That’s a rubbish picture. But it’s illustrative and may save a 1000 words such a picture paints. So be grateful. We’ll be back to it in a bit. But first I feel the need to talk about plans.

John Lennon said it best “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”*. It wasn’t so long ago stakes were grounded in a heartland of what’s important, and I genuinely subscribed to a short term view that Christmas would be upon us before the world of work impacted on something I’d labelled as recuperation, but felt like sloth.

Lazy I can do. Slobbing about is pretty much a core skill. Tinkering in a fettling manner worries me not a jot. Until the room housed elephant trumpets a noise like guilt. Got to make ends meet, got to prove something, got to give in to the notion that working somehow has more value than everything else. Too many of us have the meme of the breadwinner and it’s a hard habit to shake.

Even so, distanced from the world of work by four hours, many miles and a different culture, our holiday was rooted in a strong desire to concentrate on stuff I’d missed not stuff I might be missing. Which worked well until TurkCell fired up the iPhone SMS feed and an offer of possible work hit the screen. I vacillated a while before replying in a non committal way and expecting – as is the way of these things – any vacancy to be long filled before I arrived back on rainy UK tarmac.

It didn’t. I ended up filling it. Two long interviews, the second conducted in a rather unbalanced Al v a panel of five. So my proposed rest was usurped by something properly interesting, but basically rewarding behaviour I was trying to shake. Next year, I’ll sort that out. Important to keep telling yourself that.

Mitigation of a sort was to run away from all things vocational and see if my new bike works with dust on it. Yes, I did indeed use that very rationale for why a very long weekend to Tenerife was more than required. Known as the ‘land of eternal spring‘ I care not if this is marketing nonsense, as I’m desperately keen to get away from the ‘land of the eternal flood‘

Since arriving back from warm and sunny Turkey, I have been enveloped in weather that could summarily be described as ‘more than a bit shit’. Accepting November is perilously close to real winter, it still seems more than a little unfair that it’s done nothing but piss water onto saturated ground on a daily basis. Surprisingly I’ve ridden loads and more surprisingly I’ve managed to do so without serially nutting local flora an fauna. But it’s been close, especially with the Rocket sporting a tyre selection that has the rear desperate to instigate a conference with the front every time the trail turns sideways.

Superb selection I keep telling myself for dry and dusty rocks come a week Wednesday. There’s a counter argument suggesting I’ll never get there, if the God Of Survivable Slides looks in another direction. Two recent rides provide context; the first was back on the carbon hardtail as it wouldn’t rust after bonkers rain. Shod with mud tyres, it performed superbly in the cheeky woody trails under the Malverns. One descent I was elevated from back to front by sheer dint of beingthe only man left riding. My buddies were in various hedges and ditches having gone with a rubber selection marked certain death. Back on the rocks tho, those fantastic tyres came close to fetching me a face full of wet granite.

Next ride, grab the full-suss and hope for the best. Which hill clamping fog and sideways rain clearly wasn’t. One of those rides where getting to the end without a major blood injury tastes like success. It’s still fun, but Christ I’m bored of slogging through the mud. I was bored of it in August and now it feels as if it’ll never end.

Except it will. On December 5th. When me and my pal Martin will land on an island that’s basically an African archipelago. Four days of sunny and dusty riding await. Along with four days of tall tails told over cold beers, while sitting outside watching the sun go down. That’s what that picture is all about. Riding mountain bikes is absolutely a four season sport, but don’t delude yourself that endless muddy death marches are the only way to get through the crappy ones.

* He may have said it better in the Beatles Back Catalogue. Possibly in Yellow Submarine. But you’d probably have to be amp’d off your head to be sure.

Blokes like lists. We do, it’s just the way we’re wired. Which is exactly why our level of engagement on receipt of ‘the 10 best ways to make something explode‘ is far higher than on being asked ‘so what do you think of this sofa in that shade of lilac?*“. But ask us for a sequence of famous soft furnishes in action movies and we’re your man. As long as we’re allowed to start at one and count no further than the combined sum of our digits.

Primacy in my ‘the worse time to ride a new bike‘ was firmly inked in under ‘the day before a family holiday‘ as explained in a previous post. Which partially** explains a first-up riding performance imbued with sufficient mincing to properly offend a vegetarian. But this entry at the top of the chart was summarily ejected by a ride prefixed by ten days of solid eating and one night of three hours sleep. Conditions didn’t help either. Unless helping has it’s own list where 1: dark 2: wet 3: frictionless and 4:muddy as fuck are universally accepted as ‘things most likely to help a very tired man on an unfamiliar bike‘

They didn’t. Not this one anyway. Riding mountain bikes when every glistening polished root promises violence and every corner is merely a pointer to a nice tree to crash into requires many things. Tell you what let’s lets get our list making skills out; 1: familiarity of the trail, 2: familiarity of the bike 3: familiarity of the tyres 4: confidence that 3: and 2: will overcome the obstacles of 1:, 5: balls of if not steel then some kind of ferrous metal.

