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On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, Photography9 Comments

I’ve always had a suspicion that Mountain Biking is really something rather simple, made complex by marketing fiends pedalling pointless upgrades on some gold-paved trail to cycling nirvana. Countering this is the assertion that any bloke staying trail side up is essentially a cycling God who has hit the tyre choice/stem-bar combo sweet spot, and is therefore impervious to either criticism or improvement.

I say ‘bloke‘ because there is a strict male taboo over even the tiniest admission of poor performance in any of these three three locations; car, bike and bedroom. A link has been forged between fitting expensive new parts inside and technically accomplished riding outside. Trail snobbery – in too many places – confuses how you ride with what you ride and that can’t be right. Tony Doyle of UK Bike Skills is trying to take riding back for the riders, and our day with him was quite different to an outwardly similar experience a few years ago.

That course was all about locating my riding Mojo which had been lost, along with a chunk of knee, in a big crash. This time around, I was hoping to break through a skills ceiling into which my riding has been banging against for too long. I have exchanged ragged for fast and coping techniques for trail skills to the point where my options narrowed to slowing down, having another big accident or learning how to ride properly. I thought I’d try the latter.

Tony is a passionate character with an interesting history including bike racer, North Shore lunatic and long time corporate coach. His approach is an enthusiastic mix of simple theory, clear demonstration and concise feedback. Before you can learn anything, first there is the group-humiliation of a “skills check” where we all rode over small logs and around figure eights. As usual, we all tried hard but achieved little, with Nig being the stand out rider in terms of technical skill. And he fell off. Twice. On flat ground.

Undeterred, Tony explained that our collective rubbishness would somehow bear sweet trail fruit come the days’ end. To get us there, he spent the next four hours taking every thing we thought we knew about how to ride a Mountain Bike and carelessly pitching it into the forest. A place where a few of us followed while trying to unlearn much vaunted trail skills that had no place in Tony’s world of ‘just riding bikes‘.

He showed us how the trail has a bounty of velocity which can be happily stolen by those with timing, body position and commitment. A marker here – Tony teaches four basic physical skills and a similar number of mental techniques which I’m not going to document as they’re a) pretty bloody obvious but b) entirely anodyne unless someone shows you why.

And we’ve all been focused on how. Bad, bad mistake. The plethora of How to DVD’s and endless magazine articles preach conflicting ideas and play into those greedy marketing hands. Anyone reading this who can ride a bit can do exactly that. Ride A Bit. One of the most instructive things I saw all day was a random rider shooting the trail we were sessioning and despite his “look a me” trail jump entry, he was properly rubbish. Too fast in, too much braking, too slow out, no flow at all. Bit like you and me eh?

One thing I have learned is that riding is really simple if you do it properly. Nothing more than physics and geography perfectly aligned. If you let your brain have its’ head, burn a couple of basic moves into muscle memory and trust that this stuff will work even when your instinct is that it cannot, then you’ll be smooth, safe and fast. Tony gains that trust through a series of “Shit, that really works” exercises and some tiny setup tweaks that completely change the way you interact with your bike.

Any bike. At no time in the day was I concerned about tyres, frame configuration or suspension set up. I was too busy deconstructing my riding and starting again on a path littered with partial epiphanies and much giggling. For example, pumping trails should be simple but I’ve ridden 15,000 miles over ten years and I’d no fucking idea at all to be honest. No that’s a fib, I had many ideas – most of them conflicting and all together quite properly wrong.

When you feel your front wheel going skywards without the normal associated bar wrenching, the whole concept of trail riding become significantly more interesting. Because that’s what we do ; ride trails, we don’t huck 30 foot gaps, hit a set of six dirt jumps or launch a building sized drop. We did ride some drops thought but my misplaced confidence in ability honed on some big fellas was mitigated by having to unlearn everything that used to work.

More is less, no pelvic thrusting your arse over the back tyre, no wheeling off drops, no – well – drama. Eventually Mr. Brain overrode Mr. Instinct and we moved on moved on to my trail nemesis – corners and specifically long sweeping examples similar to the ones where I’d torn my knee apart. I’d been meaning to explain this to Tony and ask him for a fix or a cheat, but I am glad I didn’t as it is a stupid question.

Because if you aren’t staring at the apex waiting for the tyres to slip, the shape, size and radius of any corner is irrelevant. Only your speed, your commitment and most important where you are looking have any relevance. It is very odd, getting your head up and looking into the next corner while still being deep in one arcing the other way. Odd, but ace, fight the urge to up your entry speed, and feel the acceleration as you exit the turn. Oh, and don’t brake.

Braking only happens outside “Sections“. A section can be anything; turn, stack of roots, drop off, tricky climb, whatever. Hence not a lot of point in a “Fools Rush In” approach as it wastes energy, you’ll have to brake so losing that speed, and you’ll be ideally set up for making a right hash of whatever is in front of you.

