

The reasons are simple. My crushing inability to wield even the most harmless tool without the kind of collateral damage last seen during the Tet Offensive is well documented. My mental detonation was fused by a series of meetings where the word “estimating” had euphemistically replaced the rather more accurate “fucking hell, let’s just have a wild guess eh and then fuck off home”. Chiltern Railways then provided all the cerebral C4 a man can reasonably be expected to handle when abandoning us first in Rickmansworth, then ChorleyWood, then Chalfont and Latimer before grinding to a shunting halt somewhere outside Amersham.

The final spark was travelling in a suit, compressed into a carriage I’d inadvertently wandered into not realising it was reserved only for those with weapons grade body odour and a seat companion who was both fat AND sniffly. I really want my shoulder to work so I can smell at them right back and stave off arse cheeks the size of Belgium.

So right now, I’m looking at this.

Flickr - PA frame

Out of shot are some serious tools normally spun by men sporting a stern expression and a damp rollup behind the ear, whose only clothes are three pairs of identical oil stained overalls. The type of bloke who can rebate a dwell angle inlet valve and create almost any shape from an old nail and a stick. Copies of well thumbed “What Lathe incorporating Popular Angle Grinder” litter every horizontal surface and the remnants of a once proud engineering nation are clear to see.

I’m not like that. I’m less studied, more twitchy and far, far more destructive. I don’t want to be but when God was handing out motor skills, I was accidentally setting fire to an angel. If all that remains of something once lovely are a few collapsing atoms and a guilty expression, it’s probably been FBA. I like to think of that as Fixed By Alex although some would select a different F verb.

In front of me are a headset press, a bottom bracket facing tool, a thread reamer and a star fangled nut. No, I’ve really no idea what they are do either but each offers sufficient flat metal to receive a well directed hammer blow. But I think the frame could take it – it appears to have been hewn from deck sections of the Graf Spee and welded by uncomplicated men who bond ocean spanning bridges for their day jobs.

My last steel frame was all swoopy lines and pretty detailing. It was a wheeled gazelle, frolicking in the fields and breezily galloping down trails barely marking their surface. This frame however does not frolic. It has no truck with leaving the surface untouched – rather it stamps like an invading army beating the ground into submission and if that fails, eating it. Someone has looked at a bunch of stress models on a computer screen, thought “bugger this” and added 25{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} more thickness to every tube.

A sticker proclaims this angry amalgam of tubes is lightweight steel. But I’m not sure, I think it is a little known oxide of annoyance and hostility well hidden in the periodic table. I think it’s made of Chunk.

So I could make a start. What is the worse thing that could happen? Or for those of us with a fevered imagination, what’s the 10th worse thing that could happen? I’m having a badger* to think about it.

Oh and it’s battleship gray. Co-incidence? I think not.

* This is not some kind of nasty “bodging the badger” sexual metaphor. It’s a beer. Honest.

Hello Mr Solution? There’s a Mr. Problem at the door for you.

On February 18, 2007February 18, 2007 By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike RidingLeave a comment

I’m not a man who deals well with boredom. And since I can’t ride proper bikes at the moment, I’ve already served a Sunday penance on the Turbo Trainer and jetwashed both children. In a desperate attempt to remove myself from rubbish TV, I found this nifty free add on to Firefox (similar to IE in the same way that Linux is similar and way better than Windows) which grabs web text and pictures and sends them hurtling to the hedgehog.

A picture from James showing a man winning the inaugural “Hug a Tree with your head” competition at Glentress in Scotland. An outstanding effort easily painful enough to secure first prize.

There’s a litany of pain, suffering and amusement to be found on this thread posted on Singletrackworld. My picture started it but it just gets better and better.

Everyone Crashes. Some more than others.

On February 17, 2007February 17, 2007 By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding1 Comment

Another weekend where riding through mud and gloop is happening to almost everyone I know. Gloaters the lot of them, struggling through trails rendered unrecognisable by Winters’ glacial ascent over the hard packed singletrack of a forgotten summer. Like a monster from the deep, brown slop rises inexorably over your favourite tracks and the water table rises with it.

