I want my life back

A verb I happily placed in the sad world of those who include bevelling and routing*in their chosen vocabulary. I’ve always found little room for such nonsense when ‘drinking‘ and ‘slacking‘ offer far more pleasurable displacement.

Apparently though this isn’t some kind of organic whittling of material – rather it is more a structured approach to training for maximum performance. No surprise it’s never caused me a moment’s bother until today where my mild concern at not riding a road bike for eighteen months was laconically described as ‘that’s a proper bit of tapering‘ by a proper roadie.

Proper in that arse-headed, chisel jawed, thin-lipped and tyred view of the world. Announcing that come Sunday, yours grumpily shall set embark on a hilly 100 kilometre voyage of the many peaks and troughs of the wye valley, he felt the urge to question my training, preparation and technique.

“Mountain bikes, decent claret, keep-buggering-on disposition‘ framed my jaunty reply. Not good enough apparently. Tapering was just the bloody end of it, there was nutrition, heart rate, tactics and mental alignment to consider before even turning a pedal.  Apparently getting round without calling for medical assistance not only lacked ambition, it was disrespectful of the entire endeavour.

My reply is not recorded by history**, but a jaunty disposition hid a worried frown. I’d had every intention of unearthing the much neglected road bike, blowing off the dust and re-acquainting myself with the whole oddness of a tarmac world. Sadly work, weather, apathy and a mental weathervane that rotates past ‘right then 50k on the road starting right now mister‘ before slamming to a stop at ‘See you on the dirt at midday, bring money for beer‘ with barely a guilty pause.

That guilt did at least trigger some desultory activity involving inflating flat tyres, poking unfamiliar components with a small hammer and harvesting hated lycra from the darker recesses of the kit drawer. A shakedown ride aimed high at 3000 metres, but ended low with only about 200. Half of these were desperately spent failing to clip into weird road pedals, and the rest wondering where the rest of the bars had gone. My working assumption was the same bloody thief had nicked about 2 inches off the tyres.

And the brakes? I’d have liked some. A quick jaunt off road confirmed it was no cross bike aswhat we have here is pain wrapped up in carbon and trinkets. There’s clearly no hiding place in lycra which is a bit of a problem as my superbly focussed weight loss initiative hit the buffers of I-Can’t-Be-Arsed-Anymore, and there’s a bit more Al and a bit less fitness.

Still I did manage 100k when I was nearly 10k heavier. This is a good statistic although somewhat mitigated by the non refutable fact it was two years ago when I was road riding to avoid trains. Since then I’ve ridden 100k exactly no times at all unless you’re allowed to include car journeys which apparently don’t count. Even if you have a mountain bike in the back.

Come Sunday then, me and my ever present insanity-wingman shall be awkwardly hanging about in a muddy field at stupid’o'clock, jostled by testosterone cockage and spring rain. There’s a part of me – that’s the part that’s about 9 years old – thinking ‘bollox, I’ll take the mountain bike, the camelbak and the peaked helmet.. that’ll show ‘em what a proper rebel I am‘. There’s another part some 35 years older that knows nobody’ll give a shit. Not even me.

Anyway at least it won’t be snowing. I’ll be campaigning the slow down to go fast approach with a clear rider than at least half of that is negotiable. Apparently there’s medals and stuff for arriving at some arbitratory hour. I think we can give that the fuck off it deserves.  Arriving back alive after 5,500 feet of climbing and much mincing on the descents will be enough for me. More than enough.

For about eighteen months if history is any judge.

* but not rooting. I once loudly admonished an office-full of shocked Australians that every proper Englishman always rooted for his country. A well tanned local slapped me on the shoulder and declared ‘fair dinkum mate, that’s a proper job‘. About five years later realisation dawned on why sniggering and pointing announced my presence on that particular floor.

** Oh okay it did. “Fuck Off“

Hidden in the Internet-Tardis that represents my many years of dead-electron drivel is a post which raises mirth and incredulation in equal quantities. Gasts have been flabbered on bike forums patrolled by hardcore keyboard warriors who curmudgeonly confuse cost and value.  And yet hidden somewhere in the ‘more bikes don’t make you happy‘ dogma nestles an unhappy truth.

Lots and lots of bikes HAVE made me happy. They didn’t make me any better. They do however represent my view of the mountain biking world and my place within in. That place being a somewhat chaotic meeting of real geography and the rather more impressionist landscape of my mind. For the Chilterns, lots of twitching eyebrow lock-to-lock steering short travel hardtails seems just the ticket. But that ticket gainstayed any entry to the new world of bike parks where riding was more short-and-mental rather than long-and-unthreatening.

And then there were the blind alleys, the drunken eBay purchases, the niche chasing nonsense all seasoned with a heavy whiff of nostalgia. Somewhere out there was the perfect shed of dreams. I just needed to keep on looking. And buying.

But let’s not look for reasons or even excuses to my revolving door approach to bike ownership. Instead it’s time to bring the story up to date where I hoped to show a new found maturity and laser like focus on a bare minimum of bikes which were well ridden, much treasured, carefully maintained and obsessively retained.  This didn’t quite happen. Okay it didn’t happen at all.

Right then? Kettle on? Biscuits ready? Then we shall begin. This isn’t quite chronological. I did the best I could with fading grey matter and Flickr EXIF data, but when there have been so many, owned for so few months, it’s always going to be more of a jigsaw than a timeline.

Summer of 2007 saw Roger joining the fray via a half price fire sale at Sideways Cycles. It was a lovely colour. Manly purple with a bit of sparkle. Jealous sorts refused to accept it was really any colour other than a sexually ambivalent pink, which I think we can all agree is green-eyed blindness. Sadly my ever more desperate denials were merely displacement activity for a frame that was about 2 inches too short in the top tube. The only riding style for my gibbon like frame was that of a praying mantis attacking a purple (okay pink) frame shaped fish. It wasn’t pretty and it didn’t last.

Clearly it was time to move on. Which begs the question of exactly why buying another singlespeed seemed like a good idea. Especially from the same manufacturer who were on some kind of metal saving top-tube reduction vibe. I rode it exactly once which I think we can all agree fits perfectly in the envelope of long term bike ownership. Then we moved to somewhere hilly, rocky and significantly more like proper mountain biking. Good excuse for some more bikes then.

