Do you know what it is yet?

Winter Project (3), originally uploaded by Alex Leigh.

Somewhere in this rambling pantheon of cast off idols is a 4th generation niche which fell so far from grace, Beelzebub himself may well be pedalling it through the gates of hell.

It was dispatched in that flag-nailing manner of “never again” that often secures nothing more than a petard* for one to be hung from. It’s in the bucket of lies which includes “I’ll never drink again“, “I’ll never send an email when I’m spittingly angry” and “That’s all the bikes I need, thanks

The aftermath of the first night ride of the winter suggests that Roger is a little too sensitive to be flung through the grinding paste that makes up the trail surface this time of the year. The PA is too fat in terms of tyres and forks, the SX is an insane enough idea to have me sectioned, and I’m twitchy enough already which rules taking the DMR out.

Winter Project (2)Winter Project (1)

The answer is there for all to see. But with my normal niche chasing madness, I’ve carved out a further fissure. Much of this genre are pretty light because they are missing what I’ve come to think of as “vital components”. Not this chunky monster, hewn from the mountains of heavy, draped with kit that satisfies two from the three “cheap, strong, light” matrix. However, it was essentially free and lucky buggers can’t be choosers.
Winter ProjectWinter Project (4)

An explosion of this parts bin shows me missing only a set of brakes and some transmission gubbins. So there is a very good chance the green monster may make it onto the trails in the next couple of weeks. That’s about as far ahead as I can see – it may become a cherished if abused addition to the burgeoning stable or it could end up in the skip.

Do you know what it is yet?

* What the hell is a petard? Some sort of Nautical term? Pretty safe guess since half the vocabulary of this country is from the sea and the other half from Shakespeare. Or maybe it’s a mammal? I have been hoisted from this twitching gerbil. Then again, maybe not.

“There is something of the night about him”

A famous insult once speared into the political testicles of Michael Howard. The strident weeble – occasionally masquerading as a human being – known to us as Anne Widdicombe authored the quote and she should know. I cannot believe the RSC are every short of a dumpy witch for the blasted heath, whenever the self righteous dwarf is in town.

But to Mountain Bikers, riding through the five dank, dark months between summer and spring is almost a badge of honour. We embrace the darkness, the slop and the cold because the alternative is not riding and that’s just silly. I appreciate this is a bit of a volte-face on my part, but levels of randomness and abandoning previously cherished positions is all part of my charm. Even so, while bikes work fine in the dark, motivation is harder to get started. For two years, my expensive light and bucket full of excuses reduced my night riding to dull and chilly commuting.

Last night, all that changed. And to ensure it was a properly exciting evening, I chose to ride a partially broken bike in the company of the fifteenth fastest man in Britain, on unknown trails mired in post deluge slop. And all this with a light of questionable reliability powered by a battery stripped of its’ power through two years of a commute/recharge cycle. Did consider going the whole hog and blindfolding myself as well.

As I made my last will and testament and waved a tearful goodbye to my family, the last rays of light slipped behind the low Chiltern hills, and I was pitched into the black night. Which was thankfully illuminated – after a brief electronic burp – by a whitening arc of HID technology. Ennobled by this, the first road climb passed quickly for Dean and Steve and some more slowly for me with the seeping chill through my gloves distracting me from broken suspension parts.

Still this began to fill like a good idea right up until the time when we actually headed off road. A fateful juxtaposition matched a patch of slippy mud with an ill advised light adjustment. This sloppy event broke what little traction summer tyres can provide, and it was the bushes for me as my role switched from pilot to passenger.
A slightly embarrassing start to the ride but fairly representative of the next fifteen minutes as I slid about in a parody of control, trying to match the light with the trail and becoming ever more removed from my riding buddies. Their existence was occasionally verified by crazy light beams stabbing distant trees some miles away. It takes a while to tune into the rhythm of the night – in twisty singletrack, the light points one way and the trail another leaving you to swiftly re-learn the art of divining the corner apex from dimly lit shadows.

And while every MTB’r can ride in mud – it is in our fat tyred genes – sliding sideways on corner entry is a bit disturbing until you remember how much fun it is. Speeds are lower than daylight, but concentration is higher. Picking out barely discernible lines, trusting momentum over vision and dodging woody collateral hanging from unseen branches. It’s a full mind and body workout and all the more worthwhile for it.