So while those lucky bastards are sliding about in freezing conditions and condemning their wallets to hard day at component replacement central, I was left to muse on an inability to bounce which seems inescapably linked to increasing age.

Back in 2001, when the world seemed a simpler place and mountain bikes replaced motorbikes as my mental illness of choice, I hardly ever hurt myself. Sure I fell off “ often “ but never injuring anything other than inflated pride and wearing the scars as this years accessory to tight lycra. That’s another thing that has changed, any attempt to squeeze myself into those riding garments would see great swathes of extra flesh trying to get back out again.

Still being rubbish will eventually catch up with you and it didn’t have to run that hard when I swapped fitness for fun. Here’s an abridged chronology of who broke what where from 2005.

Feb 2005:
Jump going badly wrong resulting in a testicle slam that broke the saddle. Yes that’s right I bent and broke a steel railed saddle with my bollocks. Feel free to grab your sack and go all cross eyed. I know I did.

May 2005
Failing to lower the saddle when pitching into the pit of doom. Spat out forward in accordance with laws of physics. Sharp flint created additional arse crack and 35lb freeride bike added all body bruising as it fell out of the sky from a great height. Onto my head.

June 2005
Target fixation on a tree while clipped in for the first time in four months. Practical experiment testing the theory that if can’t tear your eyes away from an impending tree you will hit it. Hypothesis confirmed at the cost of a cracked rib.

December 2005
Refusal to admit that crappy balance centre and fear of heights above 6 inches prevent a man from being a North Shore God. Plank bites Man. Some blood and recently repaired rib much disturbed. Sleeping optional for a week or so, breathing less so but I wish it had been.

July 2006
Six months of atheism when the Cult of the Monged was calling to others. Made a bloody sacrificial offering to Altyr Of The Broken when a tyre lost a battle of traction with gravity, and knee lost a battle of abrasion with a spikey flint. Was latterly awarded Order of the Mong, first class. Became a fervent believer in Fate, to whit her specific irritation that with yours truly.

August 2006
Second day back on the bike after interesting noughts and crosses motif inscribed on kneecap by man with wire brush and needle. Courageously removed one arm from bars on flat section of trail and was instantly transported to the horizontal. Smashed up recently healed elbow due mainly to arm pads protecting the inside of the car. Sown back up by GP’s son who’d got a pretty good idea of what to do and medicated entirely by Nurse Stella Artois for days afterwards.

January 2007
A doomed attempt at a stylish takeoff ended “ unsurprisingly “ in a footless landing with limbs vigorously attempting to escape the host before a head slam to dirt bank brought home the full meaning of deceleration trauma. Adrenalin painkillers got me home at which point pain turned up and hung around for a few days.

February 2007.
Stuffed a front wheel into a muddy ditch. Ditch deeper than anticipated with a groundhoggy ˜here we go again‘ exit over the bars. Bars provided the perfect foil for soft flesh and bruises marched from the toes upwards.

February 2007.
Stump bites man. Shoulder now on disability benefit and showing no signs of wishing to return to work.

Now there’s a school of thought much aired in the Leigh household than maybe, just maybe, this hobby is too expensive both in terms of time, hard cash and body parts. Hah, I would rather chop off the offending limb that brook even a tributary of that argument.

Because between the accidents, I was having the time of my life and until the risk/reward ratio tips firmly towards being to broken or too scared to carry on, it’ll be business as usual.

Although can someone else have a turn at crashing? Thanks.

Thursday? Must be time to go to the hospital.

On February 16, 2007February 17, 2007 By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding2 Comments

It is more than a little disturbing to find myself lying in the same hospital bay last visited after ripping my knee open on a summer flint. That encounter traded pain for boredom over the next three days until eventually a nice man with seven years training and a wire brush removed a kneeful of trail dirt and rocks.