So abandoning singlespeeds for the last time, I emerged like a man from rehab stating that suspension and gears are a victimless crime. And what a statement the Cove Hummer was. Just a brilliant bike ridden anywhere and everywhere for four years. FOUR years, that’s a bloody lifetime in my riding pantheon, The bloody thing should have been awarded some kind of gold clock for long service. I don’t have it anymore having decided the top tube was a bit short (honestly why didn’t I just chop a couple of inches from my arms? Bloodied stumps would represent a rationale fiscal alternative to just setting fire to tenners which is pretty much my bike buying/selling approach).

But this one has many memories that make me smile. I don’t miss it, but I cherish the time we had together. It was a great bike and I should have chucked fiscal prudence out the door and hung it on the wall.

I accept it’s getting on the dull side of repetitive blaming my transient bike collection on a single measurement. Especially when I actually test rode this and declared it ‘the one’, And it was for a while being campaigned both right here and all over the country including a fantastic day on the Cwmcarn downhill course, multiple presentations at Scottish and Welsh trail centres and some awesome natural riding in the peaks and the lakes. Then I rode the ST4 and that was pretty much it for the Pace.

Which didn’t in any way persuade me that collecting more bicycles that really didn’t make any sense at all was anything other than the logical progression of a rationale mind. Firstly there was clearly a hole in my riding life where a cyclocross should be.

I absolutely convinced myself I needed a cross bike. I’ve yet to convince myself otherwise, although what wasn’t apparent to me on purchasing this rather lovely older example was the simple fact that the brakes are merely bar mounted accoutrements to tick some legal boxes. It was fun off road until any retardation of speed was required, after which I would either a) fall off or b) nut a tree. Reduced to commuting duties for a while, the writing was on the wall once I’d decided – for the standard period of ‘al-time’ (i.e. not very much) I liked road bikes. First tho, we headed off in yet another direction.

Back before a beer fuelled sabbatical of a few years, one of my first mountain bikes was a Kona Kilaueu which somehow I survived some real off road rides in the peak district. But soon it lost its lustre and was consigned deeper and deeper into dusty sheds before being abandoned in a house move around the turn of the century. Always regretted that which gave me an ample excuse to buy a rather fine example off eBay one drunken evening. Being just a frame and fork, time and money were thrown at recreating a facsimile of my long abandoned bike,.

And it rode great. Lovely. Just like the old one. Right up until the point of pointing it off road where, after only a couple of rides, it was clear that I wasn’t close enough to a man to ride fully rigid off endless roots and rocky steps. So I sold it to a man who thought he was and moved on. Lesson learned? What do you think?

So back to that ST4 then, remember the one perfect bike – but before we talk about that, let us bring out our dead and prostrate ourselves apologetically in a desperate attempt to avoid censure. Okay, here goes, road bikes. Two of them.  For commuting and, well, commuting. I tried road riding and frankly it was slightly more dirty than the darker arts of animal husbandry. Somehow I managed a few 100k sportive’s with a scary bunch of chest-toast-racked billboard-lycra-wearing aliens but it’s not my world. Not even a little bit.

 

The latter commuted me to my office over nine months and a thousand miles saving me/the planet/randoms on the trains I would likely have killed until I decided that job was about as much fun as a 24 hour testicle slamming in  sharpened drawer and moved on. As did the bike. I hesitate to admit this but I sort of liked it; sure it was heavy and unsophisticated and a bit ordinary but that fitted me pretty damn well on all sorts of levels and we grinned our way through some truly epic commutes full of rain, wind and snow.

I still have the boardman. One day I’ll ride it again. I expect I’ll be about 84.

Right back to the good stuff. We’re not done yet, but we’re making damn good progress. I finally found a bike I really loved which was heavy, flawed, flexy but otherwise perfect. Rode it, rode it, rode it and finally bonded with something that suited my riding and strange dimensions. Lavished love and cash making it perfect and then the ungrateful fucker exploded into un-fixable pieces after a Pyrenees trip.

Orange were great and sent me a brand new one that was significantly modified, considerably less flexy and somehow less fun.

 

This one didn’t break at all and rolled 2000 kilometeres under my ownership before being moved on. By this time I’d got a pretty good handle on what I wanted to ride and a plan of sorts was formed. Not before this happened tho.

On selling the Cove, I decided a long travel carbon hardtail was missing from my life. The gap was filled by this on-one Carbon 456 which was essentially blameless if a little crude. Had lots of fun riding it which was far better than having to look at it.

About the same time, it became clear i’d failed to fully mine that niche that was cyclocross. At no time did I consider myself close to adequate enough to complete – instead I felt it would be an ideal companion to speed into the local woods and explore the myriad of tracks discovered through years of dog walking. Assuming I could buy one with some real brakes.

And in a spooky realisation of some random thought process, that’s exactly what’s happened. I absolutely love riding this bike and it keep me more than honest in rooty singletrack 10 minutes ride from our house. I’ve changed exactly nothing in over a year making this something rather unique in the shed of dreams. A bike that’s ridden and not modified? It’ll never catch on. Because…

Since that photo was taken in December 2012 (Mount Tide in Tenerife if you’re interested), it’s had a new fork, mech, tyres and bars. An astonishing bike that takes me so far out of my comfort zone I’ll near to get a taxi back. Fast – oh so very fast – composed, carve-y and on at me all the time to be a whole lot better rider. I love it like addicts love crack-cocaine. It’s probably going to hurt me quite badly but what a way to go.

And being a fanboi, I had to have another Cotic.

Having dismissed 29ers as a fad that not even a niche-chaser like me would ever be interested in, my position softened a little bit after riding one. The Solaris is fast and fun. Belying its little 100mm fork, stuff just gets rolled over at silly speeds until the terrain goes the other way at which point it just eats that up as well.

So that’s it. I think. There may be a few missing but that feels about right. For those not paying attention, I’m left with the Rocket, Solaris, Boardman CX, Boardman Road and long serving DMR Trailstar LT. So of the thirty or so once owned – however transitory – we’re left with just five.

I’d like to say that’s absolutely it. But of course, it absolutely isn’t. The bloody industry is throwing every more diversive platforms at us – long travel 29ers and 650b for a start, while writing off the 26inch wheels size that’s served us so well. An intelligent rider would declare ‘stop the world, I’m getting off’,

Honestly, I wish I was than man. But realistically I’m not. See you in a year with an update

… you a bit better that average. Possibly. There’s not much evidential measurement in mountain biking unless you categorise improvement by shaving seconds off your Strava times, or extrapolating a downward curve when plotted against A&E entries.

