Category: Pretentious nonsense

A worrying window into the soul. Take a deep breath before starting any sentence. Sheer restless energy banished the comma and full stop during these outpourings of drivel.

Back to the future

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, Pretentious nonsenseLeave a comment

 

 

 

If the Welsh Tourist Board had a brief flirt with accuracy, the slogan’d pretty much write itself: “Come to Wales, bring a waterproof. And a mountain bike“. While accepting this may reduce the size of western charging cohort, it perfectly fits my view of this rather brilliant if incessantly moist country.

Key attributes of any ride in Wales; a) you will get wet b) you will carry your bike c) your tyres/shoes/eyeballs will be full of sheep shit d) you will get amusingly lost and e) outside of the poo creators, you’ll see no other mammals for the entire day. Obviously these rules apply only to proper riding, not that FC ghetto Scalextric nonsense harvesting a bumper crop of sheepy sign-post followers.

Unexpected early October sunshine had three of us piling into Matt’s rather natty demo van* and heading into the wilds of mid Wales where the hills are steep, the views inspiring and the people few. Such was our keenness, even the traction beam of an early morning pig ‘n’ chicken butty was mightily resisted as we assembled three bikes representing all the current wheel sizes currently being hawked by evil MTB marketeers.

Assuming you’ve taken my previous advice not to read the bottom half of the Internet, here’s a summary of where such idiocy takes us; the tallest of us rides at 26 inch bike, the shortest a 650b and the middling one a 29er. We all use to ride 26s, and Matt (tall) was the fastest downhill, Dave (shortest) was second with me bringing up the rear. After spending *ahem* a few pounds on lovely new builds, our slavish adherence to our own ‘best‘ standard has changed absolutely nothing in the pecking order. Other than opening up entire new motherlodes to be mined by rich piss-taking.

So having efficiently arrived at our start location in the lovely town of Rhayader, our attempt on a classic old school XC loop was put on pause while some similarly classic dithering over if a certain individual needed a wee took a while to resolve. Prostrates satisfied, off we span on leaf splattered trails in sight of the River Elan. Synaptic resonance reminded me of the last time we’d tackled this route in a snowstorm. And the time before than in a thunderstorm. I couldn’t help but glance warily at blue sky and wonder what precipitation lay in wait for us this time? Maybe a falling satellite?

3 kilometres in and we were lost. Not exactly lost, as the three of us could confidently identify our current location. Which was at river level when the route called for some proper climbing into brooding hills mocking us from our lowly position. Double back and double up on a steep climb surfaced by first a worn out road and latterly by a rocky track which provided a Welsh warm up of gaining a couple of hundred metres in not much distance.

The already dog eared guide notes** suggested the next section might be a carry. Optimism in print there as we shouldered bikes and discovered exactly why this stunning pocket of densely packed hills was picked to provide clean water for the brummies. Even after a dry summer, it was still boggy underfoot with little used trails packed full of stingy vegetation. We’d picked a route from a guide book some fifteen years hence which enthusiastically catalogued a ride of endless awesomeness with two of the best descents Wales could offer.

And fifteen years ago, you could imagine mesh helmeted riders clad in purple spandex poking themselves with bar ends and bouncing uncontrollably down rocky descents by the hundred. Not so now with all sorts of magpie shinyness attracting the contemporary mountain biker to the path of least resistance. We shouldered bikes and un-glooped ankles from un-gentrified bog, while they bought macchiatos and compared carbon composites. Their loss.

We topped out close to the stunning view at the start of this post. Opening up a a gully of rocky steepness requiring 100{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} focus entirely lacking due to an eyeball dragging juxtaposition blending man made reservoirs with lines of endless hills. I had to stop and take pictures giving me ample time to arrive at the crux already cleaned by Matt. He shouted that my line was all wrong – no change there – before hiking back up to show me the way. I decided ‘the way‘ was way above my pay grade and walked down mocked by those ghostly hardcases of old who’d made up for their lack of bike by a dollop of skills.

No matter, fun all the same which wasn’t quite the case on the climb out of the valley mostly completed with a nose on the stem, arse giving you the full ‘D-wing in the showers, reaching for the soap‘ experience. Lungs on fire, legs weakening by the pedal stroke, massive vistas putting the boot in your self-worth, this feels like proper mountain biking. Hard, uncompromising, potentially unrewarding but God what a privilege to have this to ourselves on a perfect day.

Back on top at 500m above sea level, we abandoned the route guide and headed for a half-remembered plunge down the ridge on a trail nothing like singletrack but everything like giggly fun. Fast, open and apparently without danger right up until the point a deep bog nearly ended it for me. Lost now, we pushed quietly through a dilapidated farm yard clearly modelled on Deliverance, and dropped onto the old train track built to take hard men into the mountains to build the stupendous engineering masterpieces of the Elan dams.

Dave – much broken from a horrible road crash last year – lobbied for the flat way home around the mountain. We talked him out of it promising only one more climb and a fantastic descent to finish. Selling job complete, we skirted the reservoir and pitched upwards onto a climb I remembered as being fairly lumpy but reasonably short. I was half right with the soft grass under-tyre adding pain to an overdose of lactic acid. Ten minutes later it was done leaving me on a bleak summit surrounded by 360 views and bugger all else.

I dumped the bike and stood there for a while. As close to being at peace as I ever get with none of the daily compromises foisted by life in general and work in particular. For a second or so, as a chill wind whistled through what’s left of my hair, I was tempted to use the word ‘spiritual’ at which point a tanker rumbled into view on an unseen road putting paid to that pretentious nonsense. Dave and Matt then put up with my insistence to ride through ‘that bog again‘ for the digital soul stealer before a final road climb topped us out on a double track full of puddles and anticipation.

