Back in the midsts of time* I bought a Bird Aeris. 4,500 kilometres and some two years later I sold the remains to a young grom whose world – according to the the instagram lie filter – was mostly up in the air whilst tilted sideways.

And that was some of the problem. The Aeris was a bike which came alive about the time I began to worry I wouldn’t be around for much longer. It didn’t reward the tentative rider, the man on the brakes, the poorly body positioned. That’s not the reason I sold it though – although ‘reason’ is as ever conflated with the ‘call of the shiny‘

Oh the shiny. It’s a constant companion. Both a source of joy and a financial handicap. Mojo3, FlareMax, Fat Bike, Chubby Bike, another chubby bike, settling the wheel size debate with a firm punt at 27.5. And then 29. Somehow I ended up with three full suspension bikes none of which were quite right. We’ve been there, let’s not go there again.

Somewhere in the madness there was method.  I wanted a full suspension bike that’d survive the brutal slop and grit of a long Forest winter. The Smuggler failed to fulfil that role mostly due to a design predicated on mud never being more than an occasional annoyance. The clearance in the rear was parlous at best. When it got worse I’d be carrying the bloody thing due to the rear tyre wedged firm in the seat stays.

That’s exactly what happened to the Mojo3.  With about 50{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} of the mud. So now I had two bikes that were perfect for a) California or b) 8 months of a UK year.  Roll on twelve months and post a ruthless review of what I actually needed left me with the brilliant RipMo and laughing-in-the-face-of-a-UK-winter SolarisMax. The latter being two bikes via a simple swap of death-by-tyre chubbies to some proper 29er rubber.

Still with me? Good effort as I’m just making this shit up. After my personal dissolution of the monasteries, the ShedOfDreams(tm) had the look of a space recently burgled by an extremely discerning bike thief. Scattered amongst the remains were a set of previously enjoyed spares missing merely a frame to make them whole.

We’ve been here before. And whilst that is not surprising, it does at least provide me with the slenderest thread of logic to explain my latest purchase. The original Stache was nothing more than a parts mule configured for winter. The fact it didn’t last that long before the glare of the shiny burned it out is hardly worth mentioning.

So here we find ourselves with a box full of parts desperately needing a home, a hotel internet connection and a month long moratorium on weekday alcohol.  This  kind of abstinence is exactly why I drink in the first place to avoid the clarity of thought to buy yet more bikes. It may be detrimental to the liver but it has a positive effect on my bank account

Much browsing ends with a certain inevitability of choosing a frame matching a set of simple criteria – do the parts fit, does it have some proper tyre clearance, is it cheaper than the last bike I sold, is the bloke selling it not a total fucking psychopath?**

Four greens. And it’s a UK brand run by three blokes I’ve a lot of time for. Just the right amount of travel and only a few miles from box fresh.  It even had some frame protection tape applied – possibly while drunk – so saving me the potential marriage ending argument with Carol on exactly the best way to apply it.

I considered building it myself what with a shed full of spares, a wall full of tools and a fridge full of beer. But with great age comes great wisdom so I handed it over to Matt who twirled spanners in about four dimensions muttering darkly while rebuilding wheel bearings and engineering his way round lost parts.

As ever I was lost in awe and impatience. I’m really not good with the gap between ideas and completion. Finally the bike was handed over to check if anything was going to fall off before a proper ride tomorrow. And as usual, nothing did even with me dicking about riding down a few steps and attempting to tear fat tyres off wide rims.

Matt asked me over a beer if I thought I’d be a better rider if I didn’t buy so many different bikes. That brought me up short. Having considered it though, he might be right but it’s not really much of a concern. I’m comfortable being average when the fun of chasing silly dreams is more than a compensation.

So tomorrow we’ll ride still dry trails. There’s something comforting about doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome. And the nice thing about circles is you can keep going round.

*2015 which when considering the barely-sub-lightspeed reconfiguration of my bike collection essentially frames 2015 as ‘pre-cambrian’

**That was strike 1. Even a man as ancient as I was still moved to wonder ‘what the fuck was he on?’ at the end of a non transaction.

There’s a fine line between an carefully considered hypothesis, underpinned by empirical data, and an entirely implausible excuse for a new toy. Let’s be charitable here and assume this latest purchase can be counted in the first category.

