Top Down Planning

On By AlexIn Other stuff4 Comments
N+1. Works for me.

Planning is pretty much the ultimate irony. It’s practiced mostlyby those with rapidly diminishing time trying to work out exactly what they wish to fitinto it. Those withlives barely touched by entropy are blissfully care free, soembrace directionless as something entirely tribal. While they carelessly wonder ‘what next’, the rest of us wonder ‘how to doall this shit in before I die‘

That’s middle aged angst right there. I’ve mostly avoided it through failing to grow up, and not being terribly interested in desperate grabs at materialistic stuff that somehow represents youth long lost. Because when we were twenty, I remember exactly how cool, hip and right now was the round-in-the-middle bloke, fashionablyon-trend and sporting a disappearing comb over while driving a red Ferrari looked to us. Let’s be charitable- Not Very.

So this isn’t that. You cannot enter your second childhood without ever leaving thefirst. However, I’ve been a bit distracted since we ‘Woke Up Little Suzy‘ a couple of years ago with the notion that – regardless of the inclement climate – an open topped car may dull the boredom of an oft travelled commute, and offer something for Carol and I to reasonably ignore the lack of kid seats togo do something interesting instead*

And that’s not the Cappuccino. Roof on it’s a study in claustrophobia, while roof off it’s fun but there’s always the feeling that maybe the designers failed to appreciate most humans have two legs – both of which are longer than a table leg**. It’s also insanely impractical to the power of amusing. The tiny boot is always full of roof which leaves space for absolutely nothing else. The passenger compartment as we’ve mentioned doesn’t really leave room for normal sized humans, and while there is the odd tucked away space secreted in the remaining space, there’s far more convenienceand volume in the average pocket.

The plan was to sell that so tochannel those funds into something a little bigger we could both drive. Being a project manager-y type of bloke, I decoupled the sell swiftly from the buy critical path and hit Autotrader augmented byvarious internet forums*** before deciding an Mazda MX-5 would be perfect. One with a proper roof rather than the leaking tramps hat recommended by those whose abode is clearly far removedfrom prevailing atlantic westerlies.

A rather frenetic Friday night followed where a coalition of the good headed south led by the Matt the technical expert, Carol the Financial Controller andAlex, the impulsive idiot completing the traffic bound deposition to a dodgy housing estate in Bristol. Where we met a lovely fella by the name of Jake who explained away any scratches or dents with the rather nonchalant excuse that ‘it’s my wife’ car‘. He was trusting enough to let me drive it on barely adequate insurance, and I was stupid enough to ignore the bald rear tyres, damp carpet in the passenger footwell and a few other niggling faults that’d normally trigger a discount clause.

The problem with a mind which is steered almost entirely by instant gratification is none of this stuff matters. Hence bringing a pair of proper adults to restrain my impulsiveness. ‘Try a few more‘ they would say, ‘there’s loads to consider, don’t make a quick decision‘ and ‘it’s 8pm on a wet evening, this is not the time to hand over the family savings‘. Gloriously none of this real world was surfaced and a deal was struck at a price below that of asking, and probably about right considering the almost instant garaging of the car to have ‘expensive things done’.

Further amusement awaited via the power of electronic funds transfer on a dodgy wireless collection, whencevarious expensive computing devices emptied our bank account in the manner of a 90s technology heist movie. I could almost see the numbers count down. Transaction done, hands shaken and smiles faced, we called our late night insurance agent to confirm driving arrangements. Twenty minutes later we gave up shouting at people and accepted that because of my small mishap with Carol’s car earlier this year, she’d be driving the MX-5 home, and I’d be playing with the Stereo.

Still all was good weaving our way back to Herefordshire with Carol enjoying the umpty of even the icky 1.8 engine, and me mildly ecstatic at securing something relatively cheap and much fun without significant tedium and buggering about. I even had to fire it up later that evening to demonstrate the electronic elf-age of the retracting roof to child#1 who declared this ‘quite cool‘. Which is pretty effusive praise from a 14 year old.

The next day dawned windy and wet – as one would expect for mid May in the UK – which had us dodging showers while carefully recycling wood and garden waste to make space for a planet killer. Then the uninsured took it upon himself to wax-on wax-off in the manner of the Karate Kid. Except his efforts a) turned him into a mini-ninja and b) at no time reduced the entire enterprise toa pointless, slimy mess. That’d be the rain then.

Finally we found some dodgy internet firm to insure the mildly careless one, and I took the opportunity to demonstrate exactly how much fun a rear wheel drive car with bugger all tread on the driving wheels in the mildly damp could be. I decided to hunt down the rev limiter hoping to hit it before the next bend. What I actually hit was the ‘wife limiter‘ who wasn’t massively impressed with aman recently booked onto a Speed Awareness Course passing ninety and accelerating strongly on a road designated for quite a lot less than that. Probably for the best as it’d be a shame to park ourlatest acquisitionbackwards in a hedge.

This week we paid a bit off the mortgage. That felt terribly middle aged and responsible. Yesterday we went and bought a coupe ofwhich we have absolutely no need. That felt a whole lot better 🙂

* not permanently. I’ve already got one offspring with Childline on speed-dial on the grounds of a father who appears to be 9 years old.