I knew the trails but noting else. Couldn’t work out what the hell was going on under the tyres or on the pedals. Everything felt new and awkward. Nothing worked, gentle pushes on the bar or full blooded attempt to take the trail by the tail. I knew exactly where we were but I was lost. No reference points, no feel for the trail, no tactical solutions. No idea at all. It wasn’t a happy ride other than the bit where it finished without a bark splattered Al.

This wasn’t the bike I demo’d. It wasn’t anything fun at all. Clearly the problem couldn’t be with me, so a list of possible fixes filled my head as two days later the bike was unloaded on a blissfully quiet FoD***. First climb, horrid. Bouncy, thrutchy, too much rebound, it was the lilac sofa on wheels. Just nasty. Pack off, shock pump out, few quick inflations justified by the worryingly svelte-not of Al. Better, but still not right. The bike felt heavy and dead, and it just didn’t want to go.

First descent. Nearly planted myself into a tree. I realise there is a common theme here. Lists again; most likely place to have an accident 1: tree 2: tree 3: tree 4:tree …. 10:rock 11: rock in front of a tree, etc. Even in the Malverns where there aren’t many trees, I’ve still hit most of them. It’s a skill. So even less svelte than was my post holiday delusion. Fuck it, get pumping like a porn star and wind out the unwanted bronco. Rode the section again, lots better but still not right. Repeat until the magic settings coalesced into some proper carving turns, a pop off a jump and a big grin.

Close enough. Rode the rest of the trail without a pause. Took it easy on the last descent because mud and new bikes are not speedy bedfellows. Took 15 seconds off my best time. It’s absolutely all about the bike. Even factoring in purchase anxiety, this is a truly phenomenal bit of kit. A frankly ridiculous six inches of travel but not a wallowy uphill mess. Endless traction but still plush climbing over rocks. Mad poppy fun off jumps but still running through the travel. Stiff as a teenage boy with his first copy of the Internet, but low slung and playful in the bends.

I shall need to up my game by some distance to get anywhere near what this bike can do. Designer Cy suggest the simple technique of death-gripping the bars and focussing on some distant dot on the horizon. I’ve been trying this lately with some mildly astounding results. Including keeping up with my Orange-5 shod riding pal who previously gapped me on every descent. But I’m absolutely aware that the bike can only take me so far, and I’m probably not brave enough to meet it even half way.

Still I’m going to have a lot of fun trying. I wasn’t sure what I lost by selling the ST4. And I’m not sure exactly what I’ve found with the Rocket. It’s not a sit down skills compensator. It doesn’t take a trail and sanitise the difficulty so sir can get on with admiring the view. It demands you come to the party and leave your list of excuses at home.

There very little here not to like.

* Illustrative point here. Northern carriers of the Y chromosome have no concept of lilac. The more cultured may believe it is some form of plant. It is never a colour.

** But not totally. For that look in the book of excuses marked ‘lack of bravery’.

*** This was when I could still ride on a weekday. Before a job turned up and demanded my attention. It’s playing bloody hell with my Strava performance.

There are times when there is absolutely no justification for shouting stuff from the rooftops at all. Other than what my mum would describedisdainfullyas ‘making a scene‘. This is my scene and I’ve put a bike in the middle of it.

This is not merely the latest pointless addition in Al’s rambling pantheon of bike shaped objects. Nor is it some finely honed strategy explaining exactly why the five lovely BSO’s I already own fail to meet a requirement that has suddenly become extremely important. It certainly isn’t an impulse purchase, nor will it immediately punt a previously* loved shed based item into the shivering eBay wasteland.

No this is Al buying Al a present. After every major project, there’s at least one person in the Leigh household who strongly believes – to the point of much whinging – that he is due a reward. Depending on exactly how bat-shit crazy the previous months have been, this may besomethingfinanciallytrivial or an item potentially leading to the Children eating their own shoes.

If you’ve read anything I’ve written in the last six months, or had the misfortune to be the Organic B end of my spittle-fleckedvitriol, you’ll be unsurprised to hear we’re deep into the Clark’s Book of School ShoeRecipes.

If there is ANYONE in the world who can be as focussed and profligate as me in terms of splashing an almighty chunk of cash in less than seven days, please let them step forward so I can embrace them like a brother and assuage some of my guilt. Last weekend I was high up on a Derbyshire hill – in the pissing rain of course – wondering if I could really justify buying a new bike. Specifically this one which had me grinning like a loon and scrubbing crappy work stuff like a massive mental eraser.

I couldn’t. I was fairly directly honest with Carol about this. I didn’t create some convoluted list of dependencies that’d somehow make this cost neutral. I didn’t pretend my current flock of bikes was somehow unworthy of my God-like riding skills. At no point did I mention the word progression although ‘Alps‘ may have crept in during an arm waving view of my riding future.