Or for the cohort of the world easily defined as ‘everyone but me‘, let’s not.  There are reasons of course, because there are always reasons. It hardly matters that this latest addition to the ShedOfDreams(tm) has triggered a schism in my bike collection. A splinter movement if you will. I certainly have, breaking down the much loved Mojo3 and the slightly less loved but still guiltily stripped Smuggler.

What’s left is a litany of spare parts, a newly built frame, a re-engagement with the nonsense of eBay, and a whole lot of soul searching wondering if this represents logical decision making or headless chicken randomness.

It it’s logic, it works like this; the RipMo is so studidly good, I’ll probably not pick to ride the Mojo when choices must be made. No abstraction here – last Sunday I prepped the Mojo for a long ride, pushed it out of the shed, breathed deeply and put it right back in there. Exchanging it for the RipMo pretty much sealed its fate.

That bike was amazing; no hyperbole here, it really brought my riding on – from a low base for sure – and gave me confidence to go a little harder and a little deeper into the adrenal zone.  For a man of my limited skill and advancing age, amazing feels like a mean description. It was better than that, way better than me, and undeserving to be sidelined for the false promises of new shiny things.

The Smuggler a little less so. I liked that bike a lot but I never really loved it. There’s a different- trust me on this. It’s really important, you’ll need to take that under advisement as well. Okay so if the RipMo negates the need for three full suspension mountain bikes*, where the hell does a hardtail come in?

Well it came in last year. But that one is Jessie’s** and while I ensured it was fit for purpose, it was always a bit small for me.  The new one is not. Bending to the marketing winds of ‘longer is better’, this medium sized frame pokes out an inch and a half beyond Jessie’s Mark 1.

Other things have changed as well. I barely considered them having seen the images of  the only colour worth having. It was only a short jump from there to poorly wielded spanners and better excuses.

This frame didn’t have an easy birth mostly as I’ve been bastard busy trying to wrangle an metaphorical octopus into a string bag without losing a tentacle. So I’m blaming work for getting in the way of remembering to order vital components not available from asset stripping two perfectly good frames

No problem we just butchered another one to bring this one to life. We even had lightening to electrify the process. I’m more your Dr Frankenstein to Matt’s monster on the grounds I really don’t have the hair for it. Still it was me sent out into the pissing rain to determine if pointy things were pointing in the right direction and stoppy things were sufficiently arresting.

It seems not in the case of the latter mostly as Klutz-Boy here had deposited a bath of dirty paraffin onto the front disc.  Still what’s the worse that can happen?

Does riding into the shrubbery whilst making keening sounds count as ‘the worst’? Probably not. Still it was an interesting start to the ride although not quite as exciting as a two ton car shaped ram attempting to punt me into the next county some time later***

In between I had a fab time. This is my seventh Cotic and much of that purchasing logic is based on Cy knowing how to design a fun bike. This one is definitely fun, possibly a bit more than Jessie’s as it’s a better fit, has a longer fork and is entirely new. Let’s not debase ourself searching for quantifiable evidence here.

Better still was getting out with an old mate. Riding trails returned to hero dirt by a weekends’ rain. Hint of loam, flick of the hips easily brakes the grip of a rear tyre not encumbered by suspension, slide it round, get it pointed mostly the right way, giggle, repeat.

I love the RipMo for what it can do. How perfectly the suspension design works everywhere. When things get a bit scary, it’ll save you all sorts of pain. It’s somewhere close to the perfect trail bike in a way the Solaris really isn’t.

Most of the evening was spent trying to get the bloody thing stopped, dodging trees, catching slides, releasing the brakes more in hope than any kind of learned technique, and careering through the forest like a one man morris dance troop.

Or to put it somewhat better; to feel eleven years old while being allowed to drink beer celebrating the success of another fantastic new bike. And to toast those whose time has passed.

So don’t get me started. Because I don’t want to stop.

*It’s hard to correlate a ‘well formed and fully funded roadmap for the perfect bike collection‘ with ‘why do you have three bikes that look very, very similar?’

**She’s ridden it once. That pretty much codifies possession.

***My righteous anger was somewhat mollified when it was pointed out that it was in fact now proper dark and we were essentially riding in stealth mode with no lights.

