I’m sure I recognise that bike.

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Swinley Jan 08 (7 of 7), originally uploaded by Alex Leigh.

Up the road is an odd institution where you can rent a dog for day. Let me quickly clarify this, it is for the specific purpose of walking it rather than any illicit acts with a hair trimmer, gaffa tape and a vacuum cleaner.

That’s a premium service which costs considerably more, especially if you’ve had previous history with the centre’s hamsters.

Anyway my friend Jason, who has admitted to hardly any acts of bestiality (but he is from New Zealand and – come on – it’s like a Welsh leisure centre out there), fancied a go with the a Prince Albert (I had to look that up – honestly – why would you want to to be pierced there?)*

The DMR is already being abused somewhere in Oxford by a mate who had all the skills but none of the bike. A bit Ying and Yang when you consider my multi-wheeled collection. However, this was a short-term one ride loan which clearly gave Jason license to thrash it in a way I found quite perturbing.

“I must ride it like that” I lied as he cleared off at a rate of knots not significantly distanced from bloody quick. Me and Roger gave chase and – because I’d craftily removed the granny ring (don’t just don’t okay) from his gear selection options – we caught him when the trails turned to “arrrghh that hurts”

And since Nigel managed to retain close formation with his pedals this time and the sun was shining, we shredded some warm mud for a short while before attacking lunch with significantly more fervour. Bits of the trails were still frozen, a significant chunk were giving us a big wet brown experience (I just can’t stop myself now), but there was still enough shoulder-dropping carvage to bring far more smiles that the mere miles would suggest. One second we’d be doing a middle aged housing conversation, before dropping it like a Premier League manager and getting on with the real stuff of life. If it’s this fantastic in winter, how bloody great is it going to be once it dries out?

I’ll never tire or riding bikes even when a short winter’s day is gone between prep-ing, driving, faffing, riding, cake-ing, driving, cleaning, beering. I may, at some point, tire of writing about it for which I’m sure you’d all be immensely grateful.

* Crossing your legs and eyes at this point is an entirely appropriate response. I cannot imagine the horror of Airport Security once you’ve decided spearing your cock might me an amusing way to spend a couple of hours.

I was just riding along…

On By PhotoIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, Photography1 Comment
Afan Dec 2007 (1 of 7), originally uploaded by Alex Leigh.

..considerably slower than Andy. By the time I had arrived at the scene, the narrative of the crash had already moved on from slip-oh shit-wheel-rock-abandon ship-roll-check body parts-examine bike-buggeration. Having groaned up the Whytes Level climb on a mission for a long winters ride, Andy whooped off into the twisties, found the exact lack of traction provided by forest mud and rammed his front wheel sideways into a pointy rock. And himself down the trail, his sky-ground-sky journey punctuated by stumps and groans.

It seems impossible that we could beat our awesome effort of last year. And yet, here we were a nats nadger from 2008 – having driven 170 dark and windy miles – and five minutes into the first descent, we’re a man down. And down he went as well, carrying what I came to quickly think of as “the remains” thousands of vertical feet that deliver significantly more fun by wheel. Obviously given the choice between supporting our slightly battered friend in a band of brothers we’re all in this together style, or dismissing him with a sketchy wave and a “see ya later“, we gave him all the rush that a bum would offer an annoying, overstaying in-law.

And, of course – aside from the muddy misery of a new section which appears to have been designed specifically to suck the enjoyment from riding – we had a rather wonderful time as Andy trudged back downhill muttering choice curses to the bitch Godess of Mountain Biking. My fellow splitter – Nigel – was riding like the wind, flowing with irritating ease through bends and over jumps. I was more riding with the kind of wind that only a dietary switch to bran products could ease. This – annexed to a lame excuse of flat pedals only occasionally troubled by cold feet – was the only reason I was languishing some days behind after each section.

But while Nig was admiring the scenery and possibly engaging in a spot of sheep worrying, I was having enormous fun being bullied by a long travel hardtail that eats this sort of terrain for breakfast, and then demands seconds and thirds way after your body is crying out for a post lunch power nap. After a day of this, my shoulders ached, my wrists exhibited a weakness possibly occasioned by a 24 hour wanking competition, my thighs burned, I had a bad case of hardtail arse and my neck couldn’t even manage a truncated nod to articulation.

Even my teeth hurt. And I was walking like an old man having recently been surprised by a very large horse. Still after salving my wounds with beer and my ego with thoughts of being a bit less rubbish, a rush round Cwmcarn broke our long journey home. As Andy sat forlornly in the car, Nig ripped up the climb while I merely tore a strip off my legs for hawking their energy. Downhill they clung on like the rest of me as eyeballs, roughed up by fast, rocky trails, were added to the list of hurty bits.

Between many incidents of just about failing to crash, there was much imagined railing of singletrack and more real world death-gripping of bars. Occasionally I’d see Nigel sweeping imperiously down the trail, but each time I’d convinced myself I may be reeling him in, he’d dance on the pedals and his lighter-than-air Titanium steed would bunch and then accelerate at a speed barely under escape velocity.

And then a tiredness that can only be partially explained by physical exertion rolls over you, and left me lolling in a chair when I should have been making up for abandoning the family. There is a hollowness that aches to be back out there on the trails, punching the bike into a turn and feeling the tyres bite as centripetal force flings you out the other side. You have to come back, to adjust to the mundane world of not riding, to banish the selfishness of being an obsessive cyclist. And that’s hard.

That said, you can reflect on some wonderful views when you’re not absolutely sure what’s coming next. Sadly most of them are inside your head – a collage of possible futures each of them spiked with that heady concoction of fear and joy.

Perspective is the thing I guess, so on that note I’ll wish all the readers of this continuing nonsense a Happy New Year.

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” →