Class Bore

On By AlexIn Pretentious nonsense4 Comments

There is a point in your life when one must take a stand. Even if this is from a sitting position. In a league table of misquotation Edmond Burke’s* “The Only Thing Necessary for the Triumph of Evil is that Good Men Do Nothing” is second only to Marie Antoinette never saying ‘let them eat cake‘. But I like it anyway because it’s justslightlyless pretentious than Voltaire’s “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it“**. Both are which are far less pretentious than pseudo intellectual quote derivation pretending to be clever. Ahem.

I like to think of myself as well balanced – directly resulting from a chip on both shoulders; the first a bonafide working class upbringing terraced between steeply clustered houses each with a coal cellar, and the second a hand-ringing liberalism, mostly a Pavlovian response to the horror of my Dad casting off those credentials and voting Conservative of his own free will.

The fallout has left me with a healthy disrespect for authority, a delusional belief in meritocracy and a worldview mostly baselined by the assumption the world would be a far happier place if 1{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} of the population didn’t own about 90{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} of it. It’s also given me a passive hatred of those born into entitlement who fail ever test I’d ever set; Cost versus Value, Altruism versus Self-interest, Friends versus Possessions. And yet there’s a little bit of me than envies a life kickstarted by a silver spoon projecting young Henry/Henrietta into the cultural stratosphere without ever passing any test that wasn’t audaciously skewed in their favour.

The physical manifestation of this unjust hegemony tends to drive me to deeds beyond any normal bravery and quite some way further outside of decorum and good manners. I feel a representative example would be instructive. Travelling to London on Birmingham’s finest express service sandwiched me between two estate agents, and a multiple of that from the legal profession. When I am elected world dictator there shall be no draconian policies regarding trains or mobile communication except when the two intersect. At which point, the scorpion pits awaits.

Some of this is my fault. Okay, let’s get it out there, all of this was my fault as a middle-aged inventory malfunction had me awash with a thousand songs but no way to play them to myself. This English reserve not to bother my fellow man was clearly unfelt by my carriage companions. The brillcream boys behind me were trilling their latest deal at high volume to an audience who were clearly as uninterested as I. An assertion validated by the short call duration and a desperate ‘who shall we tell next?’

But for all their shallow look-at-me fuckwittery, they barely register on the ‘I am going to kill you now‘ meter which the lawyer-clan boosted beyond ten, beyond a Spinal Tap 11 and off the fucking scale. My upper-class-arsehole bingo was already mostly populated with ‘braying voice‘, ‘pain barrier volume‘, ‘snorting laugh‘ and ‘pompous self satisfied smugness‘ crayoned in at about a thousand PSI. First tosspot#1 led out with his hackyned ‘How I saved Roy Keane from Bankcrupcy‘ story before he was trumped by dickhead#2 giving it the big one about some ‘a-list celebrity‘ who’d retained his tosspotness by denying the cheap seats access to what coke-snorting looks like when filmed from a dodgy mobile phone***

And then as my head was one millimetre from smashing into the seat in front, dickweasel#3 launched into a story of his six year old daughter, pausing only to remind the smug collective that his family had been in the vanguard of grammatical correctness for 400 years, who had returned from school excited to tell ‘DaDa‘ – a term of endearment for which murder feels appropriate – that the new teacher was quite nice but *forced laugh, shark smile* failed to ascertain the difference between ‘fewer‘ and ‘Less‘. ‘That’s my girl‘ he triumphed. Poor bloody kid.

Readers, I cracked. Maybe you had to be there. Maybe you had to be me. Maybe this stuff isn’t important and it’s absolutely okay to acquiesce to a race where money and power means you get a head start. Maybe. Maybe not. Anyway, I shovelled work papers into my rucksack, stood up and made that stand. Venturing out into the corridor, two steps had me level with the table of cleverly amused laughter at the lower races. I stared them down and met their silence with ‘If you used fewer words, you’d be a lot less fucking annoying‘.

The silence extended awkwardly so I filled it with ‘you know, if you were so bloody important, surely you shouldn’t be sharing the carriage with the standard classproletarians‘. I probably could have done quite a whole lot better had more thought been given to my repartee. As it was, the unnatural quietness passed beyond anything I felt comfortable with, so I haughtily headed off to a seat not peopled by those who paint a grand vision but see nobody in it.

That seat was part of a four filled with the crumple suited ordinary Joe’s who pretended to be centered in an informational tornado aggregated on their phones, but were really just playing candy crush. My kind of people.

Come journey’s end, weary bodies levered themselves from uncomfortable seats to try again with public transport on our capitals finest mass transit underground system. I failed to move because the white heat of righteousness was still burning strongly. Let those who believe the class system holds strong cross me now and offer rebuttal, insult or possible court papers for slander.