Stoke Mandeville hospital has lately become like a second home or the local pub. Every time I stagger into the front entrance with some imagined fatal disease, the receptionist greets me as an unwanted smelly Uncle who keeps turning up, even after the kind of hints that have an iron bar wrapped around them.

I fully expected to suffer the same six hour wait as the previous summer, and so prepared myself with a flask of coffee and a selection of periodicals with sufficient depth to keep me going long into the night. Fortified thus, it was almost a disappointment, therefore, to be called in for an educated prodding within thirty minutes of darkening the A&E doorstep.

And I’d barely started on a gripping article entitled, bevelling a radiator grill with emphasis on the waffling flange and homologising the rebate bracketï¿½ This is the type or periodical written for and written by a special but shadowy sector of the UK population; known only as the “retired“

Once the traditional lies around smoking and drinking had been documented “ much to my amusement when considering the relevance to a manky shoulder “ much wiggling and attempted rotation followed. During some extended prodding, I felt her enquiry on whether there was any pain was somewhat superfluous, since by this time I was chewing the bedpost and answering almost any questions with “arrrgghhh that bloody hurts”

A severe blow was dealt to my hypochondria once she’d announced that nothing was obviously broken, it wasn’t worth the cost of an x-ray and the best medical science could offer was Ibuprofen, ice and a concise explanation of age, injury and fast healing. Pick any two from three apparently.

The doctor’s prognosis that it may be more painful in the morningï¿½? was absolutely spot on once you’ve exchanged more for excruciatingly. The arm works pretty well below shoulder level and partially above. The eye watering transition between the two has only been slightly dulled by a druggy concoction of aspirin, cocodemal and “ the bikers friend “ industrial strength Ibuprofen. The dosages I’m taking would probably stun a small donkey but, over the years, my body has built up a bit of a resistance.

How did it happen? Obviously I crashed the bike again. Less obviously, it was a cruel permutation of stump high mud, a stump and a narrow gulley. My foot took the initial impact before an outstretched hand took the rest as I was flipped over the bars sporting a very surprised expression. This is the classic scenario where the next thing you hear is your collarbone snapping. So this makes me lucky I guess. Not feeling terribly lucky though, now yesterdays full range of movement has long gone and been replaced by a sharp ache.

I need to stop crashing. Or learn to bounce better. The kids reckoned I should just stop riding mountain bikes. Wisdom of youth eh? I don’t think so.

The body “ even in us elder gentlemen “ is an amazing thing and the Doc confidently predicted a repair in about two weeks. Since that’s on the exact timeline of a five day riding trip to Morocco, he’d bloody better be right.

Stereotyping..

On February 15, 2007February 18, 2007 By AlexIn Bikes4 Comments

… which, if you properly deconstruct the word, should mean writign this with both hands. Instead, it’s at the heart of a reply, written by the British Cycling Federation, to Nigel “Panto and Ranting are my only incomes now” Havers and his cycle hating nastiness.

It starts like this:

I guess many cyclists will have shared my anger at the anti-cycling pieces in the Sunday Times, 4th February. In the In-Gear (formerly Motoring) section of the paper, actor Nigel Havers has had another of his regular pops at cyclists, whilst the letters column of the same section features an anti-cycling diatribe for the second week running.

It feels personal, it’s annoying and it’s highly frustrating. But above all that, if you sit back and think about it, it’s a stance which is pretty dumb. Yet it’s one we hear and see a lot more often than we should in the supposedly intelligent end of the national media. Nigel Havers has been on this soapbox more often than our small screens of late, so it’s not even original on any level, yet he’s at it again and editors seem content to keep paying him to do so.

But, do you know, it’s not the accuracy of these pieces which gets to me. I’m realistic enough to accept that cyclists are not all angels. Some cyclists jump red lights (a recurring theme in the letters columns of papers nation-wide). Some cyclists ride on the pavement. And, sad to say, some of us look pretty ridiculous in the garb we wear for cycling – the practicality which is usually lost on non-cyclists.

