Rise of the machines

On By AlexIn Other stuff, PhotographyLeave a comment
We may be going to the moon

In the halcyon days where being a proper northerner was as much as an attitude as a calling, we drank tea. There were no variants. Fruit was never involved. At no point would one enquire of a fellow Yorkshireman if his warmed beverage of choice should contain hints of jasmine*. We believe Earl Gray was the posh (k)nob in the manor house, and tea was only considered ready when the stirring spoon no longer moved and those from over the border were passing out on a tannin overdose.

Yes we had tea and it had a name. Tetley. Some arty types waxed lyrical over other brands available in that London and such like. But for a kid in the 70s, it was a Tetley teabag per person and about 9 for the pot. Unless Grandma hobbled into the kitchen where we’d dig out the stale tea leaves. There’s much to say about a simple life where the choice of drinks was basically Tea, Water, Beer or – if it was summer and you’d been good – watered down orange squash.

The concept of coffee was not one welcomed in the Leigh household. But by degrees, I abandoned my tea drinking birthright first at polytechnic necking gallons of instant supermarket filth during caffeine fuelled attempts on assignment deadline day. Then many months in the US brought forth the joy of the ever-full filter jug and the first hit of ‘proper’ coffee served up by a man calling himself a barista allegedly skilled in the dark italian arts of coffee perfection. Obviously being American they felt the urge to offer it a) without any actual caffeine and b) topped with chocolate, nuts and squirrel poo**

So bang up to date having abandoned my northern tea drinking credentials through dint of an unbreakable caffeine addiction, I invested in one of those Italian machines somehow magically turning beans into body-jolting java. It came with a level of niche much mined on those specialist internet forums where the apparently sane argue violently about the exact grinding to milk co-efficient. First time in there, I wasn’t quite sure what I’d stumbled into. There wasn’t a second time.

It’s like bikes, radio control gliders and all sorts of other stuff where I’m a big fan of the product but I couldn’t going a flying fuck about the process to create it. This didn’t stop me being sucked in (the language of proper coffee is amusing, grinding, foaming, pressing, etc. I even find myself sniggering when reading the word pumping) into pointless purchases of paraphernalia guaranteed to improve my ‘coffee drinking experience’. My accessory count ran to both manual and electric grinders (fnar), air-sealed tins, heritage tampers and all manner of cleaning attachments. The horror of ‘back flushing’ became part of my world. All of this expense, research and effort resulted in the creation of mediocre but now even more overpriced coffee.

And the faff. Fire up the machine, wait for the tiny boiler to heat a similarly tiny amount of water or explode – whichever came first. Find coffee beans, grind coffee beans, extract from grinder and tip a shaky handed approximation of your morning medicine into the waiting thingy. This is the kind of technical vocabulary that’s served me well on those coffee obsessed forums. Tamp the coffee down with just sufficient force to ensure the pressurised flow runs through the whole malarky at at rate somewhere between dirty water and gritty raw coffee. Fuck about a bit longer, press a button, achieve disappointment. Spend hours cleaning up.

Enough. Really. Obsessed as I am over getting a proper hit first thing in the morning, it’s time to find a solution that’s better than me faking it, taking half the time and sod the expense. An expense I was happy to discover could be simply mitigated by pretending it was a company purchase, which put me in the slot a proper machine where beans when in one end and awesome coffee turned up at the other. With absolutely no user interaction. Goodbye tedium, hello nirvana.

I even read the manual although faded out when faced with about five pages detailing the operation of the cappuccino steamer much struck through with ‘danger of burning’. I assumed any use of the ‘milky wand’ would leave me holding said attachment with a blackened claw or the house would be burning down. So instead we turned the monster on whereupon much scary noise was emitted from various lightly armoured parts, liquid was ejected, lights flashed and then a blissful quiet was augmented with a single green button waiting to be pushed.

I pushed it. More noise from the internal constipated plumbing and then rich, gorgeous coffee expelled into the waiting cup. I tried it again with EXACTLY the same result. This never was the case with my ham fisted efforts at a repeatable process. I kept pressing the button and great coffee kept appearing in my mug. And the whole messy buggering cleaning routine is now encased in the machine needing emptying about once a week. Which incidentally is about the period of time I didn’t sleep after my initial experiment of drinking about a 100 cups of eyeball popping coffee.

And yet in the same way our Mielewashing machine attempted to annexe the fridge, there’s a nagging doubt this machine is far too complex and clever for the mundane act of serving me up much needed wake up juice. ThereforeI wouldn’t be surprised to see it hover unsteadily above the worktop before blasting through the roof and accelerating into a lunar orbit.

Until then, it’s my most favourite new thing. And it sits on top of the beer fridge. Feng Shui for those of Northern Persuasion.

* Unless you were prepared to deal with a response where a rather firmer enquiry would demand to know if your face needed to contain a knuckle sandwich.

** I may have made this bit up. But I was deeply suspicious of a coffee bean floating unwanted in the top of my drink

The rain in Spain…

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding3 Comments

… had better bloody not fall on the plain. It can fall on the plane that’s transporting four of us may hundreds of mile south. To a location somewhere closer to Africa than Northern Europe, and nestled happily between the Mediterranean and the Mountains.

Mountains that are 2500 kilometres away from those close to my doorstep and significantly more defined by sunshine and dust. About this time last year, we made a similar migration to Tenerife where the weather was more than clement and the trails mostly accessed via mini-van shuttle. This time we’ll have to work a little harder with the valley floor being our base and the mountains our destination.

