“If you can’t see it, it can’t hit you”

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

Post FoD, pre-clean

This was one of many teachings from an old school friend. He was a nutters’ nutter, mischievous to the power of insane and almost every time my teenage years were crossed with big trouble, John was chief provider of the big ideas.

Ideas that on the surface had an elegant simplicity, but scratch beneath that and the horror of what might follow immediately became apparent. Generally with older people looking extremely upset and the destruction of property.

For example, if a few of us thought shinning up trees and stealing apples was a bit of wheeze, John’d stand by, look puzzled for a second and then set fire to the entire garden. His reasoning was thus: “the fruit is falling out of the trees AND we’re getting roasted horse chestnuts“. See what I mean? Mad as cheese.*

The can’t hit it proclamation was confidently delivered while door-handling over the Snake Pass in the pitch darkness navigating only be memory, the interior light and a youthful naivety that death happened mainly to other people.

To pass the time before we plunged down the cliff in a fiery ball of tortured metal and soft squidgy bits, I tried to find out more. Apparently his firmly held view was that even if a great sodding dry stone wall was looming out of the black, we were perfectly safe as long – and this was the important bit – he never even glanced at it. 25 years later, I’m still alive so maybe he was on to something.

Riding last night, and again this morning, had Deja-Vu writ large as the constant worry of a big accident JUST passing me by but having so much bloody fun played on repeat. Malverns and Mud are rarely that close together but incessant rain turned hardpack to slick and autumn fall hid gripless roots. Our philosophy was waving two fingers at a proper ride, instead picking climbs entirely on the quality of they scary descents they would open up.

First one, me up front helmet light scanning for big rocks. Head for those because the ST4 isn’t a knackered old Ford Fiesta and is unlikely to be fazed by such hazards. Make lots of mistakes, ace bike compensates sufficiently for teeth not to be spread across the trail. Excess velocity into a step section has the bars clipping a railing which means you giggle a lot because the other reality would have been fairly nasty.

Route choice. Up the side of the Beacon and then off on a stupidly steep and slippy cheeky entry onto a trail barely clinging to the edge. Martin takes what I consider a sissy line around a rock slab. I go straight over and straight over the bars rolling sideways and into soft ferns on a steep angle. Clambering back up – giggling again – Martin has gone and I give chase with all sorts of looking at the wrong stuff, lights in the valley getting closer and a widening gulley nastily adjacent to this narrow singletrack the tyres are doing their best to keep me on.

Back up top via the road because tonight is all about going down. Off the top looking to pop this drop but the run in is so slippy, we turn around and head back the “normal” route. The top of which has about a 30 mile cross wind desperate to whip the wheels away and send you pin-wheeling down the slope sans bicycle.

A fast blast back to the car via a kilometre of much loved – if unsurprisingly sketchy – trail was followed by the admission that if we dodged any more bullets, we’d be in line for playing Neo in the matrix.

This morning I spent another couple of hours trying not to look at things that were scary. Most of those were glassy roots more than keen to whip your front wheel away and provide a not-at-all soft landing for your arse. Somehow mine stayed on the bike, although any FoD dwellers were subjected to many instances of the “Tripod” where two wheels are further supported by a desperately unclipped leg.

To access Tea and Medals, we took the “SheepSkull” DH track which proved the ST4 is basically a mini-DH bike with the seat down which is an excellent fins. Except I am riding at a speed so far ahead of my ability, it’s only a matter of time before I wrap my face round a tree.

Still, if you can’t see it, it can’t hit you. As good a motto for being silly in the woods with a bicycle as I’ve heard this year.

* We’ve stayed vaguely in touch and he’s now an airline Captain for a major flag carrier. One that I absolutely will never travel on.

There are worse things than being ill..

On By AlexIn Other stuff1 Comment

… dead for example. This morning my Lemsip anti-cold barricades were over-run by man-flu-lite and asthma heavy. At this point I tend to wang the grumpy meter into the red zone, and demand that everyone treats me as a dying swan.

An hour later, I stopped feeling sorry for myself after being informed that a second (of six) chickens has squawked off this mortal coil. The first one we assumed had passed over due entirely to natural causes late last week. Those causes being a ruddy great abscess Ledbury’s finest vet* diagnosed as malignant and fatal.