Knowing that is my normal modus operandi, I really enjoyed the first two corners both 180 degree sweepers which’d normally have me threepenny bitting round. It felt slow until I saw the video recording and then it looked fast-ish but most importantly smooth. Couldn’t believe it was me riding really. Tony asked what we thought about the big root section between the two corners, but none of us had even noticed it. That’s what happens when you get your head up and look at what you where you want to go not at where you don’t.

We strung together every section and finished with a few runs top to bottom, ending is a one metre drop nailed in my head before I’d even picked my bike up to ride it. Definitely would have given me pause for thought at the start of the day. Physically we’d ridden about two miles, but mentally I was shot away so Tony stopped us before we hurt ourselves, leaving us with a warning that with increased speed comes increased responsibility.

So Biking God now am I?No of course not, because I’m still working with a very limited set of physical and mental attributes. But ask me instead if I am a re-invigorated rider? Oh yes and some. I’ve had some brilliant days on a bike over the years, and this day will absolutely ensure I have many more.

I am like that kid with a new bike for Christmas. I just cannot wait to get back out into the woods and look at the trail in funny directions. If you’ve money to spend on your bike, I’d heartily suggest ignore pointless upgrades and spend it with Tony who will make you a smoother, faster and safer rider and change the way you enjoy the sport for ever. That’s got to be worth more than a carbon bar.

You can catch some short video and Tony’s commentary of our day here.

Different Strokes

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, Road Riding4 Comments

First up a question: “What type of stroker are you?“. While awaiting answers which I am sure will include “Playful” “Rude” and “Heart”, let me focus the roving eye of smut onto something a little closer to the real point. Back in the day when I had hair under my crash helmet, two wheeled transport came with engines and regular accidents. And most of those engines, which also came with regular rebuilds, were of the two stroke variety. Motors that went “Suck-Squeeze” “Bang-Blow” as opposed to your four stroking “Suck” “Squeeze” “Bang” “Blow“*

Two strokes were known for a power band stretching 2 maybe 3 thousand revs. My old RD350LC would barely move below 6k whereupon it would rear skywards like a Lipizzaner stallion, right up to the point where the piston rings exploded. It wasn’t a relaxing way to ride; one hand hovering over the clutch lever, ready to cut the engine before your trousers caught fire, and the other hanging onto this amped up rocketship pawing at the horizon. I loved it.

But as I got older and wanted to travel further than the end of the road, I became a four stroke man. Far more relaxing, especially with a big capacity twin cylinder throbbing away between your wedding tackle**. It’d pull your ears off from about 1 revolution a minute, until running out of steam about the time the 2 stroke was about to get snarly and interesting. Four strokes you rode on the throttle, two strokes on the gears.

There’s a point here, and we are getting to it. Most cyclists think they’re four strokes. Well let me qualify that, most BLOKES who ride Mountain bikes assume that their internal combustion engine is like that monster twin – powerful, almost infinite and torque-ier than a tractor. Which is why you see big gears being pushed in slow revolutions as proper men bend the terrain to their will. Let’s be honest spinning away like a demented hamster isn’t exactly macho is it? It’s all a bit, well, girly and possibly roadie.

As a rider with significant PSO***in my riding history and the logical reasoning that spinning faster must use more lung capacity, I’ve always been a Four Stroker. Until now. Because, counter intuitive as it may seem, you are at your most biomechanically efficient when spinning at 80-100 RPM. I’m normally knocking a zero off that on super steep climbs, with prominent forehead veins, associated gasping and a sore knee.

I have learned quite some stuff this week, and some of it from the factual vacuum that is the global Internet. Normally any search with a medical term will bring back results only two clicks away from a “you have incurable cancer” diagnosis. But I made an effort to chaff my way to the wheat, and then experimented practically on the dark side of the cycling moon. Monday morning I felt terrible, so decided to punish my lungs with a zero degree commute. That’s not zero degree gradient sadly, and the last of those had me flapping about on the station platform in the manner of a recently landed trout.

I don’t believe the desperate search for a ventalin, bulging eyeballs and chronic rasping cough nailed me up as the poster boy for “Go Cycling, it’s the healthy option“. Therefore the trip back was viewed with some trepidation – I could have asked for a lift from Carol, but that’s just giving up, accepting the thin end of the wedge, taking the expressway to gloom. So instead of treating every hill as a personal challenge to my mighty thighs, I decided to go long on leg, and short on lung.

Spinning fast feels silly, it probably looks silly, and we’ve already established it’s borderline homosexual but you know what? It only bloody well works. First big hill, I guiltlessly selected the little front cog and accelerated up the gradient. Tailwind or broken GPS I reasoned, until it happened again and then kept on happening. Emboldened by this cheating approach to speed, the final big hill was seamlessly segued into the way home.