No, it’s the underlying thought processes which disturb me. There are some 2 to 3 million bikes sold in the UK every year. Cycling is the third or fourth most popular form of exercise, depending on your source. And yet, the kind of rubbish these articles contain is built on the generalising of cyclists into one big group. The term for this process is stereotyping. The authors take their personal, negative experience of one or two cyclists and extrapolate from that and ascribe the same characteristics to all cyclists.

And goes on at some length to make the point. Read it all here

It finishes not with a stereotypical analysis of car drivers, but with some real world facts:

– Cyclists very, very rarely kill people they collide with
– Motor vehicles kill thousands on our roads every year

– Cycling does not contribute to global warming
– Motor vehicles are a major contributor to global warming

And next time you see a car driver doing something foolish, consider just how ridiculous it would be to condemn all motorists on the evidence of that incident alone.

That seems a reasonable point of view to take however you use the road.

Random Photo

On February 13, 2007February 13, 2007 By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding3 Comments

In keeping with Random’s upcoming birthday, here’s a random picture taken by Grahame Baker in Moab, Utah.

The pilot is Dave Perkins attempting the first Cross Country Front Flip only recently perfected by dirt jumpers and other nutters.

Check out the technique – the weight all the way over the front wheel, the brakes hard on and the look of abject terror as his face races towards hard pointy rock.

Amazingly he wasn’t killed. There was a collective intake of breath as he bounced down the remaining rock steps and lay motionless for a second.

But we knew all was well after patching up bleeding knees as Dave asked for a medicinal lager. It was about 9am in the morning.

Random goes global.

On February 13, 2007February 13, 2007 By AlexIn Bikes3 Comments

Random has – against the laws of probability – almost reached the age of six. And that is simply because she’s only loosely connected to this world of dull reality which houses the rest of us. Random’s world is merely an infinite goldfish bowl where every day is going to be brilliant and every thing she does is always new and exciting. She has an unnerving habit – in fact she has many, I’m merely picking one as a representative example – of snuggling into the sofa while – say – Shrek is on and after ten minutes of golden silence innocently asking “has it finished yet ?” or “Is the green man a cabbage?“.

Her elder sister never did this. Because she’s been going on fourteen since looking bloody irritated as she was brought into this world. It’s an expression she often goes back too. Could also be that we never let her watch TV while she was locked under the stairs for the first five years, but we don’t like to talk about that.

Random refuses to accept the nuggety existence of physical manifestations of dangerous stuff. Like cars on an intercept trajectory or interesting looking ground that could be better explored from ten feet up. Head first. There is some guff that a second child merely doubles your love for your offspring rather than divides it. This is clearly rubbish – it trebles at least with the gradual understanding that you now have two separate chances to totally screw them up in later life.

Oh and yes, I suppose they are sort of fantastic as well, frustrating, refreshingly selfish, expensive, bloody annoying, often showing violent sibling rivalry but kind of beautifully integral to your life. Sure we could have probably retired by now if we didn’t have kids, paid off the mortgage, sailed round the world, put an offer in for Guatemala, slept peacefully most nights and never suffered the stomach churning embarrassment of a three year old exploding in Tesco but apart from that….

Anyway, as a testemant to the robustness of RandomWorld(tm), she’s getting a rather tidy birthday present.

Jessie's new bike

Well what did you expect? Of course it’s a bike. It’s pink, it has more fork travel than my first three mountain bikes and is rather better made. Verbal has been surprisingly and worryingly calm about being gazumped in the new bikes stakes but this I’m putting down to her current tomboy phase. If it’s not blue or can fire deadly weapons, she’s not that interested.

And while the Leigh collection of two wheeled detritus now extends to two outbuildings and a count of fifteen, I can finally sell/burn/disembowel with powertools the final singlespeed in the bikey herd. Poor old Random was spinning at about a million RPM out on a family ride, which also had the disturbing attribute of disconnecting her steering circuit and sending her plunging down the nearest railway embankment.

