No Years Resolutions.

On By AlexIn Other stuff5 Comments

What’s different about one day in the year? If you’d wanted to give up smoking, then the morning after a Marlboro mainlining session would have suggested itself as the ideal time. Same for alcohol, chocolate, goat molestation and Internet obsessions. In fact, a proper bender involving all of these sins could trigger a monk like abstinence of the whole bloody shebang.

And yet it it’ll all be radically free salads and pointless Gym membership for, oh, about a week before paper resolutions are crisped by the fiery power of anti-commitment.

This year – as for every year since I stopped kidding myself I was going to play on the wing for England – I’m promising nothing but to laugh at other people failing.

So my non resolutions include:

1. I am not joining a Gym.*
2. I am not going to ride every day.
3. I am not giving up alcohol.
4. In fact, I am not giving up anything that I enjoy doing.
5. In terms of avoiding needling people, puncturing pomposity, refusing to accept dumb rules and lampooning anything regardless of correctness, political or otherwise – see 4:

Like anyone with more ambition than a spoon, there are many things I’d love to do as I rumble into my fifth decade. But writing it all down and sticking it on a wall, so come this time next year it can mock me with its’ complete not doneness? That way lies madness or at least a very depressing end to 2008.

I’m as goal focussed as the next man, woman or hedgehog. But I’m a bit more tactical so while some of you will be planning great things, I shall go in search of another drink.

So come on then, what have you promised yourself?

* Any organisation that has a business model which assumes 90{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} of it’s customers won’t turn up has my admiration. But not my money.

One speed, many problems

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding6 Comments

Stalking the netherworld is an immortal two wheeled beast. This mythical bicycle has crushed a million pedal revolutions, pushed back borders through seasonal campaigns and tramped thousands of miles with nary a mechanical glitch. And where the fabric of reality is thin, causality dictates that this phantom shade must take a form in the physical world.

Stripped of everything useful, pared back to minimalist engineering and unleashed on a unwitting global audience through the shadowy power of marketing, this free rolling allegory has a label, a name triumphantly proclaimed whenever muddy mountain bikers meet. It’s called a Singlespeed but beware innocent readers – it should be thought of as one gear but with many, many problems.

And back in the real world. the Wanga has just been on the receiving end of two hours maintenance and some blubbing. The paint has either fallen off or been defaced by some interesting looking hieroglyphics scarred in by muddy shorts or – because the paint is basically anorexic – passing shrubbery. The rear wheel has a bend like a boxer’s nose and the entire bike is guilty of removing a ton of Chiltern topsoil without permission.

All this after just one ride.

But what a ride it was. Even before we started the assembledge of unridden frame and manflu’d rider took on multiple whining personalities. Firstly the build flung together new brakes, juddery wheel and a chain line best described as “ah fuck it, close enough” – all of this under the influence of a holistic building approach that favours hammers over patience. Next up the rider has barely slept for three days and eaten even less frequently. The stomach bug that was going round has more gone through and out both ends. Banging at the door and demanding satisfaction were trail conditions, that have gone from hard to soft faster than an octogenarian deprived of his Viagra.

Trapped in this searchlight of disasters, it should be no surprise that barely ten minutes had passed before it all began to go wrong. The first climb exposed my mechanical incompetence as the complex rear dropout arrangement drove the rear wheel into the seatstay. On the downside, this meant hopping off, inverting the bike and struggling with allen keys of multiple width to put it back on the straight and narrow. On the upside, this was good practice for the subsequent five times the problem surfaced.

So as the bike took on a teenage personality and refused to leave its’ room, the rest of the riding package modulated on an empathetic wavelength, as snot streamed earthwards and lungs refused to fire. The mud was also becoming a little perturbing as a thaw injected previously frozen trails with a stash of trapped water. Riding downhill became a Hobson’s choice of two options; either pedal in the manner of modern waterwheel or, fall off.

It was at this grim point when I received a puncture from the Gods of Fate. Who are known for hating singlespeeders mainly on the grounds of their inane smugness. And while I have some time for that in general times, it seemed a little harsh to poke holes in both of my tyres at the same time. Bastards.