It’s one I’ve been avoiding, basing my valley road rationale on its post winter slop and potholed brokeness. But this was just a shameless façade to hide the real reason that a 250 foot climb gained by a steep gradient wasn’t compatible with mono-lung. And if I’d attacked it as I normally do – Four Stroke, don’t change down, wind up the motor – then it probably wouldn’t have been. But in two stroke guise, I was constantly ratcheting the shifters so I could maintain a fast cadence. I sat and spun the whole way up and the world passed by acceptably quickly, and I didn’t pass out or pass into the next one.

This experiment had an interesting conclusion; the time on the clock showed my fastest ride home. Ever. Okay my previous best effort was on the heavy Cross Bike, but even so this was both unexpected and a bit bloody fantastic. I tried the same approach on last night’s MTB yomp up the hilly Malverns and it’s still a winner, although lumpy terrain and technical challenges blunt it somewhat. And we were taking it pretty easy in deference to my “Bungalow Peak Flow“, but even with all that I’m a total convert.

There will always be a time for some Manly Four Stroke action. But it should be an explosive sprint, not the default approach for every climb. And while I’m still a bit embarrassed at my dalliance with the granny ring, hey you’re carrying those gear with you so why the hell not?

Amusingly I went to see Dr. Leeches understudy who explained a lot of things I probably should have known about Asthma and vectors and management and all that stuff. Eventually we agreed leeches were off and we’d go with some high tech TCP gargling. Saves on pills I suppose – but he did finish with “riding your bike will do you more good than harm”.

Maybe there is something in this medical science eh. Anyway I’m off for a ride on my bike. Or, more accurately, a bit of a spin.

* You see know why I felt it was important to clarify EXACTLY what I was talking about here. I’ve noticed my readers don’t need much encouragement for smuttery.

** I can’t help myself either.

*** Pointless Singlespeed Ownership

Double Take..

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

Best way to describe the FoD return ride today. Except the trails were even dryer, the car was frost free when we left and my attempts to conquer the Downhill courses started small and worked down from there. I added another Tim (that’s him above) and nature gave freely of her spring bounty. Dust motes flashed in the weak spring sunlight and shone on white knobbly knees which powered black knobbly tyres.

FoD 14th March FoD 14th March

FoD 14th March FoD 14th March

Even Mono-Lung appeared to embrace it’s lost twin and for most of the ride, I was blessed with most of my aerobic capacity. Careful use of the word “Most” there, but I’m increasingly hopeful the worst is behind me. Generally struggling to breathe and making gasping noises. See how tomorrow’s ride to work goes, six am has not generally been associated with a peak flow much more than a coughing squirrel so we’ll be leaving the cold beer on ice for a while.

FoD 14th March FoD 14th March

Riding was good tho. Spring feels really well earned and the harshness of the winter places the firmness of trail and warmth of rider into pretty stark relief.

FoD 14th March FoD 14th March

You never know, maybe we’ll even get a summer this year. I’ve just taken the mudguards off my road bike, which confirms a mental state on the rubber roomed side of delusional.

Pubs – what happened there then?

On By AlexIn Other stuff4 Comments

My brother used to espouse the theory that Pubs were the new Churches. This sermon was inevitably delivered in a beer serving hostelry, which neither of us had any intention of leaving its’ warm fug for the cold hostility of God’s place round the corner. He felt therefore that the overwhelming empirical evidence was with us, and the sooner the Church got a few barrels on and replaced the Cross with a dartboard, the more chance they’d have retaining their few, aged customers.

I was never quite sure it was so clear cut, and – even at that young age – a balanced view between atheism and the outside chance there might be something in this divinity stuff kept me firmly on the fence. Spiritually that is, physically I was getting shit-faced down the local on a multi-year research project to calculate the exact quantity of tequila chasers it took to render one permanently blind.*

I’m so much older now. Hangovers last for days, occasionally weeks. So I find myself capping the bottle early doors or substituting a nice cup of tea on a school night. And, since moving out of the beery post work paradise that was our old office, pubs have little gravitational hold on me nowadays. This has absolutely whatsoever with some kind of long term Puritan abstinence, more a slide into the habit of home based drunkenesss.

Why not eh? It’s not far to fall into your bed, and even if you do find a single flight of stairs too challenging it is unlikely you’ll be mugged on your own sofa. You know exactly what you’re drinking**, there’s unlikely to be an unseemly crush for the toilet, and your boorish behaviour is generally only exposed to a long suffering spouse. Or the in-laws, and let’s face it that’s sport “Go on, tell me again exactly who it is taking our jobs, and more on that great idea of your to arm the border guards”

We do pubs as families now. There may be a pub closing every day, but that’s more about demographics, social habits and – this seems to be lost in some of the hand ringing – because some are undeniably shit. The No Smoking ban may have forced out the hardcore pubbist, but the vacuum has been filled by those who fancy a pint, and know this comes with a no cooking option. But I can count on the fingers of one hand*** the frequency in which I’ve gone to the pub for a beer with a few mates in the last year.