They passed alright, but failed to reward my bravery with even a glance. Not because I had bested them, but because I was beneath their contempt. I still felt this was about a draw though – the industrious and clever will one day oust the privileged and inbred. That I lived in a country where what you did was more important than where you started. And the currency of experience has infinite value whereas that of exchange is merely transitory.

So then I walked into a bar, wall-to-wall filled with normal looking people happy to pay£5.50 for a pint of beer. At which point, it cost me quite a lot of money to forget that you must deal with the world as it is, not the way you want it to be.

* or possibly someone else. Or different words. This is what viral looked like in the 18th century.

** He didn’t say it. I’m trying to make a point here. If you can work out what it is, please let me know.

*** Which had me despairing about the shit we think is important. Followed closely by the thought I probably need to get out more.

Consequences

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike RidingLeave a comment

It has been quite a week, riding wise. Four consecutive rides, then two days off before finishing with an epic – starting at 9am and finishing in late twilight*. This sequence is unusual enough on long summer days atop dusty, hard trails. Or even frozen winter mornings when that seasonal experience is preserved from the ankles down – rock hard singletrack under windless bluebird skies have a visceral and visual quality much ignored by the three-season mountain biking community.

None of these scenarios even partially match the rim deep mud, the endless slashing rain, the tree rattling wind, the gray-clamped sky, all peopled by delusional nutjobs who maintain slithering about in this depressing landscape is somehow an improvement on staying inside. My first ride put the Sun into Sunday and the ‘how many bloody people‘ into the Malvern Hills. Monday lost the sun and the weekend ramblers, but kept the slop, Tuesday had me finding new and interesting ways to fall off my cross bike, Wednesday exchanged night for day but the depth of mud and misery remained the same, and Sunday was merely a composite kaleidoscope from the previous week.

Numbers contextualise the experience. 150 kilometres. 3650 metres of vertical climbing. 13 hours in the saddle. A bit more if you factor in breathing hard and drinking lightly. Three different bikes, all brown. Five sets of riding kit, also brown. Two sets of winter boots living mostly under a radiator. One washing machine toiling beyond any concept of warranty repair. Mud moved, collected or eaten not recorded – had it been we’d been rounding up to the nearest metric ton.

Obviously it’s not all good, clean fun. There’s fun to be had, but it becomes increasingly diluted as another favourite trail has nothing to offer but tread-filling saturated dirt and the opportunity to participate in the nascent MTB offshoot of ‘not being able to steer or brake’. And then there are the noises – not just the sound of man bodysurfing mudpack but – transmission grinding itself to swarf, brake pads being filed back by grit, bearings graunching as trail-shit replaces grease. The human ear is not sufficiently attuned to discern the removal of paint, the stripping of expensive water resistant compounds and the slow death of a hundred small but vital components.

We crack on though with mud heading in that direction because the options are grimmer still. My body is used to exercise – it may complain incessantly about pain and suffering, but without it physically I become increasingly restless, and mentally I miss the revolutions to unwind difficult days. Spring feels closer than it is because of this mild winter, but it’s within reach and there’s fitness gold at the end of March’s rainbows for those of us earning double mud miles through winter.

So now we’re all about eeking out components until we’re fully out of the dark. My winter boots are held together by thin strips of velcro and habit, but replacing them feels like accepting winter isn’t mostly done. Chains, Cassettes and Chain rings on my three most used bikes are hooky and slippy, but fitting new and shiny stuff will merely render it similar within a few rides. Forks, shocks and seatposts have exchanged lubrication fluid for a mess of emulsification, but my friend Matt is a wizard with all things oily so extended post-ride triage sessions should see us through.

And riding is always – well nearly always – better than not riding. Sunday felt like a death march especially as our trail scouting revealed nothing but carrying through logged woodlands, repeated muddy climbs and a zero count of new downhill trails. By 3pm, we were at least two hours from home over two big hills – news which triggered a storm hard enough to have us all reaching for emergency rain jackets. There was a measure of grim pounding out the miles through endless muddy trails and some further local depressions as yours truly had a mildly arse-y flouce over the pointlessness of it all.

So we went to the pub. With a total of one light between the three of us.** Quick pint consumed, world a better, if darker, place. Headed home into the bastard headwind which had swung around to haunt us all day. Rolled into Ross some eight hours after we’d left leaving me no option but to hose bike/clothes/kit in further dark and rain. Some time later – as I was oiling unarticulating knees with a decent Merlot – I reflected on a week where a serial assault on the endless horror of trails was somewhere between a bit silly and totally insane.