On the fourth attempt to make the rear wheel point in the same direction as the front, I couldn’t help noticing a rain of paint by torchlight. So while I was initially worried about losing paint on the chainstay, this was soon alleviated by huge swathes of previously glossy frame covering splitting with the host personality. I’m assuming this is a California thing, where paint is thinly added by a small child only recently graduated from colouring in stick men.

It really felt as if I was riding with multiple personalities – all of them pissed off at being dragged out on such a grim evening. Pulling them all through the gloop was a trial to be honest and as the mud turned tyres to slicks, my thoughts turned to summer. Or Prozac because one of the two was going to need to be on hand before I tried this again.

I expect you may have become conditioned, at this point, for me to extol the joy of conquering adversity. The sheer pride in getting through a ride like this, the banked karma of riding when it’s shit, and the joy is just getting out and riding whenever you can. But it wasn’t like that at all – it was just bloody awful and undeniably crap.

This morning picked over the remains. Last time I saw so many chips it had a fish served with them. I could cover it with tape but I’d end up insulating the entire bike. The whole idea of singlespeeds is that they are supposed to work in all conditions, with not so much as a spanner wielded. And that, by travelling through such conditions, the general patina will be that of extremely shonky.

As Meatloaf nearly said, one out of two ain’t bad.

Is it a bird? Is it a plane?

On By PhotoIn Other stuff, Photography3 Comments
RC Super Cub first flight, originally uploaded by Alex Leigh.

No it’s a flying drill. After the first flight ended shortly after take off – and some twenty feet up a tree – Carol felt that maybe, until a proper adult was present, I should curb my enthusiasm to smash it up again.

But always ready with excuses for why things cannot be my fault, I pointed out that the tail-plane exhibited fifteen degrees of lateral movement, which was in no way controlled by the electronic servos. Although the reason for this sorry state of affairs was a multi-bottled Cava assault on the build from the man with legendary MTB mechanical skills.

Ahem. Er. Moving swiftly on…

After restoring flying status, by exhausting the spares box and bandaging the accident damage with duct tape, we walked over to a field with significantly less in the way of spikey trees. I couldn’t help but be faintly embarrassed that I’d broken the plane, after a fifteen second inaugural flight, not by stuffing it into a tree but by wrestling it out from twenty feet up. Woody bruises and a broken propeller narrated our failure to catch it as it fell.

An yet, the plane is festooned with anti-crash technology. Which is good because – assuming the MTB crossover persists – I have crash technology essentially burned in from birth. However the super clever, sensor driven anti dive algorithm doesn’t actually operate below about a hundred feet.

Now I’ve not flown planes much, but most crashing I’ve ever been involved with tends to happen closer to ground level. And while the manual does trumpet the plane’s forgiving characteristics and apparent effortless flying capabilities, it does go on to strongly recommend your first flight is taken under the wing of someone with an unhealthy obsession of all things miniature fly-ee.

A quick probe into the forums suggest these people are slightly more geeky and even more self obsessed than Mountain Bikers. I honestly thought such a thing was not possible on a planet colonised by humans. Maybe – I’ve occasionally pondered – there is some alien race who are as single minded as a needle and twice as obsessive.

But no, these people are all around you. And they have committees and rules and Gala days. And beards. Lots and lots of beards.

The second flight was great and it went on for ages. The plane was either disappearing over a far horizon or pinging back like a boomerang with a vendetta. Much comedy over-controlling pitched and yawed us back over the field and a landing – that actually made use of the wheels – was affected. Affected by tufty grass and poor skills so the plane had an arse up repose, but amazingly nothing was broken. Except, maybe, my nerve

Flushed with success, of we went again and things went bad almost from the start. As the wind strengthened, my tenuous control weakened and an inevitable nose down furrowing crash followed shortly after. Second prop broke, game over.

But because the company that makes the plane secretly admits that all the anti crash stuff is nothing more than marketing guff, consumerable spares are cheap and readily available. A bit like ISIS bottom brackets except for the cheap part.