Sometimes after riding in far off places, with good old friends and a thirst that only a day spinning pedals can bring. Or forced stopovers in our lovely capital where there is nothing to do except get properly lathered. But no, going for a drink after work has been substituted by getting on my bike or driving sixty miles. And lover of alcohol as I am, it really mixes not well at all with tons of metal driven by people who have “Cock” tattooed in their DNA.

Until last Thursday when a combination of mono-lung, bastard strong prescription steroids and a visitation from those normally confined to the London hutch saw me stuck in a poncy Pub drinking orange juice and wondering what the fuck had happened. Context is required here; all round the Birmingham office is a gentrified Canal Basin full of identikit gastro-pubs and Canary Wharf wanabees. Even in these straightened times, Thursday night was full of champagne, sycophancy, forced laughter and testosterone braying.

Juxtaposed between these raging bulls and bored looking bar staff were two hen parties singing their way through a back catalogue of Karaoke favourites. Occasionally they’d hit the right note, but the general noise was as flat as the fizz they were drinking. I looked around and though “Jesus, either I got very old, or they’re all on some kind of sponsored acid trip“. The Son of God failed to illuminate my mind with any answers, so I made my excuses and got the hell out of there.

I do like pubs. Old pubs, or pubs that are made to look old. Hand Pulled beer. Pies. Jolly, fat publicans who know what they are serving. I’ll even put up with some nailed brass-ware and unidentifiable agricultural relics. I like sitting down in a creaky old chair and being able to hear a conversation without an ear bleeding accompaniment from a base speaker the size of Croydon, or the incessant beeping of some flashing machine.

You can put your bloody crackberry away as well. What’s all that about. Reading email IN THE PUB. How important do you think you are? And if you are, get your fat arse back to the office. It’s bad enough talking about work in the pub, never mind doing it.

You know I’m not sure my Brother was right. Pubs are not the new churches. I’m not exactly sure what some of them are, but I’ve absolutely no intention of spending any more time finding out thanks. Of course, you could argue I’m a grumpy old bugger that’s failed to move with the times. And, right now, I’d probably agree because next to me is a large glass of wine, and inside I’m already feeling a rather warming glow. Maybe I should open up to the public.

* I never found out, but it wasn’t through a lack of determined application. Really it would have been kinder to spoon my liver out with a rusty trowel, before affixing it to the wall with a nail gun.

** Until that horrible moment where you’re sober enough to be able to find the “Bio Hazard Drinks Bottles” but too pissed to care why you stashed them ten feet underground guarded by a tiger.

** Six. I’ve been inducted to the ways of the Herefordshire man.

Dr Leeches.

On By AlexIn Bikes, Other stuff8 Comments

That’s my internal nom-de-plume categorisation of the wizened old duffer who occasionally wakes up and pretends he’s my physician. In the coming up two years we have lived here, I have been to the Surgery exactly twice. First up for a speedy referral to a proper health professional with knee fixing skills, and secondly – today – to demand a miracle cure for squatting mouse-lung.

My expectations were not high, and to be fair they weren’t met. Twenty minutes sat amongst very old people clearly just waiting to die failed to improve my already twitchy demeanour. Sometimes I feel my age and wistfully yearn a little for the power of youth, but this morning I gapped these stooped and twisted wraiths by coming up forty years. Anyone with a mortality fear avoids hospitals and health centres for very good reason – they are full of sick people reminding you of what is going to happen. Sooner or later.

Let’s hope later eh? Anyway the suited wurzel gave me the once over and declared I wasn’t undergoing a month long Asthma attack. I agreed with him, and further agreed that it wasn’t strep, or some new allergy or hay fever or alien mind probes. I even saved him the bother of dusting off the Peak Flow Meter having self-certified myself at a “Route Must Not Include Stairs” 400 li/m. Even for a Lungy Cripple as myself, that’s down 30{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} from a base that’s adequate at best.

Back in the days when I confused titles with wisdom, such a non-diagnosis would have left me tipping my hat and thanking the good Doctor for letting me waste his time. I’d probably have hacked my own leg off if he’d asked as well. Now, I’m a little less respectful and a little more direct; “What’s the plan then Doc, leeches again is it?”

Oh how we laughed. Well coughed really but it was a moment of togetherness. In a flurry of activity not seen by this fella for about twenty years, he withdrew an armful of bloody and perscribed a course of pointless steroids that would have no effect other than to eat through my stomach lining. However, so desperate am I to remove my “Mouse-Lung on Board” sticker, I’ve downed the first six chased by a Nurofen* and now rattle as I make slow progress towards where the real drugs are kept.

£14 for a prescription? You can get a decent bottle for that. Apparently if the old soak remembers to send off a sample of my red stuff, he’ll give me a call back Friday to offer information on whether there’s anything nasty going on and/or a chance to stick my name down on the embalming schedule. Or was that he’ll only call if there’s a problem. I can’t remember, and I don’t suppose he will either.