Quite a while ago, Tony Doyle rebooted my mountain biking world by breaking down riding into a small number of congruent techniques, which was as much about stopping what was wrong as consistently attempting what was right.

Tony’s continued success is a testament to – generally – older riders accepting that no amount of travel and technology will ever cover for an approach that is little more than ‘hang on and hope‘. And that’s great, more people riding, for longer, on harder terrain without hurting themselves.

But this hides a dirty little secret. Away from the bubble of a skills day, those bad habits creep back in. We all know that to be fast you first have to be smooth, to carve corners your body positon and weighting are everything, to ‘attack‘* steep, technical sections needs speed management and clear focus. Right up until your best mate starts to ride away from you, and – BANG – Mr Cahoonies elbows you out of the driving seat and we’re back to wild eyed desperation, naked terror and consequence delusion.

There’s nothing wrong with this of course. Adrenalin spikes and Dopamine hits never fail to raise the silly grin of the recently spared. Having fun does not always mean riding faster. Accepting your limitations is part of growing up. Our riding reality is never close to the minds eye view, so why not kick back, hang on and tweak the nose of terror with a technique that has so far kept you above ground.

The answer I think is because one day you’ll really, really hurt yourself. The difference between learned and instinctive skills matter most when it’s all gone horribly shit-canned, and the next two seconds are the difference between riding home and not riding for a long time. Since buying my Rocket, it’s absolutely clear it puts me into situations that are beyond my ability to get out of with any degree of safety.

Most of these are likely to be in the Alps. Where we’ll be in eight weeks throwing ourselves down mountains day after day, with ego, testosterone and big bikes for company. My riding is a mash up of half remembered techniques, sloppy copies of internet videos and burned in inadequacies when things get tough. Strava – we will be back to this very soon on the hedgehog once I’ve finally decided if I hate it or like it – tells me I’m fast compared to my peers. But that’s mostly the bike which is very capable. I’m not even sure I’ll ever get to capable, but I’d quite like to achieve adequately brisk and relatively safe.

Which is where Ed @ Great-Rock comes in. A Calderdale based skills coach who impresses with his easy manner, outstanding riding ability and legendary beard. It’s worth the price alone for a front row seat to view robustious facial hair last seen during the Victorian era. Behind it is an intelligent bloke with the knack of making hard things seem easy.

First up this is a very different approach to Tony. Not better, not worse, just different. Ed’s training ground is the steep sided valleys above Hebden Bridge, full of West Yorkshire’s finest rocks and roots. He sized us up very quickly, me – too far back on the bike**, Matt – too ‘closed in’, H – not loose. By then we’d ridden two or three great trails in the manner of those ‘travelling far too quickly for their own ability‘

This is where practice comes in. Ed doesn’t reconstruct your riding, instead he focusses you on a few moves to make it somewhat more fit for purpose. Firstly a more open body position combined with better management of speed before letting it all hang out on technical sections. This act of faith to abandon the binders means taking more direct lines and committing 100% to the terrain. There’s some soundbites around ‘chin up, elbows out‘ but it’s more subtle than that.

It’s also not easy. Trying to unlearn everything that’s so far made you a bit successful is frustrating and a bit scary, but the reward is when it feels right, it is right so even if – when – you screw up again, at least there’s something to go back to. The same with drops and lips. Ed has us attempting to bunnyhop – not as a car park stunt – but because it’s a brilliant way to launch over trail obstacles without losing speed. Years ago this was one skill I actually had, back in the days of flat pedals and short chain-stayed hardtails. Today – not so much.

A fast top to bottom run putting it all together was great right up until the point that crashing somewhat interrupted my flow. At attempt to clear an entire root section with a committed un-weighting move was scuppered by a distinctly uncommitted dab of front brake. The same error had me over again a little later while attempting the kind of steep, loose off-camber corner we’ll see a thousand of in the Alps.

My increasing frustration at being a bit shit was mitigated by Ed’s calm explanation of what was going wrong and how to put it right. Which I finally did on another steep switchback, but this time with a proper line fixed by looking a long way down the trail, a flick of the hips to drive the bike round and a committed body position that had my head somewhat nearer the stem than the rear axle.

There’s lot more here mostly around being less of a mannequin and more of a man on the bike. The realisation of all this were a few more fantastic trails at the end of the day where my riding yo-yo’d between really quite good and really quite tired.  Sufficient energy barely remained to throw ourselves off a concrete slab demonstrating new found confidence and technique. Even if in my case it came after a few attempts where Ed’s kindly instructions couldn’t quite eclipse the sound of a 160mm travel full suspension bike being rocked against its stops, as Herefordshire’s answer to the Kango drill honed his skills.

Sitting in the pub afterwards with a well earned recovery pint, it was clear that there’s a pragmatic way of going fast and having more fun while all the time reducing the fear factor of that speed.

In six hours you’ll learn why that is. And what to do. And a bit of how that works on every trail you ride. But you won’t leave proficient in those skills – certainly not if you’re starting with me. You will leave with a head full of ideas and a very sore set of muscles unused to being included in the great sport that is mountain biking.

Ed’s a great conduit for this. He’s a very approachable fella with a quiet passion for doing things right. It was a six AM start and an eight PM finish to squeeze in this skills day, but it was time perfectly invested. We’ll be back to ride those trails, and to borrow Ed for another day so he can teach us ‘olds‘ some the dark arts of proper jumping. Until then, I’m digging out the old jump bike and practising.

Because average is the new fast.

Pics here and here for those wanting to see more. Better still, speak to Ed and get yourself booked on a course. For the cost of a couple of tyres, you get to see a whole new world of awesome

* I find that word a bit insincere when considering my riding. Honestly would replace it with ‘mildly menacing’ or ‘desperately trying’

** Removing my head from a perceived place of terror, i.e. the trail ahead.

 

A glacial epoch back or so, I expounded my new found theory of cyclonomics,  at which point – work being pretty much done – I smugly awaited multiple nominations for economics awards, Nobel prizes and global lecture tour invites to wow the world with this unheralded insight into why riding bikes was both fantastic and fiscally stimulating.

