Or, as the Internet generation insists on calling it, MTFU. That’s a good start to end the nonsense of a New Year, with the geo-virtual warriors stuck fat behind keyboards pedalling their forum-based snake-oil distilled from pseudo-science and delusional self belief.

Move about more, eat a bit less has always worked for me. Even when I’m elbows deep in a Stilton Massacre and reaching for the port. Because tomorrow I shall sally forth from my feckless munificence to point a muddy foot at the querulously crapulent*

So tomorrow comes and I go into the default mode of not really wanting to back hubristic boasts with any physical effort. No matter, my friend Matt – the master of the winter death march – suggests an early start and a late finish interspersed with a few surprisingly dry trails and whole lot more trudgery of the first, second and third degrees.

Degrees of both latitude and longitude. First up, then down, mostly sideways and occasionally in a state of peril. A 9:30 meet assembles only two riders, but four sets of lights, three pairs of spare gloves, multiple additional layers and – because this is a training ride – money for beer.

The composition of a riding group potentially makes perfect trail music or discordant harmonies when a single member fails to ride to the beat. With just the two, there’s a lamentable absence of faffing and few hiding places. Other than those off-the-trail ‘resting areas‘ best found afterdesperately ejecting from a bucking bicycle.

Heading out on local trails and then abandoning the same some 45 minutes later, we stiffened suspension** and upper lips, before bending tarmac to our weak-winter will in a quest to find a favourite downhill some two valleys distant. This is not trail-centre riding, the good stuff must be earned through raspy-breath climbs, tremendously muddy cut throughs and head-windy yomps across seasonally bleak landscape.

All good. Or at least better than being inside. Soon we’re splatigating*** to a much loved trail, autumn leaves hiding winter mud and suggesting discretion trumps valour in terms of speed and bravery. Still fab tho in the kind of sideways type riding that always feel like fun at the time. Until someone nuts a tree.

Soon we found solace at the FoD Cafe and all things central for those who can’t be arsed to pedal. The gravitational pull of the uplift truck and the pies can clearly be seen as the extremely-upholstered slide off lovely bikes and stretch lycra with not-very-earned cake.

Not us of course. Honed athletes and all that. 20km in and we’re destroying bacon and egg sandwiches with the zeal of men last fed some days ago. But not for us a lap of easy, no we went hard on softtrails oft ridden to point muddy bikes at the Yat where every trailhad a Coroner Verdict of ‘assisted suicide’ written all over it.

Except Matt felt this lacked ambition. Instead we added another 90 minutes pushing increasingly confident lines into surprisingly grippy corners. Which in no way stopped me casing a couple of jumps fully justifying expensive forks andtheir inherent ‘don’t throw the idiot over bars‘ functionality.

Finally we began to head home – still some 25km from roofs and warmth – as the early sun disappeared behind dirty clouds, and legs began to make the kind of excuses suggesting this could be a bit of an epic journey.

It was and it wasn’t. Matt and I have been friends enough to know our strengths (mainly his) and weaknesses (mostly mine), ensuring we make the best use of drafting, encouragement, piss taking, and shared-pain as the kilometres oh-so-slowly pass by.

When your mental cartography spikes every known climb and the long road home, it’s time to stuff that into a box marked ‘stop whining‘ and just get on with it. Because getting on with it encompasses two wheel drifts, desperate saves and the occasional unscheduled punt into the shrubbery. On stoppingfor a rare breather under grey-clamped skies and fading light with much still to do, Matt declared ‘I fucking love mountain bikes‘ and I couldn’t do anything but agree.

And lie down for a bit of a rest. After riding like a twat for about three weeks, I finally got my shit together and made endorphic things happen leaving the brakes alone, disconnecting my hind brain and sashaying from entry to apex. It felt terribly real and important, so entirely missing from the whole Strava-Esque ‘am I going faster than someone I’ve never met?‘

Then the rain came. Then the last off road climb was done. Then the last descent was as well- without the injuries it promised. We rode past two favourite pubs as the weather closed in with legs pretty much in limp home mode. It’s been far too many weeks since I’ve pushed my body this hard for so long.

Needed to be done. Felt worthy. And shaky on the final little road climb to a pub some 1km from home. Beer tasted great but not as good as a chair for some much needed sitting down. We left in the pissing rain and howling wind, but that’s fine because we’re a month into winter, and a single big ride prepping for Spring.

Sometimes you really just need to ride, ride and ride. For six hours and sixty five kilometres withover a thousand metres of climbing. Because what else are you going to be doing?

Inside is overrated.

