Karmic storms

Muddy Cove, originally uploaded by Alex Leigh.

Grab yourself a lentil and relax, as grassmud-hopper here enlightens you to the ways of karma. If one wishes to achieve meteorological karmic balance, one must first seek out the sub zero land of trench-knob, journey through the muddy foothills of component destruction and genuflect to the great God chain suck. Only then shall the trails of the righteous be paved with sun, dust and occasional sprinklings of cold beer.

And because the world is nothing more than an infinite flange of laziness, many of these footsteps of the cold, wet and un-initiated are being trod by yours bloody truly. You can keep your sheep-swool base layers – I have everything I need here with my hair shirt.

The most positive spin I can place upon yesterday’s ride was it was a small improvement on the week before. Not much, because the weather Gods have failed to flick the ‘Spring‘ lever leaving us with snow, hail, rain and freezing drizzle*. The car park was strewn with mud splats of portent, every car was brown as was every returning mountain biker. Except for a few which were blue and – apparently – unbreathing.

Three hours later I was a broken man but still alive. Those following the narrative may remember me citing a positive in a previous paragraph. That’s it. Both my riding chums – Nick and Dean – had apparently broken nothing, not even a light sweat. It is fair to say they are both fitter than me but, if one were being scrupulous in the use of ‘Fair’, so are almost all of my friends. Even those who have passed on to a better place.

Not the greatest accolade ever presented is it? ‘Cheers for the ride fellas, thanks for not leaving me to die, oh, and you’re both far healthier than some dead people I once knew’. A week ago Sunday, 90 minutes dispatched me to the same dark and hollow place, this time I managed twice that although not without some physical and mental consternation.

But I am going to keep at it; commuting through winterspring(tm), tossing myself recklessly** into pools of deep mud and spending a long weekend trudging up alpine climbs with only thin air for company***

But soon, I shall emerge from winters’ chrysalis and flaunt my faux fitness on trails which aren’t trying to consume you from the wheels up. Although looking at the long range weather forecast, what I am actually doing – right now – is practising for much, much more of the same.

I like to whinge about the weather. It makes me feel all patriotic and English.

* This is not the same as hail. As cold but lacking the viscosity to keep it from running into your previously warmed crevices.

** Which doesn’t bode well for the eyesight.

*** I may be underselling our Pyrenees trip in April. However, any fitness gained will be lost to the power of my willpower once the bar opens.

Do you want to go Mountain Biking?

Gimboid, originally uploaded by Alex Leigh.

After calling the Vatican to confirm the Pope was still a Catholic, I hot-footed down to the bike hire store at Hanmer Springs and hired an “executive” MTB. For my extra $10, disc brakes accesorised a suspension fork that excelled at holding the front end up. It didn’t appear to offer any other damping functions other than emitting a howling click on encountering even the smallest bump.

On the upside, it was attached to a mountain bike and a morning of virgin, dustry trails – baked hard under a perfect blue sky – awaited my desperate-to-ride persona. For the next four hours, I was essentially lost – signage in NZ is generally fantastic due mainly to the fact there are only about 10 roads but the $1 map lacked a certain accuracy when measured against scale and terrain.

But the trails were mine alone and after some false starts, mappage faffage and a blatent “sorry, I’m a tourist” approach to some walking only routes, improvement was rapid. A couple of sketchy descents on commuter pedals only lightly gripped by knackered VANs, it became clear that stacking here would result in a slow lingering death by hungry sandfly.

So proceeding carefully in the manner of a man lacking both riding skills and spacial awareness, I was amazed to divine a dusty trail that smelt of woody singletrack. And for the next 7 kilometres it rolled out a bonaza of sculptered corners, rooty drops, a smattering of ohfuckme North Shore and limitless hand crafted berms.

Hero LineBeer

The local MTB group has clearly put a huge amount of work in, so it seemed a bit mean to only ride it once. I pushed half way back up, scared myself a couple more times before having to choose between another attempt at full speed or a beer.

Well, OBVIOUSLY, I went for beer.

Some people may brand my posting an MTB blog while on holiday a bit obsessive. So for the purposes of balance, here are some pictures of lakes and glaciers encountered on a moist walk to the Franz Joseph Glacier.