Still, this plane is currently costing me about 2 quid a minute to run. Which happily upgrades my Mountain Bikes to a status of “outstanding value per mile”

Build. Try. Crash. Grin. Flash cash to repair. Repeat until broke. Great hobby, sound familiar at all? 🙂

Christmas presents..

On By AlexIn Other stuff, Site StuffLeave a comment

… a number of seemingly insurmountable challenges. First off is how to usefully occupy your time, before it is deemed appropriate to crack open a beer. Secondly, the correct make up and dosage of drugs for children suffering from chronic excitement. And some unspecified lurgey which has Random croaking like a 20-a-day man, and Verbal running a temperature high enough to risk imminent explosion.

I’m sure – come Santa time – a miraculous recovery will sweep through the family and instead we’ll all overdose on chocolate, pop and extreme present opening. I intend to avoid the annual relative cluster-hug by heading first back to work, and then over to a bikey Wales. This is merely displacement activity when faced with the real possibility of breaking Al’s life rule #1. You all remember Rule#1 don’t you?

Assuming I achieve a karmic balance between boredom and alcohol, the many unfinished drafts may bleed into published. Then you too can share the exasperation of your loved ones shouting “Will you get off that bloody computer and get on with vacuuming the cat“. For fifty one weeks of the year, our house is clean, tidyish and welcoming, but imminent in-law arrival triggers an illogical need to turn it into a show home.

This just puts everyone on edge, though you dare not sit down on one without running the risk of extreme dusting. But because this sort of stuff lives in the “never to be understood” slice of the life pie chart, I’ll treat it with respect and a bottle opener.

So until then, Happy Hedgehog from the holidays. Or something like that.

Compensator of all the talents

On By PhotoIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, PhotographyLeave a comment
Chicksands December 07 (3), originally uploaded by Alex Leigh.

At first glance you may struggle to see the similarities between the Brown government and, the man with an unhealthy interest in stuffing the hedgehog with all the trimmings. But if you retune your mental radar to abstract and your belief systems to suspended then – just there – crackling under a random synapse is the faintest of links.

While ol’ grumpy has under his command a widdle of power-crazy, greedy incompetents with a similar intellectual depth as a tea spoon*, I have one of these. So while Gordo may believe he is – borg like – creating the perfect political hive, I am striving to be an average rider supported by the gussets of a fantastic bike.

And while the Government flounces around looking for someone to blame, the SX gets me out of trouble time and again. The plate size rotors are so good at resisting arrest, it would take the entire Metropolitan Police Service to stop them. Probably by emptying the contents of a assault rife into their metallurgy innocent DNA.

And while the bike cannot spin – well not with me on it – it can carve turns at angles of lean way beyond my gyroscopic boundaries. In terms of policy initiatives it proposes a transport plan of hooning off in a downhill direction, while encouraging the voters to hang on for grim death. Niche admittedly, but not without merit.

I can’t remember which sanctimonious wanker sound bited “We are at our best when we are at our boldest” but I have sneaking feeling there may be something in that. Standing astride a stationary bike on the run in to the drop that properly broke me earlier this year, I had the fear. I needed to break the voodoo, I had to get over the irrational terror of crashing again. I wanted to get it done and move on.

But still I stood waiting for the kind of support that doesn’t smile in your face and stab you in the back. And the bike whispered “You may not be much good but I’m pretty bloody fantastic. Just limpit the pedals, death grip the bars, look anywhere but down and hang on. You deal with the edge in your mind, and I’ll deal with the one down there. Come on, let’s roll”

So we rolled and it was all good. And the inter-galactic glow from being bloody terrified but doing it anywhere propelled us to the 4X course. Now I don’t think the stuffed shirts of No.10 have ever ridden a 4X track – I’m sure they tucked into a few 4 course meals – but really, they should. Obviously it’s configured for grommety DNA with Jeans, Hoodies and outrageous skils. But even they grudgingly admire us earth bound misfits – clumsy where they are smooth and scared where they are fearless – because “hey most people I know that are as old as you are already dead”

Driving home, with rock music cranked up to warranty invalidating volume, I couldn’t help pontificating on the not very abstract that riding bikes is fucking ace. Maybe Brown should have take the cabinet on a Chicksands team building exercise. Let’s face it, they couldn’t do much worse, and it’d give the rest of us a well earned laugh.