* this is a real adjective. Vaguely remembered from a long abandoned dusty classroom and confirmed by the power or Wikipedia. Really I couldn’t be happier

** No idea when I do this. Because it’s only as we roll into the pub some five hours later do I twig it never got switched back. Not that I noticed much.

** like navigating. Only mostly sideways.

Done – the lastrideof 2014. And in the spirit of all these indeterminable auto-generated face-cloth and Strava summaries, the two hour muddy endeavourperfectly encapsulated a year of many adventures, more than occasional timidity and a whole load of clean and dirty fun in between.

Firstly I crashed. Three times. Once adding a tree to the whole ‘it’s all gone wrong‘ experience. Secondly I avoided a difficult obstacle a couple of my riding mates sailed over. That’s Dean ^^ up there who gave it a damn good look on multiple run-ins before committing. Another pal, Cez, mistrusting that approach, instead launched himself at the gap jump with so much speed, he was still seen pedalling while both wheels were in the air.

I took some pictures. Then just before Beer o’ clock, we arrived at a freshly dug trail barely clinging to a slithery hillside. Apparently this ‘new way down‘ started with six vertical switchbacks, immediately followed by a couple of nasty drops and finishing in a run out to the fire-road where you could collect all your teeth if it went wrong.

I asked Sean – who built it – if I’d die riding it, evenutilising the full range ofmy legendary skills and bravery. The look with which he responded had me scurrying away to an easier trail less marked for someone who’d plumped for’involuntary suicide‘ as their New Years resolution.

So crash, nary and avoid. There’s been a bit of that this year. What do I mean this year, every bloody year really. Hard to know if I’m getting any less brave, or – as I suspect – because I’m starting from such a low base , it’s pretty damn hard to tell the difference.

Determining fun through progression is a slippery slope. I should know having fallen off many times attempting to navigate it. This year – when compared to 2013 – I’ve ridden about the same number of miles, climbed a bit more, visited a few less places, and had a similar shit load of simple joy.

I weigh about the same, pedal about the same, maybe arc through the odd corner a little sweeter after being up-skilled, brake when I shouldn’t, hesitate when I should just go for it, find excuses to quit and get lost in tangled mental thickets of over-thinking.

And for all of that, I love riding mountain bikes more than I ever did. I’m stupidly excited about new bikes, great adventures and unknown trailsin 2015. I have the best friends to ride with, and – right here on our doorstep – many amazing places to explore.

There’s a shitty season to ride through first, but ‘pre-spring‘ is just a couple of months to stay fit and healthy before it’s all drying trails, carving bluebell singletrack, kicking up dust and having a ball. Sliding about in January and February isn’t entirely without comedic merit either – especially if it’s someone else nutting trees.

Being such an antiquated sort of bloke, there’s something reassuring inunderstanding thatall these good things are coming, while retaining a childlike enthusiasm for spontaneous stuff that’ll make me point, babble and giggle.

Age is a number tho, not a barrier. Today after riding, a pub full of similarly chiselled*mountain bikers decided our mental age is about 27. Frankly I think we were overstating our maturity by at least 10 years. I looked around and saw old people with their tired eyes and well upholstered bodies. Their chronological clock may tickthe same as ours, but wechime to a different beat.

As an adult with a loving family and paying work you really must pay some attention to, there’s all sorts of commitments and deadlines outside of any control. The antithesis of that is being able to play outside on off road bicycles.

It’s all about balance. Until you hit a tree. Come on then 2015, let’s see what you’ve got. I’m ready.

* it’s a good word. Wrinkled might be a little more accurate.

Go badly that is. My last Gap year project was back at the end of 2012, after which I wrote a predictably pretentious load of old cobblers on exactly why I’d been avoiding it for ten years, and basically why it wasn’t anywhere near as terrifying as internally marketed.

Today was different. For a start the sun was providing the kind of light we photo-snobs dream about. Although so pre-occupied was it with projecting perfect mountain reflections in glass-still lakes, it entirely failed to provide any kind of warmth whatsoever.

Shivery start then. When faced with a big sodding mountain at which your current location is a million miles from the summit, go as cold as your dare.

That’s pretty cold so almost 2 kilometres passed before fingers inside thick winter gloves thawed out, and toes signalled they were in fact still attached. But God it was so worth it – a two week period in which I’ve eaten loads, drunk far too much, wasted too many hours and ridden not at all. Morethan just being back on the bike tho, much more aslimitless panoramic viewsbouncedaroundmy optical nerves.