We’re back to options; one is doing nothing which I’ve already discounted, and the other is road riding which feels like a solution looking for a problem. So we’ll carry on in the hope that our sacrifices begin to crank the season-handle. I just hope someone is listening.

* Darkness really. It’s odd to be asked at 9:01am if you’ve remembered your lights.

** And that was a rear light. I considered asking for a carrot juice chaser with my beer.

Spin, Doctor

On By AlexIn Bikes3 Comments
This is why outside is better than inside

Many, many years ago my brief illicit flirtation with a turbo trainer ended once MouseLung(TM) receded sufficiently to reaffirm muddy vows with my mountain bike. Subsequently, occasional bursts of insanity has seen my trembling finger hovering uncertainly over the ‘buy now’ button, while an instrument of pain filled my browser screen. The certainty that – in reality – its dusty carcass would lie unused in the dark reaches of the ‘shed of dreams’ ensured that button was never pressed*

My friend Jez is the flipperati’s ‘Mr Turbo‘. A man with the awesome self-discipline to exchange a warm winters’ bed for a 6am bastard torture contraption while confidently pitting his fitness against a set of goals best thought of pitching up somewhere between ‘laughable and unattainable‘. He talks of power output, wattage, intervals, heart rate zones and all sorts of other shit that, frankly, feels far too hard when the option is to look outside and utter a ‘I think we can safely consider than a raincheck, now where did I stash those Pringles?”

So not one of those, but thanks anyway. Instead I’ve drawn a straight line between quitting before starting to group therapy via guilt and ego. My Venn diagram of riding buddies has Malverns in one circle and Forest in the other. The intersection is minuscule ensuring flipping back into the hilly world of the Malvern Hills reminds me what proper fitness must feel like. With the forest boys, it’s more what proper drinking feels like 😉

In that group** my arse is handed to me on muddy plate whenever geography dives for the river. Point us the other way tho and my cheating choice of bicycle and some raging re: dying of the light can see me up front on the climbs. It’s a shallow victory but as a man who regards a tea spoon as ‘quite deep‘, I’ll parade it as some kind of ‘no other bugger cares‘ trophy. So when Matt began to lyrically wax over the benefits of a static spinning class, I began to worry.

In the spirit of enquiry then I pitched up on a dark, rainy night to a converted industrial unit split between classes of women aerobically gesticulating, and a more mixed group herded into a small, sweaty room segregated by bike like objects at regular intervals. Bike-Like in a form which included one of the normal two wheels, a shiny saddle clearly sourced from some kind of kinky sex-shop and a transmission systems entirely missing the physical realisation of a freewheel.

And the fella running it was – while sprightly and in generally good condition – pretty fucking ancient and that’s baselined from a man who looks in the mirror every morning and wondering who the grey,old twat looking back at him might be. Still, how hard can it be? Really it’s riding a bike which is pretty much my default not-working activity, the room was peopled by nobody wearing lycra or oiling themselves up***, and boxed by a 45 minute time limit which barely gets the forest crew to the first pub.

Perceptions are wonderful things. Inability to walk, hummingbird heart rates and schadenfreudeless so. All as the result of a losing combination mixing deluded resistance oneupmanship and going after it in the manner of the first man at the bar come post January Dryatholon. Subsequent weeks followed a similar pattern especially as Spin Class falls less than 24 hours after Sunday rides that may finish in the pub, but mark out the previous five or six hours slogging through hilly organic plasticine.

It’s addictive tho. Because while treasuring any kind of pain is not part of my world, it’s less than an hour of suffering. It’s inside, dry, warm and only mildly fetid. The instructor mainlines my tragic 80s rock music agenda, and – here’s the important bit – Matt’s not getting a fitness jump on me. But we’re getting that jump over everyone else. For which we die a bit by a thousand cuts; some of those being endless sprint/climb intervals, a few more being heart busting ‘jumps‘ between sitting and standing and a particularly sadistic exercise of sprinting like a bear-chased man two inches out of the saddle.

There’s no polite way of saying this; that fucking hurts a lot. Much of this was tangentially in my mind as I sauntered into the Asthma clinic on the back of a six day cycle where I’d ridden five of them over a 100k, and up a further 3 kilometres of vertical distance. Sure I walked like an aged cowboy and was pathetically grateful the appointment was on the ground floor, but buoyed by the realisation that everyone else there looked pallid and sick, whereas I just looked knackered.

Blood pressure: beyond healthy. Weigh in: Much Smugness. Lung Function: Better than a man of my age would puff and way beyond what a chronic asthmatic should realistically be able to project. Weekly alcohol consumption: lied a bit.