The first kilometre was flat but fun dropping wheels into ‘how bloody deep is that going to be’ small lakes before gradient triggered dropped seat posts and grin inducing velocity. Nothing on this track was scary but it was fast and steppy so perfectly suited to popping off drops and drilling rock gardens. Modern mountain bikes may flatter the lightly skilled but by Christ they are stupidly good fun on tracks like this. And it was a track that went on for approximately ever. Time was marked by Dave’s freewheel right up my chuff and the chain slapping the swing arm as lumps turned to jumps.

Done if not dusty, we rolled back into town and straight into the pub. Where we talked about bikes, things we’d done and things we were going to do. We didn’t talk about wheel sizes or shock configurations or tyre pressures. We didn’t talk about how our lined complexions suggested a raging against the dying of the light. We didn’t talk about what happens when this all stops.

And that’s not just displacement blindness. It’s a recognition that while we can drag our ageing bodies into high places, the reward will be a million times greater than the effort required to do so.

Go to Wales, you get to see this kind of stuff

* which – if I was tended to the selfish – he’d best buy for our trip to the alps next year. Short of adding a drinks cabinet, it’s damn close to chauffeured mountain biking.

** Navigation via my GPS was discounted on the not unreasonable grounds that – despite it’s obvious efficacy in all things finding places – it was in gloved hands of an idiot.

Evil Eye*

On By AlexIn Other stuff, Pretentious nonsenseLeave a comment

“it’s about more eyeballs” was the passionate refrain from a man with a ‘digital vision‘ and a poor choice in ties earlier in my week. Somebody, who shall spent an eternity in hell, had furnished this ‘digital native‘ with noveltyneck wear, a copy of powerpoint and an hour of my time to expound barely-baked theories on exactly how the world was going to work and – if we took his breathless advice – our place within in.

Two problems. He was twenty years plus a bit past those who have an understanding of any of this shit – so therefore entirely irrelevant, and I wasn’t listening. Not because i wasn’t interested** but rather my attention was on the blurry audio visual experience which was more modern hieroglyphics than any discernible text. Still ever cloud and all that, I didn’t actually have to read it. Sadly my ears still worked.

This wasn’t the surprise that a man waking up missing 10{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} of his vision would suggest. Earlier that week I was put very much in mind of one my favourite Pete and Dud sketcheswhere Cook interviews a one legged Moore for the role of Tarzan and declares ‘I have nothing against your right leg Mr Spiggot, nothing at all. The problem is neither do you‘. I tell you this because my appointment with the head eye poker at Hereford hospital followed a similar script. Only it wasn’t quite as amusing.

Visual assessment predates any proper medical advice. I rocked up with clean looking eyeballs and an air of confidence. Which rapidly eroded when the right eye delivered a chart reading performance in line with a man last seen with a harnessed labrador. Top Doc wheeled me in and shook my hand in the manner of a professional having recently been forced to attend a ‘customer interaction‘ seminar.

Awkwardness passed, soon I was seated – chin on rest, lights dimmed, bright lights and barked instructions on where to point the eyeballs before a frankly worryingly extended examination where the full gamut of humming, tutting and teeth clicking left me in no doubt the breezy ‘you’re all good, vision of a twenty year old, darken not our towels again‘ of my optimistic construction wasn’t actually going to occur.

“I like your left eye, your left eye is very good, your right eye however...’ – a scan of the notes suggested a new infection was stalking my already ravaged eyeball. Although this was a matter for some dispute as the 21st Century cutting edge diagnostic history manifested itself as a wobbly circle with a dot randomly pencilled in. It was like a fucking wombles naming ceremony.

Having seen three different masters of eyeball in my three previous visits, some confusion about exactly where this dot might actually be took a while to resolve. And quite a few people. I’m here to tell you there is no shortage of doctors and nurses in the NHS. Really just when the last management consultant*** performed a headcount, they were all in a room with me. Not that I could see them of course – glasses off it’s an impressionistic blur hiding concerned expressions. Suits me, that’s my kind of displacement activity, shame I hadn’t smuggled in a hipflask.

So many people were eyeballing my eyeball I began to feel a bit like a medical experiment. Half expected a copywriter to come in with a camera and the outline of a textbook entry marked ‘if it looks like that, best recommend some audio books‘. Eventually the entire medical cohort for all of Herefordshire were shooed out and I was left with a man who gave me half a smile and about the same level of explanation.

‘There’s is an infection still there. It’s very close to the area of prime vision. The loss of clarity might be scarring because you are healing too quickly. Still it might also be too much coffee, lack of sleep or feeling tense. Are you feeling tense?’‘. Since I was arranging my face into a heroic/stoic fascimilie of a bloke who could ‘take it’ when it came to bad news I entirely missed the opportunity to shout ‘what do you fucking think? I’ve spent the last twenty minutes being prodded by a pantheon of increasingly worried looking people with doctor in their title‘

I am beginning to form an indelible impression that the medical branch of Ophthalmology is more of an art than a science. Let me furnish you with a representative example. The doc again ‘ your eyes are healing really well. But too fast. The body has only one way of dealing with cuts and thats scaring. So your lack of vision may be scoring of the cornea. We can treat that with steroids but I don’t want to prescribe too much’ / ‘oh why’s that, more is better, just give me something I can inject with a piping bag’ / ‘Ah well no we can’t because there is a side effect of steroids. And that side effect is scaring’.

While I was trying to find a some rationale or logic to work that out, he followed with ‘so are you feeling more reassured’ / ‘that what? being told I’ve lost a chunk of vision and it might be permanent or it might be because I’ve just swigged a latte? Not really or – to speak from the heart – not. at. fucking. all.’ He wondered if I had any questions, most of which would have started ‘can we start again but this time without the crowds‘. But there are times when not knowing the wrong answer is all about not asking the right question. So I didn’t. That’s how cowardice works.

Anyway they clearly like me because they keep asking me back. In fact they actively encouraged me to return before the next appointment should I feel any discomfort or concern. I’ve passed so far on the grounds that self medication with a decent Merlot is a far better approach. Come Monday tho, I’ll be back amongst the sick people memorising the eye chart and pretending all is well.