I can see Haydn and, more specifically, Haydn’s camera pointing meaningfully at yet another steep, tight rocky switchback offering an average rider* the now standard three options.

Option 1 is to examine the 3-D puzzle in front of you, considering radius, incline, camber, rock formation and exit points before deciding that as someone else has already ridden it,  you really don’t have too. Engage the 31inch gear to pivot a now stationary bike 90 degrees and die just a little bit inside. I say option 1 but after riding about a thousand of these tricky bastards over the last week, it would be considerably more accurate to label this my ‘Default’.

I did get better. Just not much. Not for me the technical skill of nose wheeling or terrifying prospect of sliding in – both wheels long gone from grip – and snapping the front end round using some form of secret hip dislocation.

Sorry for the digression there. Much as I treasure my riding friends, watching most of them perform these acts of insouciance does occasionally trigger a teeth clenching grunt wondering if it is okay to hope it may sometimes end in just a bit of a disaster.

Not full disaster tho. Which is the unique selling point of option 2.  Essentially a two second plunge to splatter oneself in the gorge below after the rider has failed to solve the equation ‘amount of skill required > amount of skill available‘. I’m not a big fan of exposure and even less keen on certain death, but a week riding these kind of trails did provide a mid holiday upgrade from ‘very slow and frightened‘ to ‘well I’m pretty fucking old, so best not die wondering’.

Leaving only option 3 as framed by that image. And the obvious tension in my riding. ‘He’s got the bloody camera out, I’m going to have to have a crack‘ summarises most of what was going on in my brain about four seconds previously. Yes I am as shallow as a tea spoon when it comes to this kind of thing.  So stop snivelling and remember what Chris – our proper ex DH pro showed you – edge of the trail and then a bit more, there’s grip in that vegetation, don’t look at the gorge far below, don’t bleed all the speed off, squeeze the back brake, flick the hips, feel the slide and get off both brakes the second you can see the exit. See easy?

I’d distilled that script from following Chris earlier in the day. Like many great riders, he’s annoying hard to dislike. Give me arrogance and gracelessness any day – at least that way you’ve got an excuse to file people better at stuff than you in a bucket marked ‘Decent rider sure, but what a colossal shit gibbon‘.

I’ve been lucky enough to be comfortably in double digits to trips to far off places. Mostly with the same gang, but this time we had extra riders – different dynamic, same maxim holds ‘location is an important thing, but people are the important thing’.

The bus was pretty splendid as well. Cool as the name suggests. And much required not just because we’re feeling lazy. Sospel is a proper medieval French town split by the river, which brought it into existence hundreds of years ago, and comfortably nestled under muscular hills reaching up to around 1800 metres.

The trails are spread across the 360 degree panorama we took in every morning from the balcony of our fantastic villa. Without the bus,  there would be a whole lot of unpleasant climbing on roads clinging to the valley sides, then white fire tracks baking in the forge of thirty degree heat and high humidity.

Sod that. While I like a climb as much as the next rider, it’s obvious you’d be lucky to get two descents a day without the uplift taking the 1000 metre strain. And while the mountains further north may superciliously look down from their more vertiginous peaks, they would be conflating height for quality.

The trails here are stunning.  Dropping onto natural paths mostly made a thousand years before the advent of a Mountain Bike.  Surfaced by interchangeable bedrock and loose rock, before diving under a forest canopy where the chatter of pinging stones is replaced by the silence of springy loam.

There is little respite from technicality. No easy trails. Anyone who tells you riding downhill for a week is easy has clearly never tried it. I am more battered and bruised than any other riding holiday. More time to crash basically. And crash you will or ride you won’t. So much stuff at the edge of my comfort zone and then some way out of it.

Of course I didn’t ride it all. But by the end of the week I was riding a whole lot more including that switchback up there which had my arse twitching like a rabbit’s nose.  Only on the last day, when mental and physical fatigue rendered me tentative, did I realise how unrelenting riding on the edge is, and how much damage you can do when you fall off it.

Don’t for a second mistake that for any kind of negativity. It was an amazing week riding a brilliant bike** with a bunch of idiots sharing a passion for mountains, riding, bullshit and a general joy for living which – unsurprisingly – makes your realise how bloody good it is to be alive.