Three years ago when this all went off, I bored friends, family and strangers alike with my imminent demise. I’m far more sanguine this time round because it feels the same, and so eventually the mouse shall pack up and leave, returning the fitness I cherished back in January.

Until that happens tho, I retain the right to be grumpy especially as Dr. L left me with a stern – if shaky fingered – warning to desist from any activities involving significant aerobic exercise and the cold. In keeping with my new found scepticism of all things health care, I think you can guess exactly how much notice I’ll be taking of that.

* Amusingly I’ve strained a back muscle while attempting to get some air into my lungs. Maybe it’s not as funny as it sounds.

Spring Therapy

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

Forget the seasonal pedants – for anyone with a love of outside, March 1 is the unofficial start of Spring. And, whilst we know it is irrational, the expectation is for the hedgerows to explode into growth, the sun to come – and stay – out, the trails to dry up overnight and with all this, seven months of uninterrupted MTB goodness to begin.

For those of us with a real weariness of winter, these changes cannot come too soon. With two events already entered, both with the number ‘100’ in their distance classification*, and the first of which is less than six weeks away, I’ve been upping my riding frequency as soon as the clock struck March. This has already included a Malverns death march, and two commutes that are mildly life-affirming, but generally undertaken in the dark, cold, wind and rain.

Through such trails and tribulations, it’s important to remember why you’re doing this; increased fitness, good summer base, miles in the legs, pounds off the belly, all that sort of stuff. But I have two problems with that; the first is MouseLung(tm) has played the Squatters’ Card so I’m struggling with about 80{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} lung capacity**, and secondly that’s not what I ride a bike for.

Time for a change then. Today I needed to tap back into my woody roots, get back to setting off with no plan, no target mileage, no goal for vertical distance. Just go and do what started me on this ten year journey of fun and frolics; messing about in the woods if you will. And there is no better mate for that sort of thing than TimH of this parish, who greeted my question of “What’s the plan then?” with an airy digit waving in the direction of some trees.

No ride with Tim is complete without some hike-a-bike/trail finding action, and no sooner that we’d spun up a sun-splattered fireroad had he dived off into the bushes promising “There’s a trail in here somewhere“. Indeed there was, and more than one frozen solid but lightly warmed by a weak sun and shielded from the bitter wind. Tim found us a fun little bombhole to play in, which we did for quite a while even getting the cameras out. Obviously we were both WAY better before new-media was there to catch our efforts.

FoD March 2010 FoD March 2010

A little more perambulation round some recent logging had Tim apologising for missing some tasty singletrack action, but I didn’t care one jot. Bike, Hard Dirt, Narrow Ribbon of Singletrack, Woods, Mate, Sunshine, Bacon Butties to follow. Doesn’t just tick all the boxes, but writes mile high in neon crayon “I REMEMBER NOW WHY BIKES ARE ACE”

And they are, especially when thrown roughly at a couple of the FC sanctioned DH tracks. First up “Corkscrew” a belter of tabletops, berms and one fairly “woooah where’s the bottom of that?” drop. It’s all rollable – ask me how – but a second and third run had me hanging onto Tim’s wheels, as his lines tore up the trail and beat down the obstacles. We approached the drop at a speed entirely inappropriate for a man of my bravery, but – as ever – enthusiasm had taken over from common sense.

There are points when you are riding trails on the limit of your ability when you need all your bike skills RIGHT NOW. As we cleared all three foot of the drop, this was clearly one of these times. I landed near the trails edge facing a tree, with my rear wheel locked up. A moment of adrenaline fuelled clarity sequenced a brake release/turn in/push down/grit teeth approach which gained me the corner, but lost me too much time to catch Tim.

FoD March 2010 FoD March 2010

I kept trying tho on the next DH trail named somewhat extravagantly “Sheep Skull“. I didn’t see one of those, but what with everything else going on including steeps, exposure, encroaching trees and relentless roots, I’m probably not the most reliable witness.

DH Sated for the time being, we headed off to the next valley searching for the next slice of singletrack – allegedly totalling over 200k in the entire Forest. After some more tree wiggling joy, time and tiring legs conspired to place Tea and Medals in our immediate future, but we were high on the ridge now – cold out of the sun and in the wind – searching for the most fun way down.

This appeared to be a mellow top section which dropped into a close contoured hairpin alley. Two of these steep and loose exposed scaries had to be conquered before plunging into a high speed chute over another maelstrom of interlocking roots. I’ll not document the rider who managed to do it first time, mainly because Tim had shown me a clean pair of wheels all day, and I reckon he was just trying to salve my ego a little!

FoD March 2010

Giggling like the inner children we are, big hand waving ideas of where we were going to explore next time, accompanied big handfuls of tea and pig-inna-bun. We hadn’t ridden that far, or for that long, or climbed very much, nor maintained a high average speed. And you know what I’m going to say next – it mattered not at all.