So my three month recurring appointment was downgraded to ‘come back next year unless you’ve died first’. The doc left me with the happy news that since my first appointment, some five years ago, my blood pressure was down, my weight had dropped 11kg and my lung capacity gone the other way by 16{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2}. She was keen to understand the secret of my success. “Spin, Doctor‘ I replied, apparently amusingly.

And then I showed her that photo on my phone. Because much as spinning has wormed itself into my riding life, nothing – and I mean absolutely nothing – gets close to skiving off work and going riding with your mates. And you get awesome light for free.

The next person who responds to the cost of my bike with ‘you can buy a car with that‘ shall be met with half a smile which is code for ‘crikey, you couldn’t miss the point more if you were firing a moonshot‘

* after all, my road bike fulfils that function superbly.

** or, as it increasingly is, any group

*** which is my enduring image of Gym-Rats. For which they really need take a proper look at themselves. And not in the mirrors such establishments install to reflect your awesomeness.

Rambling.

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, Photography1 Comment
10,000 other people not shown

I know I know, I do that a lot. Today though we’re more about the correct use of the verb as championed by at least a thousand walkers in the Malvern Hills. Sunshine lights their way and winter hibernation is in full retreat. Every evolutionary branch was represented – the double-poler striding out in grim determination, the full-rucksackers Sherpa-ing sandwiches, tea and random paraphilia to the highest point, the sweat-panted sweaty on a post-Xmas guilt trip and the family outing rounded out by bored children and perambulating dogs.

And a few mountain bikers. It’s a source of constant amazement to me that the Brownian motion of all these tribes, squeezed into a narrow range of hills, rarely sparks the tinderbox of frustration. That’s probably because 90{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} or more of trail users work extremely hard to respect each others space, and do not believe in a hegemony where they are first.

A few do tho. Walkers who wouldn’t dream of blocking another of their kind, but make a literal stand when faced with approaching wheels. Or MTB’rs slicing through family groups on some kind of pointless Strava mission. Cross the streams of these groups and it’s all finger pointing, two finger waving and ‘Outraged of Malvern‘ furiously typing an extreme tirade to the long suffering local rag.

The Malverns have an odd dynamic with half being entirely MTB legal and the other half not*, the ownership model where Conservators steward the land and endless committee’s and steering groups looking to square circles. Or possibly remove them as MTBing has long been the black poster child most darted at by those who a) speak loudest and b) ride not at all. It’s a lazy and sweeping generalisation to point accusing fingers as ‘those who don’t understand us’, but it’s also rationally obtuse to suggest Paragliders, Mountain Bikers, Model Flyers, etc somehow have less ‘rights‘ because the walkers were here first.

So we knew that departing the busiest part of the hills at 10:30 was going to be one of those smile/nod/don’t get irritated experiences. The sheer number of people wasn’t really our prime concern – no it was more the total lack of any grip that had my full attention. Conditions were a cross between riding in the world’s biggest Teflon pan and a re-imaging** of Rollerball. Both Martin and I experienced awesome tail slides – the back end breaking away and heading sideways that is always fun if a) it doesn’t plant you face first in the mud and b) the front wheel doesn’t decide to get involved in the action.

Martin did have an off which he considered a ‘dab‘. The Dab committee ruled that lying supine in the dirt and in no way connected to the bike does not constitute a dab! We also felt need to investigate the Tank Quarry for amusement/terror/pre A&E action. This descent represents the steepest and rockiest trail in the hills. Rocks that initially poke up between slick grass before monstering the whole trail with increasing size and jaggedness.

It was bloody terrifying. Never ridden it so cautiously or with such a high heart rate. Sufficient speed to carry the rock garden felt way too fast, but the thought of sacrificing grip through brake application countermanded any idea of slowing down. A washed out bottom section surfaced rocks like little gravestones, and a fetid step section nearly claimed me close to the end. Even my favourite jump was slick with flowing water, but encouragement from two walkers who clearly enjoy bloodsports saw me take a deep breath and get it done.

Mainly as Martin had already flown off it thereby fulfilling his role of ‘grip tester‘. Back at the pointy end of the hills, the hoards were fully sandwiched and adjusting focal lengths by walking blindly backwards. We did our best to nod and smile although Martin’s response to my pleading ‘what now‘ query as we faced a flange of walkers on the trail was ‘Charge‘. We didn’t really although a few rounds of ‘Rambler-Polo‘ may have been played, and the final steps were negotiated through a Tour De France like lined route, but nobody appeared to be aggrieved.