But it’s more than that. The woods are a magical place at night; moths trapped in high intensity light beams, the almost oppressive silence of the trees and the stillness of standing mute, lights off, listening the happy sounds of nocturnal mammals killing each other.

The final trail home, transformed by a carpet of muddy leaves, was no longer a high speed, jumpy singletrack gem, more a committed power though mud sucking traction – but it’s still good and it’s still a prelude to beer. A fantastic evening then and one I’m keen to repeat until the mud eats the trails completely. But on examining my rather expensive, Californian designed full suspension bike it is clear this may not be the steed for winter hooning.

Obviously, you all know what that means. You will be unsurprised to hear I have a project bubbling in the witches cauldron.

Flaws to Manual

Took me a while to write this. I’d lost my muse, but found it once more when light dawned on the inside of the beer fridge. And once I’d started, I couldn’t stop which is the kind of sticky scenario that every boy who has passed through puberty can probably relate to.

So snuggle deeper into your comfortable office chair*, feast on a biscuit if that is your want and come hither to learn the dark secrets in the art of light.**

Firstly myths, debunking for the use of. Santa Claus was invented by Coca Cola, the tooth fairy is your mum and automatic is for the people.*** If you don’t believe me, Google for the first two and/or get some therapy, but hold fast to the last one because we’ll be giving it an extensive prodding with the sword of truth later on. But first this.

Continue reading “Flaws to Manual”

Is that really a trail bike?

Peaks September 2007-52

A query oft posed by disbelieving strangers on viewing the chunky authority that is the SX Trail. Because the porky object in question (that’s the bike not me in case you were in any way confused there) is often propped against a handy dry stone wall, half way up a mountain-lite, the response is generally a slightly wheezy affirmative.

Yet if you’d asked this same deluded, yet loyal owner that very question about three pm on Sunday, the answer would have been a firm no. It was one of those rides where you’ve overestimated your ability and underestimated the hills. The weather was just starting to close in a little and we’re were running out of energy, enthusiasm and – if the weighed down, slow pace continued – light as well.

Peaks September - Dave Pic # 3Peaks September 2007-33

Derbyshire County Council should really install appropriate signage as you enter the hills “Welcome to the Peak District, where the local climb is 1 hour and five minutes“. Starting with hope at Hope, the first climb up the broken road to Mam Tor is about that before a plunge of insane rockiness down the boulder field of Chapel Gate. The lack of corners on a trail such as this is a welcome relief as you hang on for grim death and idly wonder which part of you would explode first, were you to be catapulted onto one of a million spiky rocks. Trying to actually steer the bike around this graveyard of stone would be a skill to far for me.

Peaks September 2007-32Peaks September 2007-22

And then more of the same for the next five hours, thirty three miles and five thousand five hundred feet of uphill slog and downhill lunacy. While woody singletrack is the drug of choice for many mountain bikers, plummeting down and through glacial eroded valleys and zig-zagging over rutted moorland is MTB Crystal Meth for others. I’m equally rubbish at both as demonstrated when my friend Tim came past on a hardtail. At the time, I was pedaling desperately to reach ramming speed but even so…. it’s not about the bike then.

Peaks September - Dave Pic # 2Peaks September - Dave Pic # 1

By late afternoon, we still had around an unlucky thirteen miles to go, much of it up and over sustained vertical geography including a road climb out of Hayfield that would be mildly unpleasant in a car. Turning off onto a dirt trail at last, it seemed we’d swapped dull tarmac for energy sapping wet grass. Hauling the SX around this kind of stuff can be a bit of a chore, but because it’s so ludicrously competent when cashing in gravity credits, I don’t really mind that much.

Peaks September 2007-54Peaks September 2007-51

The last descent back to Hope is the multi-pitched Cavedale. Starting grassy, quickly morphing to rifled ruts spinning you pinging over drops, before throwing up a rocky slip road to the lineless challenge that has me beaten every time. I nearly didn’t get there either with tired muscles failing to reign in whoopy over-exuberance and a drift to within an inch of a dry stone wall at ‘fuck me that’s going to hurt‘ speed came close to ending the ride early. And possibly quite badly.

Riding days like this strike a discordant harmony when compared to much of the rest of your life. Work, Family, Stuff is generally a compromise, give a little, take a little and – sometimes – bend over and receive one for the team. It’s all subtle posturing and decisions by consensus, but when you’re miles from bloody anywhere, that approach is going to get you nowhere fast and certainly not home.

