There’s no FinSnow. This was recounted to me by a pal who is flying to the Italian Alps atChristmas for a weeks skiing*. I’m sharing some of her pain, with my inner eleven year old pining for a dump of the white stuff somewhere more local.

Two reasons; firstly the stupidbike(tm) is clearly going to be an impossible to calculate brilliant once frozen rain covers the ground, and secondly asanother month of slogging through Gloucestershire’s finest Flanders Experience is likely to leave me seriously considering indoor hobbies.

Snow isn’t the seasonal norm it was in my youth. Sure that was back in the Cambrian age, but Boxing Day walks often morphed into desperate shovelling rescues of smaller children lost in four foot snowdrifts.

Back in the here and now I saw a man – not obviously searching for all his marbles – cheerfully shopping for seasonal gifts in an ensemble of shorts and a t-shirt. It was time to pushthese childish memories aside and instead spend the kids Christmas money on pointlessbike stuff.

Firstly a tyre not stamped with summer. The Dune turned up with rotating rubber perfectly configured for hardback and dust. Show them some mud and they responded magnificently by storing this frictionless material between sparsely hosted knobs** before sending you on your way into something both stoutly vertical and bone crushing.

I bought a fat rear*** which improved things down the back no end. Traction amusement as my thin tyred riding friends slithered about with absolutely no chance of success, while those of us engaging ‘Fat Drive‘ just made it so. Mostly with a fist pump nobody noticed and occasionally a failure we’re not going to talk about here.

An additional purchase was justified on the grounds that one trail much returned too was marked by a facsimile of my forehead. Three times we’d ridden it, three times I’d crashed on the steeper section- shoulder charging anapex with more crossed up action than a weekend transvestite.

Not today. My additional purchase begat significantly additional purchase on the slimey dirt. Much of which was pebble dashing me as the paddle steamerrotation of four inch tyres mined deep into the Forest mud.

Again I’d responded to the prevailing ground conditions with Internet snake oil.A front mudguard offeringborderline efficacy but with a rather more irritating stand out characteristic. Being lowest-cost-bidder flexy plastic, it genuflected to the front tyre on encountering the smallest bump. I was basically ‘travelling with woodpecker‘ asthe bloody thing beat itself to death at irregular intervals.

The rear was stolen from a time long past and best resembled a too small toupee for a too bald head. It added a bit of weight, significant comedic merit but little in the way of mitigating the dirty protest splattered from shorts to helmet.

Riding when conditions are quite this shitty can be summed up by ‘a bit more grip than expected, quite a lot less than required‘. Even with barely inflated trail crushing tyres, much of the steering was more hydrophobic than biomechanical. Grip’d turn up for about as much time to begin to trust it, before whipping away the tablecloth of traction leaving us feasting on moist earth.

Fun of course especially with unseasonal temperatures.The forecast promised much but delivered only wind blown showers. The trails – of which I’d been bitching about three weeks ago – were epically muddy. I’d like to give my three week youngerself a damn good slap on the grounds of not appreciating how good it actually was.

Five of us out, a total of eight working knees – one of which was mine while the other has succumbed to ‘patellatendonitis. The Physio suggests I leave it at least a week before riding – good advice I cheerfully ignored because – hey – when it’s this damn good why wouldn’t you ride every day?****

I’ve no idea if the StupidBike is any good really. I don’t know how it goes round corners but I fully understand how it slides sideways. It’s a bit of a drag uphill, but amusingly competent the other way onceyour belief of tyre grip has beenrecalibrated.

It’s getting me out. It’s a stalwart to the grumpy individual who makesexcuses not to ride. It’s making my riding pals laugh a lot. Ithas me giggling.

But we’re just fighting the phony war right now. Bring me that bloody snow.

*more accurately drinking ruinously expensive coffee while watching artificial snow melt as quickly as it can be made.

**Oh God where to start. Okay, I was in London last week and it was like that. Except for the sparse bit.

***Insert your own joke here. But be kind. I’m been really busy. Not had time to ride much. Anyway it’s not fat, it’s just big boned. I think of it as my personal eclipse.

****Because you can’t. As you’ve been sectioned under the mental health act.

I look at this picture and what I see if far less important than what I remember. Sure the backlit horizon is coloured a blue missing from ournorthern latitudes. The trail has rocks, dust and not insubstantial exposure. The rider is rocking some mismatched colour scheme most notable for shirt sleeves in December.