I’m okay with that. More than okay – possibly crossing the line marked ‘gloaters only this way‘. It does mean getting on an aeroplane which nowadays mostly has me downing pre-breakfast tranquillisers with those who believe holidaying in some way triggers a ‘it’s okay to knock back a quick five pints at five am‘ clause. For me it’s self medication and an alternative to the embarrassing sight of a crazy man rugby tackling a stewardess pleading to be ‘let off right now‘ when the engines start.

Much as I don’t like flying*, I do like riding and the chance to do so with good friends on new trails under sunny skies has sufficient box ticking potential I’d best go sharpen the pencil. Cramming in three and a half days of MTB action in foreign climbs has more than a hint of logistical angst however. There’s the start so early you might as well consider setting off the night before. There’s the mental cryptography of decoding airline regulations to understand exactly how much you’ll be fleeced for presenting anything weightier than a man bag**, and the anxiety of selecting exactly how much crap you need to take with you.

Less than you think obviously. But more than you need for a days riding. There will be some combination of a 3/8th gripley and some form of broken plumbing attachment that have absolutely no value right up to the point when something breaks, and the entire local mechanical collateral is represented by a fire axe. It also allows endless double entendres when texting friends requesting assistance on ‘determining the size and breadth of my massive tool collection’.

Got to get your laughs where you can. I’ve packed a standard but complete Landrover maintenance kit – five hammer of differing sizes and a roll of gaffer tape – and a few randomly looking useful items while assuming my more organised friends will take up the slack. Frankly the less tools I have, the more chance there is of the bike actually continuing to function. There’s a fine line between ‘maintenance‘ and ‘broken‘ when the world is a nail and you are essentially a mallet.

First tho get the bike in the bag. On the trauma. 29inch wheels do not fit into 26inch wheel bags. As much as you’d like them too. And a 20kg limit is easily breached if your packing ‘technique‘ is throw the bike in first and everything else after it. With help from a responsible adult, we made busy with a mile of pipe lagging and straps in a way that would suggest to the neighbours we have a fetish best not discussed in polite society.

Finally after much swearing, sweating, squeezing the bag and desperate acts with zips and clasps – I refer you to my previous point – the bugger was in although the zip tension was at about 4000 PSI. I fully expect the fabric to let go and disgorge my riding smalls all over the tarmac as some careful baggage handler drops it twenty feet out of the cargo bay.

Still it’s done now. Just need to get through one more day of work, ignore other peoples deadlines with an insouciant shrug and head for the bigger hills come Monday at Stupid O’Clock. Then a few weeks to Christmas, then it’s less than three months to Spring.

Not quite half way out of the dark yet, but we’re heading in the right direction. Due South 🙂

* although on closer mental examination, flying I’m actually fine with. It’s the falling from the horizon in a burning metal tube that gives me pause as I cross over the air bridge.

** Even outside of London, there’s a worrying proliferation of these items. I feel we shall look back in twenty years with similar mirth that is currently targeted at shoulder pads, puffball skirts, rolled up suit sleeves and braces. At least I hope so as I am well ahead of the game here.

There is no spoon

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, Photography5 Comments
That’ll buff out

Although the difference from Keanu’s experience is there was at least once a spoon. The remains of that saddle once sat proudly displayed in a bike shop gleaming all new and shiny under the brand name ‘Charge Spoon‘. After Martin finished with it, what we have here is something rather less spoon like. I accept it didn’t look much like a traditional spoon in the first place. But now the closest cookery-based cipher we came up with was ‘the cruet’

Industrial Design is a complicated and difficult thing requiring much in the way of creative individuals, mood rooms, coloured plastics and crayons. I know this to be true because many designers have told me so. It’s not just web plagiarising, a quick email exchange with a Chinese factory followed by a decent lunch while the junior designer knocks out some stoner graphics.

For balance though, that’s how every non designer has described the process. Nobody has every tried to convince me that the simple way to repurpose one thing to another is by throwing it at the Malvern Hills through the power of crashing. And yet the camera doesn’t lie – this is exactly how Martin took a solid if unspectacular product and imbued it with something of his own. Possibly a bit of thigh.

If you weren’t there it probably doesn’t make any sense. It didn’t make much sense to me either and I was there. For the bit where Martin was sheepishly mudsting* himself down in front of a few random MTBr’s who were clearly pissing themselves laughing. While Martin was unharmed other than further blows to his dignity, the saddle was not so fortunate. The entire weight of Martin’s Orange 5 – which for mathematical calculations can be considered similar to that of a small moon – had piledriven the poor perch directly into unforgiving ground. From a quite spectacular height as well.

Martin had missed a ditch you see. Only not really, he’d hit it quite hard having found it inconveniently positioned below a hidden drop. His attempt to ride it out soon became an attempt to escape the accident completely by rolling off the side and then gently down the hill. The 5 – now unencumbered by any pilot input ** – reared up before plunging into the hillside saddle side down.

I’m surprised we didn’t have to dig it out with a JCB.

It was one of those ‘take it easy rides’ because we’re off to Spain in a week, so the entire hills are a ‘no mong zone’. I’d missed that memo demonstrated by falling off on a flat bit of trail for reasons best thought of as ‘there is no talent’. I’d then ridden a nasty rock step I’ve been avoiding for about three yearsand desperately hung onto the back of a Orange-Powered Martin on most of the descents.

Both of us were quite relieved to return to the cars without any further incident. I blame Martin’s bike. It’s like bloody Carrie. And now it’s coming to Spain next week. I’m not leaving it in the same shed as my lovely PYGA. There would be nothing left but Swarf and some slightly fatter tubes.

* the well known MTB process of scraping slick mud from clothing, shoes and ears.