This was a ride which reminded me why I ride. Last week a different Tim and I messed about in a similar manner on the fall lines in the Malvern hills. In between I feel like I’ve been trying to damn hard for something I’m not that bothered about.

More Spring is good. Less targets are welcome. Bikes are ace. I’ll not be taking myself too seriously again any time soon.

* and one is more than that in real non metric miles. Gulp.

** Which, with Asthma, is about sufficient to tackle a difficult set of stairs.

Uncommon sense

On By AlexIn Pretentious nonsense10 Comments

I’ve been accused of many things. Some – if not most – manifesting to the big difference between ‘waving my arms shouting big ideas’ and the actual delivery of these crowd pleasing promises. But yesterday I was blind sided by something tangential with a heartfelt “You have No Common Sense whatsoever“* being dropped into a pit of quite ego-stroking flattery.

What struck me most was the assertion that us Right-Brained “Look out of the Window and make something up” types can not – and should not – belittle our cerebral creativeness with the desultory drudgery of everyday tasks such as remembering how door handles work.

This bothered me a little because I’ve always craved the heavy competence that comes with practicality, but when God was handing out those kind of skills, I was accidentally setting fire to an Angel. So let’s examine the weighty term “Common Sense” shall we as, from my analysis, it is neither very common nor entirely bedded in sense.

First definition is all about practicality especially in the face of a crisis. Take, for example, when our state of the art heating system morphed to state of the ark when pissing mains pressure hot water down the sitting room wall. I was your shrieking Joe Pesci to Carol’s unflappable Danny Glover but afterwards I was the voice of calm whilst the remainder of the family refused to accept that one crap joint does not put canoe building at the top of your agenda for “Things to do at 1am in the morning”

So if it’s not all doing the right thing when everyone else is considering the benefits of personal explosion, maybe the focus should shift to an all round excellence in the shed. Common Sense is merely outstanding tool usage and the genetic ability to bevel. I’ve met people like this who can turn their hand to absolutely anything; wood into furniture, metal into cars, electronics into weapons and these people all have a name. It’s engineer and frankly they shouldn’t be allowed outside without a minder and a a translater.

Flip side is the practical types who can explain – to the point of eye-forking tedium – how stuff works, but let them within three metres of a power tool and there’s a good chance the world will end. And not in a good way. So I’m no closer to what ‘Common Sense’ may be unless it’s something a little less aspirational. Are we talking about choosing to mitigate risk when considering reward? Is it saying “no” when “yes” might be quite a lot more fun? Especially if whipped cream and one of the Mynogue’s may be involved.

I hope so. Because – at 42 – I’m pretty well set on not dying wondering. Most of my biggest mistakes** resulted from an impulsiveness that treasures a quick hit over a long term benefit. A cheap laugh rather than sparing a feeling. 30 seconds of stupidity instead of choosing a line better suited to my skills. A “Fuck it, that’ll go” rather than a week in Hospital. Twenty seconds of bullshit over 20 hours of research. Maybe Common Sense is nothing more than understanding you can be stupid or lazy, but not both.

You see I’m starting to find Common sense, well, a little dull. Let’s look at another human attribute shall we? For example being Brave, which I’ve always associated with a lack of imagination and a DNA lacking the mortality gene. But you will never feel more alive than when wrapping cowardice in a bravery straitjacket and trusting life to something other than stuff that you know is unlikely to kill you.

Common Sense starts to feel like being old. A good mate of mine was 40 years old at the age of sixteen. He’s not changed much in twenty five years except for a big house and even larger wine cellar. He is the personification of common sense; not dull, not boring just happy with his lot and plug-wiringly competent. He cannot understand, never mind answer, my question “Is this it then? Is this as good as it gets, is this ENOUGH?”

Stop being a dick Al he tells me. You’re not an astronaut and you never will me, but you’re luckier than most people. Get a grip, don’t shoot for the moon, disappointment is omnipresent. It’s out there waiting for you to fuck up. Stop wondering about what could be, and enjoy what you have. Now that sounds to me like common sense.

I’ll give it a miss thanks. While I can scare myself shitless on my bike, chuck toy gliders over landscape that feel like CGI, convince my kids that at least one of them is related to an elephant and make people laugh at me or with me, I’m not very interested in conformity, acceptance or death by a thousand cuts.

I am thinking of this as Uncommon sense and I hope you can join me in raising a toast to its’ two fingered salute at this ever more regulated world.

* Not Carol. She worked that out LONG AGO. About ten minutes after we met probably.

** I’ve asked my archivist, and she tells me this is true. Although there’s a few thousand examples to consider.

Filthy Rich

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

That’s pretty much how I was feeling when taking that photo. Which would seem a difficult mental equation considering the evidence; endless swathes of wet, mud to a depth which offered drowning as a real possibility, encroaching darkness and being quite properly lost. But I always find it really rather simple to solve: Bikes + Dirt = Happy Al. Hence my plan to make my personal World a better place snatching a ride between work ending and family stuff starting.