Between then and now, I’m beating myself up testing the eyeball to see if it’s improved. Mostly by covering the good eye and squinting at number plates to ascertain how blurry the bad eye receives that image. This isn’t a good idea both in terms of ongoing disappointment, and the simple fact there may be other road events of which I am completely fucking unaware as blurry stuff passes by at sixty miles an hour.

Still mustn’t grumble. Prescription glasses arrived which instantly triggered bikes being ridden. And that was soul food for the starving. I hardly noticed the glasses – even if they are a bit Joe 90/Bono – but God I noticed how much I miss riding my bike. I’ve been like a bear with a sore arse all week snapping at anyone with the temerity to enquire on my wellbeing. It’s all gone a bit single issue and that’s a shitty way to run your life.

So tomorrow we’re on a quest to find Jessie a bigger bike and – if that goes well – I’ll get to ride with one of my kids. Sunday I’ll find an excuse to ride again because this kind of thing is a prism of focus. There’s much that is important and none of has anything to do with nine to five.

* driving home the shuffle algorithm through up tracks of this name by both Ash and AC/DC. That’s serendipity right there. Based on what passes for my musical tastes, I feel you have got off lightly.

** there was a bit of that obviously.

*** I’d just like to clear up a peripheral point here. I am not a management consultant. Never have been, never will be. I’m just a bloke with a set of skills people buy because you;d never want to employ someone quite that arsey. I’m comfortable with interim, contractor or even mercenary. But not consultant. Thank you for listening 😉

Failure to launch

On By AlexIn Bikes, Pretentious nonsense4 Comments

For some of us mountain bikes are a thing of lust. A mistress to whom we run every Sunday. At the intersection between adrenalin and joy is a rite of passage marked by ‘I love my bike!‘. It’s a little more complex that that; sure we love the places – physically and mentally* that these people-animated objects take us, yet hardly one of us hasn’t positioned a box fresh build in our eyeline and spent a happy hour drinking in her curves.

But like everyone else born human, we lie to ourselves. We confuse cost and value, guilt of the former inflates the latter. We’ll make all the right noises in public but in our heads we’re rehearsing ‘it’s not you, it’s me’. Serial bike wranglers recognise the signs and catch the tells. They go like something like this.

First ride blues – anticipation unmatched by reality. All that research, careful component choice, increasing shiny kit piles and eventually an aesthetic masterpiece which clears the ‘looks right will ride ride‘ bar by some distance. But there’s a dark mood when old man and new bike fail to ignite, and the expected trail highlights are cast into shadow. “It’s just a matter of time” you tell yourself – invest time in the bike and it’ll rewrite that disappointing review.

But instead you invest in changes. Not to make things better really, just to make things different. For the Rocket, my strong conviction was the frames’s uber stiffness was terminally compromised by a slightly noodly fork up front. Changed those to something significantly more substantial and switched bars and stem at the same type. And tyres. Unsurprisingly it felt quite a lot different, but better? Not really. What it felt was a bit dead and what I felt was a bit over-biked.

And before eyes roll and my bike renting history is dragged out as exhibit A, this wasn’t a ‘the bike doesn’t understand‘ me flounce. I really, really wanted to like it – love it if you like – because it ticked every box in my increasingly defined bike buying criteria. Low and slack. Long and rangy. Light enough to ride all day, butch enough to be chucked down mountains. And bought from Cy who I respect completely as both a bloke and bike designer.

Which may go some way to understand why the Solaris for which I had moderately low aspirations is probably my favourite bike. Got on it, loved it, stuck some tubeless tyres on it, left it alone, rode it lots with a big grin on my face. Which doesn’t make the Rocket a bad bike. Not a bit of that; it was bloody brilliant in the alps and when the going got scary, the rocket, well, rocked. The only thing holding it back was me.

So I never loved it. But God I wanted to. I had some brilliant rides in amazing places, yet 95{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} of the time those rides would have been somehow even more brilliant on a different bike. The three dimensional space where that bike makes sense is rarely part of my mountain bike geography. It needs a rider who has bravery stamped long in their DNA and a insouciant attitude to personal injury. Who will ride the bike all the time and make it sing in scary places.

That rider isn’t me. Probably never was. Certainly won’t be. Three times, in the 1500 kilometres of ownership, we left these shores to find some of that terrain where the best bits of the Rocket would shine. And shine it did for a few moments when deed out-thought trepidation. A couple of endless rocky descents were met by a charging bike, surging ever forward and demanding you got your bloody act together and started riding it, rather than just hanging on.

I hung on for a couple more months. Those were the months were the PYGA was firstly faster uphill and then down which clearly tags me as the limiting factor. Strava aside tho, I was enjoying it more – the terrain we have here is steep both ways so a three minute descent will inevitably trigger a 20 minute climb. It’s a numbers game and the pluses are on the side of the bike that climbs a lot better and descends only a little slower. And I’m still having a whole load of fun.

Even with all that, next years alps trip suggested a proper ‘mountain bike’ would be an ideal accompaniment. But getting back on it after 20 rides on the PYGA felt so weird. I looked down and thought ‘where’s the front wheel and why is it so small?’. So an innocent post on a bike forum quickly morphed into a lovely fella called Olly driving down from Chesterfield with a bucket full of bike want and a virtual chequebook.

So its gone home. 20 miles or so from where Cy runs Cotic and nestled in the midst of the peak district. I’ll probably see it next week – parrot, eyepatch and wooden leg notwithstanding – as part of the Hope Valley Challenge. See it at the start-line and possibly at the end as it’s resting against a pub sign while we’re drinking hoppy refuel. And I’ll be absolutely fine with that because the worse thing about the Rocket wasn’t that it was a bad bike but that I couldn’t ride it like a good one.

So the PYGA is going to the alps next year with some stouter forks and bigger tyres. Sound familiar? Failing that if I find my wandering eye has me falling out of love of ‘the one‘, there’s always 650B to consider. One of those’d look good against the fireplace.