* This is known as “a Government of all the talents” with no implied irony.

Finger licking cold..

On By PhotoIn Bikes, PhotographyLeave a comment

See that picture? I took this – and the fact that my face had frozen – to mean that a night ride in the Chilterns would be cold, dry, fast and fun.

One out of four isn’t bad. A full report to follow but if the local ranger is poking his nose into what happened to a thousand tons of Chiltern topsoil, you ain’t seen me, right?

God, I’m going to need therapy.

Publish and be…

On By PhotoIn Bikes, Mountain Bike RidingLeave a comment

… a bit irritated.

This article appeared in Singletrackworld magazine. And while I’m all aglow with my words being inked onto real paper, they did rather butcher the photo. Buy the mag – and you should not because I’m in it, but because it is the best MTB mag on the UK market by far – and you’ll see a good size image printed on nice weighty paper. So far, so groovy – but all the contrast has been bled out of it leaving the colours flat and boring.

It’s kind of a lightly coloured monochrome. I’m only irritated because if you’re going to spend time improving the presentation of that article, surely it a higher return could have been made going after the words 😉

Guest Poster – Queen Charlotte Ride

On By PhotoIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, Photography4 Comments
Queen Charlotte Ride (NZ), originally uploaded by Alex Leigh.

Last month my Inbox was full of blue sky and fantastic riding from the other side of the world. The photos were from my friend Doug Todd, and this is his report of the 100k event associated with those images.

I warn you now, there is much descriptive prose of glorious singletrack, super hot weather and miles of dust. If you don’t want to be reminded about exactly what summer is like, look away now. Otherwise over to Doug:

While many club members were enjoying a day out around Taupo, Mark Clansey, myself and 46 buddies from Vorb spent 2 days on fat tyres and plush suspension traversing the Queen Charlotte Walkway in the Marlborough Sounds. Vorb is NZ’s largest on-line cycling community (worth checking out at www.vorb.org.nz) and this ride is an annual event. The QCW is a shared access, mostly single-track trail across DOC and private land, one of the very precious few open to both walkers and Mountain Bikers. By foot it’s a 5-day trek, by bike it’s a tough but highly enjoyable 2-day ride.

Saturday Nov 24th dawned clear and calm and we were soon heading out by water taxi across the glassy waters of the Queen Charlotte Sound, bound for Ship’s Cove. Once off the boat, Ship’s Cove has one exit “ a 240 metre ascent, which is rarely ever ridden successfully as the average gradient is 1:3. Most of us walked the tough bits, and so 20 minutes later we summitted to spectacular views over the Queen Charlotte Sound. After a brief stop we tackled a pretty hairy descent back to sea-level, made more treacherous by DOC’s decision to improve the trail by loading it with gravel¦. Much mayhem ensued with tails of people sliding into the banks or off the edge into the bush. I’d fitted new carbon-ceramic brake pads the day before and they were literally smoking half-way down¦..

After a gentle climb back to 200-odd metres we then had another screaming descent into Furneaux Lodge. Quick recovery stop and then a 90-minute trek along the coastline with fabulous, technical singletrack to contend with. The water taxi collected us from Punga Lodge and we transferred back across Endeavour Bay for a night of tall tales and carousing at Furneaux.

Continue reading “Guest Poster – Queen Charlotte Ride” →

Travelling, Man.

On By AlexIn Other stuff6 Comments

Right first past the post with the pop artist who sang that un-comered title receives… something. No goggling, because I’ll know, and anyway it’s like falsifying your golf scores so you’re only cheating yourself. Although playing Golf* automatically cheats you out of most things anyway, except possibly life membership of the social cripple and comedy jumper societies.