You cannot see the big grin. You cannot go back and live in that moment. Solet’s seesome more.

To your left a 3 foot fallinto a culvert. To your right a drop of about 300 feet into a valley where they’d collect your remains with a spatula. Want to know the difference between living and being alive? It’s on this2 foot ribbon of trail which narrowed to less than half that without reducing the exposure. You heart maybeat 3500 times in an hour, but you notice it only for the 5 seconds it’s banging against your ribs.

Elevation is everything. We shuttled 1000 metes from the valley floor before climbing another few hundred metres on dirt tracks to access the one of the best half kilometres of trail I’ve ever ridden, Took me a couple of attempts to ride that line. I’ll not bore you with the details but its pretty much encapsulated in ‘don’t fall right’.Stuff of life right there.

Sometimes it’s hard to take your eyes off the 3-D problems demanding instant solutions, but really you must. Because even in the lower reaches of Sierra Nevada, this is what lies beyond your trail focal point.

Even I can acceptthe view from this bar is even better than a view from a Bar. I loved this trail, steep and nasty at the top bisected with deep washed out gulleys. Be brave here and the bottom section rewards you with a relaxed flow of perfect curves. Drag you eyes from the dust kicked up by your tyres and burn that image into your retinas. Because a 100 days of grey awaits on the other side of a 3 hour plane ride.

Riding on brilliant trails under shadow parabolas cast by endless sun isn’t enough of course. Half the joy of riding mountain bikes is where you are. The other half is who you are with. My good mate David rode lots more than his head told him he could. This is my favourite photo of the whole trip.

Obviously being atedious narcissist, it’s back to being all about me. Although a proper rider would have taken far more wall than that. Quite enough for me though thank you very much.

As with all good things,every day ended with beer. And more beer. And occasionally brandy. To be honest not thatoccasionally.

I felt terribly guilty abandoning my loved ones for the third time in a single year to selfishly ride my mountain bike. But by God I came back a better person. And after 2000 kilometres and 7 months, finally worked how to ride the bigbike properly. Also learned some important stuff about friendship, while beingreminded of theendless joy of being in high places.

You can see more pictures of dust and general tomfoolery hereand if that’s motivated you to try something similar, David and I would recommend getting in touch with (another) Dave athttp://bikingandalucia.com.

Orgiva is a fantastic place to stay, it’s essentially the administrative centre for this side of the mountain. This makes it a non-tourist bustling town full of great bars and restaurants chock-full of lovely people. The riding is immense and endless. The trails are lumpy and bedrock hard at higher altitudes changing to fast and loose lower down.

This is the route back to Orgiva. We are 10 minutes from a cold beer!

Much of it is pretty steep, quite a lot has a degree or more of exposure. Everything is covered in dust. It’s verymuch a mountain biking paradise.

You will be unsurpassed to hear it’s one of my favourite places to ride. The other is the southern Pyrenees. We all be back thereIn 131 days. Until then these digital memories will salve me against the grittiness of winter.

Riding in the endlessly splendid Andalucian region of southern Spain, my life was full of appropriateness. Firstly the fully suspended, modern angled and expensively adorned 160mm travel mountain bike fitted perfectly into the folds of the Sierra Nevada mountains.

Secondly dusty ridingsegued seamlessly into hot tapas and cold beer. Thirdly every photo contained the holy trinity of blue sky, dry rock and stunning views.

God I loved it. Came back last Thursday and not seen the sun since. Hidden by horizon clamping cloud and sideways rain. Half of the North is underwater while the rest of us are grudgingly grateful to be merely sliding about in tyre deep mud.

So when the going gets tough, the not very tough get silly. My good friend Matt is not what corporate bullshitters would call a ‘completer-finisher‘. So it was no surprise to see the stupidbike(tm) proxying the same version I’d abandoned in his garage, before buggering off to sunnier climbs.

This is no problem at all though. I have many other bikes to ride most of which Matt fixes with no complaints and technical explanations I pretend to understand.