The first step on any path to a cure is to admit you have a problem 😉

* I originally wrote ‘spiritually’ but the pretentious guff-meter exploded and proper Northerners threatened to take my plain speaking card away on the grounds of flowery wank and weepy metaphors.

Eyes Wrong

On By AlexIn Bikes, Pretentious nonsense14 Comments

Back in November I catalogued a journey of some enlightenment on finally summoning up the courage to cross the boundary of the local opticians.At the end of which, a public duty of care was proudly made to my non-upgradable mark-1 eyeballs. Which I’ve mostly kept through increased wearing of bookish glasses*, meticulous cleaning of super-thin lenses and the careless disposal of expensive dailys.

Which had gone rather well even while my vision was visibly declining in that horrible getting older/genial decay kind of middle aged action I’m mostly blind about. Reading mainly was becoming a bit of a close squint/nose-edged glasses/light-angled wiggling of text and a frustrated bellow at those printing black text on black backgrounds. Once I’m world dictator, no graphic artist is going to have control of final copy until they’re at least 50 years old.

Still mountain biking wise all good. Clarity and distance unhindered by puffy, red eyes or hated glasses. Until last week when the whole vision thing deteriorated from tired eyes after a long day to searing eye pain, via a sensitivity to light that I self-diagnosed as morphing into a Gremlin. Eyeball abuse has been so frequent in my life, a quick scan of the cerebral compost suggested another eye infection. That’d probably be better in the morning.

Half right in the half light, but after a night of discomfort and bathing of blood-red spherics which were only vaguely comparable with working visual optics, even a dusty fluorescent had me twisting away in pain. Still work to do and displacement to create – rather than seek the opinion of a medical professional I decamped to the home office and squinted at a big screen until common sense (or let’s be honest what the anthropomorphicpersonification of common sense is in our house: Carol) bundled me into a car and off to Hereford for a consultation with a bored out-of-hours Doctor and, if my experience of Friday night in A&E is anything to go by, a stab wound.

He packed me off with the exact same antibiotic solution we’d treated the dog with a couple of years back. Splendid result all round; no diagnosis and a good chance I’d awake half blind but with a glossy coat and engaging bark. Still placebo being what it was and not wishing to fuss** the next two days passed with a non evidential conviction that things were improving. Bored and frustrated, I went alpha-troglodyte and fixed bikes in the shed knowing riding them meant stuffing lenses into inflamed eyes, and even I am not that stupid.

So back to see Jon first thing this morning and his happy optician smile faded a bit on examining the right eye. He started well ‘the left eye, that’s healing nicely. The right eye? Not so much and the infection is close to the pupil. If it gets bigger it’ll affect your vision, probably best to go to hospital don’t you think?’. I wasn’t thinking much, just feeling. And feeling a bit bloody frightened. And a bit guilty about my previously chink free eyeball health regime. Maybe the lenses weren’t cleaned perfectly every night, yeah occasionally sore eyes didn’t get the glasses relief they should and okay the last mega dusty ride had been unertaken without any glasses, but even so surely this must be someone elses fault.

Maybe. My problem tho. And poor Carol’s who was relegated to a chauffeur role with a whinging client. Back to Hereford and some surprisingly efficient processing before being deposited on the massive eye ward. Which stretched as far as the eye could see – in my case that was about 20 yards. A quick consultation with a lovely doctor who assured me that I probably wasn’t going blind, but the infection healing process might leave a slight scar. Which could manifest itself as hazy vision in one eye. But then again it might not, whose to know eh? Well, I couldn’t help thinking, maybe you? And can I ask for my medical news to be delivered without quite so many ifs, whys and maybes.

I stiff-upper-lipped it in typical bloke style thanking her for giving it to me straight, and assuring her that I would be absolutely fine as my drinking arm was in perfect working order. She smiled – sort of – and then gave me a whole post diagnosis opinion on contact lenses, my butchered eyes and the incompatibility of the two. Glasses make me feel old I whined/at least you can still see yourself she countered.

Fair point. Well made.

More eye drops, the first application of which I tasted which suggests the application technique needs some work. And stern instructions to return in three days or before if Id gone all Ray Charles in the meantime. Oh, and as a bit of a throwaway remark, absolutely no contact lenses whatsoever for two months. AT LEAST. My initial thought – and this tells me a lot about how I’m wired up – was ‘shit no mountain biking, I’ll go bloody sitr crazy and get fat and get beaten on Strava and not go drinking with my mates and…and…and..’

So fuck that frankly. Proven approach of taking problem and throwing money at it has already procured me a set of driving sunglasses which apparently are one of a three part set including string-backed driving gloves and beige trousers. So now I can drive but I can’t ride which clearly isn’t going to fly. So I’m hunting down prescription lenses that react to light in a way I’d rather like my eyes to do again. And the second I get the all clear from my rather forbidding eye doctor, I’m back out there.

It might even begin to explain my strange line choices. It’ll certainly explain the bloody horror that a mountain biking shaped hole excavated when I was thinking too much about this. There’s something epically self centred about the prospect of having really screwed up vision for the last forty years or so of your life, but the only context that makes any sense is in the now – ‘when can I get back on my bike?‘. Honestly I’m so consumed by it I might even ride my road bike in these very glasses I’m staring at this screen with right now.

I don’t care if roadies laugh at me. They do that anyway. I blame the camelbak.

So that’s been a scary few days. And we’re not out of the woods yet. Well not as far as I can see anyway. What I have seen is that it’s probably about time I took some responsibility for fairly important organs which could convincingly sue me for corporate manslaughter. There’s been some interesting upsides as well – mostly about what’s important and what isn’t. I’ll leave that for another day, but it’s fair to say when I finally got back to my inbox, I could barely stop laughing.

Eyes Right I think from now on.

* which I’d hoped would make me look more intelligent. On reflection, a big ask considering the balance of stupidity they had to redress.