So sad as it was, not a huge surprise although the suddenness of happily vertical to motionless horizontal gave us pause for thought. Then this morning, our longest serving, largest egg laying, fox surviving proto-hen hailed by all as “Nugget” dropped dead as well.

This after just laying an egg. It’s not a fox because she would have been carted away and the rest killed. Current theory is mink although having only ever seen dead ones worn by posh people, it wasn’t until some lunchtime googling, I had even the slightest inkling of what this chicken-stalker looked like.

Evil I reckon. Nasty little bastards they are by all accounts. The irony of extending the chicken coup but letting them run free is not lost on me. What to do next is. I’m considering using the remnants of the wire to build myself a minx trap. Then inviting my friend round with his mate Mr. Shotgun.

Random is now doubly upset as that’s two chickens in less than a week. We’re not going to attempt repopulating to a strength of six again, until the cause of chicken-gate is fully understood and dealt with. Right now I’m thinking Col Mustard in the Library with a Iron Bar.

And no we’re not eating the dead one. How could you even ask.

* Yes I know you shouldn’t spend£25 at the vet on a£2 chicken. UNLESS they happen to belong to a very teary 9 year old.

Chicken Run

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Chicken Run!

Sometimes Genius takes many forms. In this case, it’s a wire tunnel connecting the perfectly secure – if bijou – enclosure to the structure supporting our Trampoline.

What kind of person could not look at those two disparate objects without thinking “Hang on Grommet, there’s an invention here to be had“? So humming the tune to the Great Escape, and making light work of spade, wire and pliers, we’ve created quite the extension to Poultry Alcatraz.

Chicken Run! Chicken Run!

Chickens are pretty intelligent*, so once we’d enticed them into the escape hatch a couple of times, it all seemed to become second nature. There were a few collisions and one of the larger ones appears to enjoy accelerating to ramming speed and punting the smaller one out, but otherwise the project is a complete success.

Except, two small issues. First is we’ve already pretty much let them have run of that garden section. To make the whole thing properly fox proof, we’ll need to be doing more than mending fences. Installing them more like, and creating an environment that a hundred years ago could have easily housed a couple of families.

Secondly, what happens if the buggers start laying egg in there? Option a) is to send one of the kids through the tunnel but I’m not sure they’d fit. Be fun to try tho. Option b) is dynamite and build a proper tunnel under the ground in the manner of an escaping WWII prisoner.

Pretty classic Al really. Solve one problem, create a few hundred more.

* I have this feeling they’re quite a lot brighter than me.

Wibble

On By AlexIn Bikes, Photography, Road Riding6 Comments

Woger Wibble

Meet Woger, the latest step on my journey to bike nirvana. Lately I’ve managed to convince almost no-one that the days of random bike purchases were long behind me. A strict one-in one-out policy was being ruthlessly augmented with a “cost per use” equation. Once I’d run out of wall hangers, I’d run out of excuses to buy anything new and shiny.

It’s important to understand these hard and fast rules were in fact no more than guidelines. And a lack of wall space can be simply solved by either leaning this one against a handy bench, or chucking Carol’s bike into the shed.

There is some method to what may seem absolute madness – especially to those whom I confidently explained that any instance of Lucifer’s preferred personal transportation device would burn up on entry into my cycling atmosphere – to why I now have two road bikes.

It’s about cash. Sort of. Mostly. In parts. If viewed from an oblique angle. By an alien. Every trip to our offices in England’s second city offers me not only a zero MPH view of the M5 most days, but also the fiscal opportunity to blow the thick end of FORTY QUID on petrol and parking. You could run a Space Shuttle on that, although I except it’s harder to find a space for it in the multi-story.

Riding 12 miles to Ledbury station costs nothing but a bit of commitment, planning and refusal to accept that dark and cold automatically equal cars with heaters. From about now until the world revolves slowly round to BST, wibbling to work via the train will pay for Woger and some. And the time I spend slumped in the carriage of London Midland’s finest trundlers can be spent reading, writing, looking out of the window, or dribbly asleep.

Try that on the Motorway and see what happens*. And yes I could make that journey on my lovely Carbon boardman that’s seen 850ks of commuting and not much else this year. It’s not like I’m even a proper roadie**, it entirely fails to deliver the visceral pleasure of mountain biking, the pleasure is more about retaining fitness not actually what’s going on during the process.