However, with everyone needing a laugh, a frenzy of activity saw many cheap and heavy components replaced by nearly new items from my bottomless spares drawer*

Off went the brakes that didn’t work, the transmission that did but at a cost to weight rationot really captured in my Venn diagram of light/blingy/arguably pointless. Having no suspension other than the undamped rebound offered by a brace of tractor tyres, I felt a dropper seatpost represented nothing less than a safety accessory.

Talking of tyres, the supplied ones really aren’t bad. In the dry. In any other conditions their chief attribute appears to be some kind of alchemic reaction transformingmud into a frictionless surface offering all sorts of exciting diversions. Steering not being one of them.

After some dithering, I ‘stuck the knobbly one in the back’. Writing that down has made me both laugh and wonder whether ‘I’ve gone at this from the wrong end‘. At best I’ve created a paddle steamer shifting huge volumes of mud to arse crack. At worse I’ve prioritised traction over steering.

Assuming the lashed together bastard love child of John-Deere and a rubber fetisher makes it to the first downhill. I have only one spare tube apparently fashioned from an elephants condom. If the weather turns for the worse, it offers sufficient flotation properties to rescue me and quite a few friends. When it finally snows, I’m fucking this bike thing off and just taking the tube sledging.

The new tyre really didn’t embrace the tubeless experience at all. Even with Matt’s compressor bullying air into the vast orifice at a 100PSI. It was flappier than – no really not even I can go there** – er a very flappy thing. I had a quick delve into the bearded world of the Fat Tyre Forums and apparently there’s much to prepare involving badgers, illegal substances and a level of stickiness which suggests any such activity should be carried out in a darkened shed well away from the children.

So tomorrow night I intend to be entirely inappropriate. The stupidbike is prepared for its first night mission. In conditions best thought of as ‘Herefordshire’s Famous Flanders Flashback’, I fully expect it to be rubbisheverywhere.There’s that and the joy of beingabandoned far behind the back of the group. I shall navigate by their belly laughs and amusing retorts on the pointlessness of one mans endeavour to testthe maximum amount of foolishness a stupid bicycle can offer.

At least it will now stop. And go without the sound of chainrings being tortured by shifters assembled by the lowest cost bidder. I expect the traction to be outstanding, front end grip less so, but trees are always just that bit softer in winter.

Assuming some kind of survival/not checking in at a mental trauma clinic, the following night whatever remains of me and the stupidbike shallattempt to summit the mighty peaks of the Malvern hills.

At the end of which, this experiment shall be declared a wonderful success and it’s just the other 99.9{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} of the population who don’t get it. Or there will be a suspicious fire in the shedofdreams.

No point dying wondering eh?

*mostly. Some additional expenditure may have been required. I like to think of this an investment is ‘future and most necessary spares currently stored on another bicycle‘

**some metaphors are best left unwritten. But for full transparency, I’m smirking like a teenager on his first encounter with hedge grumble here.

Today we talked about training. It’s important to provide some context here; we were sat outside the pub wolfing down crisps and re-hydrating with Wye Valley’s finest liquid products.

We’re vaguely familiar with the concept of junk miles. We’ve heard about rest days. We’re aware other dabble in the mystical world of Vo2 thresholds. There was however a universal ‘what-the-fuck-really’? when the alien concept of weighing ones food was introduced.

It’s fair to say training programmes are generally happening to someone else. Not that we sneer at such efforts from a position of medical certainty. The last time Matt wondered aloud what the bump on his head might be, the Saracens Head Oncology Unit instantly diagnosed him with a life threatening tumour. Or Cat Aids. Possibly both.

We just ride loads. And, in my case, drink too much, attack cheese in the kind of frenzy last campaigned by the Mongol Hoards and rarely pass the biscuit barrel without making a significant withdrawal. Which may explain why some days you sit astride your bicycle bending mountains to your will, and others when the entire ride is spent wondering who signed the holiday chit for both your lungs and legs.

Today was more of a ‘I can see my legs but they’re not taking much input from the skull hosted root vegetable’. Always ready to blame something else, my first excuse was the prevailing ground conditions tending to the wearisome plasticine. Didn’t seem to be slowing the others down much. Switching channels, the issue was obviously a bike unridden for three months.

That’ll be the Pyga then. Now sporting a longer fork and a fat rear tyre. It felt a little dead after the Aeris, but hard to target it as the problem since it’s carried me over 4000 kilometres in these last two years. Short of a hovercraft, there’s nothing stopping me being at least average other than just being me.