As even the most delusional – even those barely tethered to reality – would quickly ascertain, any letterbox widening on my part was somewhat premature.  For me it’s been a one man credit card crusade to prove a theory that has so far delivered not much more than ‘bloody hell that’s a shit load of stuff I appear to own now‘.

Take the Goshawk 50 for example* where any treasonable thought of Gym membership was usurped by freezing my cods off on a weekly basis to ensure a result somewhere at the respectable side of mediocrity Saved myself thirty quid a month for at least two months before spending the balance and quite a bit more to actually participate in the event.

£20 to enter of which a chunk is donated to charity feels like a fair swap. That lot ^^^^ up there less so. Best described as analogous to a hated visit to the dentist. After pondering it for a while, you sort of feel you should, but you rather wish you weren’t. And then you get to pay a huge chunk of money for the privilege of having a shit time. I’ve always assumed this is how posh status-concious people feel about the private school system.

So what we have here are purchases that represent nothing but survival. Some items shall be eaten, some will be drunk, some shall protect important squashy bits from collision trauma, and the remainder may partially protect ones derrière from a Welsh enema.

Let’s start there; on leaving the Chilterns and their 10 month mud cycle, I swore that never again would any proper money purchase another mudguard. Gopping horrible aesthetically reprehensible objects best left to those with map boards and a wardrobe full of Ron Hill. Really, just BTFU,**, splash out on some splash resistant shorts and embrace the dirty protest served from your back tyre. Then I considered the enduring misery of a 50k pebble dashed arse,  and a quick about face suggested twenty quid was an excellent investment. Sadly that budget wouldn’t stretch to my first choice, which was obviously a Navy Frigate.

This Welsh forest is trumpeted by the organiser as “all-weather.” I assume because that’s what it receives on a daily basis with a very clear emphasis on rain. Dispatching even David Attenborough to this latitude, he’d be bloody lucky to find any plant or creature which needed even a glimmer of sunlight to survive. And, as anyone whose ridden a bike off road in any kind of wetness, we can all agree on the almost limitless traction provided by wet roots. Right up until the point where we find ourselves somewhat embarrassed half way up a tree.

What else; well you the more keenly athletic of you may have spotted a collection of expensive placebo cynically marketed to our roadie brethren. My consistent if not always successful response to this nonsense around fuelling and hydration was to simply drink beer with bits in it.  But always looking for a cheeky edge, I had my time trialling mate write me a plan on exactly how to prepare, what to eat, when to scoff it and how much to stuff in.

Absolutely nothing in there about a nice sit down mid ride with a cheese butty washed down with a cold lager. Worse still was his advice which suggested I’d need to find space in my bulging pack to bury my ego. Apparently any attempt to keep up with the fast/quite fast/a bit slow/one legged people on pogo sticks would torpedo my shark like assault through  the pack some 10k from home.

Just the two little problems with that approach; 10k from home the real Al will be tucked up in the pub with a recovery pint and a bag of nuts, having decided that 25k of that winter madness constituted more than enough. And secondly the idea you’ve even sufficient energy to get in the way of any proper athletes when only single metric digits are between you and sweet, sweet non bikery lying down computes not at all.

Still the way he tells it, it sounds a bit like cheating so on that premise alone I’m up for it. And it validates going very slowly indeed, which opens up the possibility of taking a DFL position before hiding behind a tree then sauntering back to the start and turning the car heater on.

The rest of that package is mostly for the Alps trip some two weeks distant where body armour, van shuttles, big bikes and almost no pedalling at all shall take the place of pretending you can still vaguely hack it amongst your cross country peers. Ying, Yang and lying face down in the mud with bark abrasions are what make up this mountain bikers’ life.  Could be worse, could be facing the same but worth next month with the HONC.

Oh. Shit.

* I’d very much like to take it and place it somewhere in the seasonal cycle where hypothermia is less than a 90%  possibility.

** Bottom The Fuck Up.

Or wagon wheels as this new niche/the emerging standard/the ONLY wheel size you need – delete as per your standing in the internet-blowhard wheelsize jihad. All of my bikes seem to have a difficult birth, and – unsurprisingly as Random’Al was left in charge of collating all the bits – this one was no different.

However some things were exactly the same. Firstly my protestations that a busy man has many better things to do than build bicycles, even if that means occasionally riding them.  Result being a desperate husbanding of likely looking parts being carefully thrown into a box before being presented to a wary bike mechanic with a breezy ‘all there Nic, everything you need, absolutely no issues whatsoever, really can’t see a problem. Pick up at lunchtime?’

Things didn’t go smoothly from there. Although almost fifteen minutes passed before a bemused Nic telebonged me with a polite enquiry on how exactly he was to transfer the donor headset from a bike of entirely different dimensions. The ugly stick, in a last act of defiance, disgorged bearings and the like with it being built to a set of measurements clearly translated from English to Chinese by a man with only a vague understanding of both languages, and a specialism in camel selling.

I left Nic to serially problem solve the many other issues my desperately time poor assemblage of possibly useful bits and pieces had left him with, to motor across the county with strict instructions to return only with a part best thought of as unobtanium. Amazingly, skills honed on long winter nights* presented me impatiently at a counter manned by a nice man called Dave who opened about a thousand boxes before an Alan Partridge ‘AH HAH‘ signalled success.

Back in the car, and back to Ross for a second time having taken in the lovely environs of Hereford’s world famous Saturday Traffic Disaster, I presented Nic with my find in the manner of Darwin – recently de-beagled – stunning the scientific world with a slightly bonkers theory on why Church Building may not be a wise investment.  He took this opportunity to regale me with certain ‘issues‘ my motley part collection had caused during what should be a simple build.

At times like this, I find it best to nod apologetically and wander off to Lunch before to avoid being roped in to any actual work. Returning an hour later, a bike shaped object was more than taking shape even if my choice of BFFT** demanded a micrometer to measure the gap between front mech and rubber nobble. Still with trail conditions being essentially dusty right now, what can possibly go wrong? Failing that, I’m firing up the dremmel and customising Shimano’s finest.

On my THIRD trip to the bike shop, I reflected on an approach which selected parts by colour and shinyness probably needed some work. The bits I’d left out I now shamefully handed over, and the bits that were wrong we silently replaced.  But at the end of this painful process – well for Nic, I’d basically spent the day with Jess making jokes and eating cake – the result is something really quite pleasing.  Even if it appears to be missing 50mm of fork travel that’s clearly been lost in the wheels.

