During nightly insomnia, an entire post took shape at around 3AM postulating the purchase of Mountain Bikes as non organic memory banks. A 6am coffee-fueled brain dump revealed this was merely my subconscious coding logic for guilt. There was – as are most things conceived in that black reality vacuum of the deepest night – a hint of pretension and a whiff of self obsession which require a northern edit* to mitigate publishing embarrassment.

So instead let’s talk about how the monster rides. For those of a short attention span, the following picture shows the difference between what I thought I was building and what finally popped out of Matt’s Garage. For clarity, the Nukeproof is the one on the right.

It was a difficult birth. Some of which was – predictably – my haste to build it. Some was a distributors stock control system which essentially mined an astrology algorithm in an divination attempt to predict the content of the physical boxes. Fair to say the results were occasionally amusing, mostly frustrating and largely inaccurate, hence the mismatched rear wheel stolen from a mate.

Which was the wrong width. And the adaptors didn’t fit. So we had to machine those down. Then the Bottom Bracket wouldn’t thread because the shell had gone straight from ‘incisewith a bread knife’ to ‘ship’ without ever passing through ‘Quality Assurance’. This sort of thing went on for a while and even after two nights of intense effort and some proper hammer action, it still wasn’t rideable. A final visit to a bike workshop produced a working bicycle, but I’m bloody glad I wasn’t allowed to watch as three burly men appeared to be leaning on a T-Bar, all the while uttering words of which their mothers would strongly disapprove of.

Best go ride it then after all that effort. Years of yomping mountain bikes over lumpy terrain, coupled with an extensive back catalogue of representative examples suggested that the Mega would climb like a three legged stoat while descending in the manner of a lemming shot-cannoned over a bottomless abyss. And be fairly boring in between. What today told me was that generalisations are wonderful abstracted things but not very useful in real life.

We climb for a short while as I marvel at the black magic of a single ring not constrained by any type of chain device. There’s sufficient cogg-ery between front and back to present a ratio entirely acceptable for climbing anything in the forest, even with an all-up-weight someway on the wrong side of 30lbs. It’s hard to know how much of a real world problem this is with 90{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} of the trails surfaced with a thick layer of mud. It’s not much fun to ride in, but at least it showed me exactly where I’d failed to protect the frame with heli-tape. Still paint is over-rated I’ve always thought.

So climbing is fine. It’s better with the rear shock switched to a mid point pre-load allowing the bike to sit up in its travel without losing too much small bump performance. The forks are something else. Even with the myriad settings firmly defaulted to the mid point – the entire gamut of sucking up small rocks to travelling large over fearsome obstacles on downhill runs are met and dispatched with the same aplomb.

Heading downhill has the purple minion in control. It’s indestructible in terms of what terrain can offer up. It’s also laterally and vertically stiff and nicely balanced between the axles when standing up. Wide bars, short stems and ‘personal wall‘ brakes mean you can take all the control you need to manage all the risk you’re prepared to deal with. Even on flat contouring trails, the expected boredom is missing with adequate briskness being a few simple pedal strokes away. With that slack head angle and 170mm forks, there’s a pre-requisite of some ‘body english‘ on turn entry but, once in, it tracks beautifully which must be due to a combination of frame stiffness and a fat 2.5in front tyre.

Our route to tea and medals was one of the mellower downhill runs way above the centre. First we had to let two younger gentlemen rocking the 2014 enduro pyjama look drop in and almost pull off that difficult juxtaposition of wearing nighttime clothes and riding mountain bikes. Careful use of the word ‘almost‘ there. Short of giggling and pointing, we didn’t give them much of a start as there was a close-to-zero chance of us even seeing them again, never mind catching.

We didn’t. Bit since my entire cognisant capability was overloaded with the crazy 3-D puzzle in front of me, this wasn’t much of a concern. Staying on, staying somewhere close to Haydn’s rear wheel**, staying in the moment and finding time to wonder how much of any trail competence was down to me and how much to the bike. The instant conclusion reached was it was the bike of course, which in no way failed to shift the grin on my face.