** Not quite true. I just hate hospitals. They are full of sick people. And other people in white coats with bad news. Who’d want to go there?

Nearer 50 than 40

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, Pretentious nonsenseLeave a comment
Picture painting a thousand words

Which is perfectly okay if someone is handing over used notes or offering chances of survival from a fatal disease, but when we’re counting years and working out how many are left, it’s clearly the wrong way round. Even subtracting ten years would likely trigger middle aged angst and a strong desire to purchase a bright red sports car.

We’ve established that there is happy chasm between being being old and growing up. Some of this is an attitude firmly baselined in the delusional, a bit more is refusing to allow beige into your life, there’s much about striving to act significantly less mature than your own children, and – inevitably – there’s something about riding mountain bikes.

Sometimes life in general and this blog in particular suggests that everything that isn’t riding bikes is merely filler until I can. Plugging the financial, parental, vocational gaps when clipping into familiar pedals isn’t possible, And there is something in that – smugness at refusing to join the sofa-bound reality TV crowd is tempered by guilt at pissing away countless hours reading bike forums. Doing great stuff with the family skewed by boring them with mountain bike trivia*. Sat at my desk doing stuff other people can’t do, but terribly distracted by the sun blue lighting the distant hills.

Forget being forty-six and the haggard looking face in the shaving mirror that confirms chronologically you’re pretty well screwed – instead take a shorter view, live in the moment for a week and let’s see how that feels. It feels like this – Saturday morning we hit the M5 in search of fun and dusty trails and were rewarded by a Quantocks ride which reaffirmed a basic truth learned from doing this stuff for a long time; half of the awesomeness of riding bikes is where you are, the other half is absolutely who you are with. Even when the buggers are clearly more skilled/more brave and basically just faster downhill.

I’m done with worrying about such things. Not sure I can get any braver but I can certainly get fitter. Even with fading physique, the PYGA loves a bit of oxygen debt and my bloody-mindendness gland shows no sign of withering so we do okay. On a sunny, summer day hitting panoramic highs with your riding pals who absolutely get it is something between a privilege and a blessing. Even as a card carrying atheist, I completely understand why churches are built on higher ground – it’s at the same time uplifting and placing you somewhere in the ‘what’s important‘ hierarchy somewhere close to insignificant.

Then Sunday I announced that my continued dereliction of family duty would be balanced by a shared activity we could all enjoy. Obviously that meant taking everyone going riding. Or possibly whinging by bicycle: “Dad this is really steep” / “it really isn’t, it’s a bloody railway track” / “when do we get an ice cream?” / “when you’ve put a bit more bloody effort in“. This is the kind of motivational approach/group bonding that holds our little family together 😉

I’m not a complete bastard tho. There was ice cream. And then there was cake. And then there was much praise for good things having been done. And then there was Internet shopping for Carol who’d been ruined by an inappropriate saddle. And then there was the promise of another motorhome holiday next year, because I mostly believed ‘we really want to go on holiday with you again’.

Wednesday – the day before the most important workday of my year when 600,000 18 year olds pretty much rely on us to tell them if they’re going to university** – started with a depressing charging of lights and a mad dash to the ride start point. It didn’t take long for mental salvation through the power of perfect dirt to rearrange my definition of important. I’m riding stuff now that earlier in the year had me stalling and excusing. This isn’t some magic fix for all that properly sucks with my riding, but as I slide into ever deeper antiquity I’ll take any kind of progress whether it be real or delusional.

Then tonight after a couple of very long and mind-bending days, we hit the trails again in the Malvern Hills after I’d already hit the bar for Birthday drinks and hit the cake equally as hard. At my age this is what I consider a balanced diet. I wasn’t riding very well but the sun was shining, my friends were riding with me ,and we planned a perfect route which predictably finished in the pub.

You see I read that self indulgent crap and I don’t feel old. I look around at what I have and can’t quite work out how a shit-kicker from Yorkshire ended up with a loving family of whom I’m immensely proud, a career clearly directed by endless lucky breaks, and a boxload of friends who ride bikes with adequate briskness while putting up with my verbal drivel.

Forty-Six is still closer to fifty tho. You can’t buy time but you absolutely can use it. I’m not getting my hair back and I never had any good looks to lose. So this doesn’t feel like the right time for naval-gazing introspection. I don’t need to find myself – I’m right here and if there’s one thing I have learned in all those years it is this; you absolutely have to live in the moment because when it’s gone, it’s gone for ever.

Yeah you can’t buy time, so let’s make sure we don’t waste it.

* See that over there? That lovely view? Yes, see that sparkling river in the valley? Yes? I’ve fallen in there.

** which – I have to say – we did a bloody fantastic job telling them. Which made me very happy indeed. Some of which was due to knowing EXACTLY how close to the wire it was 😉

A weighty problem

On By AlexIn Other stuff, Pretentious nonsenseLeave a comment

Around the start of the year, I whinged through a predictable lament on the pointlessness of targets, before slipping in the horrific half al/half hippo fat-boy stat, and promising to do something about it. No one is more surprised that I, that cheap words were followed by somewhat more expensive deeds.

In those eight weeks, nearly 20lbs has been removed from my withering carcass. The expense has come in the form of booking an early alps long weekeend, a few race entries, and a new bike. Liposuction, or possibly full body replacement would have been cheaper.

I’m rightly quite proud of that. Slipping a bike in under the auspices of healthy living I mean, rather than the actual fat removal. That bit has been surprisingly easy mainly as it’s not a diet, it’s just a better way of living your life. Firstly, stop drinking in the week. I’m the last man with any mandate to get all preachy here, but the volume and frequency of my bottle love was sat right in the middle of what we’re told is a middle class problem.

Then eat less, exercise more. Smaller plates filled with home cooked food, heavy on the veg and missing all that processed shit that used to be the default option. Treats are treats – love a bit of Jessie’s awesome cake but the key world here is little. And not to be coupled with often. Accept that sometimes you’re going to be hungry but even that goes after a few weeks. And when you do eat, it’s a really enjoyable experience not just fast fuel.