Still enough of that. One day at home and then back on the road again. To hotels with Internet connections.  Plans need to be made for where we’re going next. Frankly I don’t care as long as it’s somewhere. Maybe with just a tiny bit less death by switchback tho 🙂

*that’s me of course. Others treated these obstacles with a combination of skill and disdain I can only dream of.

**oh and that bike is brilliant. There were moments when I was laughing out loud how good it was. Mostly though that was also the time I had my eyes closed.

It’s been nearly a whole year since I crested that societal summit suggesting life is basically over. Fifty they say, fuck me, you’re lucky still to be alive. Looking back less than a hundred years, it’s hard to argue. If your appointment as cannon fodder didn’t get you, the Spanish Flu was ready to take up the slack.

Based on that I’ve done rather well. Especially considering a life lived on the margins of dietary respectability. I’ve exchanged a blasé approach to eating anything within elbows-orbit with a strict approach to greens and fibre which only a decent glass of red can make palatable.

While fairly comfortable that I’m not dead yet, signs of ageing are hard to ignore. I’m ignoring them through the vigorous riding of bicycles, larger trousers and the aforementioned balanced approach to medicinal alcohol.

But, well, fuck all that. A road trip awaits. This time for Matt to stamp his pass to middle age. He’s not so much in denial as entirely unconcerned. That’s something to admire as is his somewhat lackasaidal approach to any kind of plan. Plans being my thing, I’ve stepped in and organised eight riders to converge on a little known town in the Maritime Alps.

I know it having ridden there a few years ago on the ‘Remains of the Dave‘ Tour. Another birthday if a little less consequential. Looking back at the photos, I was as close to whip thin as I’ve been for a while, having sloughed 10kg post a shitty project and pre turning up looking keen.

Rode like shit tho. Many reasons. I blame the bike. Others would have more informed views. Uphill I was a machine, downhill I was a man recently introduced to the sport of off-road cycling. Whatever, that was then and this is now. Let’s look at what’s good on the spacecraft*

Long term injuries. Left Shoulder, Left Knee, Right Ankle. I can ride but shaving sometimes requires an extra mirror. Nothing new there. All manageable. New Injuries: left ankle, ruined during a badly judged attempt at a half marathon, mostly okay, can stand on a pedal, best not to look at it.

Mental health: Work has been, not to spare the horses, a total bastard for the last few months. Again my fault for not saying no, the consequences of which have been many late nights, too many of those stuck in a hotel, and a general bemusement on how this was the year I firmly planned to slide into semi-retirement,

No matter. We’re close to a road trip and there’s part of me which suggests half a century should replace youthful vigour with wisdom. Therefore, it is probably not appropriate to be as excited as a five year old facing down a vat of free ice cream.

Well, fuck that as well. We have little enough chance to live in the moment and I’ve been around long enough to ignore what other people feel is important. I’m not bothered about being somehow better or more skilled or cleverer than my peers, I just want to be different. A little bit closer to the edge.

The edge pulls back every year of course, but it’s still an edge and it’s still a decision to wonder if you can fly. That’s cheap talk – the proof is in the doing. Much of that is the derived from the context of when risk meets reward.

There are a thousand things I’ve ignored or made excuses for when riding on my own. The same obstacles baked dry by summer sun, easily ridden by my best friends, and at the end of week bookmarked by peering over that edge, are nothing more than trusting the bike and harvesting the endorphins.

Stephen Fry wrote a fantastic letter to himself some 35 years on passing on what he knew now. It’s far more heartfelt and important than the one I’d write myself which would go something like ‘put that joint down and take some bloody chances while you can‘. Not that I’d have listened. I was even more stupid back then.

This trip is different. We’re booked everyday on the uplift truck . Fitness isn’t a differentiator other than the fatigue that an hour long descent will put into you. It’s all about the sharp end. Bravery, technique and the ability to adapt to what’s in front of you. Checking my internal CV it appears I’ve scored a disappointing 0 out of 3.

Ready? Not materially injured. Riding an amazing bike. On trails I’ve ridden before. Close enough. Although based on the cohort travelling down in two vans next weekend, I’d best pack the spare liver.

One day I’ll get bored of feeling excited like this. It’s not today. Not even close.

*Apollo 13. Positive thinking to the max.