** which on a five is generally to point it downhill and wait for a) the end of the trail or b) the arrival of the ambulance.

The startled turbot

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, Photography2 Comments
That’s not the muddy bit. But it was the cold bit. And some.

Racers. You know the type. Defined by an engorged competitive gland fused with unbreachable self belief. Scarily focused and endlessly driven. Success boxed by results and targets. Sure, you know the type. I’m not that type at all as my blotted copybook of event based ineptitude confirms.

Which doesn’t stop a Wolverine like snap of pointy elbows under entirely appropriate contextual circumstances. To whit the temerity of a good mate believing there’s a line his pace and skill can lace between me and that tree. Oh there’s a line alright and he just crossed it. Catching is one thing, passing quite something else.

We’re not talking rock hard race courses here, buttressed by striped tape and peopled by those who’ve confused pain with pleasure. Nor seasonally race-boarded chubby weekend warriors gurning out mid pack mediocracy. No this is something entirely different and rather more configured for fun. It’s a cheeky singletrack nestling below the much travelled ridges of the Malvern hills. It was first an animal track and latterly exactly a minute of tree carving joy in the summer months.

Which have been and gone leaving us with sheep trampled mud, a moistness of dirt running infinitely deep and grip occasionally found but mostly lost. Martin built most of this trail and claims first-down blagging rights in conditions from dusty to disastrous. Except tonight when the tyres were slicked with a mud pack, and direction was 5{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} rider input and 95{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} the current direction of travel.

I slipped by as he slipped off and gently pointed my slithering steed in the direction of any local geography not entirely filled with hurty trees. Luckily – and I use this word with some charity – the sheer volume of mud ensured velocity was restrained almost sufficiently for brakes not to be required. Careful use of the word ‘almost‘ there as a brief caress of the rear* slowed me only as a direct consequence of the tyre breaking away and attempting to overtake the front.

Probably best not to try that again. Instead hip steer the sliding bike onto a perpendicular bearing to a phalanx of glassy roots, take a deep breadth, unweight the now rather portly mud-transporter and breathe again as success is briefly declared when considering the alternative. I’ve always been a big advocate of the maxim that if ‘at first you don’t succeed, redefine exactly WHAT you mean by success’

All this dithering and procrastination has Martin line astern on my weaving tyre. In commentators parlance he’s ‘all over me like a rash’ and looking ‘fast and racy’. In my language he’s clearly cheating and that’s my speciality. All that separates us from trails end and bragging rights are two ninety degree bends that reward bravery and balance back in those halcyon summer days.

Try that now and earn a free mud pack with added twigs, stumps and surprised rabbits. I’m not really prepared to let Martin by, nor am I keen to splatter various important but squiggly body parts against a tree. So rather than make a decision, I curl my toes, worry a bit, run out of time and push oh-so-gently on the bar. Somehow we’re though the first and setting up for the second but Martin is now ‘all over me like a cheap suit’

Grr. Testosterone. Stupidity. Chuck it’ll in, it’ll be fine. Of course it will. Of course it wasn’t. Rear wheel slides are fun, front wheel slides are scary, both wheel slides are essentiality a finite period of time before brave face hits the dirt. This was a proper two wheel slide enacted at the exact time Martin made his dive for the inside line. Good luck with that.

I’d stopped worrying about being overtaken because any such thoughts were overtaken by hanging onto a bike that was rebounding between one axis and the next. The front and rear clearly had a proper strop with a refusal to agree on a common direction. Corner of one wide eye saw a bar to my left but by this time I was a passenger somewhere between ‘riding it out through awesome bike handling’ and ‘bracing for impact‘.

After a few more fishtails we regained control of the bucking bronco and stuffed it happily into the stile** declaring to almost nobody who was interested ‘that my friends is an entirely new race move. Forget that nonsense around tactics, strategy and pointy elbows. No, what we have here is a Nigel-Mansell-esque approach to trail ownership. You’ve just been privileged to witness is ‘the startled Turbot’

It only works if you’re riding with like minded individuals who really should be doing something rather more productive with their Friday nights, a trail at least tyre deep in tractionless mud, a configuration of perfect corners and a view that racing is really rather less serious than some will insist it is.

Lucky for us then that’s exactly what riding with your mates in November brings forth on every night ride. Don’t get me wrong, I’m already pining for Spring but until then I shall be ‘doing the Turbot’. It’s al whole load of fun and I’m fairly sure it’s legal 😉

* the brake in case you’ve lost the thread. And certainly not the front because that’s the hydraulic equivalent of penning a suicide note.

** Honestly, you’d never get a horse over there. I shall be writing to the footpaths officer 😉

Kneed to know.

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, Pretentious nonsense10 Comments
Thank Christ for low res phone cams in 2006

All of us believe there’s certain light conditions*, camera angles, heroic stances, etc which firmly represent our ‘best side’. That’s my knee in July 2006 after an impromptu slice and dice involving Chiltern Flint, over-confidence and stupidity. It’s not the my best side, it’s not even my best knee. Some seven years later a neat scar scribes a line between something that aches in damp conditions and a few mm from leaving hospital in a wheelchair.

Sobering stuff. But not terribly statistically significant. Since 2002, a conservative calculation suggests more than a thousand rides in all sorts of dangerous places have been completed without major injury**. Crashes aplenty, occasional hospitalisation and many, many morning afters where the the memory of the crash is vivid except for the bit where you’ve clearly been hit by an articulated lorry. Because falling off your bike can’t possibly hurt that much.