Habits can be hard to break. At work we seem to be in a cycle of unending birthdays releasing a torrent of sugary based products on a daily basis. Once you’ve politely declined 20 times, people do stop asking. Now they just give me a banana instead, although this may be a less than subtle pointer to how I am viewed by the organisation 😉 So breaking the snacking habit is a bugger, but – if the calorie counting app is anything like accurate – a bloody important one.

That app is nasty. And it’s also pointless to those who say calorie counting is a stupid way to try and lose weight. They have the -ahem- weight of science and clinical trials to go by, I have my trouser size. The truth is in the middle somewhere I’m sure – eat better food in less quantities while really thinking about what you’re stuffing your face with, and it’s likely you’ll see some positive results.

Mine are a waist withcircumferenceof minus two inches, a view of my ribs last seen by an x-ray machine and a body shape that isn’t entirely hidden by thirty years of abuse since beer was discovered. But that’s just vanity and entirely not the reason for making a bit of an effort. Riding bikes is what I love doing, and being a chunk lighter makes that an even better experience.

Not just climbing where you get there quicker but it hurts just as much. Strava – and we’ll be back to this soon – is another bastard app clearly designed for weak willed, excuses filled people like me. Now tho, longer rides aren’t soexhausting, schelpping up ‘one more climb’ makes some kind of sadistic sense, and while pedalling hard everywhere still raises an oxygen deb, at least I can just about service it.

New bikes help of course. As do recently dry and frozen trails. And impending deadlines for the Westword 50, Wiggle 100k road ride, HONC (never again I said, it appears I lied) and a few others have me out spinning circles with a stretch goal of being second from last.

I appreciate this is all a bit self congratulatory. It’s not meant to be, more an outpouring of surprise at what’s somehow happened in eight weeks on a pie avoidance programme. Whether it’s sustainable is hard to know, but so far the rewards far outweigh any occasional cravings.

I did, for one second, consider another crack at Mountain Mayhem. But that’s crossing a hard line between healthy living and terminal stupidity.

Targets

On By AlexIn Pretentious nonsense4 Comments

First goals and now targets. This smacks nastily of play mirroring work. Let’s take that and exercise it a little through a weary narrative jog. Last summer*, most of my targets were viscerally augmented to the broad suit backs of my temporary employer. Such was my calamitous state of work/life balance that the opportunity of ‘clearing angsty thirty foot hungry alligators from a Florida swamp‘ would have been met with a cost/benefit analysis something like ‘so similar work in a warmer climate with more reasonable clients, where do I sign?’

Targets are terrible things. Especially if you’re a civil engineer. As you’re merely building them as incentives for the defence industry. In the mostly pointless world of what I do, they represent a meaty slice of a vocational pizza topped with KPIs, CoEs, SoWs and YHTBFJs**. Not that I’m complaining because through no obvious effort on my part, stuff that many people seem to find difficult is scarily easy for me. Of course I have to work hard, but not because this stuff is actually difficult to do. There’s just a lot of it.

You may have noticed that, at no time, has any effort been made to articulate exactly what that is. This isn’t me being coy or clever – it is genuinely because there’s no easy way to explain it. Even to myself. I know what it’s called but that’s not the same as what is it. Many moons ago, when we first moved out here, my efforts at school-gate communication elicited the knowledge that almost everyone had a proper job be that fireman, farmer or farrier. My best response was essentially a hand waving generic – speaking of great deeds evoked mainly by shouting at people.

So we’ve established what it isn’t. Only not really because what it is isn’t is how I see me spending the rest of my ever diminishing days. There’s a beautiful phrase about middle age which essentially talks of “Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way” (point for artist and title). Let me share what this target fixation isn’t one more time, and that’s a middle aged crisis because such angst would suggest one has ever pupated from mental puberty.

Any time I’ve ever felt secure in a job is the trigger for boredom followed by extremely bad mannered disruptive behaviour. Get out before being thrown out. And I have absolutely no fucking interest at all in the kind of career plan where some Apprentice-meme mutates into ‘in two years I shall be world dictator, but first: this filing‘. God if you want to be disappointed, look out of the window or into the mirror. Don’t set yourself up for failure; we are already over-burdened by a society explaining we’re wholly inadequate in terms of what we buy, the way we bring up our children, the house we live in and the car we drive.

So if we’re going to have some kind of target, let’s at least make it something we might actually enjoy doing. It’s not riding bikes – strange as that may sound, because riding is a dirt filler which papers over the cracks on an ordinary life. It’s not a way of life, it’s an escape from it. And there’s no target that gets hit by punting myself out as a gun for hire until old age or cynicism or hitting some mythical number cries that enough is really enough.

It’s finishing a book. If we were looking at a left-to-right sequential view, it’s about starting it. Or even working out what it might be. But in four months time this contract ends and something will start. For four weeks, everything that pays the bills and provides some gossamer wisp of self worth shall be cast aside. To see if there’s anything in my head that might make sense on paper.

Let’s save ourselves some tedious rhetoric and assume the answer to all of these questions is ‘you’ve got to be fucking joking‘ 1: have you any idea what kind of book that might be? 2: will it be finished? 3: will it make you any money? 4: do you have the mental discipline to sit in front of an empty screen every day and 5: will you have an enviable set of excuses of why the lack of any discernible output shall be considered a wild success? Oh sorry the answer to the last one is, of course, absolutely.

My mate Dave has written two books; an electronic one he’s published himself, and a second that a proper company is currently making out of real paper. For which he appears to have gainstayed any actual paying employment for the thick end of two years. Although this is simply explained by some supposed ‘research‘ that had him gallivanting to all corners of this sceptred isle to go ride his bike. But ballsy as hell – of that there is no doubt.