So why buy another bike to do something that’s meant to be about saving money. Logic so twisted it requires a couple of extra dimensions. And yet, my justification based entirely on the shitty state of the roads here, the cost of replacing expensive components the Boardman is hung with, and a guilt-free laziness of a bike that has “shed chuck” written all over it. Only way that bike is being cleaned before spring is if it gets rained on.

That was my rationale before I rode it. Didn’t expect to enjoy it at all, it’s cheap and that’s reflected everywhere with heavy stuff adorning an unsophisticated alloy frame. Surprisingly it’s pretty good fun once winched up to speed. Lardy wheels make that a bit of a chore and the gearing is a bit aspirational when presented with the local geography, but get a wriggle on and there’s a racy little number trying very hard to get out.

It has the persona of a fat lass, downstream of a few Bicardi Breezers and looking for a good time. While the Boardman is all efficiency, lightness and power, Wibbly Wog is labrador-esque in its’ need to please. Will I feel the same way at the end of winter?

Not sure, but there may be a road bike up for sale. Possibly two.

* Disclaimer. If you die horribly in a mass of twisted and burning wreckage, don’t come looking to me for sympathy.

** To fat, head not permanently stuck up one’s own fundament, occasionally noted for a sense of humour, has man-hairy legs, that kind of thing singles me out.

If it isn’t fixed, break it.

On By AlexIn Other stuff, Photography6 Comments

Two halves of the same thing

Do you know what it is yet? Or – and tense is important here – what it was. The photo below is more than a bit of a clue.

Luna 2

Yes that was my favourite/latest/fastest/most fun to fly toy glider. And having not had the chance to stand on a hillside freezing my cods off for a month or so, I felt this weekend was an ideal time for a bit of sloping therapy.

Didn’t fancy riding because my knee hurt a lot. Ironically it hurt more after trudging up a lumpy, tussocked approach to a not terribly windy edge. The pain in my knee however was subsumed by the dent to my pride, after bits of once expensive moulded glider cartwheeled across the ground.

It’s hard to say what happened. Well, no that’s not true. It’s very easy to say what happened – the model fell out of the sky from around fifteen feet in an entirely vertical direction, and ploughed into the ground with all the finesse and elegance of a piledriver.

What’s not so easy to understand is why. Let’s go with pilot error and leave it at that. Not far behind in the “uh? what?” stakes is how the hell I’m going to fix it. The broken bit up there is in the middle of the fuselage. Moving forward, where the wing used to sit is just shards of glass fibre, and the wings themselves are missing the pieces which were ripped out on impact.

It’s possibly repairable. Even by me. Whether I have the time/inclination/ability to survive mainlining horrible gluing compounds is something else.

The irony of not going riding because of a broken knee wasn’t entirely lost on me. So the next day I decided to see exactly how broken it was by subjecting the bugger to a bit of early morning MTB action. Result of which is I am still walking, but more of that later.

For Christmas, I’d like some less stupid hobbies, twice as much time and a titanium knee insert.

Arthur Knee.

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Disembowelment attachment.

I find misery can sometimes be partially assuaged by having a good laugh at the misfortune of others.

You know the kind of thing; the face of some poor sop you’ve never met trapped in a ten mile traffic jam on the opposite carriageway, the look of a self-important corporate clone at the exact second his frothy skinny latte-hold the cheese explodes all over his designer suit, a good mate falling off and giving himself a nasty bruise. Possibly in the testicles.

I believe the Germans call it schadenfraude. Apparently there is no direct translation into English. But there is a facial expression, and that is the smirk.

That was me, smirking, at this courageous positioning of those bar ends. Really couldn’t be better placed to disembowel oneself during an accident. It’d be a bugger really having survived a head on with a car, only to find your kidneys impaled on spiky bar accoutrements.

Unless you were watching. In which case, smirk. And the way things have been going this week, I’m in need of a damn good smirking.

My miracle-working physio explained that melonknee(tm) was a bit out of whack. Ligaments that should hold the joint appear to have wandered off the another part of the body, and if skilled prodding doesn’t sort it next up is a man with an MRI machine and possibly a small drill.