Not that we hung about to ask. So he hills may be alive with the sound of whinging. Though not from us. Conditions may be grim, our favourite trails unrecognisable and theforecasted weather has no real winter in it, but we’re outside in the sunshine and more than half way out of the dark. For a man of limited ambitions, that’ll do.

* Unless it’s dark. In which case the ‘evening bridleway’ clause comes into full effect.

** As I believe remakes are called now. That’s a terrible thing to do to a verb.

Slithering Darkly

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, PhotographyLeave a comment
Drudgery neverending

An awesome moniker for the villain in a fantasy extravagancer, and if one substitutes ‘villain‘ for ‘idiot‘ and ‘fantasy‘ for ‘mud-slick‘ you’ve matched a simile to my riding experience over the last few days. Back the world up one rotation, and the anything north of Madrid is ice locked and cheerlessly cold. The trails were rock hard whilst the roads were endless slippy death. A reversal of what we have right now. And that’s a problem.

Winter Mountain biking has a rhythm. A heartbeat marking out Wednesday and Sundays as riding pulses whatever the prevailing weather conditions. Come summer it’s all a bit fibrolated with endless light and easy rainchecks with sun promised the next day. The dark season offers none of this – the weather will either be wet, cold, snowy or icy. If you’re extremely lucky possibly all 4. That’s a good number heralding the drawing of the darkness curtain, when the tedium of multiple layers and on time charging become part of our cylical world.

As do military style logistics mitigating dirty protests being campaigned through clean kitchens. Spare clothes and towels for the rider, bedsheets and seat covers for the transport, hosepipe readiness and preparations for draining the European lube mountain. Weekly brake pads and monthly pivot services. Transmission whittled by day and bank accounts by night. Such activities can be considered as a three month trauma clinic or a sacrifice to the goddess of Spring.

The rhythmic harmony of the Flipperati has suffered a discord this winter. One member* has largely abandoned ‘playing outside’ with a fetish for indoor training be that mating with the unholy Turbo, or racing round banked tracks in heated velodromes. The other two have been slacking off in admirable style; firstly to ride in an entirely different country and then stealing daytime rides when their vocational calling wasn’t looking.

Wednesday last though the Flipperati rode out again. For the first time in over a month – for which we were appropriately punished. My early arrival under threatening but dry skies gave me ample time to search the ride-bag, the car and my fading memory for an essential clothing component. Sadly drew a zero on all counts leaving me with a PE ‘playing in your pants’ approach to lycra shorts. Delivery of gritty arse crack to the terminally forgetful? Sure, where do I sign.

Faffing done, the rain came, stayed and hardened. Specifically at the point when Martin declared confidently ‘it’s slowing down’ which triggered the inevitable downpour. This felt like proper mountain biking as we used to do before getting soft and weather apps. Slogging through uphill mud, sliding sideways through downhill mud, exiting the trail in comedic fashion and wondering if there would be some kind of medal ceremony for any survivors.

Mud-Mesiter Martin was in his element. Or elements – those being slick mud, a cheating front tyre and a lack of imagination concerning tree based impact analysis. Jez and I were more sensible/conservative/nesh chowing down on mud cocktails and wondering whether to crash now to avoid the rush later. The aftermath was interesting; a ‘bucket of doom’ has been introduced in the Leigh Household where exterior MTB clothing must first pass before being stamped approved for the washing machine. The inside of my car appears to have been the victim of a flood event, and my unpadded arse had another feeling – that of having spent the evening in D wing bending over in the shower.

Any sport where the consequences double the time of the actual activity is clearly bonkers, as was I for repeating it two days later in the Forest. Which the previous week had been fantastic fun mainly because I had one of those bike-plus-rider-as-one epiphanies. Not last night. Oh fuck no. It’d have been quicker/safer/far less embarrassing/about the same speed to leave the bike boot-bound and run around the trails.

No one else appeared to be having similar problems. As their lights danced in the increasing distance, I was bouncing off trees, braking inappropriately and just generally riding like a twat. Every time I tried to anti-twat myself, Bad Things Happened. Be that a sashay off a jump leaving me with the option of ‘braking by fencepost‘ or slide into tree, or ‘root-grinding‘ a front wheel which is six inches of compressed terror followed by fetching oneself out of moist shrubbery.

20k of that was more than enough. From about 2k my entire thought process was mainly on staying alive at any speed and wondering – out loud – if it was time for beer yet. If you ride like a chump, ensure you drink like a champ. You’ll be unsurprised to hear I hit both those marks with equal committment.

Today there was much to rinse, wash and clean. And this brief period of unsulliment shall last exactly four seconds into the next ride. Which of course will be tomorrow in line with the winter heartbeat. Come Spring we’ll be Gods of the trail, winter hardened, sideways skilled and seasonally adjusted.