A quick spin down the road confirms it has the ride characteristics of ‘a bike‘. There’s definitely something odd going on with gyroscopic effect which makes me wonder if I should have fitted a speaking tube ‘ENGINE ROOM, ALL AHEAD FLANK‘ – that kind of thing. But what’s done is done, even with the rider that the remains of the ugly stick nestle malevolently in the rafters above my head in case the clothes of this new emperor are entirely fictitious.

Tomorrow I’ll go ride it. It’ll be an experience similar to lying face down in a muddy puddle for four hours, so empirical data to support the big wheeled apologists is likely to be lacking. On the upside, it’ll be riding a bike in the sunshine with my friends, with beer to finish. That’s significantly more important than what you are riding.

Lance was right about something. It’s not about the bike. Of course it isn’t. It’s about the beer. Bloke was clearly an idiot

* that’s surfing the Internet for bike bits. In case there was any doubt.

** Big Fat Fuggin Tyre. I’d rather be slower uphill than upside down in a tree. Grip over Weight every time. Probably a life statement right there!

 

Let’s begin by casting our minds back to last year. Sounds like a long time eh? Hmm. Specifically December 2012. More Specifically December 30th 2012 where words* rationalising and advocating the current bike collection were met by three things. By you; amusement and disbelief. By Carol; eyebrow raising good nature and by me; nods of approval and a warm feeling of a job well done.

It seems appropriate – if mildly uncomfortable – to use this very same medium barely a month later to recognise that my previously firm position on what constitutes the perfect shed of dreams may have softened a bit. It started with a tweet and ended, not much later, with a one word reply from the controller of all thing financial and final authority on what’s beyond taking the piss that went something very like this ‘LOL’.

It’s hard to know what cuts deeper. The fanboi’ism of an apparently slavish brand allegiance to a small bike company run out of an industrial unit somewhere up north**, or the indisputable fact that this latest pointless purchase is basically a mountain bike mutant. The endless piss taking of my friends isn’t even a consideration as this would only impact a man still in possession of even a shred of dignity.

There’s an arms race escalating in cycling – dreamt up by desperate marketing men, who care about market share and engineers who really should just know better. It’s either long travel this, electronic that, or carbon fandangling of the other to create ever thinner slices of a market that – even ten years ago – was pretty much fat or thin tyres.

But in some deep dark tea time of the soul, somehow we’ve allowed ourselves to become complicit in the acceptance of THREE wheel sizes. I’ll not bore you with the details, let’s just call then perfectly adequate, pointlessly large and somewhere desperate in the middle.  I’ve always been a 26inch man which frankly is enough for most humans, but the 29inch solution/solution looking for a problem has insidiously been working itself into our psyche via glossy magazines and endless rainbow chasing newer is better.

They roll over stuff better. Oh yeah, right.  They retain speed. Whatever, you can get arrested for that. They add three inches to a critical measurement that you shall be judged by. Hmm, okay there might be something in that. Honestly it’s bullshit wrapped in bad science presented in a steaming package labelled ‘this could be the one‘.

Except this misses the rather important point that the one is you. Spend a hundred quid getting some coaching, not thousands on something so achingly now, it really must be the future, today. I never worked out why people don’t get that this makes it the past, tomorrow, but what I really don’t get at all is that I bought one.

There’s no good reasons. There’s – as ever – many excuses. I tried one for five minutes and it felt quite nice really. I’ve owned / rented the ugly stick for a year now which in my bike rambling pantheon of try/buy/discard is a suitably epic epoch. I stupidly entered  the HONC and didn’t have a bike for it***. I don’t have the stomach for it either, but that’s an entirely non bike related issue and has no place here.

I even tried to blame the new bike bought at the back end of last year. I can’t remember quite how that worked, but it was good to be able to blame something else for my fiscal recklessness. Only on the hedgehog, can we hold up a recently shiny new bicycle as the PROBLEM that only a further new bicycle can solve. It’s a talent of that there is no doubt.

Anyway it’s done now. Mostly. Funny sized forks and tyres are here. Wheels to follow. A rape and pillage of the ugly stick covers the majority of the remaining components so I’ve put the hammer on standby. Once Cy frees up his ex-demo frame,  a plunge into the abyss of the novelty-niche is merely a few percussive strokes away.

I’m not normally troubled by feelings of guilt, but this does feel on the wilful side of profligate.

Originally this entry was bookmarked to extol the simple joys of winter riding and the beauty of a snow bound vista. Moreover, something about how sledging with the kids was a reminder of how fantastic doing stuff as a family can be. But that was a week ago, and – as we’ve seen – that’s a bloody long time on the hedgehog.

Tell you what, here are some pictures. They tell the story better than I can.

 

 

 

 

 

Until next time then, let me leave you with a useful tip: ‘when it comes to bikes, everybody lies‘

* okay, lies.

** run by a very nice man called Cy Turner who makes lovely bicycles and has seemingly infinite patience for my stupid requests.

*** Two things. I did, it’s called a cross bike. And that’s an argument generally pressed by the fairer sex when being presented with an invitation to a posh do. It’s a bit of a tragedy this is now my world as well.

I missed a trick here. Soundcheck Wednesday – wuntu/wuntu/wuntu passed a couple of days ago while I was busy immersing myself in a version of reality that pays the bills but falls well short for a purpose of existence. But testing I have been, mainly of myself, occasionally of the patience of friends and rarely of my bike.

Tenerife is many things; grockalery and horrid at the beach, architecturally inconsistent in the mountains, friendly everywhere, often on fire and living off a geological event so cataclysmic that no amount of biped evolution can even begin to mask it. Basically it’s a volcano with some nice beaches. Dominated by a classic caldera’d Mount Tide at over 3000m, this is a little island with big ideas. Even our hotel in the foothills of the big boy were at a height that’d have most Ben Nevis Ramblers sated at what is considered a proper summit.

First off, let’s get something straight in a world of turns, I absolutely fucking loved it. For many reasons; let’s start with spending five days in the mountains with like minded people and toasting each day with ice cold beers and tales as tall as the peaks. Secondly reconciliation between how staggeringly capable mountain bikes are and how little I push their limits was finally understood in mere seconds when I got to understand what fast feels like. That was a privilege. I’ll miss it but now I know it’s not my world.