This is not good news. It reminded me of an old climbing mate originally introduced as “Arthur Nerd“. This was, “God’s Honest Truth Mister“, because he was not a total nerd. Just the half. My knee is like that, it sort of works in the middle of a perambulating arc, but is entirely uninterested in moving to the margins.

And the half that does work wants my pain centres to know that it’s not mad happy about it. Hence my grumpiness. In fact even the joy of watching two elderly members of the Ledbury tandem club dismount in a manner most likely to break a hip couldn’t cheer me up.

I bought a new bike instead. It might come tomorrow. Mrs Phys tells me I can ride if I’m careful and “Don’t push hard up the hills and try and put all your power down“. I’ve been able to set her mind at rest on that one, I can assure you.

Anyway if they do need to pop the sunroof off my kneecap, I’ll be sure that nothing gets sown back up without a bit of Ti or Carbon being installed first.

Quote, Unquote, Say “ow”

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Last Friday, I am confronted by an angry fat man in a Butlin’s uniform on New Street’s main concourse:

Him: “You can’t bring your bike up the escalator sir”

Me: “It’s a bit early for all that existential shit isn’t it?”

Him: (Flumoxed): “Sorry?”

Me: “Well clearly, I am here, the bike is on the platform, I have clearly been transported by the moving walkway back there, therefore the physical evidence trumps your philosophical world view”

Him: “Er, no I mean it’s dangerous”

Me: “Damn Straight, walk up those stairs with this knee and there’s a serious possibility I’ll fall straight back down. Well done for letting me use the escalator”

It’s important at times like this to stride – or limp stride-aly – off with a enigmatic smile before the magic wears off.

Today, I’m in the Doctor’s surgery being un-diagnosed by the same newly qualified quack who had me down for malingering last time.

Her: “That’s odd, that knee really is very swollen, what do you think we should do about it?”

Me: “Well, it’s not me that’s spent seven years in Medical school and has access to google, so I’m kind of in your hands”

Three options present themselves apparently; 1) do nothing which has worked so well with my manky finger I was mad keen to try that again. 2) Pump myself full of sufficient anti-inflammatories to stun a small donkey or 3) try and un-retire the physio who sorted me out last time.

I’ve gone with 3) after being offered the reassuring advice that if things hadn’t improved in TWO OR THREE weeks, to come back. Assuming I can get my trousers on and the appendage in question has not taken on the size, texture and general flexibility of a melon.

The only conclusion one can reasonably draw is that the budget cuts are at work here. First don’t prescribe any drugs that might cost some actual money, and – phase 2 – be so entirely bloody useless to discourage further visits.and then rent the space out for CV writing workshops.

Wonky knee makes driving painful, walking a chore and riding pretty much fine until I stop. The latter is extremely vexing since I appear to have dug in enough this summer to dig out a decent level of fitness. Trails are still loads of fun and the ST4 is a bloody joy to ride. Hell, I’m even enjoying road riding, but this is entirely due to working out how much money I save swapping bike for car on my commute.

For that amount, I’d crawl naked over broken glass to get to work. Although I’ll wait until my knee is better first. Not that I’ll be bothering the Doctor, again after seeing her surreptitiously adding “Old Age and Decrepitude” to my list of symptoms.

Return of the rant

On By AlexIn Road RidingLeave a comment

On the one hand, there is my well reasoned discourse – forensically arguing the case for universal benefits with reference to the unfairness of the proposed changes to Child Benefit, and more specifically the devastating financial impact on my secret bike buying funds, on the other a short sweary note on some welly-booted twat trying to kill me.

I have always maintained that a shared passion for something does not automatically engender kindred spirits. Many – in fact most – of my friends ride bikes but that doesn’t represent anything but the slightest dent in a world of cycling cocks. Nor does everyone who lives outside London* assume the gentler, kinder, less hurried characteristics of many we’ve met since heading west.

Last night point entirely proven. LandRover with massive trailer rattles up behind as I made my exit from Ledbury. Set of lights 300 yards ahead on red, but he can’t wait even tho I’m the far side of 20mph and pedalling hard. No, he pulls out to pass, realises there isn’t room for me, him, his trailer and the co-op lorry approaching from the opposite direction, and so removes me from the sizing equation.