Franz Joseph GlacierPeters Pool

Anyway I’m off to take the local spring waters follwed closely by taking rather more of the local hop waters. Tomorrow we’re off to swim with seals although Random insists we’ll be in the water with eels. She is not – as I sort of remember from what feels like far away corporate speak – with the programme 😉

PS. Sorry for piss poor spelling. Running out of internet time and $10 buys two beers!

Bought!

Hummer, originally uploaded by Alex Leigh.

On the nicest day of the year, I decided to abandon the family’s plea for some outdoor action, instead closeting myself in the barn to build this Titanium lovely. Ti is a frame material which has received much mullage from the experts-in-their-own head found on Internet forums. Apparently it is the silver bullet, the cookie-cutter, the pinnacle of the periodic table. That’s bollox obviously but didn’t stop me lusting after one for many years.

And years ago, I did have one but discarded it as a smelly kipper once it became apparent that exotic frame materials do not beget awesome trail skills. I know better of course now because this one was far more expensive – even second hand – so must be pretty damn begetting in dishing out those elusive inflamed wedding veg.

My friend Mike – who understands such things – tells me frame materials are largely irrelevant to how a bike rides. There is no inherent springiness of steel, stiffness of Alu or mythic ride quality associated with Titanium. And, of course he’s right but the PA and Wanga have gone, while this has taken their place. It’s already way better than the Voodoo because it has lots of gears. Which after some angst and shouting, I was able to wrest from their recalcitrant starting positions.

Mike also tells me this bike will last me for ever. Which – based on my bike rental approach – is interesting, if not entirely relevant. But tomorrow, on the anniversary of shoulder-gate, it’ll get clothed in the Emperor ‘s new mud. Of more interest to Carol is my direct return to the house without a diversion to Accident and Emergency.

Worshiping at the altar of Mong would have Consequences what with two weeks of camper van driving a mere week away. But I’m not sure I can ride any more slowly. Anyway a quick cheeky footpath test showed the bike to be both stiff and frisky.

So I’m thinking of calling it the “Penis“. Like rider, like bike eh?

Want rocks?

Quantocks Jan 08 (25 of 45), originally uploaded by Alex Leigh.

That’ll be the Quantocks then. From a purely geological standpoint, it’s arguable the Peak District or North Wales may better qualify. But walk for a minute in my shoes* and try rhyming anything with district. Lift Fits? Whit Gifts? Wrist Pick? Lacking both rhythmic cadence and rhyming couplets.

So, as usual, form triumphs over function on the hedgehog. But it’s not a total fib as these were rocks garnished by marketing. One minute you’d be pinballing off square edged geography idly disputing the brochure’s claim of “dry, sun dappled singletrack nestled in the beautiful hills of Somerset“, and – just before you called a lawyer or the A&E department – suddenly it would appear right in front of you**

Quantocks Jan 08 (1 of 45)Quantocks Jan 08 (2 of 45)

Legend has it that proper mountain bikers would never spend less time out in the hills than it took to travel there.. I’ve always assumed such heroes had very fast cars. But when fantastic weather and great trails intersect, even the slack can manage to ride through five snatched hours of winter daylight.

Quantocks Jan 08 (15 of 45)Quantocks Jan 08 (28 of 45)

Although we did spend approximately a third of that time in the pub. And because they serve beer, it seemed rude not to embark on some light quaffing. And because the Quantocks are a sugar loaf of steep sided valleys, the subsequent climb very nearly resulted in some projectile de-quaffing.

During the occasional brief riding hiatus’s between drinking, talking and eating, the singletrack sparkled cheekily and sparked all sorts of post descent nonsense around riding proficiency rarely seen outside professional competition. For myself, I’d like to think that “I flowed through those corners like I was on snails” treads a line somewhere between natural modesty and harsh reality.

Quantocks Jan 08 (10 of 45)Quantocks Jan 08 (21 of 45)

There was much talk of floating serenely over bumps and braking only when certain death was the alternative. Better still sometimes deeds even followed words with a death-grippy “ohshitgoingtofasttobrakebuggeryarrrggh” approach to the Weacoombe descent brought with it a weeks worth of adrenalin. Had it gone wrong though, the next ten seconds would have been packed full of hurty incident.