We ignored the massive gap jump near the trails end, and instead headed for cake and rubbish analysis. So the bike will climb pretty well, which makes the Sunday choice a little harder as the trails dry up – because the Mega is so damn good going down. 26 inch wheels work very well indeed, and in the deep mud of today were probably a little easier. Certainly changing direction and removing them vertically from the trail are definite plus points. They don’t roll as well but the giggling part of me was thinking ‘who cares?‘.

All bikes are good. More bikes are better. Bikes with silly amount of travel can still earn gravity credits through manual propulsion. Wheel sizes are more about marketing than riding. The only obvious conclusion that can be drawn from these statements are that ‘I need a bigger shed‘ and ‘I need more time to ride my bikes’. Soon I shall deal with one of those and it won’t involve any kind of extension.

Riding today should have been a five hour death march atop the bike provisionally slotted in for the Goshawk 50 next week. This time last year I was fit, focussed and not even a little distracted by shiny new pedally things. Still two out of three ain’t bad. Or one out of three. At least one half for sure – anyway the forecast suggests it won’t be snowing and the ambient temperature will be in double figures. How hard can it be?

I won’t be taking the Mega tho. Even stupidity has its limits.

* “That kind of flowery wank might pass for journalism in London, but here we conjugate our verbs and call an earth moving spacial implement a bloody shovel. Don’t darken my doors until you’ve removed all three syllable words and failed to compare anything to a cloud”

** not the one I’d borrowed to sort my bike. I can’t deal with that level of recursiveness.

A year ago there was a bloke who looked a lot like me staggering backwards off the ‘scales of truth’. These electronic gluttony judges emitted a startled parp , while all the time flashing a ‘only one person at a time‘ warning. I seem to remember having to console myself with a biscuit or two* while ingesting the weighty news that my previously ordinarily sized frame now had a large bulge in the middle – and not located in the trouser department.

Sob. Console myself. Biscuit. Rigorous self analysis: not just a round tummy, but a hint of moob, fleshy armpits and a face sagging with the effects of age and un pasteurised cheese. Bugger. Biscuit. Still as a keen cyclist, there’s a lovely simile in that my extra body shape resembled a mountain bike tyre**. H’mm good spot I thought, should reward myself for that. Biscuit.

The solution had little to do with biscuits and much to do with finally admitting I was no longer 25 with a metabolism to match. And a nasty little app which tracked your calorie intake and posted back a weight prediction – in my case on a trajectory similar to the first hour of an Apollo mission. So I ate less and better. Reduced my alcohol intake by at least 50{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} and rode my bike lots and lots.

It felt good. I felt hungry, yet surprised myself with previously unknown willpower when being tempted with cake. I fell off the wagon eventually, but not before dropping a jeans size, losing the moobs and shedding 20 old english pounds from my withered frame. And mostly clambered back on the wagon at various intervals through the the year when guilt or gluttony induced lethargy suggested Salad rather than Sausages.

So yesterday was a far less traumatic weigh in. Bob on 12st, a healthy 16 pounds*** less than the horror of the previous year. That’s more than half the weight of my heaviest mountain bike. Which is sufficient inspiration to set myself an arbitrary target of about half the same again before shivering on the Westwood 50 start line at the start of March. The weekend after is some ridiculous beach race I was duped into entering, and not many weeks after that some tarmac based misery with my name and a 100 miles written on it.

After which, I fear for the Morrisons Biscuit aisle. Expect a crazy middle aged man to arrive with a careering trolley on fire while performing a supermarket sweep of anything with the word Chocolate in it. And then a spin round to lay waste to the Cheese and Wine arrangements. Until then, it’s back to the nasty little app and a mind-powered allergic reaction to cake and much riding.