The outsourced postman will be delivering it tomorrow. Luckily it’s a bike box so the kids will just assume it’s for me which is a bit rich since Carol had a new one for her birthday and since then I’ve only had one more. This is likely to change rather sooner than Carol probably expects but if I wave my hands around in an excited manner and talk quickly, I reckon all shall be well.

So coming to sustrans near you soon – the Leigh family stone terrifying other legitimate trail users, playing chicken with the concrete and failing to crack the complex code of gearing. And that’s just me.

it’s going to be great 🙂

Flying is good.

On February 5, 2007February 6, 2007 By AlexIn Other stuff, Pretentious nonsense1 Comment

There’s much in the papers today about living on the edge. Whether that’s chucking a Rugby ball about, or facing terminal cancer with a cheery smile, or winning in business by playing odds no one else dares – it’s all about being something that others are not.

Life on the edge is “ naturally “ edgy. It’s about making dangerous choices while fully understanding the precarious consequences, but doing it anyway. It’s the self confidence to fight against the tide, be a sheepdog in a field of sheep and never, ever accepting that what you are doing is even close to being enough. Religion speaks to us that our short life is merely a precursor to something better, but those peering over the abyss believe that there is nothing penultimate about life on earth.

So it’s really not a nice place to be.

Sometimes I get a glimpse of what that world must be like where now is everything and you are one cowardly decision away from normality, regret and safety. And the older you are, the line between pushing it or faking it becomes increasingly blurred. Parental responsibility and physical fragility are the waves drowning your youthful impulsiveness and washing you away to a conformist shore.

And that’s a shitty place to be as well.

Life without risk is no life at all. With my mortality fear looming ever larger, each day is a test of your bravery, your commitment, your closeness to the edge. So you must steel yourself to step forward, to look the drop full in the face and feast on the rush of spitting fear in the eye. And then running away quickly.

A friends’ parent bravely piloted a Lightening jet fighter for many years, but now stutters through his remaining life twitching on phantom adrenalin and craving the rush. But what a life – suspended between terror and greatness never counting the cost of a junkiesm that holds you hostage to stuff you can no longer do. It’s the same but worse for those who chase the dragon in every raised vein, or grab their kicks from a bottle. You may reasonably question their willpower and social responsibility, but even they must dimly toast Dylan Thomas and his raging against the dying of the light.

It distills to this “ better to live to forty, fifty maybe sixty years old rather than waiting for God while dribbling into a hospice pillow, forgotten by those who were once the centre of your world. Your lie broken in a bed that’s waiting to be a coffin “ at best a responsibility and, at worst an embarrassment.

So there should be none of that embarrassment if you mainline your twenty something old self and remember that sometimes Who Gives A Fuck?‘ is an entirely appropriate way to greet adversity and accountability. I used to think I hated being scared for myself, or frightened for my family. You know that stomach churning revelation at 3am that maybe your best times have gone and you’d blown what little talent you had.

But I don’t anymore “ because even pretending to be on the edge rocks like a hurricane and while the lows are lower, the highs fly “ Icarus like “ to the Gods. And here’s the thing; the singular joy of being a coward is every time you carve a fast, sketchy bend or confront a scary inner demon, it fills your heart up with life stuff and makes you seven feet tall and invincible.

And that’s a fantastic place to be “ even if it is only for one minute in a thousand.

Life on the edge is not a choice. But sometimes you’re lucky enough to be aware that you can choose to shuffle sideways into conformity or, take a deep breath and jump “ hoping against hope you can learn to fly.

Flying is good.

Quantockastic!

On February 5, 2007February 5, 2007 By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike RidingLeave a comment

Exactly a year ago, a few hardy souls braved the ice, wind and sub zero temperature of the Quantock Hills in Somerset. Because I’m now officially too old and decrepit to have any new or creative ideas, we chose the same weekend and trails to try again.

Except this time, the mercury was rising and a weekend of shorts, dry trails and apparently limitless singletrack awaited the slightly porkier but no wiser riding crew.

I’m far too knackered at the moment to even try and narrate one of the best riding weekends I’ve had in this country so here are some photos instead.