** And it’s for sale. Hard to resist I’d have thought after such a hard sell up there.

*** Which really are a metaphor for ‘some people need to get out A LOT more’

Mind The Gap

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, Photography, Pretentious nonsense17 Comments
It’s not a very big gap. But then again I’m not very brave

We are are all scared of something. Or many things. Or fear itself. It’s part of that human self awareness conundrum. Cards on the table, for me it’s impostor syndrome, mortality fear and gap jumps. Obviously for a man who collects neurosis’s as a hobby, there are many more, but at no point did I say ALL cards on the table 😉

So let’s summarise the driving forces here; deep concerns about being found out, being found lacking, being diagnosed mostly dead, and being in possession of a mountain bike approaching an obstacle where some bastard has hollowed out the middle of it. The epicentre of this personal blast radius is neatly metamorphosised through a rain soaked tractionless trail neon pointing at a bunch of slick logs, barely cresting a gravity sucking hole clearly ending in Australia.

I exaggerate. Generally, but specifically in this case as it’s not even a proper gap jump. The entry isn’t even higher the exit. No that particular pleasure was saved for the next scythe-waving grim reaper located a little further down the trail. First tho, we’d best deal with gettingover eight feet of A&E potential. Until this weekend, my entire gap jumping back catalogue represented a single unitary entry. Yes, exactly one. I know this is right as I’ve counted it a number of times. It’s neither big nor clever, but it claimed a riding buddy who spent significant drinking time supine on a spinal board awaiting a diagnosis offering him a vertical future.

Tonight it’s four. An emergency addition came via a desperate ‘make the bike longer’ thrust on Saturday, after being assured an unridden trail had neither gaps nor doubles. Except, as was explained during my tourettes tirade come unlikely survival, ‘that one’. Two more managedtoday,inspite ofdisplacement activity mostly coalescing around mental images of crisp sheets and cool nurses. The problem I have with gaps are – somewhat unremarkably – the bloody big gap masquerading as a gaping maw to chew up uncommitted mountain bikers.

Table tops are by their very definition entirely devoid of gaps. You might look rubbish failing to hit the downslope but that’ll be looking rubbish without troubling the emergency services. Jumps defined by trail wedges pointing vaguely into space are right in the slot for my meagre skills – pick a point onthe far horizon, compress the suspension somewhere close to the lip, deep breath, close eyes, stick Newton in the driving seat and wait for the firma to become a little less terra.

Big, scary jumps aren’t a problem either. Just ride round them and present your ‘whist drive’ card to the youngsters laughing at your brittle bones. Gaps tho – entirely doable in terms of bike, muscles, skills and vague aptitude. The issue is the counterbalancing vegetable up top – kaleidoscope heavywith broken images and crammed full of endless doubt. Most of mountain biking at the level I do is about managing your head. Everything is a battle, a fight against intuitiveness, a war with the inner coward against a creeping barrage of unmitigated fear.

This is not some testosterone fuelledmasochism- because chucking yourself off stuff ignitesthe adrenalin compressor and fires raw dopamine into waiting veins. Chasing the Dragon without dealers and needles. Dropping the bike and high five-ing a mate before some very British embarrassment around being forty six years old and not really comfortable with that level of emotional vulgarity. Firm handshake next time okay?

And that bloody bike is going to either going to buttress my fragile bravery gland or send me to an early grave. Or possibly both. And maybe at the same time. But it’s still not enough to bridging the gap between ‘that’s doable‘ and ‘I’m doing that’. No for that I need Matt to lead me in at a speed entirely missing from my own jumping repertoire. And for all the elevated heart rate, wobbly armsand screaming head-thoughts, the actual event is blanked bymuscle memory and mental censorship. In the same way I envy those who dream in colour, I’d love to describe how getting it done actually feels. But I’ve no idea, it fades rapidly to black before the impact of tortured suspension bleeds colour back into my world.

The next gap was bigger. Sliding straight into it was an exercisein quelling the cacophony in my head. The bike saved my arse and other bits as we landed a bit short, and my brain saved me trying the next one on the not unreasonable grounds that a working flange of limbs at this point was a bonus not to be risked.

So now I’m ‘Four Gaps Al’ which is an excellent moniker for a red-neck band, but a rather paltry return for a man who has been riding mountain bikes for more than a decade. The counterpoint of that rather sorry statistic is the immutabletruth that bravery is not merely a lack of imagination and excellent medical insurance. Rather It is feeling the fear and doing it anyway. There’s something about standing on the edge of things and wondering if you can fly. Almost every instinct and experience would suggest not.

Bravery is launching yourself into the gap. There is much to recommend it. And not much point dying wondering.

I really must write up that visit to the Penis Museum. It’ll be slightly less self-referential and have far more knob gags in it. And I think we can all agree, that represents a massive improvement in the content of this blog.

There’s something in the air

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, PhotographyLeave a comment
Although not very high

Which wise old sage once foretold ‘before you can truly appreciate Spring, you must first suffer heroically through the bleak winter’? That wise old sage was me, and I proclaimed it yesterday while basking under the sun’s rays and burning my thin bits. Not that wise then. But quite old before you feel the need to chip in and remind me of that.

We’ve suffered alright. As have the bikes. Heroically might be a stretch unless shivering by a pub fire, pint in hand whilst bleating about the misery of endless cold and rain counts. Which in Al’s book of winter fables, it bloody well does. So it is most welcome that signs of spring are everywhere – increasing ground cover, decreasing mud, flashes of leafy trees, endless birdsong and the blissful silence of Matt’s new drive train.