Transitory for the most part although a body inventory counterweight suggests lasting damage has been done. A shoulder that creaks, clicks but fails to properly articulate after a hand out/hard stop in Swinley forest many years ago. And an ankle that’s a funny if not amusing shape having been reforged on a spiky anvil of rock. A wobbly nose remodelled on a not-so-handy tree stump, a thumb tattooed by a bar end and full of broken bits, and a little finger that fails the tea drinking Debretts test on the grounds of extreme crookedness.

All of which tediously triggers the ‘price of entry‘ defence. A means tested ends justification argument that is espoused by wheelchair bound protagonists and the rest of us siding with Dylan Thomas and his raging against the dying of the light. And behind that lies a dirty secret; it isn’t that the price we pay for throwing ourselves in pointy geography is more than compensated by the ‘if you have to ask, you’ll never understand’ reward. Because that’s just pub talk hiding the rather less heroic mindset that it’ll never happen to me.

I am too skilled/too careful/to calculated/too clever to make that kind of catastrophic mistake. The line between endorphins and endings is well known to be. The difference between a little bit brave and quite a lot stupid needs no explanation. I’ve paid my dues and earned my stripes. I’ll back off a long time before I fall off. Crashing fits with my risk envelope but serious injury doesn’t.

Which is a paragraph of delusion, Embracing and accepting risk is the difference between living and being alive. Mountain biking is a sport of many variables of which we are in control of very few. You can hurt yourself by trying too hard or not trying hard enough. By committing or not committing. By being brave or considering cowardice. By peer pressure or testing yourself. There’s no ‘risk management’ strategy here: a situation where braking may send you over the bars is perfectly balanced by riding an obstacle at full speed which may end better, worse or the same.

We make our choices but we barely influence the outcomes. I smashed my knee up on a familiar trail in perfect conditions at middling speeds. 99 times out of a 100, it’d been nothing more than a few grazes and some piss taking. The next three days were spent with a ‘stupid stupid stupid’ mantra racing around my head while my body was static in a hospital bed. But with the benefit of hindsight that entirely misses the point; 99 times out of 100 I had somehow got away with it already.

Looking at that picture socially network’d to my inbox earlier today, it’s flooded memory banks with long forgotten anxieties. Physically it took a while to recover, mentally it probably never will. At least I can turn left now, which wasn’t the case for the next two years when I nearly tossed the whole thing in as being too damn hard and nowhere near as much fun as before the accident.

Seven years later tho, I’m still riding mountain bikes two or three times a week. I worry less about losing a summer through a nasty crash and more about how many summers are left. I strap my knee pads on and make cowardly choices when faced with danger. Occasionally tho I’ll surprise myself with an act of bravery conquering some obstacle that even in, what’s laughably known as, my prime would have given me pause for thought.

Now that thought is something pretentious like ‘if not now when?‘. And that’s probably the only question that has any relevance in this extended navel gazing. An inch either way and my mountain biking future would have been limited to observing as a limping voyeur. And that feels pretty terminal for a man whose life is far too defined by wondering when he can next ride a bike.

Thanks Andy. You reminded me of the futility of trying to work this stuff out. Tomorrow I’ll pedal my bike, take some inappropriate risks and lie to myself about the possible consequences. That feels like a pretty sound way of running your life 😉

* although in many cases, this is of course ‘pitch black‘

** Unless my liver is included in the ‘book of damage’. In which case, I’d suggest the knee got off lightly.

Mud Dogs and Englishman

On By AlexIn Other stuff4 Comments
Murf – a lot younger. No less smelly.

Bit of a stretch that. Saved by the digital archives locating an 8 month old Murf having been ‘done over‘ by the bigger dogs. The dog continues to be as happy as a labrador in shit some five years later. The smell of damp mutt has barely diminished, but thankfully the crazy paving passing as a carpet has long since been given a decent viking burial.

For the last three rides, undertaken in a rather ambitious four days, most of the trail, a good splattering of my person and the entire bike has been consumed by various shades of what was, until recently, dusty and buff singletrack. You’d need to apply for the role of ‘delusional optimist’ to pretend ‘moist dust‘ is in fact a recognisable property of viscous mud.

Thursday’s night ride was under the first clear skies for a week. Before then we had rain best verbed by ‘lashings’ and not in a Ginger Beer kind of way*. I’ve always maintained the geological perfection of the Malverns is both in their topography and their age. We’re talking an ancient glacial sponge here which funnels water through much cracked rocks into natural springs. Not on Thursday it didn’t.

Splodge, slide and slip light up a ride otherwise shrouded in muddy darkness. Fuck, Shit and ARRRGGH add a little more colour to that picture. It was mostly funny, sometimes difficult and occasionally terrifying. The ridge descents were mostly dry, free of people and silly fast. Anything below was slick-backed with glutinous dirt filling of tyre and removing of grip. Trails where hard carving summer turns had been fed through the Autumn translator. A new language of breathing gently on the bars and listening to sliding tyres kept you mostly upright.

Difficult, engaging and necessitating proper handling skills. Worthy stuff but tell me when Spring is again? It wasn’t yesterday where 40k of Forest singletrack started in the pissing rain and ended happily in a sun drenched pub. And altogether brilliant showing friends our best trails in less than their best state. Proper life affirming stuff, where grip could best be thought of as ‘more than you think but somewhat less than you need‘

Mud brings comedy. Me leading into a switchback full of muddy slickness which transformed tyres to slicks and me to a passenger. ‘It’s that way‘ I desperately shouted while heading off in entirely the opposite direction looking for somewhere soft to throw myself into the shrubbery. And ‘Did you just fucking ride that?’ being thrown my way as multiple riders arrived atop a final tractionless drop to a fire road. ‘Sure, no problem, it’s fine‘. They thought differently and under beer interrogation I was forced to admit it’d been ‘pretty much uncontrollable/nearly ended up in the river/considered diving head first into a passing canoe‘

Emboldened by having a great day on mostly horrible trails, witheredcarcus(tm) dragged a much washed bike to the Malverns for a pre-lunch quickie**. A fine idea echoed by everyone within a thousand milds of Birmingham. Rambler Rammage fully accessorised with thick red socks, enormous packs, emergency transmitters, walking poles and expressions clearly crafted from a long study of the terribly constipated.