.. except for me of course. I’m always lost – geographically or conceptually. This is not an affection – if ever I offer a navigational soundbite at a trail decision, the group dynamic always chooses the polar opposite.

For good reason, I spend so much time lost in my own thoughts, once outside it’s pretty much a slam dunk I’ll end up some place interesting if not exactly planned. Yogi Berra* holds the received wisdom here: ‘if you don’t know where you going, you’ll end up somewhere else‘

Would you like an example? By Tuesday night I’d already spent two days in windowless meeting rooms or stationary on melting tarmac motorways. The next 48 hours promised more of the same, so I did what any sane individual would do; checked out of the hotel, motored home, figitedly requainted myself with the family, while casting a guilty eye at the ShedOfDreams.

The car lacked only a trailer to transport me to great trails. But I’d be buggered if I was getting back into that. I swerved into the barn, grabbed my latest off road toy and pedalled it furiously up the tarmac. Not too far; it’s only 20 minutes to a local wood that is both huge and lacking in decent trails. I should know, for ten years I’ve been trying to find them.

Tonight was different. Too hot for knee pads and a helmet. Dirty old painting shorts and a t-shirt on the cusp of being repurposed as a bike rag. Knackered old vans and no plan whatsoever. Just not being in a room full of people or a road full of cars.

Ten minutes in and already the world is a better place, In it is a footpath sign I’ve ignored fifty or more times heading to the woods.  To hell with it, with not destination in mind, exploring is a good reason to get lost. No Strava, no maps, no idea which way west might be.

Five minutes in and I’ve fighting my way through waist high brambles. Progress slowed marks me out as an insect buffet, and the little bastards are in full gorge mode. I break free into a field full of thirsty corn stretching wide right and left. I put the bike down, take a deep breath and and give the winged bastards a second course.

So I’m up and riding over rock hard ground riven by tractor tyre. Back to the road gives me a choice of left or right. I choose left. Then, a minute later, right when it becomes obvious I have not chosen wisely.

The woods offer a few singletracks. I ignore what I know heading off instead onto a trail once walked with a young Lab maybe eight years ago. It was wet and not much short of miserable. Today it’s bloody amazing, not technical, no gradient to speak of and in places barely discernible.

None of these things matter. I am riding new trails. I am exploring like the 40 year younger version of myself on his first proper bicycle. What’s over those next hills, what’s round that corner? Every few minutes, a sun dappled track offered itself, snaking deeper into the woods leading to who knows where.

I was torn; stick with this or twist on the road to anywhere. Soon I cracked and lost myself completely on trails which bounced between fun and gone. Human or animal must have built these and at least half are abandoned, overgrown, impassible.

There’s some real history here. I found shrunken dirt jumps softened by time and sinuous paths weaving encouragingly between trees before ending abruptly. I found more than that, a reason to never stop exploring, to fight the inertia of riding what you know, to play the long game even if it means for every decent find, you’ll be arse deep in stingy vegetation the other nine.

The one I did find was so good I rode it twice. Flicking between trees, lipping off root stacks and punching the bike out of natural bombholes. Without a GPS I doubt I’ll ever find it again. But that’s fine, because it’s the trigger for branching out, for getting lost with no regrets, for reminding myself that turning pedals is what I do, not chasing targets or digging grooves in oft ridden trails.

I rode for bloody ages. Even at the height of summer, benightment became a distinct possibility. Returning home stung, bitten and more than a little sunburned, I declared all was right with the world.

And it was. It got just that little bit better toasting the sunset with a cold one.  In a week we head off to the Maritime Alps for a week of riding amazing trails. And maybe some less amazing ones. As long as we get lost at least once a day, we’ll be on the right track.

*the baseball player. Not the bear.

I’m forever advocating a long campaigned truth, to the mostly disinterested offspring*, that experiences trump things.  Materialism I grandly declare is nothing more than status anxiety drowning in marketing poison. They point mutely to the ShedOfDreams(tm), and the contents within, as a take-it-to-the-bank example of saying one thing and doing something else entirely.

Yes, but that’s different. Of course it is. Bikes are not things. They are so much more than that**. Things are merely noun placeholders for stuff not important enough to have a proper name, whereas MTBs ride over that semantic boundary into something far more mystical

Yeah, whatever Al, Same shit different day. Heard it all before. Excuses repurposed as rationale. Deflection tactics loftily abstracted from the rather more dirty reality that shiny things bite hard. The money invested*** in that bike should be sat in our savings account. For things both known and unknown. Because that’s what sensible people do – and that person in our family is Carol.