Started that yesterday. By heck it was muddy which considering our road is underwater shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Still banked the first 20k and will be flipping/flippered out again this weekend. Possibly with a bit of stilton on a stick just ahead of my front wheel 😉

* For context: Chocolate. Packet.

** 26 inch obviously. 27.5 hadn’t been invented. This was 2013.

*** I refuse to go metric. I don’t know what a kilogram is. And even if I did, I wouldn’t trust it. I mean what kind of system works in decimal? Where’s the fun in that?

Bit of a stretch that. Saved by the digital archives locating an 8 month old Murf having been ‘done over‘ by the bigger dogs. The dog continues to be as happy as a labrador in shit some five years later. The smell of damp mutt has barely diminished, but thankfully the crazy paving passing as a carpet has long since been given a decent viking burial.

For the last three rides, undertaken in a rather ambitious four days, most of the trail, a good splattering of my person and the entire bike has been consumed by various shades of what was, until recently, dusty and buff singletrack. You’d need to apply for the role of ‘delusional optimist’ to pretend ‘moist dust‘ is in fact a recognisable property of viscous mud.

Thursday’s night ride was under the first clear skies for a week. Before then we had rain best verbed by ‘lashings’ and not in a Ginger Beer kind of way*. I’ve always maintained the geological perfection of the Malverns is both in their topography and their age. We’re talking an ancient glacial sponge here which funnels water through much cracked rocks into natural springs. Not on Thursday it didn’t.

Splodge, slide and slip light up a ride otherwise shrouded in muddy darkness. Fuck, Shit and ARRRGGH add a little more colour to that picture. It was mostly funny, sometimes difficult and occasionally terrifying. The ridge descents were mostly dry, free of people and silly fast. Anything below was slick-backed with glutinous dirt filling of tyre and removing of grip. Trails where hard carving summer turns had been fed through the Autumn translator. A new language of breathing gently on the bars and listening to sliding tyres kept you mostly upright.

Difficult, engaging and necessitating proper handling skills. Worthy stuff but tell me when Spring is again? It wasn’t yesterday where 40k of Forest singletrack started in the pissing rain and ended happily in a sun drenched pub. And altogether brilliant showing friends our best trails in less than their best state. Proper life affirming stuff, where grip could best be thought of as ‘more than you think but somewhat less than you need‘

Mud brings comedy. Me leading into a switchback full of muddy slickness which transformed tyres to slicks and me to a passenger. ‘It’s that way‘ I desperately shouted while heading off in entirely the opposite direction looking for somewhere soft to throw myself into the shrubbery. And ‘Did you just fucking ride that?’ being thrown my way as multiple riders arrived atop a final tractionless drop to a fire road. ‘Sure, no problem, it’s fine‘. They thought differently and under beer interrogation I was forced to admit it’d been ‘pretty much uncontrollable/nearly ended up in the river/considered diving head first into a passing canoe‘

Emboldened by having a great day on mostly horrible trails, witheredcarcus(tm) dragged a much washed bike to the Malverns for a pre-lunch quickie**. A fine idea echoed by everyone within a thousand milds of Birmingham. Rambler Rammage fully accessorised with thick red socks, enormous packs, emergency transmitters, walking poles and expressions clearly crafted from a long study of the terribly constipated.

They don’t like mountain bikers much and I’m not a massive fan of human slalom poles which reduced the ride to sloggy impasse on trails method acting February. At times like this, experience and gravitas comes to the fore. Meaning Martin and I slithered down a descent ending at the Malvern’s finest cake stop. Refreshed and invigorated through the power of tea and sweet things, we switched the bike direction and headed downhill on much neglected trails.

Karma mostly restored, a final climb found us immersed in a honeypot of trail runners, small children, rotund ramblers (hint of constipation firmly in place), Brummies clearly lost and a thousand random mutts. We announced our presence with staccato chain slappiness and cheery shouts of ‘Morning‘*** in a ‘we’re all in this together‘ shared access kind of way. Soon we were free and clear heading for tea, medals and a desperate assault on the washing machine.