Google tells us that an average book is 60,000 words. That’s 2000 a day then. Creating thousands of words isn’t the problem, they might even be good words but navigable sentences is clearly going to be a big issue. And that’s before there’s any proper writing thing around plot, research, structure, narrative, etc. Still I’ve started a few so eventually I’ll have to finish one, because we all know that everyone has a book inside them. And frankly that’s probably where it should stay.

To be honest, writing this down and publishing it to an uncaring Internet is merely a device to keep me honest. It’s nothing more than a public admission of failing to follow convictions that make perfect sense until eating becomes a priority. I’m at an age were forgetting difficult words such as large woody handled objects separating inside and outside become finger clicking, its-coming-to-me, arrrghh-you-know-the-THING daily trial. If I don’t get my shit vaguely together, I’ll be left with nothing more than electronic spittle.

Worse case I can find my muse in dusty summer singletrack*** and revel in a world where alarms happen to other people and emails are something to be welcomed.

There I’ve said it now. No idea what happens next.

* Chronological. In no way meteorologically differentiated from winter by anything other than a slightly elevated rain temperature.

** Don’t ask. I only made one of those up. If was the one with F in it.

*** Which may involve a move to Spain.

Winter, it’s the new spring

On By AlexIn Pretentious nonsenseLeave a comment

Not so much spring, more raging torrent. But before that, this.

There’s many, many things serially broken about Christmas. Not least because it’s become less of an excuse for your righteous atheist to tediously explain to anyone who isn’t interested how we’ve hijacked a pagan festival, and more because we’ve replaced any token interest in the birth of Christ with a full on worship of the great god Capitalism.

The shit we buy. The guilt we feel. The booze we drink. The food we stuff down our throats. It’s a gluttony love in swiftly followed by an orgy of self pity when we open the credit card bill, or stare through frightened fingers at the new digital scales some bastard relative thought we might find useful.

As a mast-nailedunbeliever, there’s somethingbeautifullyironic when to the God of Marketing the spoils, and to the being once held absolute the scraps. There’s a million people that do this argument better than I, and that’s fine because right now it’s missing the point by about 3 days.

21st December. Wintersolstice. Half way out of the dark. Sure our little storm tossed island is still mostly underwater andmeteorologicalevents suggesting the season handle has not yet been cranked over. Snow and ice have been replaced by wet and floods but – horrible as it is for those who have a holiday full of nothing but sandbags and insurance call centres – it’s atemporarything.

But before we feel even the suggestion of the season after this, there’s the brutal horror of January with its storms, new years resolutions, disappointments and reversions to the status quo, followed swiftly by the hardest monthbefore pre-summer arrives with the promise of dry and warm but generally delivers more of the endless damp. Especially if some media prick goes wild with the ‘hosepipe ban‘ angle. Cue Ark Building.

Christmas is a brutal prism on emotion; from joy to sadness, from rhapsody to dysphoria, from can’t get enough to can’t wait for it to end. All suffered under rain clamped skies,coopedup with those you love and those you really wish would just fuck off home. Don’t misunderstand ne here, it’s not a bad thing – spending time with your loved ones and quaffing guilt free booze never is – but save me from the bonhommie and banality.

Instead let’s look beyond Jan the First and accelerate from there. Because care as I don’t about some made up day when we we all go mad with ripping wrapping paper for ten minutes, I am deeply consumed by the chronological certainty that what we’re looking at here is not the onset of winter. Oh no, ladies and gentlemen let me welcome youfulsomelyto the countdown to spring.

And just to show I’m not a total Christmas Clampit, let me add this; for seven years I’ve been writing this shit. I used to think it was for the few people who took time to read it, but really it isn’t. If that was any motivation, I’d have stopped bloody ages ago. It’s for me to keep in practice. Because one day I’ll finally finish something started back in the era when hair, optimism, self belief, that kind of shit was common currency in my world.

Until then you’ll have to put up my random streams ofconsciousnessand lop eyed view on what’s important. Which I suppose means, for those long serving hangers on and occasional readers, I shall raise the predictable glass and wish you all Merry Christmas.

Best of luck with that 😉

Whoosh!

On By AlexIn Other stuff, Pretentious nonsense7 Comments

That’s the sound a year makes. That’s my best guess anyway. It might go “PING” or “BOOM”, or “YEEHAW” or even “FUCK ME SLOW DOWN I’’M FEELING A BIT QUEEZY” . At the north end of 70,000 MPH it can make any noise it likes. But I”m going with Whoosh because a entire wobbly planetary rotation, with all that messing about in multiple dimensions, appears to have passed in about the time it takes to down a much needed beer.

A chunk of this chronological discretionary is entirely due to me being on project time* which morphs yours truly into a serial problem solver fixing a million things in a sixteen hour day and spending what’s left wide awake worrying about what I’d missed.

Not too much based on the 700 people failing to understand how fucking close we were to opening the office doors with an apologetic “sorry, we did our best it just didn’t work out. There’s your slate, collect chisels from the stationary cupboard.

I’ve missed many things. Let’s take the summer for a start. Still I hear that you all missed that as well once a perfect March triggered a season full of paired animals and sandbags. I missed my family- arriving home well past the point that the kids had long gone to bed. I missed normal conversations with Carol instead substituting “Fuck what a day; you’ve no bloody idea” before unloading a stream of consciousness without ever wondering aloud how she was.

I missed riding bikes although too much of this was meteorological angst wrapped up in vocational excuses. I missed every “not drinking in the week target” by about 9pm on a Monday night and got so very close to a corporate ˜My bat. My ball. See ya” flounce before guilt and a deluded opinion that sheer force of personality could overcome endless insanity**

I missed all sort of other stuff as well. Fairly focussed on delivery when Jessie started high school. Missed her first day and I’m not getting that back. Missed Aid getting suddenly properly full sized human with mostly formed views of the world. Missed the house acquiring proper bathrooms, furniture and paint. Nearly missed Jess outgrowing her bike, but pulled that one back and threw enough money at it to make both her day and mine.

In summary, I missed far too much. Said no to the wrong people. Not my finest hour.