In despair, I rooted deep into the pack harvesting a sickly energy gel of doubtful provenance. Two hours in and threemoreto go – because that’s the minimum period to qualify for a Doran Death March – any kind of supplement was beyond welcome and deep into necessary.

I’ve always had a deep-seated, if entirely illogical, mistrust of this kind of thing. My experience of gels isnot what’s in the inside. During my long yet undistinguished racing career, sticky wrappers clung to innocent foliage inside the tapes. Lots of middle placed pilots struggling with a humour bypass felt the best thing about being outside was to litter it with non biodegradable packaging.

Not me. Mid pack at best but right on. Bananas, malt loaf, any wrappers stuffed into shorts not stay pressing my crotch. Tutting as those whippets wrestled their way past – fast you may be, but a planet loving human you are not. It was practically Yoda.

Trail food nowadays tends to come in packets marked ‘Caution – extremely sugary product within‘. Wine gums, jelly beans, chewy snakes and Haribo. Many times on wintry hillsides bereft of motivation, a hit on the glucose gland has returned us togood cheer.

So mid ride stops tend to coalesce around establishments selling outsized bacon sandwiches. Washed down with sugar suspended in strong black coffee. None of those things were immediately available, leaving me nooption other than tochug down agelatinous creation promising instant pep through the flavour of summer fruits.

Ugh. Gag Reflex. No instantPopeye muscle popping. Ten minutes later though my legs came back on-line givingat least a passing resemblance to limbs which may yet power me up a few more hills. What kind of Elven magic is this? I’m well practiced in mainlining the 6:30am double coffee shot with added caffeine but this was something entirely different.

It didn’t stop me riding like a total spanner of course. See previous excuses re: conditions and bike. But it did get me as far as the pub where any post-gel crashes were cushioned by a pint. Then – just to be sure – another one. 60km of slop and slide left me pretty much empty, but I filled right back up avidly discussing plans for the winter and stupid challenges when the sun finallyreturns to the Northern Hemisphere.

I broadcasted a text to the riding crew in the vein of what a bloody good laugh it was*. Summarising the replies is illustrative to why we get up at 7am to throw ourselves at the scenery: ‘gets rid of the crap of the previous and prepares you for the shit of the upcoming week. It’s what makes us, us’

That +lots. The gel saved my ride. The ride saves all sorts of other things. I don’t want to train. I’m not interested in diets and supplements. Being fit is the symptom not the cause. Riding bikes is what makes us, us.

Worth repeating that.

*specifically for the other three find ever more amusing** ways to lambast my purchase of a Fat Bike

**for a given value of amusing.

Even inside the world-of-endless-niche which hostsmountain biking, fat bikes are still bloody stupid. Not so much a problem looking for a solution, more a victim looking for a corner to hide in. Fat bikes unite ourbarrack-room lawyer community in universal mirth.

We point and giggle because of their innate pointlessness. Designed – although that’s a charitable use of the word – for sand and snow, they are defined by comedy outsize tyres clearly harvested from a tractor, rarely suspended by anything other than belief and ridden by men – always men – proudly bristling in the vanguard of ‘peak beard‘

They cost too much. You could buy a proper mountain bike for that*. Heavy, cumbersome, slowto climb and evenslowergoing down, a fat bike slumps into a niche no-one cares about labelled ‘rubbish at everything’. Except Snow and Sand. I’ll grant you that. But living in a landlocked county with bugger all winter precipitation, this doesn’t represent a killer sales pitch.

Why then Al did you buy one? That’s what they’ll be asking. All my friends with whom I share the dirty Sunday service. They won’t pose that actual question because that’s not the way frenzied piss taking actually works. I expect at least one member of the under-niche’d will need oxygen or the Heimlich manoeuvre to arrest their mirth.

There can be no argument – however well formed – to defend the indefensible. I’m not even going to try. My strategy is far more nuanced: I shall merely pretend to have gone stark, raving mad leaving me with no memory of wandering into a vast outdoors warehouse and returningwith this bastard love child of a MoonLander and a marketing professional owning just the one yellow crayon.