It didn’t start well. I was gritting my teeth on the first road climb soon to be picking detritus out of them, as my choice of mudguard* failed to prevent tarmac shrapnel fired by water tracers blasting me at high speed. Inevitably this wetness extended to an all over moist experience which at least prepared me well for when tarmac switched to trail. The woods here share none of the porous geology found in the Malverns. Instead they hold rain in a thick clay soup, making them largely off limits for MTBing during any prolonged wet spell.

This “Red Death” sets in about October and hangs around past Easter. There are – for the adventurous rider – some lovely dryish trails** but these are mostly lost in a delta of mud fed by rivers of gloop. I’ve seen terrible thing happen to great tracks when over-ridden during shitty conditions, so my approach is always to head straight down the centre regardless of any wheel swallowing puddles.

This served me well until I attempted to pedal or steer. Pedalling immediately drove the rear wheel sideways, and any attempts at cornering boldness immediately led to the kind of catastrophic oversteer where the front wheel ends pointing back at you. Or at least it would be, were you not now lying winded on a handy stump laughing your tits off. I dusted off the old cerebral CD cabinet and loaded up the forgotten “Chiltern Hills” riding skills to see if five years of falling off there would be in any way useful.

It was in a nudgy-nurdly approach to making progress. The fantastic ST4 was largely pointless as when it’s this wet – you’d be as quick on a shopping trolley. But that is not the point here; love the Malverns as I do for their all year riding, their steeps, their proper mountain-lite ness, woody singletrack still feels like home. And even when it’s under about four inches of mud, there’s still fun to be had switching drift for grip and sideways movement for speed.

90 minutes was all the time I had, which included a total of eight pot-holed road miles miles to reach the woods. Talking of totals, the scores on the now darkened doors were not terribly impressive. 13 Miles with a smidge over a 1000 feet of climbing. That distance in the Malverns, and you’re half way up Everest.

But it was brilliant fun, and entirely fitting in with my goal of doing something silly every day. Which may go some way to explain why tomorrow 5am will see me getting up to drive sixty miles to Birmingham in order to get a train to London. When ones leaves about the same time as the one from just up the road.

That’s not silly, that’s on the mentally unstable side of bonkers.

* None. Bought one of those fancy RaceGuard ones. But the clearance under the Reba fork arch is, well, Californian.

** Where the horses haven’t been. Clearly most horse riders are illiterate as the “Please Don’t Ride in these woods” are generally ignored.

Mud in your ice.

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

As trail conditions go, a sprinkling of fresh white stuff covering a crunchy layer of corn snow atop a bed of mid winter mud doesn’t trigger an enthusiastic “Let’s Ride” response to a 7am Alarm call. Except today when two of your five tomorrows include 18 hour London Returns and a whole week of shitty looking weather.

We kept to the South side of the Malverns with the high ridges and peaks being properly deep in snow. This still didn’t make our passage easy as every climb had to be forced through the greasiness and energy sappin g slippiness of trail wide mud. Which you only found as tyres broke through a thin crust of snow on the fourth day of a freeze/unfreeze cycle.

Malvern Ride - Feb 2010 Malvern Ride - Feb 2010

I’m fairly bored of snow. Only our last descent was on the right side of conditions nirvana with hardpacked snow on firm trails. The rest of a rather weedy sounding 10k loop had to be hard earned with granny ring gurning, and significant pushing. Downhill was pretty exciting to be fair, with fantastic levels of grip being attained right up until the point when there wasn’t any. At all. I’ll be going straight on then regardless of the spiky vegetation blocking my way.

Malvern Ride - Feb 2010 Malvern Ride - Feb 2010

Momentum was truly your friend – my old mud riding memories surfaced from years of Chiltern Winter* allowing be to blaze a stinky trail over half frozen stutter bumps and endless draggy slush. It was more fun that is sounds, especially as we had the hills to ourselves and most of our tracks were the first ones.

Malvern Ride - Feb 2010 Malvern Ride - Feb 2010

A final climb up a quickly renamed “Mist-Summer” found us finally on harder tracks where pedalling brought a proper forwards, rather than sideways, reward. A brief stop at the top ratified our choice to stay away from the high places with wind driven snow making riding difficult and a bit dangerous. Off the top we went, carefully on the narrow, snowy tracks and then faster – sometimes unintentionally – through the steep, muddy tree section.

Malvern Ride - Feb 2010 Malvern Ride - Feb 2010

A comedically heroic snow spraying plunge back to Hollybush brought forth icy tears and big grins.

Malvern Ride - Feb 2010

If I’m still loving riding so much in these conditions, what’s it going to be like when it’s dry, dusty, fast and warm? I’ll hardly be able to sleep 🙂

* And Spring. And Autumn. And Summer as well on too many occasions.