Until then, it’s snorkel, credit card and washing machine research. And wondering how hard it would be to learn Spanish.

* I love the English language. The nuances of a single word are there for everyone to snigger at.

That’s awkward

On By AlexIn Bikes, Photography6 Comments
Should put some parking sensors in there.

The onlyreal constant in my endless quest for a settled shed of dreams – other than the rubbish rider of course – has been the trusty bike trailer. Bought about 2006 and ritually abused ever since. Living outside in all conditions, heated under the odd baking sky, rained on far more frequently, often covered in sleet and snow and bounced onto the tow bar atleast twice a week.

Blameless it was. And now it’sdead. Or close to dead – the bent and twisted remains shall be reverently placed on Thor’s Anvil* tomorrow while the guilty watch on shuffle-footed, expecting the worse: ‘Sorry, we did all we could be it was too far gone. Might be worth a tenner in scrap value’.

It deserved better. Coming clean, the enumeration of smashing it into other innocent stuff is greater than one. At least two further incidents need to be accounted for; firstly backing it into a wall that was essentially the same colour as the road, just more vertical. Could have happened to anyone. An excuse which entirely fails to cover the other incident where extreme rammage** was inflicted on a grassy knoll which had a similar mythical status of that one in Dallas.

Which may explain why the electrics slid into a deranged mental state – sort of working just not in response to any driver input. And somewhat undermining the extremely German sliding arrangement providing tailgate access by dropping the bikes backwards. This fiendish feature was traditionally operated through a number of safety mechanisms nicked from a nuclear arming protocol. Once I’d smacked it around a bit, the disturbing site of a few thousand pounds of mountain bikes disappearing out of the rear view mirror became a terrifyingly frequent occurrence.

And then being a mechanical savage, I broke the similarly superbly engineered fixing attachment while testing it with a new tow bar. If sufficient violence hadn’t been wreaked on its bent frame by this time, there was still time to break a key in one of the be holding arms requiring amputation of important components, and a desperate plea to the manufacturer for some new bits.

It was in this happy state we dropped 50kg+ of expensive mountain bikes onto the remains and motored down to the alps. A journey of some 800 kilometres – most of which I spent pathologically staring out of the rear window, wondering if I should have mentioned the trailer’s party trick of disgorging its contents onto the road once the trigger speed past 80.

So yesterday, the manual over-ride hitch was carefully negotiated with the post attachment obligatory finger count passing muster. The bike was dropped into the middle carrier and strapped down like so many times before. But something was different. Normally Carol parks her car next to mine – today it was mostly abandoned near the front door. A small detail I probably should have noticed.

Because you see that’s EXACTLY the space generally used to back out of the drive. Not that I’m blaming Carol is any way – although her Honda is quite small, it’d be a bit of a stretch to maintain a line suggesting ‘well how was I meant to see it? It’s only about ten feet long, 3 feet wide and bright red?”. Traditionally one would discover such a thing by examining the lack of drivable space in the rear view mirror

But I wasn’t looking in the rear view mirror. Oh no I was looking out of the side window so I didn’t hit the fence. Which is another innocent party that’s avoided bumper swipe-age by about 2 microns over the years. The parking sensors always save you of course – you know the things you scoff at when the Car Salesmen extolls their virtues and he is rebuffed with a ‘I am a MAN, I am genetically engineered to park, go and talk to someone without a willy if you wish to flog that benefit’.

Something everyone should know. They don’t work well through a trailer. The first proximity inkling of which you are aware is an expensive thumping noise and some lightweight deceleration trauma. Followed by another sound, this time from the driver: ‘oh for fucks sake‘. Engage first gear, roll forward, open door, tread carefully over broken plastic recently attached to a much loved trailer.

We thought Carol’s car was fine until a hairline crack in the bumper triggered a chain reaction of broken stuff ending somewhere in the boot. The garage had to get the extra wide calculator out which had me reaching for the insurance details and waving a sad goodbye my no claims bonus. The very helpful man in the call centre was most apologetic that ‘no, I’m sorry sir the trailer isn’t covered‘ whilst quietly miming ‘you total numpty‘ I’m sure.

Carol was significantly more sanguine on the whole assault and battery of her car than I’d have been had the circumstances been reversed. A few hours later a bloke in a BMW soft roader thing nearly totalled me in Ledbury which – given this stuff tends to come in threes – suggests the poor old Yeti is soon to be found under a local tractor.