Somehow he’s eeked out vaguely cog shaped swarf through the grit’n’shit of winter, before the inevitable collapse of key components forced fitment of bright and shiny new stuff. So no longer are we accompanied by the discordant cacophony of slipping chains, grinding cogs* and associated whines, groans and hisses of disintegrating transmission. There may be many meteorological and horticultural markers to herald the arrival of Spring, but for the Forest Of Dean Mountain Biking Community, it’s when Matt fits a new chainring AND replaces his bald rear tyre.

So three hardy perennials sprouted short sleeve tops and dark sunglasses at a rather un-springlike 9am, where a cold wind was more than a match for a peeping sun. And anticipation of spring conditions were tempered by a night ride some three days back where the trails were winter-wet, from which me and the bike returned much in homage to a dirty protest. I don’t mind that kind of thing in Jan, but it’s getting pretty old come BST and April.

12km on road on off road tyres at 25 PSI** warbles on a bit as a 2.5 inch contact patch attempts to rip up the tarmac. But riding out means an extra pub stop on the way home ,and that’s worth a 20km return trip to the drinking hardcore of our little group. Such were the solar powered high spirits, my navigational numptiness was ignored as I promised some fantastic trails ‘on the other side of the river‘. Where there may be monsters – probably a better chance of meeting those than me finding a track I’d ridden once, a month ago, in the company of many others.

No monsters were harmed in the making of this post; no instead after the tiniest location error – okay I missed the trail completely – we found not one but two perfectly loamy trails – dark earth shouldered by emerging bluebells and twisting perfectly through a green screen of burgeoning fauna that is almost as good to look at as to ride. Almost, but not quite.

Mountain Bikers categorise the dirt under their tyres into sub groups and niches; grip, sloppiness, colour, slippiness, smell, likelihood to punt you into a waiting tree, that kind of thing. And while summer dirt is a light, dusty brown with a crumbly surface marbled by cracks, that’s brilliant only if you like dust motes over grip, but dirt aficionados search for Spring Loam where the ground has a bit more give, a lot more grip, the ability to hold a tyre at almost any angle and – if you are righteous – harvest mini clods to flick at the bloke behind.

It’s perfect dirt. It’s the dirt you see in Mountain bike videos. It was the dirt we rode on Sunday. And we rode an awful lot of it pretty damn briskly. Seven ups, seven downs divided – as ever – for me between ‘before‘ and ‘after‘ the infamous ‘double drop‘ which is a moderately vertical drop onto a concrete fire road. On a bike with oodles of travel, it should be nothing more than a point, relax, close eyes, brake when it flattens out – but having nearly claimed me a while back, I’m bloody glad to get it done. Without having to send anyone back up the trail to locate missing teeth.

After that, pretty much floor-to-sky bliss. Mainly because there’s so much more speed without the associated risk of the front end washing out. Swinging bikes left-right-left between trees on this perfect dirt is as close to the Jedi Speeder chase you can get to without CGI and Cary Fisher. And having dragged out the Purple Minion, the bag of excuses for not riding all the jumps and drops (within reason, there’s some stuff I’d need a crane and a trampoline to even attempt) was pretty much empty. And that’s fine, because they disappeared under wheel before I could even form my normal whimper.

And then Matt fell off on the easiest trail of the day. Which was funny enough to displace the thought of tired legs with ‘Ice Cold in Alex’ type Beer Hallucination. Thankfully we only had to cross a couple of kilometres of family-walker-slalom before attaining the rather splendid locale of the Saracens Head. Beer was drunk, bullshit was legion, fish type trail reconstructions were made, sunglasses were worn, smiles were baked.

Arriving home some 8 hours after sneaking out, my thoughts sadly turned to a day in the office. A day spent wistfully gazing out of the window wondering when I can go outside and play on my bike with my friends. I appreciate this presents a mental age of about 12.

I’m good with that.

* No not that kind of grinding cog. I’ll get round to the Penis Museum very soon. Until then we’re on a Fnar moratorium.

** Except for H who cheekily pumped his up to 50PSI for the ride into the Forest. That’s fine, we let him take the wind as punishment.

Size doesn’t matter

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike RidingLeave a comment
Pick a size, any size

Well it might depending on context. So when sufficient time and therapy has passed, I’ll test that hypothesis through a full disclosure from the Reykjavik Penis Museum, but today let’s firm up on how different widths perform when wiggled about in the moist stuff*

In fact let’s not. Because that bottom half of the Internet inhabited by those who confused marketing with progress have already bored me almost to death by taking extreme positions on the margins of the argument. So let me spare you the dubious pleasure of a debate over the difference an inch or two may actually make, and instead make time for a proper discussion on friendship and community.

Those bikes have different sized wheels. What’s way more important is they are piloted by different riders. One of which was – and I’m not tending to the melodramatic here – lucky to survive a horrific crash with an onrushing car. An accident that left him with some injuries that will never properly heal, and an understandable lack of motivation to get back on the very thing which nearly did for him.

