I know, those pedals. An absolute travesty suggesting punishment for such aesthetic criminality would involve a locked room plastered in Pantone colours with a terse sign explaining “there are colours and there are shades, learn the difference”.

Learning lessons is not one of my core strengths. As identified early in my academic career, a kind appraisal of ability was summarised thus: “slow but sure” as in slow to learn and sure to forget. This failing continues to manifest in ever more perplexing ways. Take for example the ShedOfDreams as of 11th April.

That snapshot of insanity has TWO bikes out of shot. One being another trail bike very similar to the all-types-of-green-machine in the foreground*. Had I forgotten, that in the thicket of bicycles, were a couple very much aligned in terms of geometry, suspension travel and intended use?

I had not. Nor can I  blame increasingly cerebral confusion** for this stacking of expensive trinkets in an increasingly crowded space.  I can however revert to type and blame someone else. That person is my old friend Olli who was part of a fantastic bunch of humans designing and building Gillette’s global wide area network back in the late 1990s. Pre-internet when plug and play was more incompatible junk and command line hacking.  Good times and good friends who’ve stayed so long after the project was done.

But mostly virtually. So when Olli pinged me over Christmas wondering if I fancied catching up in the real world for a ride, I was all over that like a cheap suit hatching plans for four days of epic UK riding once the seasons ratcheted from cold and wet to warm and dusty.

As with all plans I’m involved with, things escalated quickly. Ending with a reciprocal ride visiting Olli and his family.  Further escalation saw Carol and I embarking on a 1000 mile roadtrip across three countries.***

Meeting up at Olli’s place, we were introduced to his lovely family, and a box marked “Propain” that had the makings of a trail bike I’d been lusting after for many years. Brexit made that pretty much unaffordable, so I pivoted to a strategy best described as “some light smuggling“.  Again time to move on.

Building the bike I was initially confused by the elven sorcery that is electronic shifting. Honestly, I fully expected a pointy eared survivor of Helms Deep to pop out of the box incanting appropriate spells.  No such materialisation occurred- instead I was left with the thick wad of materials accompanying the bike. Obviously I ignored those and instead called in 2nd line support. Carol did an excellent job unfucking my ham fisted assembly attempts, and gently walked me away from the hammer. We were good to go.

Olli’s local trails are right behind his house. Sadly he lives shadow deep in the valley so it was a 300 metre climb to get us started. It didn’t stop me marvelling how light the new bike was, and how much fun was to be had randomly pressing non haptic pads and all sorts of mechanical stuff happening a metre away at the rear mech without a cable being involved.

First trail, cautious was the watchword. Rubbish would be another one. Way too much going on with new bike, new trails and Olli disappearing at quite the rapid rate. Regrouping at the fireroad, I had just enough breath left to wonder if this “blue” trail might be light red. Based on my ability to understand colour, probably not.

The trail network here is impressive. Superbly built and fantastically maintained by a community of like minded MTBers. We rode blues, red and blacks and I loved them all. Mostly tho not because of riding a new bike, more riding with an old mate under sunny skies. That never gets old.

There is even a restaurant at the top of the hill. Rammed at the weekends apparently, but mercifully quiet on a skive-y Wednesday. We headed back down the valley. on another superbly involving  trail, where my confidence in the new bike outstripped my ability and it was touch and go whether I’d  impact and stop, but somehow we wrestled things back under control.  Lesson learned? Probably not.

Heading back up the other side of the valley we crested the 1000m of climbing and kept going. Absolutely worth it for another banging trail before heading home for beer, medals and a burger about the size of my head.

Next day the clouds clamped chilly conditions to ground level. We headed out 30 mins to another ride location that – after some funky chicken warming up on exiting the van – had adrenaline shots lined up on every feature.  My legs weren’t keen but once we had gravity weighing in the backpacks, multi kilometre trails were hosting entirely inappropriate middle aged whooping.

That’s me rocking my standard “Hidden Badger, Naked Terror” stance. Bike was great tho. Different enough to the other ones to make me consider thinning out the herd some time this summer. There’s probably another 1000 words extolling the positives and ignoring the negatives of adding a copy of something I already have, but you’ve read that crap before. And it’s still the same bullshit.

Instead let’s talk about the value of friendships. The taking of chances. The grasping the nettle, the shunning of the ordinary. Sure riding bikes is always good, but renewing bonds stretched a little after 20 years was so much better. I only hope we can give Olli the same experience when he’s here in a couple of months.

That’s on us then. We have the trails, now making sacrifices to the weather gods.

Until then we’ll have good time memories. And a new bike. Not sure it gets much better than that.

*Can we move on from the pedals. It was a needs must situation which I very much regret especially after showcasing the new bike to the local ride crew. No quarter was given 🙂

**Really. Standing in front of things wondering what I’m doing there is now a daily occurrence.

***We had a whole bunch of fun. Shall be doing that again.