They don’t like mountain bikers much and I’m not a massive fan of human slalom poles which reduced the ride to sloggy impasse on trails method acting February. At times like this, experience and gravitas comes to the fore. Meaning Martin and I slithered down a descent ending at the Malvern’s finest cake stop. Refreshed and invigorated through the power of tea and sweet things, we switched the bike direction and headed downhill on much neglected trails.

Karma mostly restored, a final climb found us immersed in a honeypot of trail runners, small children, rotund ramblers (hint of constipation firmly in place), Brummies clearly lost and a thousand random mutts. We announced our presence with staccato chain slappiness and cheery shouts of ‘Morning‘*** in a ‘we’re all in this together‘ shared access kind of way. Soon we were free and clear heading for tea, medals and a desperate assault on the washing machine.

I’m keeping Martin honest because his French Full Suss has waved the white flag for the third time in as many months and he’s been downgraded to the hardtail. I’m bouncing about on the PYGA picking lines based entirely only how much fun they may be at silly speeds. The mud is gone, the slog of wheel slipping climbs are behind us as we’re fired briskly into a blue rimmed horizon. Payback time.

Today, a ride saved by cake. Yesterday was bookended by misery and beer. Thursday under clear skies felt like a privilege as we looked down to a valley full of TV-on houses. Tomorrow will be warm and inside which is good, but it’s the weekly spinning class which clearly isn’t. Tuesday, the flipperati shall ride out again splashing through puddles and peering into the dark.

And repeat until Spring. Which might not sound fantastic. And yet compared to the option of ‘not riding’, it sounds like the best bloody idea this year.

* Did ANYONE other than the Famous Five ever actually say that? Apparently Enid Blyton didn’t like kids much which if you read the books becomes immediately apparent.

** Those days are LONG GONE 😉 Mostly because various offspring would be calling Childline citing starvation due to parental abandonment.

*** MTB code for ‘no idea if these brakes are any good, are you feeling lucky?‘

The wrong way round

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike RidingLeave a comment

A phrase conjuring many amusing anecdotes from mechanical engineering to spousal navigation passing through confused copulation, frustrating flat-pack building and – if my experience has any statistical significance – the configuration of any electrical magical devices*

I am lucky – nay blessed – to have parked our life smack bang in the middle of some bloody fantastic riding. To your left a muscly ridge built on porous glaciation and to my right a 100 kilometres of forest. Both packed full of legal and cheeky trails most likely to make any MTB rider whoop and holler. And occasionally whimper. But while these trails – on first sight – feel too numerous to count and too extensive to map, a certain groove is carved first by most fun trail selection, then by habit and finally by apathy.

When you can roll out a mental map between where you are right now and the pub some three hour distant, it’s time to kick back, break out of that groove, ride the trails less travelled and go exploring. Get in touch with your inner eleven year old who is desperate to know ‘what’s down there?’. Last week we rode for bloody ages looking for a trail that just about rewarded the effort to find it, but the absolute best bit was getting a bit lost on the way there.

Today the spirit of the navigational optimist was imbued by my good friend Martin who decided we’d ignore the tracks of our years, and instead head off in an entirely new direction. Being the Malverns this still involved climbing to a windy ridge before dropping behind on a much ignored doubletrack which proved itself rather fast and feisty – hanging off as it was the side of a bloody big drop.

Then descending something climbed a hundred times. Again vertiginously configured in a way to ensure you were fully involved in a plummet/brakes/hairpin/plummet again dance with loose rocks, tight single-track and occasional lumpy sections which are a bind as a climb but bloody brilliant bouncing down them the other way.

Then we got a bit lost which was entirely expected. Finding some new routes just above Malvern, one had a rather tempting wall drop Martin felt I should be sent down first. His reasoning was that my clown wheels were more likely to stay any possible disaster, which is fine rationale until one considers the skills-free idiot plonked on top. I menaced it with sufficient briskness for the drop to be absolutely no problem although the runout very nearly was. More run off than run out. Or run into a tree. Anyway, flight pass stamped, I happily goaded Martin into having a go explaining exactly how slick and loose it all was.

He rode it fine. Which was, frankly, a bit disappointing. Never mind we continued to ride around the problem of familiarity with all sorts of ‘oh that bit comes out there does it/we’re here, right I thought we were over there‘** Under the hills, autumn colours shone slickly in weak sunlight making skidding through thick piles almost compulsory. The buff and dry trails may have gone, but we’re not quite into winter yet ably demonstrated by the orange and gold trailscape carpeting our route and whispering breathlessly under fast tyres.

We manoeuvred ourselves onto a track ridden only once before. It was jauntily off camber, barely hanging onto a steep hillside with the a whole load of bugger all to the left. A lovely view into the valley encumbered not at all by any other geography which might break your fall. Speeds may be down, but fun, fulfilment and the occasional adrenaline shot of terror are all still fully present. It’s not muddy enough to be a slog yet, but the grip is at best variable and occasionally non existent.