It won’t work of course. I expect the joshing to go on for, oh I don’t know let’s say, ever. Quite right too because this bike has many, many problems – the least of which is the reaction it inevitably draws. Those child-drawn tyres are inflated with single digit PSI. Translate that to the road, and it’d be easier to pick the bloody thing up and trudgeto your muddy destination.

When you arrivethings are unlikely to improve much. Massive tyres do offer a form of suspension. Technically we call this massively-undamped wrist splitting chaos with more than occasional squirm. You will absolutely be heading in one direction, but equally unequivocally this is not a direction in which you are even consulted. You mayattempt to stay this wild craft using skills long learned but they will serve you not at all. Eventually there will be a form of arrest as fat tyre consitenersagainst unforgiving tree.

You shalllreturn home battered, likely bloodied and burning with a hatred of men – shed based in remote winter regions and boasting the facial growth of a rhododendron – who felt sure this was a valid evolutionary branch of bikus suspensionus.

All this is true. Probably. But when you’re slaloming through the surprised shoppers of Go Outdoors, Gloucester whileshimmying between tented fabric in the camping aisle, there is a massive grin splitting your face whichnot even the fiercest beard could contain.

Yes Fat Bikes are stupid. Of course they are. But this one issomething else as well; cheap for a start, less than the cost of a decent set of forks**,£493 to be exact. The rolling chassis of frame and wheels are pretty good while the rest of the kit is pretty typical of a budget constricted product managers spreadsheet.

He or she doesn’t have my shed load of spares though. Even after building the moustache, there’s sufficient pre-loved collateral to fit proper brakes, wider bars and decent transmission. At which point there will be no excuse but to go and ride it.

I don’t expect it’ll be faster uphill or down than any of my current bikes. I don’t care. Nor will itbe clattering through serial obstacles by sheer dint of brilliant suspension and modern angles. I’m not much bothered by that either. Because I have a good feeling it’s going to make me giggle at any speed. You cannot look down at that front tyre and not crack a smile.

Those marketing types have missed a trick here. If they’d named this niche ‘silly bikes for big kids‘ they’d have sold a shit-load more. Jess jumped on this one in the shop and came back with exactly the grin that’d crept up on me in the tent section.

So will the maiden voyage but tomorrow on one of Matt’s Muddy Death Marches starting at 08:30 and finishingsomewhere close to darkness? Of course not, I have many other bikes far better suited. Instead, I’ll wait for a couple of spare hours, a stretch of loamy singletrack, a mind that isn’t fixed on fast forward,and a place where I can feel 10 years old again.

Fat is stupid. Stupid can be very good indeed.

* or for those living in the real world, a tidy 2nd hand small car.

** Not that I’m putting that out there as a rational purchasing decision.

My phone chirped. I ignored it. It chirped again in that irritating positivity of the modern smart device. I continued to snub its implied cheerfulness already being tossed about in the informational tornado of what passes for normal. Essentially my attempt to reconcile a multi-threaded life with a single-threaded brainwas already too overloaded to deal with additional input.

Chirp. Chirp. CHIRP. Oh for fucks sake. Who wants what now? It’s Rex – a man who has never to my knowledge dipped below the level of everything is awesome – talking up the joys of a night ride on trails often ridden and recently sodden.

I looked out of the window. I do that a lot. It’s part of a job where thinking trumps doing. Fading light silhouetted fresh rain slashing against stout double glazing. Looks good to me. Fuck it. Fuck this report. Fuck stuff that matters onlytomorrow. Scuttle into the shedofdreams and impatiently prod at stuff that needs replacing on the selected bike. Phone chips again: 6:30 start. Oh bollocks to this – I’m fixing brakes and that’s not a task for the time poor.

Pull the hardtail off the wall. Give it a hard stare. Explain if it fails to light up my darkened world this time out, it may soon represent the epicentre of my welding skills project. Find lights, pump them full of electricity and clothe myself with sufficient technical apparel to waterproof a moderately sized elephant.

Night riding is not my favourite thing. It’s dark for a start. And generally it finishes with a wet arse, tired legs and a large bill*. I appreciate in London, certain gentlemen’s clubs demand limitless credit cards for such an experience, but here in autumnal Herefordshire, such things are free. Largely – in my view – because they have no value.