Stripped of social niceties, you just have to get on with it. The good bits are better and the bad bits a little worse. Expanding your mental horizons while pushing hard on the cusp of the adrenaline/fear barrier is not place for crowd pleasing choices. But that’s a pretty good place to be and when I finally give up Mountain Biking, I don’t think anything will ever take its’ place.

We’re all doomed..

IMG_0928, originally uploaded by Alex Leigh.

.. in the words of Private Godfrey of Dad’s Army fame. Were we the only family who used to watch that back in the 80’s and play the “he’s dead”, “he’s definitely dead”, “are you sure he is dead?” during the title sequence?

Anyway, after Andy’s lament over soon to be muddy trails, I thought I’d cheer us all up with this picture of a typical Chiltern scene come about October.

A number of options present themselves at this point:

1. Don’t ride in winter and get fat.
2. Ride in winter and pretend you’re enjoying it
3. Do something else instead like extreme DIY or bog snorkelling
4. Move to somewhere sunny and dry.

4 is a fantasy, 3 is unlikely, 2 has proven to be beyond my mental capacity for suffering this last few years so it looks like 1 then.

I shall dust off the bigger trousers in readiness.

Old School

Chilterns September (14), originally uploaded by Alex Leigh.

My old friend Andy Hooper, latterly of these parts but recently relocated back to Gods County, rocked up for an XC ride after surviving the dustbowl of Chicksands yesterday.

Riding a loop of the trails we used to ride all the time, in perfect conditions with a good bunch of friends was a fine way to spend a Sunday morning.

I’m glad to note that excuses from 2003 were still deemed valid (“wrong trousers, poor fish breakfast, exploding shoe”) during a brief, yet terrifying pilgrimage to well named “pit of doom“. Andy rode it like a man having just spent two weeks in Canada (which spookily he had), the rest of us minced about and took pictures.

This was the inaugural ride of the almost comically beefed up PA and ,as expected, it is a pilotless tankbusting missile locked onto big stuff that I’m a bit too nesh to ride. Show it a brick wall and it’ll be stamping a tyre and demanding an all out frontal assault. Fab 🙂

We found some super shonky North Shore which was hardly worth the potential barbed wire testicle removal to ride, swooped down perfectly groomed, rooty singletrack and finished on a favourite descent which left legs shaking and grins firmly in place.

Sadly Andy couldn’t join us for the post ride BBQ but – in the spirit of shared companionship of many years – we ate his portion.

Super day. Top fella to go riding with 🙂

Work tomorrow 🙁

Roger The Pink Hedgehog

Voodoo 008, originally uploaded by Alex Leigh.

It’s built but it’s not finished. A dish of bodging and rushing spiced up by a side order of frustration is not not a palatable way to build a bike. Still having got this far and given it the round the bloke test, the following has come to light:

– The forks are a bit like my hosting server. Occasionally working, most of the time not, no one seems to know why.

– The rear brake needs bleeding. This process walks a well trodden path from me having a little bleed, then a big tantrum then a cuddle with the beer fridge. I cannot be calmed by even the most rational family members for many hours.

– The rear shock is an enigma. I found an instruction manual in German, but my attempts to translate it triggered an urge to invade my neighbours garden.

– There are apparently 27 gears in this configuration. I can select only 4, of which three make a noise not normally associated with longevity of drivetrain.

– It’s fast though, short chainstays mean sharp acceleration and it carves corners in a n”oh, we’re already round” kind. It feels like it should be great off road if someone cleverer than me can fix all the stuff I’ve broken.

And the best part of riding it in the hills is it may get muddy. I seem to be the only one who thinks pink is a good colour for a mountain bike.

EDIT: My friend Jay has come up with the perfect name for the pink poof as per the new title of this post. From now on, it shall be known by the acronym RTPG. Which – you must agree – sounds better than “yegads, whose is that pink horror?”

Ah they do…

… do it in pink. I’m now the proud owner of a pink 18 incher, but with a mere three and a half of vertical travel. It’s part of a bike rationalisation strategy I’m calling “benign insanity“.

And, before anyone asks, I shall not be accesorising it by purchasing any further “light purple” components especially anything that may be thought of as a pink helmet.

And because I’d have to dig down to create a bat cave if this was a simple addition to the bikey herd, the old bull elephant has to be cast out. So anybody in the market for a previously enjoyed Turner 5-Spot, let me know.