She’s suffered my twisted logic for more than twenty years. She’ll listen politely when I talk of bank accounts offering more than fiscal security. Memories and adventures I flappy-hand in a parody of a real justification. My supposition that I’m saving those instead is met with an expression I’ve come to associate with “Whatever. We can pay the bills, no one is going to have to eat the wrapping of your latest nonsense. Get on with it”

I got on with it. In a roundabout way mostly not going through corners with any kind of velocity on a bike I was pre-disposed to love. Didn’t happen. Instead, in what can only be considered a last-hurrah to any kind of fading talent, I bought a bike proudly associated with the Enduro zeitgeist. 160mm forks matched with 145mm out the back, the combination of which was mostly Internet captured by blokes lobbing it off stuff that make me go a bit squishy inside.

Still it has a sibling in the ShedOfDreams(tm) which is officially ‘the best bike I’ve ever owned’ which considering my extensive pantheon of the next big thing is quite an accolade. It’s so achingly on trend I may need to order some beard oil and a wood-burning stove. Still all the standards and all the latest angles have created something that – let’s be honest here – isn’t much of a looker. Like the worlds most expensive carbon gatepost.

Matt built it of course. I turned up with a box full of parts, a crate of beer and a curated collection of mildly amusing asides. Before it was properly finished I ragged it round the local car park giggling in a way that’s a venn intersection of hope and desire, before handing it over to Matt. Who turned up 10 minutes later extolling its virtues at handling multiple step sets. I’m never lending him anything again!

I rode the same steps this morning. In the rain. But rain doesn’t adequately describe the apocalyptic thunder and lightening rolling through the county. At times it was merely extremely moist, the rest of the time I wondered idly if anyone had ever drowned on a bicycle.

No matter, the trails held up pretty well other than the sniper roots – polished, slick and waiting. I’m not a fan of conditions like this. It feeds my inner screamer. ‘Arrrrghhhh going to slide, Eeeeeeek going to crash going to hit that tree’. but today I was located in Nirvana, Newbikesville and all was good.

More than good. First descent after a climb, under stair-rods of warm rain, I exited a jump with unusual calm and pushed my apparently perfect new bike into the first corner. Where it slid sideways on raked out roots aiming off to a trunk in a ‘do not collect £200, go straight to A&E’ kind of way.

Here’s what normally happens next. I grab a shitload of front brake, stand the bike up, plough into said trunk or its leafy environs and exit out the front or back with all the grace of a Wild West extra shot from his horse. Today tho I distinctly remember thinking ‘that slide’s absolutely fine, we’ll go with that’.

I never say that. It was as if I’d been adopted by a better rider. Who – while I was still agog with not actually crashing – flicked the bike back into line and suggested a little more velocity might be quite entertaining. Whoever he is, he’s onto something as we mined the adrenaline twinned motherlode of ‘amazing grip’ and ‘no grip whatsoever’.

My new mate riding shotgun made himself comfortable for the long haul as we laughed in the face of off-camber roots, waved V signs at flat corners holding a scum of muddy water, and barely recognised the potential full sub-soil body implant of a notorious gap jump.

This is not me. I am not at home to Mr Insouciant. I do not do under-thinking. Post injury, it’s been harder to ignore the whispering that I’m just getting too damn old and risk averse to honour my mountain bike credentials.

Not today. Not even close. We toasted our escape from the ‘River Rapids of Ross’ with a beer and some post-storm steaming of discarded waterproofs. I’ve been buzzing ever since. It might be new-bike-thing, it might be that this one is going to take me closer to the edge. A place I thought largely abandoned to my younger self. It’s going to be epic finding out which.

It might rain again tomorrow. I give not one shit. I’m riding my bike.

*they are now at an age too old to be thought of as ‘children‘, but too young to be considered ‘carers’ 🙂

**a topic already under development in a semi-lucid state for the next issue of the never less than brilliant www.cranked.cc

*** It has payback. I can’t measure it. But it’s there. If it isn’t you’re doing it wrong.