A year ago I walked away from a well paid job that I found stupidly easy and equally stupefying. Initially with a self inflated sense of my own worth, and a view of the world the way I wanted it to be rather than the way it was. I regret neither my decision not my naivety. 13 years ago, I quit a fantastically financially rewarding position as a young(ish) technical director for a thriving firm on the rather up-your-own-bum grounds I failed to believe in what we were doing.

This was exactly at the time our first child was born. And Carol quit work. So really chucking it in last year was methadone when compared to the full on cold turkey over a decade ago. And if I learned anything it’s that ˜something always turns up’. It’s not a career strategy as such but it’s a valid alternative to believing in some kind of full time employment security delusion.

So in one week I’m going to stop. And for the first time in approximately ever not start straight away. There is always a clamour to chase the next quid, cash the next cheque, stash loot for a rainy day. I think it’s probably raining.

I’ve a book to finish***, breakfasts to have with the family, people to see about places to go, bikes to fettle, ride and adorn with new shiny bits. And yeah, I’m sure there will be a point fairly soon when making some cash to pay the bills will once again be important.

But it’s not important right now. I’m incredibly proud of what a tiny team of “fuck it we won’t be beaten” people and now friends achieved this summer. That’s gone and until I can remember what it was exactly I loved about doing what I do then I’m not going to do it. Because most of it is fired by a spark that’s gone missing.

It’s not just missing. It’s missing the point. And I’m done with that.

* I wrote a weighty polemic on exactly how fucked my life has been the last six months including a rapier like analysis of the failings of the many. But that’s career suicide. So you’ll have to take my word for it.

** Honestly this is the edited version. The cathartic one reads like a Tourettes diary.

*** Let’s be honest here. Start.

Old, but not bold

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, Pretentious nonsense6 Comments

Malvern "Ooh I say" Ride.

An attempt to describe my age as the composite of a fit 32 year old man with the mind of a 13 year old failed to illicit the hoped for response. It was strongly mooted that only if I paid random passers by to shout ‘hey Al you’re looking damn good for 30‘ and really upped my maturity game could this age denialfantasycome to pass.

Even then, it would be a stretch. But that’s the problem with growing older without growing up. Most of us in our middle years still feel about sixteen inside unti we try something physically difficult. Like bending down. My favourite definition of middle age is ‘you cannot stand up without making a noise‘, which in my case is the grunt of effort accompanied by a creaking knee, clicking ankle and graunching shoulder.

Again the hoped for wisdom, gravitas, having the slightest clue of how I should run my life failed to be mentally unwrapped on my birthday, so – listening to that inner teenager – I went to play outside instead. Because, while the weather had continued to moistly disappoint, the summer is moving on and with it the evening light and elevated temperatures. If I don’t shift my ravaged carcass now, what chance come winter?

Another joy of advancing years is as what little remaining hair makes a run for the shower plug, karmic balance insists on adding the tyre of fadingmetabolisms around the middle. To be fair even the most active fifteen year old with a hummingbird genome would struggle to work off my Scone, Cheese and Wine diet greedily imbued on holiday.

A shifty glance in the mirror suggested bigger trousers were on the horizon unless I fancied grooving the middle aged sloping chest/straining button look so seemingly cherished by many my age. I’m sure that as I turned away in disgust, the fat bit over the belt hung about for another second before centrifugal force wrenched it back. Bit of a relief the ensuing Newtonic reaction didn’t throw me down the stairs.

So shorts snugly fitted, a bike selected from the ‘shed of dreams‘ and a tootle out to the Malverns where fat bodies/tired legs are found out in the turn of a pedal. A quick up and down suggested the few rides shoehorned in this last ten days had at leastgainstayed the rasping breath/burning legs of a non riding man. Still always room for improvement of bike if not rider and, as a birthday present, Martin lent me his very capable Orange 5 for a quick blast.

Not so quick uphill. It’s a bit of a pig frankly. But shod with what I assume are recycled tractor tyres and with a frame welded by a blind man working deep in the remains of the Ark Royal, it’s never going to be a sprinter.Aestheticallyit’s somewhere between industrial chic and mind-bleachingly ugly so the best place to view it from is definitely on top.

I wasn’t feeling much love even from that position tho, with Martin sprinting away on my ST4 declaring it ‘fast, fun and poppy’ which is everything the 5 isn’t. Having finally winched myself to the top of a rocky descent, the time had come to remove ever withering brain, pick an object on the far horizon and see what a super stiff frame suspended on six inches of clever shock trickery could do.

It could scare me that’s for sure. Only at warp speed does this bike make sense. Any less and there’s nothing apparently happening as fat baby-head rocks and wheel sized drops are dispatched with nothing more than a feeling of sinking gently into a sofa. I knew the ST4 was a little bit flexy, but this thing is stiff beyond belief. The only feeling of speed – other than landscape being thrust at overrun optical nerves – is the noise. It’s very much like piloting an old steel filing cabinet being thrown down a metal fire escape.

As I watched Martin find the limits of my ST4, it would have been easy to go quicker. But foolish. In a moment of clarity, I realised the reason the ST4 is such a great bike for me is exactly because it does have limits that provide a perfect excuse not to go any faster. The 5 is a brilliant – if simple – piece of honed engineering, but it only makes sense if you are the type of rider who craves speed over everything else.

I’m happy to say that rider isn’t me anymore. Probably never was. Swapping bikes back, I watched Martin create an effortless gap between us on the next descent clearly defining him as exactly that type of speed freak. Fast I like, insanely fast I’ll leave to everyone else including my younger self. But that’s not going to stop me getting on a bike at every opportunity and tweaking the nose of terror. Before running away.

Ten years ago when I fetched my old rigid mountain bike out of the shed and set out , helmetless, clueless and without a thought where this may lead, the only thing of certainty was this pastime couldn’t extend beyond 45 years old. I couldn’t have been more wrong. And on that basis, it’s probably time to go and play outside again.