If I may just be allowed a further moment of pretension; riding up frozen mountains with your friends, all the timebeing assailed with infinitelybeautiful glacial landscapes pretty much encapsulates all of’this is why‘ Thank you- from hereon in, I shall attempt tostick within the confines of a more descriptive narrative.

Illustrative couplets include ‘frozen-icy’ ‘slippy-frictionless‘ and ‘scary-terrifying’. As we climbed higher, hard ice replaced the trail – peppered only occasionally by soft dirt. A couple of short, steep technical ascents were summited through a combination of extreme effort and grip-less tiptoeing.

Enoughof this brought us to the first proper descent whichwas clearly going to be bowel clenchingly sketchy. It started well enough with baby headed rocks – free of ice – passing swiftly under superbly suspended wheels, before dropping into the type of frozen tundrathat can only be properly ridden rocking therictus gurn.

That Gurn is a facial summary of many things clenched from toes upwards. I wasn’t sure if the rear wheel was sliding, or my arse was merely twitching in the manner of a rabbit’s nose. Left, right, straight on – all choices entirely arbitrary and barely affected by wrenching the big steering handle things. You could try braking of course. If smashing face first into gritty ice is your kind of thing. Eventually the trail finally ended in a mess of Forestry brutality, and soon we were climbing again heading for the Gap from which the ride takes its name.

First tho, a nasty little rock strewn climb immediately followed by a short – but fun – plunge down a rocky escarpment. Not today though as it was filled with ice and even walking down, portaging the bikes, didn’t feel even close to safe. It was all a bit Blakes-7 ‘Down and Safe‘* vindicating my continued dalliance with flat pedals, and more importantly grippy shoes. Not that these saved me later on.

First tho, big climb up to the saddle. One of those ‘pick a gear and a point on the horizon‘, start pedalling, take in the view and think happy thoughts. Twenty minutes later these thoughts didnot include navigating a precipitous ice fall where the trail used to be. We recce’d it from all angles before agreeing the best approach would be two legs and two wheels, entirely separated.

This didn’t prevent me from an unscheduled arse-ice incident leaving a proper bruise and apparentlyamusing photographs. By the time I’d regained biped status and the remains of my dignity, the rest of the crew were long gone. They waited in the perfect spot to be enduringly polite at my attempts to actually ride some of this ice/rock/ice/ice horror.

I didn’t ride much of it, but I managed to throw myself roughly to the ground one more time. In the spirit of absolute fairness, this time a single pointy rock savaged the other arse cheek. I shall spend the remainder of this week walking like an aged cowboy.

No matter, reunited with my ‘rode most of that‘ pals, we set off for the classic descent on this loop. Firstly, a little up and down, launching over water bars and keeping a wary eye out for more ice, even tho we’d broken back into the sunshine. Never have I been so happy to see water streaming down the trail.

And then the increasing gradient and narrowing track tumbles you down into the valley at somewhat more sedate speeds than in less treacherous conditions. Still fast enough tho for Cez’s attempt to lob himself over a dry stone wall. Reasons mostly unknown.

That’s enough for a winter’s day, especially considering all limbs reporting in as still mostlyoperational. But there’s a little more, two tough sections demanding a decent pace as narrow paths throw up endless tyre stopping rocks. Physical, committing and on the ticked list to clear today. Proper, hard mountain biking.

All that was left were a couple of cowshit strewn roads, hidden from the sun under high leafless hedges and glistening with fresh ice. Safely navigated, we turned onto the frozen canal path and made haste for the pub, where beer was of course for winners/survivors.

There’s many other things I could have been doing today. Working for a living being one of them. Or lying on the sofa complaining of continuing plague which appears to have pressurised my small intestine. Or finding a thousand other reasons not to go and play outside where it’s cold and icy.

I’m so bloody glad I chose wisely 😉

* for readers under the age of being allowed to wear long trousers outside, this is a reference to the superb 1970s BBC Sci-Fi series somehow being both mostly realistic** and produced on a budget of about 10 bob.

** if you were very young. It probably hasn’t dated well.

… is worth two in the shed. As observedby that rather hackyned old proverb, now cheekily repurposed for what passes as rationale fromthis side of the keyboard. From here I can imagine the gasps of amazement and expressionsof disbelief fromthose hearing of this unforeseen event.

Yeah okay that’s not imagination, it’sdeluded fantasy. I expect exactly no one to be even mildly astonished on the big reveal merely shuffling innocent trinkets in the shedofdreams(tm). A bedrock of my relationship with the good lady, her indoors is that I pretend to have a brilliantly nuanced trail-map from today to a fixed point in time*, where fiscal probity and asset sanity finally replaces the revolving door of bike replacement. And she pretends to believe me.