So we slid about for a couple of hours before finding ourselves 200 feet above the cars under threatening but awesome looking skies. This weather keeps 90{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} of the walkers off the Malverns and we’d had some slalom free runs all afternoon. Inevitably a family photograph was held up by the camera holder adjusting the focal length by stepping onto a trail we were bombing down. Her blissful ignorance may have been shattered by my squeaking brakes, but no letters to the Malvern gazette were triggered by our back to front production.

Back at the cars, we congratulated ourselves on a lost well found. So the wrong way around would appear to be the right way round after all. There’s probably an important message there.

* still one of my all-time favourite phrases was uttered by a proper engineer ‘if it doesn’t work, hit it with a hammer. If that doesn’t work, bind it up with duct tape. If it’s still being an awkward bastard, what you have there is an electrical problem. Call the sparky. He’ll probably be in hospital having set himself on fire. Useless arseholes‘ 🙂

** Mostly from me. Who we’ve established has a fully working internal compass. Unfortunately it’s permanently pointing to ‘lost‘

Don’t look back in anger. Look back in confusion.

On By AlexIn Other stuff2 Comments

It’s always good to reflect. Let the eye take a longer view – unconstrained by those ‘here and now‘ sight lines. Seeing things for what they really are rather than the jumbled visual puzzle of immediacy. That’s me out of visual metaphors, but I’m bloody glad to have two half decent eyes to at least see what’s being written.

I’ll save you from any further tedious pseudo-medical analysis of the battered eyeball, and instead document my micro slice through the monolith of the NHS. Their ‘first intent‘* is ‘be safe‘ which is interesting in itself. This is less about fixing you and more about doing no further harm. Which makes some sense as the human body is pretty brilliant at fixing itself once you keep it warm, fill it with appropriate fluids and keep it away from infection.

That’s not decrying the capabilities of doctors and nurses because we’ve come quite some way since blood letting was the literal cutting edge of the medical profession. The sharp end in our modern world is wielded by highly trained practitioners aided by high tech equipment and rather more traditional values of patient care. And mostly it’s bloody brilliant, especially when you consider the almost uncountable number of services offered free at the point of issue.

The NHS as conceived by the post war labour government was complicated enough. A utopia of medical care born flawed and compromised by bruising disagreements hammered out between the widest range of agendas and perspectives. That in itself was a triumph and unlikely ever to be copied or recreated. It’d be too damn expensive and politically impossible to enact in the twenty first century, which should in itself be enough for us to all raise a cheer for getting it over the line in the first place.

But crikey it’s a monster. Impossible to manage supply and demand, unwieldy in the extreme, moribund by creaking systems and rarely helped by technology. Always robbing Peter to pay Paul and increasingly under siege from an expanding population far more needy that those just about surviving a world war. My experience was the people within in were universally brilliant but the system of delivery is horribly broken.

Take appointments. Pitch up at 9am and be serially allocated an slot based on your place in the line. One go at this and everyone games the system, turning up ever earlier and bagging the seats closest to the reception desk. Which is staffed by lovely if harassed ladies who ignore ringing phones and cast about desperately for dog eared folders where your medical notes may reside. They also reside on about three different IT databases which communicate much in the same manner as a Rumanian and a Frenchman with enough shared vocabulary to sell a camel.**

What’s funny when the clock strikes 9, the massed ranks of the unappointed stagger towards that desk in a manner best described as Zombie Dawn. Half of us are half blind and the other half have around a 50{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} complement of working limbs. Whoever merged the Osteopath and Eye wards is a funny if evil genius. Anyway on arriving at the desk through the medium of touch, you blurt out name, rank and number, somewhat distracted by swelling knees and stubbed toes, whereupon you’re dispatched to the exact spot from which you started.

Then in some indeterminable time between right then and right before you die before you’re called to another seat which has a different institutional view but the same arse numbing boredom. Amusement can be found watching trolley of notes failing to be steered by busy nurses and crashing into walls, doors and occasionally other patients. Names are called – generally not yours although I always fancied smartly stepping in front of an extremely aged and doddery Mr Phillips who appeared to have all sorts of interesting symptoms I’d have been keen to get a medical opinion on.

Eventually it’s you. Apologies for the delay will be made and more than accepted. Good work in then done if in a somewhat chaotic way as desks are swept of previous notes to create space for your battered diary of NHS life. Inevitably you’re asked back for another appointment which you – now a veteran of the system – cleverly schedule for an afternoon where actual times can be provided.

Clever right until you arrive all ready to be seen at 2:30 on the dot. This is of course a fallacy of your own self importance. All you’ve achieved here is chosen a new time to begin queuing. That’s kind of how the NHS seems to work, it’s awesome when it’s doing its stuff, but it’s bloody hard to engage with. Too many hypochondriacs chasing too few doctors. Too many consultants fixing the wrong kind of problems. Too much politics, not enough money.

When I watched a nurse take a handwritten note from my optician, type it into TWO different systems and then print a copy for my file, it became apparent there are some efficiencies to be made here. That’s my kind of vocational bag, but maybe not one I’d like to open in front of the NHS. A colleague of mine did just that – umbrating the doctor who was carrying out his health check with a prioritised list of improvements the surgery should consider in the name of efficiency and patient care.

His reward for such unsolicited advice was an extremely painful examination of his prostrate. At the ripe old age of 28. From smartarse to sore-arse in all the time it takes to say ‘Thank you for your concerns, please bend over Mr Martin‘.

Anyway I’ll do my best not to waste anymore of the NHS’s time. They clearly have enough going on without whingy-one-eye pitching up demanding satisfaction. I came away with the greatest respect and admiration for those essentially running ever faster on a burning treadmill . And a final thought that however inefficient, conflicted and underfunded most of the NHS is, we should be immensely proud of it.