Otherwise I’ll be forced to lie on fleabay.

Nobody Puts Baby In The Corner.

Post route finding, originally uploaded by Alex Leigh.

Inspiration is an interesting concept; sometimes it wanders in disguised as an old friend with a new idea, occasionally it is the product of weeks’ of intense rumination, and about once in a lifetime it is a lighting strike of Good God, The Flux Capacitor, OF COURSE

I’m currently orbiting a geostationary position in a galaxy full of new ideas; and after a moment of mild epiphany when the trail pixies fired up the adrenalin compressor last weekend, it seemed apposite to try the next thing that came into my head.

Thankfully it wasn’t go and find a gibbon and see if she puts out “ instead a rather boring go and find some trails and see if they give good vibes, sent me riding from home in the hope of finding something other than field edge rubbish. I’ve tried this before and it’s always been a collision of disappointment and frustration as promising looking mappage is nothing more that hub deep hoof shadow.

So with a low level of expectation and a similar level of light, I struck out with a a map I can’t read and a GPS I don’t really understand. Sat here in the pub a couple of hours later, I reflected on what I’d learned:

1. Footpaths round here are mostly footpaths for a reason.
They’re rubbish field edge slogs on an elevation profile similar to Holland. All the enjoyment one can elicit from receiving a saddle up the Japs eye at one second intervals for approximately ever.

2. Some footpaths aren’t
And they are upgraded to evening bridleways, carefully highlighted and shared only with the other shadowy members of the Creation of Unseen Natural Trails*. We rarely use the four letter acronym as it upsets people.

3. MP3 players rock when you’re riding alone.
Especially when you have a shiny new one that has more memory than you have songs. Okay transferring music to it has sounded the death knell of my elderly PC but as the review goes when listening to The Throbbing Buttchumpers ˜Sprouts are my muse’ the retroactive bass blends perfectly with a trebly surround bumped acoustically by a deeply pleasing squish fader it clearly offers something classier than your mate farting Abide With Me.

4. Living somewhere isn’t the same as knowing it.
It’s great to find some bonzer new trails after riding the same ones for over five years especially as some have sufficient cheeky value to promise much fun over the next half decade. There are clearly some very rich people living round here as well with sprawling piles (must be the expense account lunches) marking the end of lost footpaths. I hope they’ve read the Aylesbury expansion plan because they’re about to have 10,000 near neighbours.

5. Riding bikes is just bloody ace.
I was running of light so cut short my exploration at the top of a stingy climb. Reversing direction, it was a delight; some fast switchbacks in the woods then a fantastic trailside up’n’over where a footpath intersected, leading to a flat out brain out rooty gulley finishing in panic stop as cars flashed past on the main road.

It would’ve been about perfect if the player had dished up U2’s Perfect Day or something pumping rock chords from Feeder or Linkin Park. What I actually got was Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes This is the time of your life.

Like I said, Nobody Puts Baby In The Corner**

* I stole this joke from Nick Cummins’ about five years ago. I’m assuming he’s forgotten
** I’m not explaining this. If you don’t get the film reference then you’re way cooler than me. If you do /Waves

Dark Peak Epic.

Long post, short geography lesson. The Peak District is essentially split north/south around Tideswell. The South Side (White Peak) is primarily limestone whereas the North (Dark Peak) is a combination of Millstone and Gritstone. All of it has been fiercely eroded by first eons of glacial action and latterly by wind, water and man.

What it lacks in woody singletrack, it makes up for with proper hills, grinding climbs and loose rocky descents naturally created for the best sport in the world. Classic descents such as Lockerbrook, Jacobs ladder, Oaken Clough, Hag Farm and the notrious “Beast” are famous in this little piece of MTB heaven, and I was long overdue a crack at a few of them.

It’s always a proper big ride especially when Andy “Tracklogs” Shelley is planning a summit bagging epic, this in the face of your trembling bottom lip and 35lb freeridey bike powered by jelly legs on flat pedals. First up was a grind up to Cavedale from the Peak Forest side – once there, I managed to stay on the bike for about the first five seconds before picking first myself and then the bike off the floor. My saddle has been fitted with a precision testicle homing device and so it was with some wincing that the steep section was minced mainly by walking.

.CavedaleCavedale

Continue reading “Dark Peak Epic.”