I’m keeping Martin honest because his French Full Suss has waved the white flag for the third time in as many months and he’s been downgraded to the hardtail. I’m bouncing about on the PYGA picking lines based entirely only how much fun they may be at silly speeds. The mud is gone, the slog of wheel slipping climbs are behind us as we’re fired briskly into a blue rimmed horizon. Payback time.

Today, a ride saved by cake. Yesterday was bookended by misery and beer. Thursday under clear skies felt like a privilege as we looked down to a valley full of TV-on houses. Tomorrow will be warm and inside which is good, but it’s the weekly spinning class which clearly isn’t. Tuesday, the flipperati shall ride out again splashing through puddles and peering into the dark.

And repeat until Spring. Which might not sound fantastic. And yet compared to the option of ‘not riding’, it sounds like the best bloody idea this year.

* Did ANYONE other than the Famous Five ever actually say that? Apparently Enid Blyton didn’t like kids much which if you read the books becomes immediately apparent.

** Those days are LONG GONE 😉 Mostly because various offspring would be calling Childline citing starvation due to parental abandonment.

*** MTB code for ‘no idea if these brakes are any good, are you feeling lucky?‘

It’s always good to reflect. Let the eye take a longer view – unconstrained by those ‘here and now‘ sight lines. Seeing things for what they really are rather than the jumbled visual puzzle of immediacy. That’s me out of visual metaphors, but I’m bloody glad to have two half decent eyes to at least see what’s being written.

I’ll save you from any further tedious pseudo-medical analysis of the battered eyeball, and instead document my micro slice through the monolith of the NHS. Their ‘first intent‘* is ‘be safe‘ which is interesting in itself. This is less about fixing you and more about doing no further harm. Which makes some sense as the human body is pretty brilliant at fixing itself once you keep it warm, fill it with appropriate fluids and keep it away from infection.

That’s not decrying the capabilities of doctors and nurses because we’ve come quite some way since blood letting was the literal cutting edge of the medical profession. The sharp end in our modern world is wielded by highly trained practitioners aided by high tech equipment and rather more traditional values of patient care. And mostly it’s bloody brilliant, especially when you consider the almost uncountable number of services offered free at the point of issue.

The NHS as conceived by the post war labour government was complicated enough. A utopia of medical care born flawed and compromised by bruising disagreements hammered out between the widest range of agendas and perspectives. That in itself was a triumph and unlikely ever to be copied or recreated. It’d be too damn expensive and politically impossible to enact in the twenty first century, which should in itself be enough for us to all raise a cheer for getting it over the line in the first place.

But crikey it’s a monster. Impossible to manage supply and demand, unwieldy in the extreme, moribund by creaking systems and rarely helped by technology. Always robbing Peter to pay Paul and increasingly under siege from an expanding population far more needy that those just about surviving a world war. My experience was the people within in were universally brilliant but the system of delivery is horribly broken.

Take appointments. Pitch up at 9am and be serially allocated an slot based on your place in the line. One go at this and everyone games the system, turning up ever earlier and bagging the seats closest to the reception desk. Which is staffed by lovely if harassed ladies who ignore ringing phones and cast about desperately for dog eared folders where your medical notes may reside. They also reside on about three different IT databases which communicate much in the same manner as a Rumanian and a Frenchman with enough shared vocabulary to sell a camel.**

What’s funny when the clock strikes 9, the massed ranks of the unappointed stagger towards that desk in a manner best described as Zombie Dawn. Half of us are half blind and the other half have around a 50{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} complement of working limbs. Whoever merged the Osteopath and Eye wards is a funny if evil genius. Anyway on arriving at the desk through the medium of touch, you blurt out name, rank and number, somewhat distracted by swelling knees and stubbed toes, whereupon you’re dispatched to the exact spot from which you started.