Anyway enough of silly pastimes. And no, not for a minute could Mountain Biking ever be labelled silly. Bikes that cost more than cars, figure hugging lycra barely constraining middle aged spread, riding round in circles, getting muddy, spending the family savings on pointless pimpery and occasionally breaking out into “Dude, I railed that berm, pumped the jump, sent it over the drop and would’ve shredded the switchback except the rebound spiked the rotor arc. Bummer“. Whereas golf, don’t get me started.

New Zealand sits behind nine weeks of winter darkness, the liver damage triggered by in-law angst and New Year resolutions. Now the latter are funny, Icarus like in the face of a blazing sun, born in alcohol, crafted in imagined degrees of separation from the last time and burned in the fiery death of the real world. January brings train journeys long in faces and radically free salad, but short on joy. Roll forward a month and the comforting fug of pasties and Silk Cut once again envelopes the carriage.

Right the point. Don’t get excited, it is hardly worth waiting for but it does have novelty hat content. Because the concept of a package holiday – embedded with schedules, cracked out smiley guides and an atmosphere of Brian “grumpy as fuck” from Wolverhampton – resonates with a happiness frequency similar to the sticks and ball brigade, we’re pitching for a camping experience.

Without the actual camping of course. After a day of the ‘world is the wrong way round’ jetlag, we’ll be taking 14 day possession of this confused truck. Is it a car? A caravan? An integral part of a Blitzkrieg armoured brigade?

Like a stuka. With wheels A truck mates with a caravan.

No this Mercedes is the latest in touristy mobile homage, with an upstairs bedroom to banish the kids, LCD TV, DVD Player and some cooking stuff. And a fridge to keep my beer cold. It’s also the thick end of eighteen feet long which suggests I may need to practice with my car towing the trailer, and Carol’s wagon roped on behind.

So I’ve taken soundings from my friend Martyn who is all things camper van. His sage advice can be distilled into this:

1/ There’s a lot of truck out back. Think about that when turning, reversing and – most importantly – overtaking

2/ Keep an eye on the “dirty water“. The consequences of a high pressure blow back are really too horrible to contemplate.

3/ Procure a Driving Hat. On donning said headgear, a chain reaction of packing outside stuff, expensive electronic goods, and – if time – the children shall be triggered. Anyone not on board in 60 seconds is hitching.

Sounds good to me. And the kids are belted in so far back from the cab, they could easily be in a different country. And while I like the sound (or lack of it) of that, I’m hankering after watching TV while I’m driving.

I mean, really, what could go wrong?

* I refuse to accept that Golf is a verb. My American colleagues insist on twittering on about “I’m off for a weekend golfing”. But – because I ensure that Bad Grammar Hurts – they never make it. Honestly, if we taught English with a copy of the light program and a baseball bat, the world would be a simpler place.

Morning blues

On By AlexIn Bikes, Pretentious nonsense, Road Riding5 Comments

Step carefully into the darkness. Grope for a frosty door guarding the entrance to the hard transport option. Shiver and fumble, with cold fingers, for riding gear. Add an extra layer and wheel out into the pre-dawn light. Clip in and fire shotgun audio – bang, bang – into the still of an icy world.

Crank carefully on white roads. Imagine a painful future through squirming tyres. Feel the freezing sizzle of 23c of slick on nature’s glass. Then, carefully risk upping the power needed to heat freezing extremities. Watch a crescent of fiery orange imperceptibly ascend over the low hills. Marvel as the layers of primary colours – reds and blues – push back the night.

Frozen water from autumnal storms forms winter crop circles. Long shadows are cast from bovinely stupid but contextually perfect cattle. Stop, dismount, abandon the bike to spiders busily icing Mandelbrot patterns. Marvel at this planetary show of fire and ice, until freezing hands and leaving trains drive you on.

Snick a couple of gears. Pity those unknowing stuck behind airbags and fiddling with heater controls. Sweep into the station and catch a little slide on untreated tarmac. Ignore the warmth of a stuffy waiting room. Grin at a hundred identical city coats and useless patent gloves.

Feel the morning blues. And reds – freezing fingers and hot blood mirror the colours of the sky. Stand on the platform now, savour the feelings of being warm and worthy. Remember why you ride a bike. Smile.