Not being terribly clever or sophisticated, the rest of that close knit wheeled obsessives, who are lucky enough to count him as a good mate, have been gently encouraging him to venture out and ride bikes, have a laugh, drink beer and bump the release on the stress valve. We felt that’d be pretty good rehabilitation therapy since it’s a group with an almost fundamentalist belief that anything involving bikes is about infinite to the power of a lot better than doing anything else.

So we’ve been bringing the fella back into the fold which hasn’t been easy with a winter than promised snow but delivered floods, and trails which have been on the shitty side of mostly unridable for way more than a few weeks. Today hardly represented the zenith of improving conditions with the rain and clouds of this past week being our welcome for an early start into an inevitable headwind.

Not riding for a bit makes riding right now a lot harder. But we got the climbs done in a kind of sociable spin which represented normality before the advent of Strava. And while it certainly wasn’t hard and dusty under-tyre, it wasn’t that mud sucking drudge of even a few weeks ago. Mud’s okay when it’s warm and interspersed with sections of ‘wooah to me..to you.. ‘ sashaying on technical singletrack.

Rolling on, we found ourselves entering a favourite descent which opens up with a little gap jump. It’s claimed a few victims over the years one of whom was with us today. I nearly added another one having failed to generate sufficient speed through the clag before hitting the take off. For clarity, I was fine, it was the poor bugger behind me who had to ‘find some moves‘ in order to land on a bit of trail not predicated to exit him out the front door. Talk about adding injury to injury.

I did apologise at trails end, but was cut off by a big grin and the look of a man who might be remembering why we chuck our middle aged bodies at trees in the hope we may miss them. We rode quite a bit and laughed a lot more before making a break for the pub where various offspring appear to have the cycling community pretty much grid locked for at least another generation. Whether that is rapid and nerveless downhilling aged about 11, or ripping up the Newport velodrome aged not much more, it really doesn’t matter.

We all sat and talked excitedly about riding. I accepted a challenge to go ride the boards knowing my arse shall be presented to me on a plate by a lad many years from voting age. I watched another small child nick his dads bike and sprint up and down the road in a manner not becoming of his father. I chased a cheap laugh by mentioning this at some volume. I’m happy to report it got exactly the type of laugh that any crack amongst like-minded individuals will from those who have a shared love of a thing without taking themselves terribly seriously.

Today reminded me of some really quite important stuff. Riding matters, fitness matters, speed matters, improvement matters, equipment matters…. yada… meh.. whatever.. because they are massively subsumed by why these things are even slightly important. You make great memories with awesome friends, and you are privileged to have days like this when it’s pretty damn life affirming to see smiles on muddy faces which have been through far too much crap, anxiety and angst.

And that’s what I learned. The bike your ride and the size of the wheels really don’t matter at all.

Friends do.

* Since making the regrettable decision to visit that museum, the urge to go long and hard at knob gags has been largely irresistable**

** Worryingly, not that many of my close friends and colleagues have noticed any difference

That’ll do

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, Photography1 Comment
I could do that. In my dreams.

There are days when vigorously slapping myself is the only rationale response to some lament regarding life, and how difficult it is. Only this sting of self flagellation reminds me how incredibly lucky I am compared to those poor buggers who didn’t get the breaks afforded to me. For a start, I’m a northerner and that’s already starts you ahead in any race prefixed with ‘Human‘*

For the last three weeks, we’ve been riding bikes in conditions best whispered as summer. Ironically the turning of the seasonal ratchet to Spring has brought with it somewhat more wintry conditions and the return of the rain, but it’s still about a zillion times better than it was at the start of March.

When researching trenchfoot remedies held more interest than going outside. Everything creaked – bearing, chains, brakes and knees. Two events around this time hove into view and while my winter fitness suggested I’d easily finish them, I found it far simpler not even to get started. Which is a bit rubbish when you’ve signed up with friends who put in outstanding efforts – while I was more interested in riding what was in front of me, rather than something inked in when the dark and cold was endless, and motivation needed a firm prod.

So there’s a bit of guilt but a whole lot of joy. That’s the only word that gets close to flying on trails that a month ago afforded nothing but mud sucking slog which saps your power and your will to ride in about equal amounts. Now riding is less about damage limitation and more about revelling in the efficacy of legs and lungs campaigned through a grim winter. And giggling. And pointing at dust. And drinking cold beer in the sunshine.

Until today, my last five rides have been a rediscovery of why the PYGA is such a damn fine bicycle. Once in the Malverns, the rest of the time in the Forest including a night ride which had me wondering if these were entirely different trails. I’m sure at night there must be more trees. And less obvious lines. I responded magnificently by ignoring any faint trace of a trail, instead bouncing first lights and then body parts off innocent timber. Still nothing got broken and we had beer later so honours even I think.

After weather more appropriate for this time of year, I swept the sleet of the Purple Minion and explained to anyone who was interested that a 32lb bike of extreme stoutness adorned with a tacky 2.5in front tyre would be absolutely ideal for road riding. 10km of that in cold air, and under threatening skies had us rendezvous with the hardcore trail pixies who apparently enjoy lobbing themselves into space with no thoughts of the potentially bruising effects of gravity.