Then in some indeterminable time between right then and right before you die before you’re called to another seat which has a different institutional view but the same arse numbing boredom. Amusement can be found watching trolley of notes failing to be steered by busy nurses and crashing into walls, doors and occasionally other patients. Names are called – generally not yours although I always fancied smartly stepping in front of an extremely aged and doddery Mr Phillips who appeared to have all sorts of interesting symptoms I’d have been keen to get a medical opinion on.

Eventually it’s you. Apologies for the delay will be made and more than accepted. Good work in then done if in a somewhat chaotic way as desks are swept of previous notes to create space for your battered diary of NHS life. Inevitably you’re asked back for another appointment which you – now a veteran of the system – cleverly schedule for an afternoon where actual times can be provided.

Clever right until you arrive all ready to be seen at 2:30 on the dot. This is of course a fallacy of your own self importance. All you’ve achieved here is chosen a new time to begin queuing. That’s kind of how the NHS seems to work, it’s awesome when it’s doing its stuff, but it’s bloody hard to engage with. Too many hypochondriacs chasing too few doctors. Too many consultants fixing the wrong kind of problems. Too much politics, not enough money.

When I watched a nurse take a handwritten note from my optician, type it into TWO different systems and then print a copy for my file, it became apparent there are some efficiencies to be made here. That’s my kind of vocational bag, but maybe not one I’d like to open in front of the NHS. A colleague of mine did just that – umbrating the doctor who was carrying out his health check with a prioritised list of improvements the surgery should consider in the name of efficiency and patient care.

His reward for such unsolicited advice was an extremely painful examination of his prostrate. At the ripe old age of 28. From smartarse to sore-arse in all the time it takes to say ‘Thank you for your concerns, please bend over Mr Martin‘.

Anyway I’ll do my best not to waste anymore of the NHS’s time. They clearly have enough going on without whingy-one-eye pitching up demanding satisfaction. I came away with the greatest respect and admiration for those essentially running ever faster on a burning treadmill . And a final thought that however inefficient, conflicted and underfunded most of the NHS is, we should be immensely proud of it.

I shall attempt to maintain that point of view from an ever receding view in my rear view mirror.

* originally a military term to retain some focus when plans hit reality, but now stolen by the corporate world to define strategy. Most places I have worked the first intent appears to be ‘get your retaliation in first’

** If you ever want a failing IT project, mash up the public sector, politicians with vanity aspirations, 3rd party IT suppliers concerned only with shareholder value and a set of requirements best thought of as a quest. As a man with some experience here, I tell you it’s absolutely impossible to do. You’d be better off stocking up on chisels and slates.

That’s a terrible noun pair even before comprehension gets a look in. Back on the day* we had no stadiums but wedefinitelyhad rock. This was a time before social media, on-line ticketing and – in my case – thatcheral thinning. Head-banging to the the much played scratched record was a passage of rite ending in a mosh-pit cavern – mostly experienced under a low-roofed beer shower ofsweaty men rocking their Kevin-Keegan perm.

Times have changed a bit.Twentyplus year ago the Stone Roses exploded onto the stage at the Briton Academy roared on by those who’d been happily shooting up with Bolivian marching powder in the gents some five minutes before. It was awesome and not without mild scenes or peril, but at 23 you’re basicallyindestructibleso flowing with the go is where it is at.

I remember my heart beating so hard in sync to the bass line. I remember careless discarded beer ruining my first good suit worn as a rush from from corporate life. I remember feeling that if this wasn’t what wasimportant, then there was some very fucking big thing out there I was missing. This was as much about belonging as experiencing and it was fantastic, ace, life changingingly important.