Quantocks Jan 08 (20 of 45)Quantocks Jan 08 (34 of 45)

Still out of the aggressively nibbling*** wind, the weak winter sun warmed our backs, and the happy noises of right side up mountain bikers could be heard all around. Riding in winter is so often wet, cold and butt shotblastingly muddy but – on days like this – you remember just how great the next three seasons are going to be.

Back at home some time later I did the numbers. Traveling hours: 5. Traveling miles: 276. Riding miles: Not many. Riding smiles: think of a big number and multiply it by close to infinity.

Forget the rigidity of seasonal accuracy. The daffodils are out, the birds are singing in the dawn, the hedgerows are sleepily awake with new buds. Spring is coming. And so is late summer for those of us heading off to the other side of the word next month.

I may have mentioned that already.

* Probably should have warned you about the smell. They are a funky set of kipper slippers.

** Insert preferred ending
– like Hally Berry wiggling provocatively out of the sea
– like a handsome man with a beguiling – yet playful – smile
– like the Shopkeeper in Mr. Ben
– all of the above.

*** somewhere between flat calm and biting

Never say never

There are many things a man should do before he is forty. And having done those things, he should never ever, even under the most provocative of circumstance, try them again. Right at the top of my list are practical experiments involving body parts and the ground, and event based racing. Well any racing really because of a well documented lack of skill, fitness and motivation. Balance that with a surfeit of grumpiness, lycra xenophobia and a blossoming hatred of riding the same lap. Again, and again and again. And, er well that’s it really, about that time I just pack up and go home.

So no one was more surprised than I as somewhere between the secret project that cannot be named, buggering off to the other side the world for the best part of a month and trying to find even the smallest crack* in my work diary, that I’ve taken on team captaincy for the a 24 hour event held sometime in the not distant enough future.

CLIC-24 isn’t a race. Which is good because the slack crew, who failed to step back quick enough when I shouted out a volunteering email, and I aren’t going to be racing. We’re going to be raising money for CLIC-Sargent which is a silly name but that’s about where the funny stuff stops. It’s a fantastic charity supporting kids with cancer and their parents. And if – and I really think you should – spend some time reading their web site, you’ll be both amazed and saddened by what you see.

After ten minutes browsing around, I would have signed up for 24 hours of almost anything. Note the careful use of the word, almost. And don’t confuse my love of riding bicycles with the prospect of being marooned with 500 other nutters, especially after last year the event was essentially held underwater. And while – in the little Spirograph which represents my mind – I’m seeing myself Nelson-Esque dishing out serial laps to my underlings, realistically I’ll be putting down any mutinies with an extra beer ration and getting back out there myself.

Flickr - From Neil Cain

Oh that looks fun. I’ve spared you the mud. Be grateful.

And hating every minute of it. Still, straining for an upside, it does present an opportunity to annoy the rich people in the firm to handing over quite alot of cash. Between now and actually having to earn my sponsors cash, I intend to avoid any of that training nonsense and, instead, ensure my burgeoning bike collection is race-prepped – because the rider certainly ain’t going to be.

I fully expect a full on dither come the selection crunch, bringing with it the likelihood of borrowing a trailer and chucking the whole lot it – just in case. And while there could be a technical argument that I would be somewhat over-biked riding the SX Trail over the course, I’d much rather think of that as slightly under-terrained.

Please don’t let it rain. Please don’t. Because of the web of lies that will bolster my sponsorship efforts, I’ll be guilted into an out of tent/on a bike experience for which the words ‘fucking horrible’ were brought into existence for. Oh and talking of cash, on receiving confirmation that the Somerset Inquisition is ready for some new heretics, then I’ll be posting the justgiving link here. Quite often 😉

* In terms of white space not apportioned to endpointless meetings not something smutty, as I know at least a few of you were thinking. Me too 🙂

I was just riding along…

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.

One speed, many problems

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.

Compensator of all the talents

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.

Publish and be…

… 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

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”