I took photos while they did their stuff. My bike is perfect for that kind of thing, and I am so clearly not. This kind of difficult juxtaposition worries me not a jot nowadays. Instead I revelled in the next trail far more suitable to my pay grade – winding between trees and without any obvious 20 foot gaps where I’d expect the trail to be. We enjoyed it so much, they found us another one which dropped into a gully full of baby head rocks lightly polished with damp moss. The mega is, er, mega here. It is so composed, so suited to this terrain, so effortlessly competent regardless or rider input, I cannot wait to ride this stuff all day in the Alps.

That starts three months from today. Between now and then will hopefully be filled with much more riding like this. But for the next 10 days, it’ll take a back seat to actually reminding myself there are other things more significant than mountain bikes in my life. The most important of all shall be sat next to me on a plans heading to extremely foreign places where we’ll spend the first few hours wondering where the kids are.

At home 🙂

* this may not be a universally shared view. But I’m from Yorkshire and we not terribly interested in what those birthed in lesser counties might think.

Telling Lies

On By AlexIn Other stuffLeave a comment

If it all looks new, there’s a reason for that. it mostly is.

We all tell lies. Really we do – all the time, and any time there is a need to balm truthful scars with deceit. It’s an entirely human trait, and failing to follow our instincts would likely result in never getting out of bed other than to reach for a bottle.

I know this so am ready for it – an excellentexample were the lies pitched by a teenage salesman with trainee moustache passing up any chance of irony by declaring˜new is the new used‘. The somewhat more experienced Swiss Tony who finally sold us a car didn’t have a better story, he merely pedalled better fibs. But even those whoppers are dwarfed by a clearly deceitful rationale suggesting buying a new mountain bike somehow represents outstanding value. We all know any such purchase is baselined by the running costs of a Chieftain Tank, or possibly an entire small war involving gunboats, helicopters and a small thermonuclear device.

And if you think new cars suffer inestimable devaluation on leaving the showroom, bikes makes these looks like a safe long term investment. The second a bike gets muddy, it loses about 50{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} of its value. Not so much of a shelf life, more of a half life. All of which would suggest to the fiscally prudent that a handsome dividend could be returned if one delved deep into the 2nd hand market.

Wooah, steady on there cowboy. The first rule of any 2nd hand market is never to consider touching another mans’ smalls. Mountain Biking is a destructive activity – fork and bearing seals are no match for winters’ wheel flung water and mud. Unseen damage hides inside seemingly pristine components especially as one mans ‘full service’ regime is another mans chuck it in a damp shed and forget about it. Everyone lies.

Even so, such a vibrant second hand market was clearly a better option than prostrating oneself in front of the Marketing Man and His Shiny Appendages. I sallied forth into a reverse auction compiling a parts list carefully crafted to weed out the chancers to funnel barely used half price components into the low cost build I’d promised Carol. A short evening spread across a few choice internet forums had me preparing my inbox for the incoming avalanche of previously enjoyed parts.

Inevitably, the ping of multiple emails appeared to be nothing more than the curation of various sellers’ photos from their ‘private collection’ – possibly the result of some kind of mass dirty protest. If this was how these items were presented for sale, how the hell did they treat them beforehand? The told lies and I didn’t believe them, so here we are no further on but suffering much disappointment and something else rather more profound.

You see behind their dirty secrets hid one of mine. And it is this; mountain bikes are memory banks for good times and their authenticity is proven by a patina of composite wear over components of a similar age. Even the relatively new PYGA has many scars which bookmark great rides and map specific events where paint was scratched, rims were dinged, pedals were scraped and cranks were dented. That might be a rock strike resulting from a crappy line choice deep in a Welsh rock garden or swing arm paint rubbed away from careless trailer attachment. A fork which went from pristine to heavily used in a couple of rides and one specific tree.

It’s a triggers broom kind of thing. Stuff needs to wear out or be destroyed from a single generation of stuff once representing a shiny new build. Throw something new on there and don’t be surprised if the bike rejects it like a foreign organ surreptitiously inserted under the cover of darkness. This hypothesis of what is true and right allows us to lie about the efficacy of second hand parts. It’s not a great lie as fibs go, but this is now way prevents it being wheeled out on an almost daily basis as the weary postman collapses under the weight of the new and shiny.

There’s something else as well. A molecule of self awareness suggeststheworld is as it isratherthan the way we would wish ittobe. We may want for perfection but that’s a rainbow-ended fantasysomewherebeyond an infinite ‘to do‘ list. A list I am to tired, tolazy or to clueless to work through , instead soothing task failure with beer. But a new bike – now we’re talking, here is something framed for perfection. Just for a brief moment as it comes off the bike stand all-perfect but pre-riding. Anticipation in its purest form but a mirror for your imperfections. For all of its beauty, it reflects your shortfalls – of bravery, of skill and of power. For all of the newness, all you can offer is decline and past glories.

But what a fantasy while it lasts. This shall be the bike which transcends the very heart of mountain biking. The tool to mine deep into the mythical motherlode of flow. A time – briefly glimpsed and then cruelly snatched away – when bike, rider and trail coalesce in perfect harmony. Chasing dust from your best riding mates rear wheel, summer air lit by sun kissed motes of joy, that perfectly carved turn, the promise of beer and bullshit later. The time when you know it cannot get any better and then somehow it does – that is exactly what a new bike represents.

Which is exactly the lie we tell ourselves.