So the trailer is mostly buggered. It’s put in an excellent shift and suffered much abuse and neglect. If it was a dog, the RSPCA would’ve been round a long time ago. And however great it was for bike transportation, it makes a bloody useless battering ram. Having said all that, if its final act was to protect my bike and my car – both of which received not a scratch – while sacrificing itself, the ending has not been in vain.

And I shall buy another one of the same brand. Assuming it comes with parking sensors. Or a chauffeur.

* My mate Matt who is a hammer champion. He owned a Landrover once so has all the tools required to fix that engineering masterpiece. Lump hammers in eight different sizes.

** I believe this means something different to those apparently misunderstood sheep fanciers we get a lot of around here.

Chasing Shadows

On By AlexIn Other stuff4 Comments
Chase that shadow!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* For context: Chocolate. Packet.

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

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

God, already?

On By AlexIn Pretentious nonsense, Site StuffLeave a comment

It’s traditional at this time of the year for the long suffering hedgehoger to suffer just a little more. In three special little ways:

  1. I have updated the ‘postsmost read’ page. In our increasingly connected world where cross posts merge with social network surfacing*, the simple old page count becomes increasingly irrelevant. Which is as good a metaphor for this blog as any. I didn’t write anywhere near as much this year, which was properly rewarded by people reading less. It’s good to know that even if I haven’t got anything better to do, other people have.
  2. I have also updated the ‘bike’ page. Every year hope receives a couple more mortal wounds as the portal to the Shed Of Dreams revolves at ever increasingly velocity. One January I shall triumphantly declare ‘No Bikes were damaged, abused or sold in the making of this page‘. It won’t be January 2014.
  3. I rage my own internal debate – because let’s be honest who else will be interested? – about continuing to ramble in my idiotic way. What’s the point of it all eh? It’s vanity stuff mostly about me, and there’s lots better on the Internet at that. Justin Beiber for a start. And if you can’t even stack up your own self worth against that vacuous nonse and come out at least equal, may as well close the door quietly on your way out. So after eight years, a thousand posts and a million words, might be time to embrace Web 2.0 and simply take amusing pictures of my lunch to share with the world. Nah, not going to happen. I can’t afford the therapy if I stop writing. Sorry 😉

I might write different things. Although inertia and precedent suggests more of the shame kind of shit. Until them, it’s always a pleasure to signal a further earthly cycle into moral and physical decrepitude by wishing my dwindling readership a Happy New Year.

* I just made that term up. Time to front up the CV with ‘Social Media Export available for immediate hire’

Return of the Turbot*

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, Other stuff10 Comments
Crouching Badger, Hidden Terror

The fact this photo exists at all is no small miracle. Firstly because it’s taken by my good friend Martin who cannot count, amongst his many talents, any photographic ability whatsoever. This is his first recorded image where both wheels have been in the same shot. And the riders head is a lucky bonus. Secondly that setting sun had been well hidden behind a curtain of rain driven sideways by gale force winds for most of the day.

A small window of riding opportunity opened up between getting wet and going dark, so we jumped right through it. The rain may have stopped but the wind was still brisk enough to have us seek shelter under the muscley shoulders of the Malvern Hills. The first descent through the storm blown treeline was an exercise in amused terror. Terror because of the rain-slicked service offering grip levels between variable and none, amusement because Martin as designated ‘grip tester’ was lamenting his decision to stick with a balding rear tyre.

Stick isn’t the right word really. Because it wasn’t sticky at all – more sashaying in a parabolic arc in an attempt to inform the desperate rider that all was not well out back. Except for the bloke a bit further out back displacing his own traction issues by simple dint of laughing at Martin’s predicament. Ten minutes earlier, I really hadn’t been keen to ride at all. Too cold, a bit hungover, concerned the mech bodge was merely repressed exploding metal, and a bored of the slop and the grime.

Ten minutes after that, with views opening up over the Black Mountains on one side and the Cotswolds on the other, there was nothing which could have bettered it. Riding back on some of my favourite trails and reacquainting myself with the joys of the sorted hardtail, the climbs passed quickly enough and the descents were desperately funny tip-toeing between every corner feeling for grip and ready to catch the inevitable slide. It was the opposite of fast, clean fun and all the better for it. The essence of why we ride mountain bikes can be distilled from the feeling of riding crazily slippy dirt on engineering masterpieces with your friends.

Which isn’t something so easily attained when natural trails are replaced by those made especially for us. For a while, I’ve been a bit snooty and dismissive of trail centres – some of which is because there is so much brilliant riding to be had not graded and signposted. But it’s a bit more than that.