While we’re gloating about how fantastic riding dusty trails in shirt sleeves was when – say – compared to trudging through ankle deep sleep in England’s winter darkness, then consider the happy fact we threw the bikes down the thick end of 10,000 metres of descending while climbing less than tenth of that. God, I love shuttling. I feel like a fraud but if that’s what fakery is like then send me a package of it for Christmas.

Finally – aside from an ankle still weeping evil cactus thorns* – my battered body remained largely unbroken unlike my friend Martin who attempted to perform open heart surgery through a simple practical demonstration of potential energy in an environment of endless spikey rocks.  So let’s talk about that. I am at an age when improving is metaphorical for managing decline in a beery delusion. Every ride is akin to a visit to bottlers anonymous “Hi I’m Alex and it’s been 100 days since I took any risks whatsoever.  I have so many excuses, how long do you have?”

This is classic unsighted riding on trails designed by geology to either hurt you now or kill you later. There’s exposure in a ‘fuck me, that’s vertical and bottomless’, there’s technical in a ‘fuck me again, that’s not a line, that’s something beyond heroic and out the otherside‘, there’s steepness best ridden with an arse on the rear tyre and a hand on the insurance certificate. Four days of this and it seemed better to throw my shorts away rather than explain the state they were in.

Three days were on the limit of my ‘good day, ace bike, don’t make me look like a gutless twat’ skills. One day way beyond that in a horror of a 100 switchbacks apexed by broken rocks where momentum saved you, but speed absolutely kills. Or hitting a rock pool at 30kph having just lobbed oneself off a three foot drop and death-gripping the bars because braking will be a confirmed disaster whereas hanging on might introduce a question mark.

Every second is a decision. There is absolutely no respite. Don’t believe for a minute that downhill boys hang on and hope. Mentally dropping 2000+ metres in 25k frazzles your brain to the point where sleep is interrupted by muscle memory. Physically your shoulders are in spasm, thighs contract, calves ache. It’s room 101 forever but in a good way. It’s if it ends now then it ends but Christ what a way to go.

And that’s an important point; let the bikes run and they are everything the marketing people tell you. Two or three times I felt so far outside of my comfort zone it’d be a plane journey back, but the bike was serene, gliding over lethal rock gardens with confidence that I absolutely didn’t feel. Watching a couple of other ride like this all the time filled me briefly with envy until the realisation dawned that it’s only when you feel the fear and do it anyway do you get a dopamine hit so high it cannot be legal.

The last day – reunited with my wingman who was back on the bike only because donkey killing painkillers are available over the counter here – ranks somewhere in my top 5 rides ever. Every switchback we’d ridden, every pumice chute we’d surfed down, every rock garden we’d conquered were merely qualifiers for 30k of mountain biking bliss. The exposed carry over a water pipeline opened up a barely discernible singletrack which I’d happily ride every day until I die. Mainly because it flattered learned skills without attempting murder every ten yards or so.

Then a plunge down a semi-vertical ridge line. Then a moab like slickrock section, then a jagged rocky mess which claimed the lung of a previous rider. Then super drifty dirt corners against a massive drop, then a dirt bike laid trail of bermed loveliness, then..then..then.. it ended eventually because geography will catch up with you even after a monster shuttling. But it finished with me wondering if there was any more fun to be had with your clothes on.

There’s something important here. For a good part of the riding I was properly scared, feeling too nesh, too old, to clumsy, to much missing the point of riding stuff right on the edge of your ability. Seeing Martin hurt himself and stiffly declare he was missing the next day had me wondering if we were to fucking past it to waste everyone’s time pissing about and being rubbish. Watching 30 year olds go bonkers with nary a care about the shape their face might be should it go wrong raised my angst we were writing cheques our bodies couldn’t cash.

There is some of that. But there is also something else. While we’d have a couple of beers and call it a day because ‘we didn’t want to be ruined for riding tomorrow‘ we did pretty damn well for a couple of old blokes. I didn’t feel old. I just felt alive. I came back a better rider. I created a bond with my new bike that’ll take us to all sorts of interesting places. I stopped worrying and started feeling.

We left at seventy degrees and landed at zero. We packed the bikes with dust and unpacked them to mud and ice. We can forget two hour descents and relearn the wheezy raspiness of winter climbing. We can go and ride stuff that used to be scary but now has the terror factor of a small pimple. We can – and here’s the thing – carry on for a bit longer yet.

Let me at it.

If you’d like to see more, try here. It doesn’t even get close to painting the pictures in my mind.

* I hit one of these trail sentry bastards as about 25kph. On examining the damage the only rationale conclusion was an unwitting participation in a hedgehog darts contest. Except for some extremely scary purple blood that had me going a bit until it was gently pointed out I’d eviscerated a prickly pair on my unplanned romp through the undergrowth.

 

I haven’t written much lately but, to quote from that famous* Stratford Upon Avon postcard, neither has Shakespeare.  The difference is that he’s dead and I’ve just wanted to kill people.  Harvesting 700 people from three dilapidated buildings and re-homing them in a shiny new one shouldn’t be this hard.

This assertion is based primarily on having it done quite a few times before. With more people. And less time. And considerably more complexity. The difference being this client has a level of dysfunction which upgrades any project to more of a quest.

All of which has resulted in many, many late nights, a few stand up arguments, a few more sitting down with my head in my hands, the very real prospect of me removing myself, bat and ball on the not unreasonable grounds of possible prison time for extreme violence metered out to the unworthy.

As ever my coping strategy combines alcohol is medicinal quantities and multiple trips to the mental refuge of mountain biking.  When it finally stopped raining, the trails responded with a late summer bounty of slop-free hardness and occasional dust.

Most of my riding is prefixed by a mad dash from the office navigating the horror of the Hagley road and three separate set of roadworks** chasing a fast setting  sun.   And I cannot enjoy the hard packed dirt until my poor riding buddies have suffered the collateral damage of my gapless verbal machine gunning synopsis of another shitty day.

Then it’s been good. I’m not sure if it’s confidence ridden in from many rides this last six weeks or some kind of ‘don’t make me go back there’ death wish, but my edge has been well and truly ragged. I’ve dragged front wheels slides back from certain disaster, survived endless cased jumped and bar-kissed almost every tree in the Forest. Both my bikes have been brilliant, which is obviously why I need a new one.