Oh cheer up. Blinking into a phalanx of breams,clearly scavenged from a world war II searchlight, I summarised my feelings: ‘alright fellas, I assume it’s going to be endlessly shit then. I’m just here for the beer‘. ‘Blimey it’s the Olympic Flame’ they responded* (he never goes out), ‘that big hill over there? That’s us’.

It was indeed and climbing it was nothing new. Except on a lightweight hardtail, the air-scraping of lungs passeda little easier. Arriving at the ridge of our little, local sugarloaf we flicked lights to max, to dropthrough a leafy carpet shrouding an old trail somehow morphed into something new under the cover of darkness.

Good that. Took me a while to remember five inches of rear suspension travel cannot be simply mimicked by middle aged ankles. Need to move about more. That was good too. My expectations were so low that even a groundswell of mud felt more like dry trails. Grip was variable through, so both breaking traction and carving turns outed the inner giggler.

No one was more surprised than I that this was actually properlyfun. Autumn and winter for me are about staying vaguely fitand impatiently waitingfor Spring. Still. compact as these woods are – being boundedby a town and an escarpment – two hours of climbing their steep sides and plunging back into the deep valleyswas something close to joy,

It’s fun – and there’s no other word that works here – to watch lights switch-back below you while theremaining stubborn leaves deaden every sound. Even when I over-estimated both the grip and my ability, a sojourn into a thorny bush still made me laugh -especially when the rider behind turned up: ‘As you were Jim, I’ll just be having a minute here, away you go‘. We chuckled. As you do. When you’re doing stupid things.

In a moment of inappropriate confidence, I lobbed the hardtail down a greasy rock face oft ignored on the grounds of extreme dentistry if it goes wrong. it went mostly wrong and the minds-eye of an Al spatchcocked on the rock below was narrowly mitigatedby said rider basically closing his eyes and renouncing his atheism for about 3 seconds.

Heart rate about 180. Grin nearly as wide. Headed for home with the people who make this thing seemcloser to real life that the stuff I do in the daylight. Most of whom forsake dirt for tarmac when the pub was in sight. Got to fill that calorie gap somehow.

I still don’t enjoy night riding much. I probably need to MTFU. But rather than succumb to the positivity of my fruit based device, I’m going the other way. Assume it’s going to be endlessly shit and revel in the times when it isn’t.

And when it is, well, that’s what the post ride beer is for. Ignore thedogma thatmistakes are merelyexperience. Wrong emotion. Regret is for the things you do not do. Mistakes follow.

So when the rain is trying to get throughthe window, I suggest you surprise it by turning up on the other side. Together you are likely to have a great time. Especially if your friends have done the same.

* We’re not talking ducks or the like here. It’s not like we’re harvesting the beaks of innocent animals. Really, what stories you’ve heard about living in the country? Anyway that’d leave no time for cow-tipping.

There are those days – many more than before – where you just can’t ride for shit. Well not you, me butin a misery loves company sort of way I fervently hope you’re suffering just the same. Because you must know what I’m talking about; leaden legs demanding at least two easier gears, brain entirely disconnected from reality soignoringconfusedlimbs failing toclear the simplest of obstacles.

It should get better, but of course it doesn’t. Point the bike downhill and the evolutionary miracle of a modern mountain bike founders on the rocks of the DNA pinging about in a rather more ancient evolutionary conduit currently mainlining a three legged stoat with a serious head wound.

There was a time when the most appropriate response to being dangerously rubbish was to flip it the bird and attempt to ride faster. Faster is always better we’re told. Right up to the point when it isn’t. That generally being the confluence of too much testosterone, too few bike handling skills and a tree.

Nowadays I just sigh a bit, shout at my legs while consulting the ˜book of many and varied excuses‘. Today’s ride had all of that with a frankly obscene side order of sticky mud soconsigning the day to the file marked ˜why the fuck did we bother?‘

Except of course it didn’t. Because we spent most of it above the clouds. You don’t generallyget such a view without owning your own charter airline. Not at 8am tho. Heading over the border to Wales in 10/10 clag, the day started with the level of ambivalence traditionally associated with riding big mountains duringNovember. No matter, we were up and at ’em shedding layers on a 30 minute grind up a usefully placed fire road.