Long Term Weather Forecast.

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Four words to strike terror into the heart of any committed fair weather fairy/hardy mountain biker despite the heuristic proof that they are nothing more than Electronic Wizardry looking out of a virtual window, before making something up. So when, four days ago, a flutter of net pidginary cemented a Welsh trail centre rendezvous despite dire warnings of frozen fire and sleety brimstone, we rightly expected at worst cold and clear, and at best – well – Spring.

As usual, the prevailing weather conditions had nothing whatsoever to do with the Met Office’s finest lying machine, and everything to do with my utterance of the “S” word while being lightly warmed under sunny skies on a Devon beach some two days earlier. So it was a disappointment – if not a surprise – to find myself driving through a wall of snow some two valleys upstream from CwmCarn this morning. My riding Pal – who shared the last proper winter experience and the birth of the grim-o-meter – was running late, leaving me ample time to sulk in the car park as a volley of small arms fire was unleashed on the truck.

No way that was merely rain. Nothing as soft as H20 can create a racket quite that hard and so devastatingly depressing. Here we were then; in a never-ending winter, at ground zero of a rain event that can surely only end in flooding , and awaiting Nigel “the weather Jonah” Parker. As we’ve said so many times before “What could possibly go wrong?”

Not much actually. On the upside, waterproofs were exactly that, gears shifted, suspension reliably bonged up and down, tyres kept us in touch with the trail and brakes stopped us flying off it. On the downside, it was a bit wet and muddy. There is a rather snooty stance, generally dispensed bravely from behind an Internet keyboard, that trail centres are identikit scalextric tracks – the domain of the poseurs and poorly skilled, somehow unworthy of proper riders. And you know, under the pompous bullshit, there’s a nugget of truth there especially if you are surrounded with such helpful MTB geography as I am.

But not today, five minutes into the first climb we were both immersed in splashing through puddles and searching for grip. Experts in the former, rather less successful locating the latter leading both of us to wonder if today was “National Can’t Ride for Shit Day“. Really didn’t matter as all though as we crested the snowline and made fresh tracks for the summit. We’d be following five or six tyre indents since mud gave way to the white stuff, but come the first descent, fresh tracks were ours.

This was properly atmospheric riding, snow tamping down all noise except the hiss of our tyres, low lying trees brushing clothes and depositing freshies in your helmet*, and the trail lost under a carpet of late winter. Neither of us have ever ridden that descent quite so slowly nor been quite so close to a whole range of interesting accidents. Slowly it dawned on me, that your best UK rides are invariably undertaken in less than perfect conditions. And this is a good thing, because who would want dust and firm trails all year round eh?**

Something else began to nudge my hindbrain as well, and that was simply the ST4 is one brilliant bike. I’ve ridden CwmCarn on a range of MTB’s from short travel singlespeed through ever more exotic hardtails, and a slew of full suspension bikes. And one section in particular has always found them out – the exposed ridge hanging over the valley and made up of fast chutes, exposed turns and a whole bunch of pointy shaped rocks. Hardtails are hard work here as a few bits are pedally and all of it is pretty bouncy. Full Suss bikes don’t snap out of the bends, and feel a bit too magic carpet for the trail. Singlespeeds are just silly.

But the ST4 is not like any of those. It encourages pumping the trail**, taking more aggressive lines and being rather too brave carving through the turns. It’s differently great because you cease to think about the bike and what it can and you can’t do. You just ride and grin and ride and ride and grin some more until the world becomes a better place. You can’t explain why, but you don’t care much about that either. At the trails’ end, I was a little disappointed to see Nig only 50 yards behind on his hardtail. He did however have the decency to look proper bolloxed.

The homeward trail has been groomed and improved to deal with those who confuse braking with turning, and those of us who’ve *ahem* ridden off the edge after failing to bridge the gap between confidence and skill over the little jumps. Nig and I went at it line astern, fully dialled in to the level of grip and estatic in the knowledge that there is nothing but downhill hoonery between us and a huge mug of tea.

It didn’t last long enough, but it lasted long enough to validate why riding is always better than not riding. To reinforce the truth that is dicking about with your friends beats sitting around bemoaning the bloody British Weather. To make me wonder if it’ll always be like this, or whether one day I’ll accept middle age, living between the lines, lose the incredulation of my peers who pityingly ask whether it’s time to increase your medication, find stuff people find important is important to me, conform to social norms, stop breaking the washing machine, that kind of thing.

But laughing at Nig with his full body mud pack – the signature look for a Winter Mountain Biker – and having another head full of fantastic memories, I think it’s pretty sodding unlikely for a while yet.

Suits me.

* This is not rude. It was, however, exceptionally cold.

** Okay, okay fair enough but you’d need to share it with a bunch of Californians’. Hah, that’s shut you up.

*** No this isn’t rude either but it’s huge fun, and you can do it standing up so….