It goes something like this; there’s some traditional dogma surrounding multiple bike ownership – plant the shed with the latest crop of shiny new things as defined by Mr. Marketing, and harvest the one most appropriate for the prevailing ground conditions. Crappy old winters day or quick woody hack, take the hardtaill. Uplift truck or big rocky day out, drag the big bike from the shadows. Anything in between, grab the one that’s pretty damn good at everything else.

There’s the thread of a compelling narrative there. Save the good bikes for best- every ‘proper‘ rider must tella petrolhead-Alfa hardtail story, the full face needs a worthy companion so there’s no situation for which I’m under-equipped or poorly matched. Dig a little deeper tho and a couple of rather important points are uncovered; firstly cumulative isn’t the same as appropriate, and two thirds of your bikes hardly getridden.

Examples abound; myhardtailis a lovely incarnation of the breed – big wheels, a steel heart and corner-chasing handling. Thepseudo big bike has an effortless brilliance accompanying it’s less accomplished rider from the back of an uplift trailer or swinging on a chairlift. Both are fantastic,butneither has even 10{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} of the miles clocked on the middle of the road unsung hero.

The Pyga is a great bike. I’ve actually worn stuff out before upgradingit. 3200 kilometres, two drivetrains, one full set of bearings, two suspension services, one brake bleed, endless pads, multiple tyres and scratches from rim to rim document 18 months of multiple weekly interactions leaving me with a big grin and a nagging worrryover all the unriddenbikes with their drying seals, deflating tyres and dusty countenances.

Bikes at the heart of the periphery are outliers. They are essentially wall art, occasionally wheeled out to justify their existence. What they do better than your ‘daily driver’ feels strange and alien. Behind their bars is not a familiar place, sohalf the ride is relearning their foibles. It doesn’t make them bad bikes, but it does make the bike per genre thinking somewhat flawed.

The solution seems obvious. Just keep that one and use technique, bravery and bloody-mindedness to ride around perceived shortcomings on the margins of trail riding. It’s an interesting idea, but garners no traction for a man who genuinely believes he is one bike from unleashing some hidden potential – regardless of owning similar brilliant examples.

And yes there’s the shiny new bike thing. I’d be fibbing off the scale if that wasn’t factored into solving the complex equation of N+1-2. It’s another manufacturer almost no one has heard of, paid for way before it arrives and purchased entirely on the basis that ‘it looks about right’plus a nod tothe designers who seem like decent blokes.

So my plan** is two bikes almost the same. Small Hammer and Big Hammer if you will. For a man who sees the world pretty much as a nail, every bike is merely graduated percussion.You can keep your finesse, lightweight components, extreme compromises and ridiculous reinventing of what a bike should look like. I don’t want fat, thin, exotic or niche. Rather give me two bikes someway beyond my capability to test them, and I’m pretty much done and dusty.

Riding the Mega always made me feel a little bit special and quite a lot rubbish. Slinging a leg over the Solaris for the first time in six months gave me little joy and an unshakeable feeling of beingold and lumbered by a degrading spine. Both can go to people and places where they will be the bike of choice, primarily selected whatever the trail, dragged out in all conditions and slung back ready for another adventure just around the corner.

I’ll be sorry to see them go, but not as sorry as seeing them hanging purposelessly in a heated shed with so much to give and nowhere to go. This might – and probaly is – pretentious wankerage merely displacing guilt for buying into the latest wheel size and geometry, all of which is entirely irrelavent to having fun riding bikes.

There’s a reason bikes are called cycles, because the curators of a shed-full will spin up the sign wave between ‘one of each‘ and ‘more of the same‘. It’ll go around and come around always with some veneer thin rationale to why, this time, the deckchairs on this Titanic have finally assumed their final positions.

Until then, I get to ride new bikes that’ll blow me away in new places, make old places somehow even better and never hang unwanted in something that started as a bike store but ended up looking like a shrine.

A sane person looking into my word mayquestion why anyone could possibly need so many bikes. And they’d be missing the point. It’s not the quantity, it’s the mix. If I ride the Pyga and the Bird equally over the next year, I’ll be proved absolutely right. And if not, guess what happens next? 🙂

* at no timewould I put a date on that. There’s no point in both of us being disappointed.

** I’ve just reacquainted myself with the OED definition of ‘Plan‘ sofeel substituting that for the phrase ‘random stream of unconnected activities’ would be more appropriate.