Top of which, I headed off with my normal navigational uncertainty to capture the rarely seen ˜clouds in the valley‘. Squatting between distant peaks, a heavy fog obscured civilisation below leaving us to feel pretty much on top of the world. That’s a special feeling. Last time we were here – back in April – the trails were dusty dry, but a cruel wind blew away the warmth and cloud clamped hard on the tops.

Not today. The trails were somewhere below a water table topped up from a weeks worth of rain but we cared not a jot. The sky was a deep and unending azure blue, the temperature was rapidly climbing and far horizons beckoned us through the splashy tracks. We broke the protocol of following previous routes to head onto a first summit positioned to look down to those poor fog-bound bastards in the valley. On days like this you really get why high places were so important to our forbearers; you cannot help but feel like gods.

We camera-mugged for a while before gravity dragged us mostly downwards and amusingly sideways right into the valley bottom to where the fog was waiting. Pah, we have no time for that – climbing past the hermitage to gain the river crossing opening up the epic 4km climb to the saddle of Rhim Tramau. That looked hard so we stopped for lunch accompanied by asound system of the gurgling river and a few jokes not entirely appropriate for men of our age. All while chewing sandwiches in shirt sleeves. A win all round.

Did the climb. Didn’t really enjoy it. Didn’t really care once I’d sweated myself to the top and checked out the view. Always good but today really very special indeed. The fog was a sea – swamping entire settlements with meteorological candy floss. We stood above it and wondered what time it might get dark. Had it not been for urgings from the rest of the crew, I might still be there.

And based on my descending performance in the blue-cast daylight that’d been a disaster. All over the place and nowhere near where I needed to be. Gave up, outed camera, took a few shots of those doing it right. Found previously scary rocky descent pretty much mitigated by ace bicycle mostly left alone by rider staring slack-jawed at the CGI landscape.

Arrived alive at the bottom which is an excellent adjective describing exactly what it’s like to be a thousand feet under the summit you need to crest. The start of which was predictably muddy – but not even registering on the horror of 2014 – which somehow synapse’d Cez into forging upwardon the first ascent of ˜Y Das Direct‘ which involveda 30minute push up a grassypath beforea bike-on-the-back yomp to the ridge. Blimey that was hard. The view though needs bottling tightly in a vessel labelled ˜when it’s REALLY REALLY SHIT, uncork this’.

The photos are great. They are not even ciphers for being there. We sat and we stared and we didn’t want to move. High places are always like this but when you’re an island in the clouds, nothing can- and really there is nothing – get close. John Donne – you were wrong.Every man is an island when the world looks like this.

And that was pretty much that. We had a difficult trog to summit overGrwyneFawrreservoir. Then the ground conditions suggested webbed feet in our immediate evolutionary future.

Still time for me to perfect the ˜gentleman’s dismount‘ during a race to the bottom involving many ruts and much giggling. I was laughing at Alex getting it amusingly wrong at the exact point my front wheel fell into a deep V-shaped rut with a diameter of something a bit less than my fat, flat pedals. The bike stopped, I didn’t but – after a day of being entirely useless on a bicycle – I somehow stepped off the bike and over the bars leaving me with the small problem of decelerating from 15kph with a 10kph gait.

Icaught the rest of the fellas up eventually. Only to lose them again when my˜light snob’ eye took a singleblink at the still waters of the reservoir andinsisted digital imaging must get involved.

We dropped back to the van on a final rockychute – in my caseriddenentirely with brake pads mud-filed to nothingness – with happy 100{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} mud splattered faces. Not because the trails werefantastic. Not because we’d completed somethingattempted many times before. Not even for the simplejoy of riding bikes with our friends.

No, because we spent a dayabove the clouds. And that makes it a very special day. But also a bittersweet one,because our lives are full of work, ofmeetings, of rooms with windows tothe clouds, of reasons to embraceadulthood. Weknow these days are fleeting, no more than a last gasp ofseasons long gone, yet for allthat rationality a single golden thread draws ustogether. Maybe it will be like that tomorrow.

It really might be.

No one should live their lifeon someoneelse’s agenda. Those rooms have no view. The ones outside really do.Don’t die wondering.

There arealways reasons not to ride Falling neatly into three categories -vocational, environmental and personal – so confirmingeasy excuses to avoid harder choices.