How the swinging death metal of the trailer missed me I do not know. I did ask him though – politely knocking on the window before demanding a explanation quickly followed by an apology of exactly what the fuck he thought he might be doing. A standard response I’ve learned well from my time in our fine capital was again trotted out “didn’t see you, didn’t realise you were going so fast, wasn’t that close was it?”. “Blind Idiot, Stupid Idiot, Yes it bloody was, I was there, honestly I know” was pretty much my comeback only with lots more swearing.

I went on at some length that the highway code applied equally to us all, and that “no his road fund license was not funding some secret cult where it was okay to kill cyclists for being in the way“, at which point the lights changed, and I decamped haughtily down a one way street. In the wrong direction. Throwing my moral high ground behind me.

If we meet again I shall hope he is suitably chastised and has learned a hard lesson. More likely it’ll be a shotgun out of the window and picking pellets out of my arse for weeks.

For the sake of balance, my reasoned argument went something like “tax those bastards who got us into this first, yeah you know the ones paying themselves six figure bonuses for lending more cheap money. The gits that don’t need child allowance to prop up their boarding school fees“. I feel it’s a populist cause I’m fronting here.

* almost all those inside are nutters tho.

Funny shaped vegetables

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Potato Harvest

Remember those quieter times, when the highlight of a Sunday TV schedule would be a humourous* selection of misshapen brassicas and root vegetables vaguely resembling – in a certain light and to a certain schoolboy mind – dangley body parts?

I worried – even at an age when a dog farting was absolutely the funniest thing in the world – about the people growing such penile specimens. Did they do it on purpose? Was there some kind of special seed? Maybe a funny shaped tube mirroring something normally kept well holstered inside the trouser?

I worry no more. Because after exercising scavenging rights in the field adjacent to our house and unearthing the remains of the vegetables beds, it has become absolutely clear that nature has a wicked sense of humour.

Firstly the humble spud. Now grown on an industrial process unrecognisable to even a post war farming generation, they’re planted in dense rows, sprayed with all sorts of shit**, everything above ground killed with sulphuric acid, and then harvested with a machine first recorded during the Spanish Inquisition.

Only not all of them. It’s uneconomical to hand pick the stragglers. Well it is for the farmer, far less of an issue to a family hurdling the fence in the hunt for a season of free chips. Armed with nothing more advanced than a wheelbarrow and a furtive expression, we’ve recycled enough to make me wonder if “potatobix” has a future as a breakfast cereal.

No idea what they are. “Potato” I hear you say? Ah well you’ve not plumbed the fascinating depths of tuber identification oncethe Internet is brought into play. Really there is no finer family fun that holding a humble muddy spud to the light while pointing excitedly at the screen: “It’s that one, I’m sure of it, mottled edges, responds well to squidging, looks as if it may have been secreted by a sick bear… yes it’s definitely ‘Farmer’s delight-the muddy bugger‘”

The carrots however are something else. Everything we grew above the surface of the beds has been nibbled/shit on/carried off into the night by an insect population which turns up with cutlery. What is left has taken the most amazing shapes from the chronically deformed to the point-and-laugh.

It’s great to see my own kids have taken on the mantle of indicating that an orange vegetable with a point at the end may very well be a spitter for a willy. Makes me proud.

Still they’re free and they taste pretty good***, and one day I’ll feel strong enough to tackle the difficult potato Random dug out that has the size/weight/general shape of the dog’s head. Send that one into Esther and she’d not know where to put herself.

I’d almost welcome a reboot of the That’s Life franchise, were it not for “Gardener’s World” being a worthy successor. Ashamed as I am of admitting it, I could not tear myself away from Friday’s gem of an episode where lots of retired folks were terribly serious on the topic of “Exhibition Vegetables”. I might have to have a go – there is at least one carrot the judges would find hard to ignore.

* Only, not very.

** Chicken shit generally. Ask me how I know.

*** The Veg not the kids, but I like the way you’re thinking.

No Crash Zone

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

Ski-heads will reverently talk of heli-serviced runs where the phrase “No Fall Zone” is both a barrier to entry and a badge of honour. High above the marked pistes, where snow clings precariously to impossibly steep slopes is close to heaven for adrenalin junkies. Screw up here and you’ll most likely die – either by tumbling a thousand metres down the mountain or being lost in an unmarked crevasse.