I shall attempt to maintain that point of view from an ever receding view in my rear view mirror.

* originally a military term to retain some focus when plans hit reality, but now stolen by the corporate world to define strategy. Most places I have worked the first intent appears to be ‘get your retaliation in first’

** If you ever want a failing IT project, mash up the public sector, politicians with vanity aspirations, 3rd party IT suppliers concerned only with shareholder value and a set of requirements best thought of as a quest. As a man with some experience here, I tell you it’s absolutely impossible to do. You’d be better off stocking up on chisels and slates.

About that book…

On By AlexIn Pretentious nonsense5 Comments

Reminds me of a vaguely amusing anecdote. An author was being all a bit luvvie and woe-is-me on writing her new book so announcing ‘well I’ve had to move to Cannes to try and get this book finished, it’s been three months now‘ which was superbly riposted by ‘Yes, it takes me a while to read a book as well‘

I’ve been talking about writing a book for multiple decades now. Ideas are not short but actual chapters are. On earlier efforts, the only comment is to congratulate my pretentious younger self on password protecting the terribly self indulgent pap, so thereby saving innocent browsers from extended therapy. Even as a man with dignity long stripped by endless pratfalls, there’s nothing here I’m prepared to share other than the THIRD sentence which included the ohgod-please-remove-my-spleen-with-a-blunt-spoon phrase ‘my world was ill tuned to the discordant harmony of others‘.

And I’ve never touched hard drugs. Really, there’s no excuse.

Then there was a rather slick plot device which I felt very clever about right up until the point of someone far more capable actually turning into a proper book, and making a shitload of cash. Pass the matches, might as well create a bit of warmth in the funeral pyre of that idea.

Clearly actually creating something other than a few lines and a vague direction of travel was not going to make a book make. So instead I looked at a million* words on this blog chronologically sequenced from 2006 and honestly believed there might be 100,000 which’d make people laugh. And more to the point, pay. This was not so much an idea more of a total rip off from my mate Dave Barter who had successfully e-published something similar albeit it with proper grammar and better jokes.

Desultory would be the honest way to describe my efforts to mirror Dave’s success. I wrote a great intro, chopped a million words by a thousand and sweated over linking paragraphs. But while the stuff made me smile, it wasn’t a book about cycling. It wasn’t a book at all if we’re being honest. I do think a few people would have bought it** but it failed to actually answer a rather more simple question.

Not is it going to make me any money, but is it the book I wanted to write? Ah well. Here’s the thing. It’s easy to take stuff you know that makes the odd person laugh and throw it out there apologetically. Live off a few favourable reviews and worry not the elephant is still in the room. And sat squatting over fading manuscripts all terribly worthy and failing to answer the question that does really quite matter to me. Can I write something for an audience other than a bunch of bike geeks who will buy MBUK so clearly are right in the slot for the shit I produce. Courage of convictions and all that.

Comfort zone is now a bed of nails. Stop being narrow and try being wide. if it’s not about making money – which it absolutely isn’t, however self obsessed I am even I can see this isn’t a career change, it’s an indulgencey – so don’t bloody well die wondering. I have these conversations with myself all the time. Mainly because – quite rightly – no one else gives even the tiniest micro-gramme of a shit. But suddenly it’s important because a spark lit some paper talk and I lost hours writing stuff that made me laugh and made me realise there’s a whole book there desperate to get out.

For the first time in many, many months I started writing stuff because I wanted to, not because the blog felt lonely. It could still be total shit of course. But it’s going to get done. And done in less than twenty years. Mainly because each spare minute is spent desperately tapping to capture the giggling insanity of what passes for real life. I am blessed by intersections of awesome comedic merit almost every single day. Once you tap into into the reach narrative seam, this stuff writes itself. In my head anyway.

I’ll be asking for a few kind souls to gently remind me that not everyone sees the world as I do. Especially when it comes to apostrophe’s. But before anyone assumes proofreading duties, I can at least share the title: “Shooting Horses“. Which is at least the one laugh out loud idea in the book. I stole it from somewhat at work. Some things never change.

*really. there is. Thank God for the Internet. Not a single tree died in the making of this production. I may have lost a liver tho.

** because i have pictures of them doing stuff with goats that really isn’t appropriate for polite society.

Back to the future

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, Pretentious nonsenseLeave a comment

 

 

 

If the Welsh Tourist Board had a brief flirt with accuracy, the slogan’d pretty much write itself: “Come to Wales, bring a waterproof. And a mountain bike“. While accepting this may reduce the size of western charging cohort, it perfectly fits my view of this rather brilliant if incessantly moist country.

Key attributes of any ride in Wales; a) you will get wet b) you will carry your bike c) your tyres/shoes/eyeballs will be full of sheep shit d) you will get amusingly lost and e) outside of the poo creators, you’ll see no other mammals for the entire day. Obviously these rules apply only to proper riding, not that FC ghetto Scalextric nonsense harvesting a bumper crop of sheepy sign-post followers.

Unexpected early October sunshine had three of us piling into Matt’s rather natty demo van* and heading into the wilds of mid Wales where the hills are steep, the views inspiring and the people few. Such was our keenness, even the traction beam of an early morning pig ‘n’ chicken butty was mightily resisted as we assembled three bikes representing all the current wheel sizes currently being hawked by evil MTB marketeers.