Pause. Pull back from the pretension for a while. It’s sentimental nonsense of course. All we’re doing is waving stop at the marketing bus, rushing on while waving our credit card and demanding a first class ticket to lifestyle central. For me, that metaphor is better realised if I continually throw myself under that bus in the belief/lie that the fiscal pain of being repeatedly run over is somehow worthwhile in the wider view of things. Delusion is quite the most wonderful thing – the mistake people make is to believe it looks the same from the outside.

So what have we learned? Our utopian worldview is nothing more than delusional deceit placing ourselves central on this planet. We lie to ourselves, our friends, our loved ones, to complete strangers, and most of the time we don’t even know we’re doing it. We pretend to make rationale decisions, but we’re slaves to a system that sells to our many and varied weaknesses. We buy, consume and discard with frighting callousness.

That’s all a bit depressing really. So let me finish with this. Mountain Biking makes me happy in a way that absolutely nothing else does. That’s not even close to a slight on my family, what laughably passes for my career and having a beer with my friends. But it’s different, less nuanced, more visceral, less lies, more truth. And Ihave not have the patience to postpone that happiness, nor diminish it with things not quite right, nor risk the memory bank of something potentially quite special.

So rather than be a passive receiver of lies and mediocracy, I need to plan many adventures. Anticipate great rides. Pretend that suddenly I will become a better rider, forge future memories of perfection under burning skies, achieve nirvana, ride to the end of the rainbow. And for this I need a new bike dripping with the nicest stuff. Luckily I seem to have built one.

As lies go, there are plenty worse.

In a muddle

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding2 Comments
It’s all been a bit like that

I’m compiling an extensive catalogue of songs themed entirely by what happens when rain, rain and more rain splats on saturated ground where buff six inch wide trails used to be. Sloshing through these mile wide muddy motorways, I find myself humming eighties classics including ‘Mud Is All Around‘ and ‘Don’t Talk to me about Mud‘ before occasionally backsliding into the previous decade, duetting ‘Endless Mud‘ with a virtual Lionel.

This can go on for some time. The mud certainly has – I feel like a mudaholic at a grubby public meeting ‘Hi, my name is Al and it’s been about 9 seconds since I last washed my bike/threw away some brake pads/replaced the entire transmission/ignored the sound of impending bearing collapse‘. For more than two months, every ride is preceded by sufficient waterproof apparel to clothe a small elephant, and suffixed by a sanitation regime resembling a particularly desperate field hospital in a long forgotten war.

The mucky sandwich bookended by this drudgery has long passed from challenging to enduring passing through wet, dark, cold and shitty. My entire riding life is one long dirty protest repeatedly passing through an outdoor spa specialising in a muck spraying treatment best thought of as ‘Back, Crack and Rucksack‘. Not even a new bike or brief shafts of sunlight could shift my SAD symptoms. Beer helps obviously, but mainly as it is inside, warm and doesn’t taste of damp earth shotgunned at 20mph into your face.

And this Sunday the Goshawk 50 comes around which the event website is struggling to sell “I think this is going to be one of the toughest Wentwood50’s to-date, both mentally and physically – especially if it stays wet. If you get your head in the right place, treat it as the training event it is meant to be, you’ll hopefully have a good day out. ” – wow sounds great, where do I sign up? Oh, I already have? Bugger.

Last year, this signposted the end of a 10 week – and I appreciate the use of a rather grandiose term – training plan at the end of which I’d shed nearly 10kg, ridden oh so many miles on mainly frozen trails, subsumed my beer and cheese habit and dropped a good trouser size. I was keen to see if it had all been worth the effort, and was happily rewarded with a pretty strong performance and a lower mid-pack finish. For me that represents podium form.

Roll the planet around and we find a similar shaped specimen of about the same weight, similar fitness, but not even registering on the same motivational scale. The question I’m asking myself – about 5 times a day – is can I really be arsed to drag my wet, claggy arse up and down 50 kilometres of muddy trails? There’s a few others having a go, so on the positive side the ‘misery loves company‘ defence could be wheeled out for turning up. The weather will be at least 10 degrees warmer than last years ice cold winds and occasional sleet. And I’ve already paid for a T-shirt. Er, that’s about it.

On the not so positive side, I really have nothing left to prove about why being fit is immeasurably better than being fat. While the course is a good one, it’ll be made up of more fireroad and – as I’ve already whinged about – quite a lot more mud. And it wasn’t exactly dry last year. There’s probably a similar day out somewhere else on dryer trails – not ridden first by the 200 fast boys and girls up the front.

Sure I am the first toespouse the incontestable hypothesis that riding is always better than not riding, and to lampoon those keyboard warriors who exchange winter hard work for internet hard-man withering. . I’ve even occasionally surprised myself with coping techniques for difficult challenges. And there’s always the pleasurable aftermath to sniff the waft of reflective whimsey.

Yeah, bit for all of that I am still back to the central moan that surely enough suffering has been visited on me in the 600 crappy kilometres I’ve ridden in the grip of the dirtstream since the year turned. It’s like room 101. That event is the rat in a cage. It’s an odd way to spend your days off sobbing ‘Don’t make me go back, anything but that, please no more mud’.

We’ll see. Riding tomorrow night. Still time to pull the emergency hamstring.

Purple Minion

On By AlexIn Other stuff4 Comments
Looks Dry. It isn’t.

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’s 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.