I’m not overlyfamiliar with the canon of Ms Zellweger’s work, nor the Bridget Jones extended franchise, but neither of these potential cultural oversights stayed the ‘Edge Of Reason‘ flash-sideways sliding into my frontal lobe during a mildly trying period best thought of as ‘man versus tree’.

Sideways and Sliding are a rare adjectival/verb crossover combination perfectly describing a descent into wooded singletrack and mild terror. One minute I’m drinking in the earths’ curvature from high places painted deep in winters azure clarity, and the next it’s all gone dusky dark, slithering mud and arborealaggressiveness.

My passion for forests is only topped by their taller mountain brethren, except when individual trees are throwing themselves at my increasingly brittle frame. Switching from the rather trite ‘lungs of the planet‘ to ‘bone crushing monoliths’ in all the time it takes to wonder where all the traction went.

‘More grip that you think, just a bit less than you need‘ is the watch-phrase here. It was preceded by a need to ride under perfect blue skies, with a less than perfect right knee and sodden geography recovering slowly from the first winter storms. Late year sunlight brings even the troglodytes from their crypts, sothe hills were alive with the sound of walking sticks, bored families and the occasional joy sponge composing their next militantmissive to the Malvern Gazette*

We dropped out of sight onto trails so cheeky they should have their bottom smacked, immediately encountering the kind of tyre filling mud leaving anyone perched atop with the option of risking a dab of brake or a hint or steering. Certainly not both. That way lies an individual consultation with thestump of your choice.

God it’s fun tho. There’s something about this time of year where the trails have basically turned to shit, but there’s still enjoyment to be found at half the traction, three quarters of the speed and twice the commitment. Two wheel drifts are amusing at 10mph, less so at twice that, and solving the weight-placement, braking, cornering angles on a per-second basis is physically and mentally satisfying.

Mountain biking in the real world if you like. Nothing is buffed other than your head with that particular brand insulating a deficient thatch. There’s no hero dirt here, no sun-sparkled dust long-framed in lens flare, no guns out in the sun, no easy options, no limitless traction, no endless light filleddays.

Proper four season sport. Layer up, get out thereand appreciate the vignettes of saving a desperate slide, warming extremities by vigorous stamping, conquering a greasy climb through torque and technique, hitting jumps already sideways, and always riding, riding, riding through a landscape devoid of life and often clamped in grey.

We hardly had a run at any descent because the hills were peopled with those asdesperate to walk shadow tall under cloudless skies. And that’s absolutely fine because just reeling in the horizon at any speed at times like this is enough. Not quite enough though, because today we sallied forth again under those much hated grey skies to slither about in the woods above Ross.

Bits were great. Fast, grippy, devoid of mud. Other bits were slick, difficult and often full of unwanted trunk**. Which brings me back full circle to the brittle bones bit; riding at this time of year requires more skill – and probably less bravery – than an amalgam of spring, summer and autumn. Which is fine and everything until someone loses aline, the plot, and possibly an eye.

Post ride, beers were pulled as those self-classified as the worthy sat in the warmth and talked of deeds to be done and more to be catalogued. I have some of the greatest friendswho, regardless of their circumstances, prioritise riding mountain bikes in all seasons and weathers.

We talk like children, excited by the possibilities of the new but we’re not young. The first flush of youth has long gone. We’ve got scars, broken bits, sore limbs and a clock countingthe minutes until all this stops. And it’s the thought of those missing months you can never get back which deprecates your bravery. Hurting myself isn’t the issue, being off the bike absolutely is. Riding tomorrow is far more important than riding the thing in front of you.

Mountain Biking is so much a part of what I am, and yet it’s also a perfect juxtaposition between cravingthe adrenaline hit and not hitting something that’ll put you off the bike for a while. Possibly for ever. Now there’s a dark place too scary to visit. Until there are no other choices.

My dad is getting on a bit. He’s flown gliders and light aircraft almost every weekend for nearly sixty years. Soon – so very soon – age and certification become incompatible. He is understandably worried about what to fill that hole with, and while it’s impossible not to sympathisewith position, I’m beyond bloody glad it’s not me facing that decision.

Ride bikes for fun. Don’t crash hard. Ride bikes again. That’s as close to a Christmas message as I’m going to get.

* ‘Dear Sir, I suggest in the strongest possible terms Mountain Bikers are reclassified as game birds so open season can be declared on August 12th. Yours, an old bloke pining for days that never were‘

** Trees not elephants. There’s a lot of weird stuff that goes on in Herefordshire, but herds of massive mammals*** striding across the Wye valley isn’t one of them

*** Except for MAMILs. We get loads of those. Fat mountain bikers I get. We drink loads of beer. Fat Roadies? Help me out here.