That project has stalled with a booked demo bumped by another Saturday in the office. Instead Random has gone from one bike she loved to two she’s not quite sure about. This after moving on her much cherished Islabike,  which has taken her from a towpath rider to a full on MTB’r in a fast growing 18 months.

She’s too big for it now, visually demonstrated when she threw a leg over her sister’s lovely if languishing Spesh Myka. However Logic being a hostage to delusion in our household, I received instruction that Abi might suddenly regain the riding bug and that Herefordshire might suddenly become flat*** enough for her to enjoy a family ride.

Seizing on this as an opportunity for more bike buying, a quick scan of pre-loved bargains brought forth a bike with a dodgy providence and dubious history. Originally trumpeted as being custom built for the manufacturers wife, we subsequently discovered that not only was this a massive porkie, but also the frame wasn’t even the same model as advertised.

Not a problem for me as it’s clearly a thing of hand crafted beauty. Possibly a problem for weight-weenie Random who has her sister’s hatred of hills pointing up.  My response was – inevitably – to throw money at the problem; lightening the frame by hanging boutique bits on the outside and replacing the weighty coil shock with an air equivalent in the middle.

And adding pink of course. Lots of pink to a frame probably designed for being hucked off massive drops. It’s essentially an elephant in drag, but looks bloody fabulous and shall be pedalled into the local woods on Saturday assuming Mr Fuck Up doesn’t visit the project meaning another weekend lost  to the insanity of others.

I did manage to find time to take a few photos in between bouts of beating my head against a shiny new desk. Here are a few examples:

Martin on the Worcester Beacon at Sunset

Nig in the Quantocks

Andy in the Malverns

Right I’m going back in. Four more weeks and we’re done. Or maybe earlier I’ve burned the building down to show my displeasure of all things stupid.

* Not really

** I can only assume there is some kind of ‘big data’ thing going on which pinpoints my regular routes and inserts 5 miles of roadworks in the middle of it.. No way it can be coincidental.

*** It appears to be my fault that we live in such a hilly county.

So raged Ben ‘the hulk’ Ainsley after some charmless rogue accused him of cheating. Channeling that same Olympic spirit, I too became cross after a brave – if methodologically idiotic – decision to leave my rain jacket at home while taking my bike for a tour of rain-shielding trees in the North Devon countryside.

After a road ride on Saturday, characterised by shivering, the onset of hyperthermia and a real risk of drowning,  I was satisfied if not sated so needing to pedal again before venturing somewhere indoors and expensive with the family.  Setting out again with optimism replacing proper waterproofs, the holy trinity of rain, cold and the great British Summer coalesced overhead in a storm called ‘Al’s Stupidity’.

I made a desperate diversion for some likely looking trees which goes some way to explaining my navigational confusion some two kilometres into the ride. The rest is – of course – entirely due to my internal compass always pointing to ‘lost‘. No matter, a damp map and electronically-bristling GPS confirmed I was still in Devon and heading towards the river.

A river being violently fed by the steep rocky and rooty trail I found myself staring down in the manner of a condemned man facing the scaffold. No matter, the Internet insists that you can ride a Cross Bike down anything easily dispatched by its MTB cousin. This may be true if a) the ‘net wasn’t populated my blowhards and charlatans and b) the rider in question had a modicum of bike handling skills and courage.

I set off with some determination and some more fear, quickly becoming at one with the terror as the bike bucked over jagged rocks and slick roots. Deciding braking would mean certain death, I hung on to the drops and idly wondered if the local dog walkers were skilled in first aid. Such displacement tactics had success written large in jingoistic gold until a patch of wet grass triggered first blind panic, and then a more focussed emergency dismount into the waiting verge.

No real damage done. Only lightly bleeding, I pushed on towards my destination some 3k away. This proved to be a precedent verb as the footpath *ahem sorry holiday bridleway * deteriorated into a clay-based slop that had me mentally revising quicksand-release techniques. Luckily a local monsoon had me back under a tree, GPS in one hand, OS map in the other desperately wondering if any of the symbols represented easy to access local hostelaries.

Eventually the rain slowed long enough for a navigational triumph ending in a road climb steep enough to encourage nasty little thoughts that in fact I was climbing the side of a house. Eventually the house ended back in the same village from which I’d departed some 4k / most of an hour earlier. Much as ‘going home and cracking open a cheese and tea medal ceremony‘ seemed the best option, instead I hit the tarmac and headed off on a road that was wider than the bike and didn’t plunge up and down vertical valleys every 15 or so seconds.

And what a road it was. Flat, fast and – for the first time this week – sunlit. Even on 50 PSI knobbly tyres it felt fantastic with that lovely feeling of endless power as you tear up the horizon. This later proved to be the result of a significant tailwind. On and on we went, my genre confused bicycle and I, on the drops, pushing a big gear and engaging in what we middle aged cyclists like to think of as ‘a light shovelling‘, It’s like ‘burying yourself‘ in Olympic parlance only for people with beer guts and some sense of realism.

That hurt a bit, so I abandoned the lovely smooth road some 10k later in favour of the winch and plummet of rain soaked broken tarmac lost under misty tree cover. It was therefore a while later that I presented myself to the bar at the ‘Stag Inn‘ some five kilometres from where we are staying. Still bleeding from the odd abrasion, extremely muddy and clearly in need of a pint.

The barman wandered outside a little later and looked first at me and then at my bike in some confusion. “How did you get so muddy?” / “I’ve been riding off-road in the woods” “How did you get here then?” / “On the road obviously”. “So is it a road bike then? Or a mountain bike?” he asked pointing at the dripping, gloopy mess of my faithful aluminium pal.

Neither, I replied. It’s called a cross bike. But it makes me very, very happy.

Gather round, there’s a bit of a story here. It started nearly eighteen years ago, before Carol and I had even met*, and ended with an incredulous look on her face that I will treasure to my dying day.

Carol is many things; exceptionally tolerant of my generally selfish behaviour, a proper parent to our two rather lovely daughters, a calm head in crisis’ generally of my making and the glue that holds our little family together.  After fifteen years of marriage, she knows me better than anyone so stoically deals with a level of spousal impulsiveness than would have left most males by the age of, say, 11.