Idiot’s Monster

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, Photography11 Comments

Nukeproof Mega AM build

Until about 1:53pm this afternoon, a post was in the virtual exit tube awaiting prose peristalsis to push it into my socially connected world. Where almost no one would read it. Which was a shame as much thought had been expended over the last two weeks in an attempt to make daily flooding mildly amusing. Tales of sleet laden trudges over high Welsh mountains jostled, with similar epic death marches through a Flanders-themed Forest. All linked by motivational reserve eroded by endless rain.

And if that wasn’t enough I’d worked in the term ‘arboreal‘ quite a number of times interspersed with a bucket load of moist similes, all finished with a mildly pretentious polemic on political blindness in a dying world. There’s a feeling here that maybe the read wasn’t as interesting in the write but no matter, it’s all raging water under crumbling bridges now.

Because of 1:53pm.

That’s when a maelstrom of want, guilt, delusion and displacement created a perfect storm marked ‘Confirm Order‘. Notice words such as ‘logic‘, ‘reason‘, ‘rationale‘ and ‘permission‘ are pointedly missing adjectives from the previous sentence. Notice also that the newest entrant into the Shed Of Dreams has the meme of something not long ejected on the grounds of misalignment due to my now firm bicycle requirements.

In my defence it was cheap. There are definitely additional strong and sound arguments on to exactly why I bought it. I just don’t have them to hand right now. Essentially I’ve aquired a relic of an unloved wheel size that I won’t use 90{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} of the time, and when I do it’s going to be an experience starting with ‘why is that front wheel so small and why is it so far away?‘

We’ve been here before. Many times. I’m a buying windsock when breathed on by the zephyrs of marketing and perceived betterness. So I hated to see the Rocket sat unloved in a corner of the shed, shunted behind a brace of 29ers that rocked my UK riding world. Which made selling it pretty easy especially as the speed and bravery needed to bring it to life were pretty much beyond me.

Roll forward six months. In four more we’ll be back in the Alps riding* stuff like the Swiss Downhill Course** in betwixt chairlift winching and plummeting down more handy mountains. And now I have a bike almost the same as the one recently discarded to ride it on. Only it’s worse than even that. Whereas the Rocket was a superbly engineered, hand crafted frame from a Cy’s much respected emporium, the Mega up there appears be the bastard love child of a amp-crazed welder abandoned in a dark room with a handful of aluminium lintels.

Pretty it isn’t. Whereas the Rocket was all composite curves and almost OCD attention to detail, the Mega has the look of something brought to life by a million volts and the frightened cry of ‘The Monster is Alive‘. When the delivery van arrives, I expect it to punch through the rear door, bludgeon the innocent driver to death before smashing into the house, eating a family pet then presenting itself at my feet – possibly on fire – demanding whether I’m man enough to do anything other than quiver in its presence.

I think we can all agree the answer to that is a firm no. And then we have to build it. First tho I have to lift it which might be a job for at me and a couple of friends. It appears the FEA analysis was junked for ‘screw it, do those girders come in a bigger size‘. Once I’ve added stuff to make it go forward, up and down and hopefully stop, it’s going to weigh about the same as me. Still since most of its life will be spent on an uplift truck or a chairlift, this is unlikely to be a problem. And I’ve become pretty accomplished at pushing if not.

Let’s get the questions out of the way shall we. An FAQ prepared by the deranged if you will:

Will it be better than the Rocket? Of course not.Will it cost as much to build? Absolutely not*** Will those 26 inch wheels hold me back? It’s me we’re talking about, of course not. How much riding in the UK will it get? Exactly as much time as when there’s a bike trailer, some terrifying trails and sufficient armour to play a major part in a medieval battle. Aren’t I a bit old for this kind of thing? I dunno, if with great age comes great responsibility and great wisdom, then clearly bloody not.

Is it going to be a monster? Oh Yes. Am I an idiot? Again, Oh Yes.

So it turns up later this week. And through a process of eBay osmosis shall I restock my 26inch spares box before hanging it all off the monster. Yes, this is exactly the same stuff I sold not so long ago declaring ‘Pah 26inch bikes, who’d have one of those, talk about old technology‘. And once built, we’ll be off to Bike Park Wales where I expect any acts of cavalier bravery shall be more horse than rider. Get through that unscathed and then it’s all about surviving a long week in the Alps. Might happen.

Still no point dying wondering eh. Rationale and Logic are over-rated. Idiocy and Delusion is where it’s at in 2014.

* or in my case mincing. Having the Rocket last year in no way imbued downhill skills which in no way should invalidate buying another bike to do pretty much the same on.

** which I’ve subsequently discovered my mate Dan rode on a hardtail. Best to gloss over that for now I think.

*** Because I shall be long in the second hand market. As promised to Carol who took about 2 seconds to deconstruct my arguments for new shiny thing ownership before explaining to the children, that yes she had married an idiot.

London. No still don’t get it.

On By AlexIn Pretentious nonsenseLeave a comment

This blog stumbled, embarrassed, into the light from the darkness of my commuting angst. A working week sliced and diced by a thousand weary cuts splitting my happy home life from a somewhat less joyous vocational experience. Being alarm-turfed from bed at 6am/slice. Digging out the least stinky riding kit/slice. Suffering frostbite and trenchfoot six+ months of the year/slice. Pedalling the same old ground day after day/slice. Useless trains that were always packed/Slice. Rain bashing the window I’d soon be outside of/Slice. Grotty work changing rooms/Slice. Is the shower working anxiety/Slice. Repeat with no prospect of escape.