I’d like to introduce the concept of “No Crash Zones” for mountain bikes. And I feel more than qualified to do so with a distinguished history of ejecting stage everywhere, sometimes comedically slowly, frequently largely unnoticed, occasionally with an élan made for video, and rather too often finishing in hospital.

But there is more than a nuance between crashing somewhere good, and crashing somewhere really very bad indeed. Deep in a dark and dank forest encased in coffin sided slate is definitely one of those places. The Climach trail is roughly carved through a quarried out valley and appears to have been gloriously overlooked by the health and safety crowd, so prevalent in other trail centres.

Well the bit we rode anyway, having shown enthusiastic indifference to the delights of the XC loop. The final descent hangs on the valley edge, a perfect singletrack bench cut between slate walls and menacing trees. It’s not welcoming, it doesn’t have happy little signs, it fails to box-tick the “trail centre downhill playbook“, it doesn’t think you’re hard enough to have a go, and it will spit mud in your eye before genially trying to kill you.

Not because it is technically more demanding that anything else we had already ridden in a weekend ratcheting the adrenalin barometer between fun and fear. No, because it’s so damn fast, dispensing with the velocity inhibiting swoopy sinew of perfect apex’s – this trail is straight down, hairpin, plummet again. Hewn out of the slate, the surface is always wet and glassily frictionless, jagged edged to catch a tyre, cambering off to a dark mass of uninviting trees.

Blair Witch for bikes. You have to love it, if only for the sheer chutzpah of a designer who gone with the “fuck it, make it fast and dangerous, they’ve read the sign at the start, they know the risks” brief. One section lingers long in the memory – post hairpin a wall of slate vertically limits the right, dense trees clinging to a forty five degree slope the other way – bracketing a thin ribbon of slate, stone, dirt and mud.

Stray left and you’ll hit something bark related on the way to a 200 foot drop, catch a bar on the rock wall and the experience will be akin to diving head first into a bacon slicer at about 25 MPH. That slate isn’t smooth but cruelly serrated and so very, very close. You don’t want to crash here, you don’t even want to think about it.

I was thinking about it as we winched up for another go. First though I had to fall off the tiny section of North Shore plankage. A standard approach of not getting off on damp wood spanning grim looking ditches* was, er, ditched as I lined up confidently for a fuss-free traversal. A certain causal narrative follows; I look at the plank, I look at the ditch, I ride onto the plank, I ride into the ditch.

Musting** myself off, the trail was now mine alone with my fast riding pals already some way distant. That’s pretty much the situation whenever I’m riding with these two, and it was entirely their fault that my riding speed was way above my pay grade at this point. They need to be slower, or I need to be less competitive.

Corners may not feature much on this trail, but the trail pixies added much lumpiness and scary rock to ensure that you can spend much time in the air and most of that properly frightened. It’s a bit car-crash tv tho – you know one mistake and food shall be served in a drip, but it’s such a bloody rush that the pretence all is fine and you’re more than handling it is a salve for the delusional mind.

Round the hairpin, set up for the bacon slicer, virtual blinkers on, can’t look left, don’t look right, look over there where it’s less scary. Speed builds, split second decision to sacrifice grip, but you’re dare not brake, dare not breathe really, it’ is only fifteen seconds but you’re properly alive, absolutely focussed, living in the moment where fear and joy are just about the same. And then one second – a second I shall relive mostly waking up screaming in a cold sweat – I felt my glove graze the rock.

Two futures open up; one sees the an impacted bar launch the rider hard into the rock before bouncing him – broken – down a cliff offering all the cushioning of hard pine trunks and stumps. The other releases the pressure on that right hand, shoots the bike out of the danger zone and makes damn sure the God of Fate is properly respected from here on in.

I got lucky. In more ways that one. I got to ride mountain bikes on proper mountains with good friends, take more risks that I should, drink more beer than I can handle, and still come back with my shield rather than on it.

A month ago similar things were going on in the Pyrenees. Different mountains, different friends, same feeling of utter peace at the end of it.

That’s not lucky, that’s blessed.

* Because I’ve already got off some 10 feet before.

** A lexical fusion of “Mud” and “Dust”. A winner I think you’ll agree