Assuming you’ve taken my previous advice not to read the bottom half of the Internet, here’s a summary of where such idiocy takes us; the tallest of us rides at 26 inch bike, the shortest a 650b and the middling one a 29er. We all use to ride 26s, and Matt (tall) was the fastest downhill, Dave (shortest) was second with me bringing up the rear. After spending *ahem* a few pounds on lovely new builds, our slavish adherence to our own ‘best‘ standard has changed absolutely nothing in the pecking order. Other than opening up entire new motherlodes to be mined by rich piss-taking.

So having efficiently arrived at our start location in the lovely town of Rhayader, our attempt on a classic old school XC loop was put on pause while some similarly classic dithering over if a certain individual needed a wee took a while to resolve. Prostrates satisfied, off we span on leaf splattered trails in sight of the River Elan. Synaptic resonance reminded me of the last time we’d tackled this route in a snowstorm. And the time before than in a thunderstorm. I couldn’t help but glance warily at blue sky and wonder what precipitation lay in wait for us this time? Maybe a falling satellite?

3 kilometres in and we were lost. Not exactly lost, as the three of us could confidently identify our current location. Which was at river level when the route called for some proper climbing into brooding hills mocking us from our lowly position. Double back and double up on a steep climb surfaced by first a worn out road and latterly by a rocky track which provided a Welsh warm up of gaining a couple of hundred metres in not much distance.

The already dog eared guide notes** suggested the next section might be a carry. Optimism in print there as we shouldered bikes and discovered exactly why this stunning pocket of densely packed hills was picked to provide clean water for the brummies. Even after a dry summer, it was still boggy underfoot with little used trails packed full of stingy vegetation. We’d picked a route from a guide book some fifteen years hence which enthusiastically catalogued a ride of endless awesomeness with two of the best descents Wales could offer.

And fifteen years ago, you could imagine mesh helmeted riders clad in purple spandex poking themselves with bar ends and bouncing uncontrollably down rocky descents by the hundred. Not so now with all sorts of magpie shinyness attracting the contemporary mountain biker to the path of least resistance. We shouldered bikes and un-glooped ankles from un-gentrified bog, while they bought macchiatos and compared carbon composites. Their loss.

We topped out close to the stunning view at the start of this post. Opening up a a gully of rocky steepness requiring 100{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} focus entirely lacking due to an eyeball dragging juxtaposition blending man made reservoirs with lines of endless hills. I had to stop and take pictures giving me ample time to arrive at the crux already cleaned by Matt. He shouted that my line was all wrong – no change there – before hiking back up to show me the way. I decided ‘the way‘ was way above my pay grade and walked down mocked by those ghostly hardcases of old who’d made up for their lack of bike by a dollop of skills.

No matter, fun all the same which wasn’t quite the case on the climb out of the valley mostly completed with a nose on the stem, arse giving you the full ‘D-wing in the showers, reaching for the soap‘ experience. Lungs on fire, legs weakening by the pedal stroke, massive vistas putting the boot in your self-worth, this feels like proper mountain biking. Hard, uncompromising, potentially unrewarding but God what a privilege to have this to ourselves on a perfect day.

Back on top at 500m above sea level, we abandoned the route guide and headed for a half-remembered plunge down the ridge on a trail nothing like singletrack but everything like giggly fun. Fast, open and apparently without danger right up until the point a deep bog nearly ended it for me. Lost now, we pushed quietly through a dilapidated farm yard clearly modelled on Deliverance, and dropped onto the old train track built to take hard men into the mountains to build the stupendous engineering masterpieces of the Elan dams.

Dave – much broken from a horrible road crash last year – lobbied for the flat way home around the mountain. We talked him out of it promising only one more climb and a fantastic descent to finish. Selling job complete, we skirted the reservoir and pitched upwards onto a climb I remembered as being fairly lumpy but reasonably short. I was half right with the soft grass under-tyre adding pain to an overdose of lactic acid. Ten minutes later it was done leaving me on a bleak summit surrounded by 360 views and bugger all else.

I dumped the bike and stood there for a while. As close to being at peace as I ever get with none of the daily compromises foisted by life in general and work in particular. For a second or so, as a chill wind whistled through what’s left of my hair, I was tempted to use the word ‘spiritual’ at which point a tanker rumbled into view on an unseen road putting paid to that pretentious nonsense. Dave and Matt then put up with my insistence to ride through ‘that bog again‘ for the digital soul stealer before a final road climb topped us out on a double track full of puddles and anticipation.

The first kilometre was flat but fun dropping wheels into ‘how bloody deep is that going to be’ small lakes before gradient triggered dropped seat posts and grin inducing velocity. Nothing on this track was scary but it was fast and steppy so perfectly suited to popping off drops and drilling rock gardens. Modern mountain bikes may flatter the lightly skilled but by Christ they are stupidly good fun on tracks like this. And it was a track that went on for approximately ever. Time was marked by Dave’s freewheel right up my chuff and the chain slapping the swing arm as lumps turned to jumps.

Done if not dusty, we rolled back into town and straight into the pub. Where we talked about bikes, things we’d done and things we were going to do. We didn’t talk about wheel sizes or shock configurations or tyre pressures. We didn’t talk about how our lined complexions suggested a raging against the dying of the light. We didn’t talk about what happens when this all stops.

And that’s not just displacement blindness. It’s a recognition that while we can drag our ageing bodies into high places, the reward will be a million times greater than the effort required to do so.

Go to Wales, you get to see this kind of stuff

* which – if I was tended to the selfish – he’d best buy for our trip to the alps next year. Short of adding a drinks cabinet, it’s damn close to chauffeured mountain biking.

** Navigation via my GPS was discounted on the not unreasonable grounds that – despite it’s obvious efficacy in all things finding places – it was in gloved hands of an idiot.