“I‘ve got too much work on” is a solid banker. No matter you’ve pissed away most of the daylight staring out of a window bywhich your fattening arse is sat on the wrong side. Blaming those mythicalhigher-ups, who’ve visited immovable deadlines on your innocent person, at least partially mitigates the group-think outing you as nesh and fragile.

Slackers like me requireother avenues of deceit. Checking out the rain slashed panes harbouring you from skies full of portent should be enough to sack it off with a ‘rain check’. Doesn’t pass the peer pressure test though so instead it’s all displacement tactics pointing to broken components, unsuitable bikes and – if desperation strikes – exploding tyres.

Again not something on which I can reliablyrely having a shed-full of suitable bikes and many friends in non mutant size with spares. Better instead to pretend some important bodily part has succumbed to increasing antiquity. When the rain falls, the wind blows, the world goes dark like space and the trails slip into shitty winter there is always ‘pulling theemergency hamstring’ to save the day.

You’re still not done. There’s a whole mind to be mined chasing the lode of ‘not really feeling it‘. This isn’t the simple can’t be arsed of the SADly effected. It is genuinely not wanting to ride your bike. This is easy to explain to those not suffering an addiction which demands a couple of weekly hits, but a little harder to those attending the same meetings: ‘it’s been two weeks since I last rode my bike, and that feels properly shit…‘

Flailing about overrain smashed geography while being simultaneously battered by icy crosswinds can be far more fun that it sounds. But only when your head is in the right place. Not just above the bike and issuing stern instructions to mud speckled legs, but happy to be outside doing stupid stuff at an age when your contemporaries are contemplating exactly the right time to out the Xmas jumper.

Because, we all know don’t we that, 99 times out of 100 riding is better than not riding. Days like today ask the question ‘maybe thisis the one when it isn’t‘. Weeks like this to be honest – three times opportunities presented themselves to go ride either for a quick solo blast or a longer time with my friends. And three times I found excuses from every category preventing me from breaching the can’t be arsed stage.

It’s not the weather. I’ve said before this isn’t a three season sport. In fact motivation is stronger in February than it is in November. For now there is still a lingering memory of summer warmth and dry, hard trails. In February, it’s been four months of paddle steaming through the middle of the water table, soyou’ve become impervious to conditions which have your returning to your loved ones as an apparent extra in a low budget swamp monster movie.

Stupid as it sounds, not riding makes me feel guilty. Always has. More so now I think because of my oft repeatedassertion to grab every chance to do what I love because who knows when it might stop. That assertion strengthened by the loss of Jenn who got that in spades before and after she was diagnosed.

Instead this apparently unbreakable principle has been diluted by sitting in front of this screen writing apparently very important emails. Or rushing off to see people who may wishto pay me for whatever it is they think I do. Or staring out of that window watching the garden die whilewondering if that’s some kind of metaphor.

Feeling a bit rubbish hasn’t been helped by a localised outbreak of stomach bloat brought on by a peristalsis halting combination of crisps and chocolate. When the darkness descents, the pull of the sofa is strong.

At this point, there would normally be an uplifting paragraph or two on how going out for a ride cracked the mould of this mild self pity. How the question I’d set myself to answer on a long ride became increasingly irrelevant the longer those pedals were turned. Didn’t happen.

Last weekend we had one of those. Shit weather forecast, set off in the rain, rode in the rain, went exploring, got lost, rain stopped for a bit, kept going on until it returned with a vengeance whereupon the hardy four headed to the local pub to talk shit and drink beer. It was a good morning, extending to the afternoon.

I need another one. This isn’t new of course. Seven years ago, I was having a slightly more serious crisis of faith. Amusingly back then I set myself a deadline of another five years or so before trying something else; adulthood for instance. From this lofty, mature position let me just clarify that with a ‘fuck that‘. If I do ever stop mountain biking, I’ll need to find another hobby. Wecould neverafford the repairs if I decided thatshould be DIY.

Adventures. They’re the thing. Got us through last winter and I’ve high hopes similar japes will carry us through the next two seasons. Sunday we load up the van and return to a much loved epic in Wales. It’s likely to be wet, slippy, sloppy, windy and with more than an even chance of benightment.

Sounds good to me. If nothing else those big hills always give you a sense of perspective. Odd isn’t it, we are always told – because it’s a universal truth – how lucky we are, but only when the insignificance of our existence is exposed by proper mountains do we actually feel it.