As the sun fell behind the mountains to the west, my dislike of trail centres found something more rationale than ‘well it’s not proper mountain biking is it?‘. That’s a lazy curmudgeon view of MTB ghetto’s which offer weather independent fun and year round ridability. The first trail centres – before the Forresty Commission got wind of their financial prospects – felt like the best natural singletrack but cleverly engineered against erosion and decay. The final descent on the Wall, Sidewinder and Dead Sheep Gully at Afan, the original beast at Coed Y Brenin, Heartbreak Ridge at Kirroughtree and many more were absolutely worth the drive and price of entry.

The new stuff tho – all rollers, massive berms and so industrially created leave me cold. They seem carved unsympathetically out of the hillside and don’t feel natural at all. Maybe trail centres have moved on and I’m stuck in the past, maybe I just don’t ride them fast enough, maybe this new stuff is what the majority of trail centre riders want. Whatever, it isn’t for me, and sitting on my bike atop the Worcester Beacon ready to chase the sun home, a second conclusion was belatedly reached.

Virtually ever minute I spend on a bike is a good one. But the absolute best ones have always been in the middle of bloody nowhere, not quite sure what might be coming next, no idea when we’re getting home and only a vague one of which way it might be. More of that please – 2014 shall be the year of ‘Adventuring by Bicycle’.

Probably need a new bike for that I would have thought?

* not the mythical missing Star Wars episode, more a bike handling approach when slithering through tyre deep mud.

There’s a word that rhymes with farce

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, Photography8 Comments
That’s a custom option… not.

And that is, of course, arse. Up there is the result of the ‘sacrificial‘ mech hanger letting go on yesterdays’ ride. This lump of engineering genius is carefully designed to shear under extreme load, thereby saving the more expensive things it bridges between. Those things being the rear mech and the frame, so a sensible solution to the real world problem of rotational torque being transferred in potentially damaging directions. Splendid idea. Well done.

The OED tells us that sacrificial can best be defined as ‘an act of giving up something valued for the sake of something else regarded as more important or worthy‘. In this case a£500 frame and a£60 mech. Definitely more worthy and important than a fivers worth of pressed aluminium. However brilliant the idea, functionally the mech hanger has some shortfalls, namely 1) the mech was twisted beyond use and 2) it attempted to eat the frame during the snapping process.

I discovered this only today after removing around a metric tonne of Forest Mud from the bike. At the time, my mighty-thighs(tm) were attempting to generate sufficient momentum to propel rider and bike through yet another sticky mess on the trail*. There was the briefest noise of tortured metal giving up followed by a lose of drive and a feeling of flappage out back.

I can only assume the volume of mud and grit in the mech had created some kind of sideways load best thought of as catastrophic. The sheared hanger split took the easiest path the freedom which was sadly through the back of the dropout. However, my initial concern was the exact whereabouts of the spare. That was closely followed by the realisation that I have never purchased a spare in the first place.

Helpful suggestions from my riding buddies included creating a bastard single speed of the remaining working parts. This feels similar to suggesting a man with a sprained ankle could best manage the pain by hacking his entire leg off. Before I was able to articulate my hatred of all things one geared, Haydn magnificently brought forth his own perfectly fitting spare. Sometimes it’s good to ride the same bike as your mates. Especially if they’ve got some concept of what useful spares might actually be worth carrying.

A quick swap and we were on our way with most of the gears sort of engaging in a non indexing manner. After a fabulous downhill run to Coffee and Cake, an emergency fettle, involving the lost art of mech bending, restored shifting harmony. That lost art by the way involves chanting the mantra ‘please, please don’t break the mech‘ while shutting your eyes and leaning heavily on the innocent component. All good, another 30k of mud and fun before a quick beer nearly benighted us.

Until this morning. Much grumpiness. Mech is beyond help and has been thrown into the overflowing ‘drawer of expensive broken metal things that might one day magically fix themselves‘, frame has been photographed, prodded and poked and is waiting for Cy from Cotic to come back off hols to give his professional opinion. Less professional opinions suggest ‘it’ll be fine‘, ‘hit it with a hammer‘ and ‘hand it over to a man with a welding torch’. All of these these things may come to pass, but for the moment I’ve bolted on a new mech and left well alone.

In the last ten days since my miraculous recovery from plague**, I’ve rediscovered a few things. My Cross Bike is fab, there is much singletrack to find and link up within the radius of this confused bicycle, I really don’t like trail centres much and riding in the slop can be good fun. If only as an appetiser to Spring.

Tomorrow will probably be the last ride of the year. Just short of 4000 kilometres on the mountain bike. Just short of 150km on the road bike 😉 That feels about right.

* not THAT kind of sticky mess. I always find the best way to get through that is to store it on my shoe.

** Self diagnosed. Pretty sure I was close to death on occasion. Not a widely shared opinion in the Leigh household.