Which was somewhat at odds wtih 25,000 people crammed into Arsenal’s stadium paying hommage to a band that’s transcended punk and indie while somehowappealing to dad’s and lads over a thirty year career. I’d taken my first born to the Green Day Rock Opera last year and witnessed her open-mouthed awakening to the power of live music and thought ‘there’s something here I need to nurture’. ‘God Dad It’s Loud‘ she said I nodded, silently adding ‘you’ve seen nothing yet’

So through internet buggering about two tickets for Green Day were procured, whichtriggereda far more complex logistical exercise of homing the family in London for a weekend. That done, we drove into the capital and marked time before hitting the tube with a middle ageddemographicdesperatelydisplaying their tour t-shirts which entirely failed to hide sloping beer bellys.

Arriving at the stadium you are met with a wave of discadded beer bottles from those refusesing to pay stadium prices. I was ever so snooty about this before buying a beer and – having beencourteouslyrobbed of more than five quid – calling the St. John ambulance for immediate medial assitstance. Our arrival in the bowels of the what’s corporately called the Emerites Stadium was over a bridge full of fading football legends and peopled by t-shirted affections of previous tours. The force was strong with the pot-bellied.

Abi was keen for some food. Having seen the food, I was less engaged but through the simple transaction of cash for rubbish we secured a pizza for Abi and a beer for me which took 20 minutes where we failed to add to a half filled stadium being entertained by the support bands.

We finally rocked up beer in hand (that’s me, even I am not stupid enough to believe that’s something a 14 year old should be experiencing. Or at least not while I am nominally in charge) and the Artic Moneys were more than fine. Full of energy, pointedly bigging up the main act and not short of a few hitsthemselves Sideways glances suggested Abi was definitely in a learning experience but I left her to it. One of the things about being a dad to teenagedaughtersis you have to let then live a little. I received exactly zero perecent of fuck all from my parents on how the world might work. That’s not a reflection on spousal abandonment, they just hadn’t seem to have a fucking clue either.

Green Day hit the stage and 20,000 people hit their own ‘fuck it‘gland giving it the full middle aged two finger rock-on and slavish vocal accompaniement, And to the stand-apart ironically amused observer, I couldn’t help but notice that 40 year old prostrates – jiggled over ten songs – had those t-shirt stretched disciples streaming for the bogs when something written post about 2004 blasted out from the speakers.

It was great. Not epic because live music without some kind ofintimacytakes on the form of stage managed rock opera. Which if that’s your thing is fine and if it isn’t Green Day are probably the best band to make it as good as it can be. Two and a half hours, 31 songs finishing right on the curfew, and a whole load of audience participation. There’s something quite choral going on with 25,000 people singing vaguely in time and occasionally in harmony. That many people shouting ‘fuck‘ at the same time stretches the choral thing a little, but nevertheless an awesome piece of audience engagement.

The mosh pit was policed first by security and then the ambulance service as various partially clothed younger type of people bounced on each other heads in an apparent orgy of excitement. One or two were pulled out at random to sing or play guitar which they performed with suspicious perfection. Still the girl fetched from the front row to play Billy-Jo’s Strat, while he took her photo in from of a stadium full of fans, probably now has the world’s greatest Facebook profile.

So all good, firstborn apparently full of happiness with little of the initial trauma apparent. Decanting that many people into North London at 10:30pm had me slightly concerned, but a 10 minute mobile street carnival to Finchly station had us step straight onto a tube. Good job too as I was knackered and ready for a nice cup of tea and a lie down.

Which brings me to the terrifying conclusion that if I’m getting a bit decrepit for ‘granddad-rock’, when the default position is sitting down on a chair, what the hell I am going to do should a request to attend some kind of up-to-your-armpits in mud/chemical toilets/drunken fools* type festival. Actually I have an answer ‘of course that’s a great idea – it’s your mother’s turn to take you‘ 🙂

* or year. Or – let’s be honest – decade when I had hair Rock was something you went looking for rather than gravitating too with 20,000 people. I’ll pretend that’s progress of a sort.

* A little like Mountain Mayhem. Except the mud could never be as bad.