All this and attempting to steer the good ship fiscal probity through the rocky rapids of Al’s toy obsession surely merits some reward, other than often muddy and occasionally bloody husband pitching up late at night to break the washing machine. While many of these toys have passed through my hands, the only material possession Carol ever came back too was this tiny two seater sat in at some obscure car show back in 1995.

This, in a rare moment of introspection, was the line of thinking which arced from way back then to right now and sparked an idea perched on the exciting ridge separating brilliance from total stupidity.  Logically complex and financially tricky, this secret project could still be absolutely fantastic if I could pull it off. But, based on my history of over-promising/under delivering, it was more likely to the Wikipedia citation for a cluster-fuck.

So instead of careering off alone with my somewhat limited knowledge of how cars actually work and what stops them working, I roped in a number of long-suffering friends who’ve all been burned by a ‘project Al‘ sometime in the past. Yet they still came to the party, bringing with them short term cash loans**, proper mechanical knowledge, ownership of a large warehouse and contacts for serious tradespeople skilled in the arts of stuff that seventeen year old cars need.

Yeah you read that right, this was a one year import of the Japanese Kai Class Suzuki Cappuccino which totalled just over a 1000 cars. Since 1995, that number has dropped to about 350 road-worthy examples – most of which are never going to be for sale and many of the remainder in what we shall call ‘restoration project state‘.

Like I say, logistically tricky but rather than spending the rest of this post describing the web of deceit/tales of Al’s low cunning and downright heroism in the face of all sorts of difficult shit/the so-many-almost-disastrous slip ups/the sleepless nights wondering if she’d even bloody remember why she wanted one, let’s concentrate on what’s important and that’s how it was received.***

The only way I’d managed to keep this a secret from Carol for the best part of a month was to tell everyone else. It was what we call in the industry an EFK (ever fcker knows) secret which included both the kids who share their father’s inability to keep their traps shut. But having recruited an entire support team to make this happen, my only job was to get Carol out of the house long enough for ‘package to be delivered‘

So day off booked. Unseemly haste to get Carol on the Mutt Walk. Furtive phone glances showed nothing and I was running out of excuses to drag the hound round yet another field. Finally ‘The Eagle Has Landed’ confirmed it was time to Wake Up Little Suzy leaving Carol mildly confused as I strode off in an entirely different direction to the one advocated some four seconds earlier.

I have to say I was shitting it. For so many reasons; firstly it’s not the most practical present. It is the size of a well apportioned shoe with a roof that you can detach - with a week or so’s training – in about an hour. There’s a tiny boot but you can’t use that because that’s where the roof goes. It has no power steering, no brake servos, no ABS, not much other than a tiny 700cc engine with a big fuggin turbo strapped on all driving a pair of ickle rear wheels. It’s a proper little sports car and I’d no idea if that’s what Carol liked about it.

Secondly it’s Tiny. I know I’ve mentioned this already but honestly somebody asked me if it’d fit in the back of a VW T5. It’d fit in a T5 GLOVE BOX. During a particularly traumatic motorway journey in the pissing rain, my friend Jason remarked from the loftiness of my Yeti that you couldn’t actually see the Suzuki at all as it was all below the window line.  Chances of getting crushed by a lane changing BMW X5? About 100%. I didn’t want to give Carol the motoring equivalent of ACME bomb with a burning fuse.

Thirdly, it’s not the easiest thing in the word to drive if you’re a *ahem* normal sized human being. At six foot, I found it a bloody trial. It’s about an inch off the floor which precludes anyone over the age of seven entering or exiting with any dignity. Pretty sure if I checked the manual, the official entry procedure would be 10 quick steps onto a Gym Horse finishing with a double pike into the front seat. Remembering to take the roof off first. Assuming you ever do manage to find a driving position where both your knees and arms are in the same side of the car, your eyes will focus around four inches above the windscreen giving an excellent view of the roof lining.

As for exiting the vehicle, the only thing I’ve found that consistently works is to open the door and just fall out. Try and park near some soft ground and take your chances would be my advice.

Anyway you now have a share of my worries as we rounded the gate only to find my enterprising younger daughter had covered it in various tarps and blankets exposing just one wheel.  Carol’s quizzical look translated to a verbal ‘have you hired us a sports car’. Me ‘Not exactly, take a proper look‘. She did while Mr. Smug here bathed long in the joy of knowing he’d actually done one bloody thing right for someone else.

“You’ve bought me a car” / “Yep, it would seem so”. “You’ve bought me the one car I always wanted and we couldn’t afford” / “Indeed”. “How did you manage that?” / “I had a bit of help, anyway get in make sure it fits”

She did and it does. Soon after we were spinning along the local lanes with the roof off under – for once – perfect blue skies. All my fears were unfounded; this is a car that fits Carol in every way. And while I’ve always had her down as quite a sensible driver, within 15 minutes I was genuinely in fear for my life. Comparing notes with Jess later on suggested this  experience wasn’t a one off.

We had a fab day. No room for the kids of course. The two things might be co-incidental but probably not I think – and I’m not sure because my understanding of this stuff isn’t much more than guesswork – Carol loves it because she’d never consider buying one herself. It’s impractical, it’s certainly not going to replace her Honda****, you probably get to drive it with the roof down 30 days a year and it needs proper looking after including a place to hibernate for at least four months of the year.

But it puts a massive smile on your face and dishes out joy with every bend. It’s not a tool to go from A to B. A to B is the journey with the destination being largely optional. Of course it’s silly. I like silly. Always Have. Really bloody brilliant to find out Carol likes my kind of silly too.

As an anniversary present for 15 years of marriage, it’s pretty cool even if I’m somewhat biased in that opinion. It let me take all the mad stuff I know drives Carol nuts and make it work for her. It hopefully says something I’m not very good at saying.

And for that and the look on Carol’s face when she realised it was really hers, it is worth ten times the time and money spent to get it on the drive.

* well we had met, but she had me tagged as an immature show off and I had the hots for her best friend.  Not much has changed. Except for the bit about her best friend. Just to clear up any possible misunderstanding there.

** Carol and I have nothing but shared funds. I’ve never worked out why you’d want to operate differently. But this did present a potential financial hole that ‘Wow, that was a big shop‘ was unlikely to cover.

*** There will be later posts covering off these points in probable tedious detail. But you’d expect that.

**** Wow more vehicles than you can use at one time. I wonder how I could have thought up such a concept.