But these were mere nics and burrs when transposed against the ‘hack my head off with a blunt cleaver, it’d be a mercy‘ of doing this every day in what some people* proudly label as ‘the best city in the world‘. One could take a narrow view that this may well be true if your hobbies include killing cyclists, mainlining endless fuckwittery, pushing, shouting and shoving. Not for me though. Not even close.

There were odd days when the gladiatorial contest of staying alive ended with the Christians besting the Lions, but mainly it was a drudge full of danger and dirt under a cityscape of dazzling modern brashness silhouetting a thousand years of fascinating history. I’ve always maintained London can best be described as ten million idiots wrapped around a stunningly interesting core. As a ghost-town it’s hard to hate, but peopled with Londoners it was impossible for me to love.**

Five years ago I waved it goodbye with a pair of fingers and have missed it hardly at all. Occasional sallies into its mean streets and fetid tunnels reinforcedmy old prejudices, and the first train out cannot run soon enough. Although not quite- hidden in the boonies you vaguely remember that by scratching beyond London’s grimy surface, there’s all sorts of mouth-open-wide amazement for those of us who find crop identification mildly exhilarating.

That was me then; on a sunny winters day blinking my way out of St. James station. First order of the day breakfast, so ignore the main street franchise and instead duck into an alley partially blocked by builders’ vans.Behind which was hidden an authentic London Cafe with a blackboarded menu offering Bacon and Eggs. Tea or Coffee. No credit cards, don’t ask as a punch in the mouth often offends. Run by some cheerful Polish dudes who provided this mildly hungover traveller a pint of tea buttered up to a heart-stopping Bacon Roll for about four quid.

Sated, I had something else to spend; Time. An hour of it to invest under a winter warming sun in a now mostly deserted post-rush hour city. First stop, a circle of the lake in St James Park giggling at those paying thirteen quid for ‘breakfast in the park‘, stepping away smartly from hissing swans and misidentifying the Disney spires and endless crenelations of a shimmering palace.

My bet was the Kremlin, a local suggested the less interesting/more likely Queen’s residence now much photographed by Japanese tourists grouped by tour umbrella. Many of whom were adjusting focal length through the simple medium of stepping back into the traffic. Where amped up taxi drivers attempted to run them down. Gave the cyclists a bit more of a chance I suppose.

And what cyclists! All shapes and sizes, some astride the latest race tuned technology, more wheezing slowly on Halfords specials with knackered everything and brown chains. Even a few intrepid Boris-Bikers weaving unsteadily between rows of gunning cars. I have absolutely no idea how I survived five years of this, it’s absolutely bloody mental and yet somehow survival rates are slightly better than sticking ones head into a melting nuclear reactor. Bonkers.

Refreshed by a second artisan beverage, I was amazed that such a small square of real estate could contain three ministries of state, Scotland Yard, a big bit of the treasury and the headquarters of a dozen major corporations. Squeezed between these corporate behemoths were proud, regency houses blue-plaqued with eighteen century prime ministers and philosophers.

My aimless peramble gave rise to a grudging respect for London. The juxtaposition of stuff older than most nation states mingling with high tech/high rise thrusting corporations. The identikit high streets sharing custom with esoteric cafe’s in winding back alleys. The suited and booted worker ants jostling with finger pointing tourists. Maybe familiarity had bred contempt. Sure, I still would never want to live here, but it’s not entirely terrible either.

And then it was. Buzzing overhead like an irritated mutant wasp was a bright yellow police helicopter festooned with massive lights, camera and – possibly – machine gun action. It swept over the high rise buildings, rotating this way and that clearly searching for bomb-carrying lunatics, escaping bank robbers or any individual not associated with the Masons.

This was amazing and a bit scary. I fully expected black-clad MET Ninja’s to throw out ropes and descend into the mean streets. My expectations were not met as, after a couple more minutes of the orange snout sniffing out trouble, engines whinged, rotors sped and the Helicopter became a fading dot in the sky. But that’s not the terrible thing. No, when I looked around me to see what your average Londoner would make of our little vignette of Patriot Games, there was a real shock waiting.

NOBODY looked. Not even a glance. Just me and the tourists excitedly waving their middle digits. Really? I mean really? What passes for normal around here? Do Transformers have to rampage through the city and rip out buildings before anyone feigns interest? And only then because it’ll just give the bloody tube a reason to be delayed. I wanted to grab the nearest too-cool-for-school sharp suited nutter and demand ‘Am I hallucinating or did some sodding great helicopter just swoop between those buildings?‘

But I didn’t. Because I’m English and it’s this kind of quiet reserve that’s served us so well in Love and War. Sort of. Anyway I couldn’t get away fast enough, and it was only as the train put some distance between me and that massive edifice of insanity could I give it some more thought. And that thought was this – whatever the reason, whatever the prize, whatever they tell you, stay well away from London – it’s stacked full of loonies and aliens.

Honestly I’d rather spend time in Birmingham. And on that bombshell, the defence rests.

* but not people who you’d trust with matches. Boris Johnson for example.

** Whoever said ‘if you win the rat race, it’s important to remember you are still a rat’ made the point somewhat better.