No. I didn’t do any of that. My position was simply that I’d worked my bollocks off for seven months and come very close to rocking-under-the-desk stress bunnyism, and the only way I could make sense of that was to have something that said ‘you know what, you’ve earned that’**

Carol was as ever understanding if a little taken aback when the full cost was finally blurted out. You could buy a car for that, in fact we did. Or a Holiday, we did that as well. Not satisfied with a brand new frame, I wanted to adorn it with as much blinginess as a large warehouse in East Lancs could post by Friday. Somehoweverythingarrived on time including a massive hangover for the man dragged into the pub on his last day***

The sensible thing was to dispatch all parts to Nic @ Revolutions with a breezy ‘it might be a little more complicated that I explained’ before stumbling off for a second greasy breakfast. A quick call mid afternoon was met with a flowing invective I shallsummarisethus “fucking nightmare, those wheels, jeez what were you thinking, it’s a right bastard of a problem child‘. I hung up happy in the knowledge that someone other than me was dealing with this difficult birth.

Really if it were me, it’d have been hammers and tears of frustration before lunchtime. There are some mentalists of the screaming variety who love to build bikes. I am not one of them unless assembly is merely a percussion arms race with added powertools. Nic delivered the bike with a couple of throwaway comments including ‘tyres aren’t quite seated, should be fine on the first descent or they’ll roll off the rim. No Point dying wondering eh?”

No point indeed. It’s sat over there <— looking as if it’ll be writing cheques my limited skills will struggle to cash. I’ve added some air to the forks before capping my mechanical knowledge right there.

Tomorrow we go and ride. The day after that we go on holiday. I’ve been given strict instructions to arrive home with my shield or on it, after at least one incident where our vacation plans were slightly disrupted by the designated driver spending three days in hospital. Carol doesn’t need to bring this up, she’s just given me a ‘”we’re going without you” look, if you’re lucky we’ll txt you some pictures’ which seems entirely fair.

If, and it’s a big if, nothing goes wrong in the morning and Turkey doesn’t suddenly becomeuninhabitable, then the holy trinity of completing batshit project, riding my new bike and going on holiday with my family could come to pass. Got to be a better than evens chance.

What’s the worse that can happen?

* let’s be charitable and say ‘last week’ shall we?

** Possibly not all of that.

*** WikiAlex definition of dragged “Hey Fellas, I’m off the to the Pub, Credit Card behind the bar, WHOSE WITH ME?”

The hedgehog isn’t known for dispassionate reviews backed up by serious real world testing by proper riders*. Which may explain why this one fails at the first hurdle of actually providing an in-use image of the product in question. There is, as ever, a great excuse for this small oversight – a) I forgot and b) it was dark.

The darkness was kind of key to the review. What with it being a nifty little light shipped to me by MagicShine to illuminate the seven months of the year which have a chunk of night riding involved. The control was my much campaigned Lumicycle XPG-3, which was mothballed while riding deep into the cloaking night of the Malvern Hills with the MJ-872.

First things first; the light unit itself. An impressively small unit, much finned but taking very little bar space. Secured with a simple O-Ring which proved stable under the most extreme pounding of rocky trails. Four settings step illumination up from ‘that’s adequately bright for riding’ to ‘wowser, I appear to be the owner of a night sun’. Simple up and down arrowed buttons on the back of the light unit switch between modes.

The back of the light unit also gives a visual indication of the battery status from a fully charged blue through green, amber and red. The manual isn’t very helpful on what this actually means in terms of potential endarkment, but stick in on any level other than the 1600 lumen max and it’s going to last well past two hours. The max setting is definitely a battery killer ,and aside from a quick blast in the spirit of enquiry, I left it well alone.

The four LEDs provide a very strong white light with a distinguishable spot punching out of a wide flood. Compared directly with the Lumi, the beam pattern seems a little narrower but in real world use, it wasn’t noticeable. Definitely bright enough, good spread of white light and solid on the bars. Hard to find anything to criticise other than my preference is to stick it on one setting and leave it there. Two modes would be fine, low and high.

The battery pack however is not quite such a triumph. For the start it’s a bloody monster festooned with a pointless tiny LED screen showing voltage. Since it’s strapped under the top tube and a visual indication of battery status is already provided on the light unit, it’s somewhere beyond pointless.

Secondly it’s enormous. Three times bigger than my lumi battery and an awkward shape with sharp edges aplenty. It’s secured with a strong velcro strap but I really struggled to find a space on my ST4 so it didn’t could the shock mount. I couldn’t shake the concern that if I stacked, I’d be in really danger of eviscerating a key organ while exiting the bike.

Charging with the supplied cable and plug is an overnight process. It’s nicely packaged, everything worked flawlessly under some nasty wet conditions. The light spread and output was nothing short of excellent, but the battery pack needs some work. Lose the voltage meter, package it in something more nut friendly and reduce the size by 50{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} and it’s a winner.

For the money tho – about a£100 – it’s an excellent buy. I know you can import these directly for less cash, but Magicshine were great to deal with and would look after you if you had any problems.

If I was in the market for a new light and they fixed the battery pack, it’d be hard to justify the uplift of the Lumi. In fact if they do sort out the niggles, I’d probably have one as a spare.

Full details can be found here.

* it’s not known for much really.