Category: Words

Shamelessly stolen from dR jOn, are your ready for the 2 Mile Challenge?

Sea Otter is on over in the US with lots of new stuff on show. Chipps is out in California for Singletrack and is reporting on the new arrivals. In other news Trek have announced an end to their long standing partnership with Lemond. It seems that Lemond’s very public feeling on Lance Armstrong and other matters have become too much for the big corporation to live with. Cyclingnews have the full article.

I don’t often post up local news items, but this one is particularly shocking:

Detectives in Manchester have appealed for help to trace car thieves who left a man to die by the roadside. Stephen Wills died after being knocked from his bike on Princess Road in the early hours of Saturday. The stolen Volkswagen Golf used in the incident was found abandoned and burnt out shortly afterwards, police said. Three white men were seen running from the scene. The car had been stolen from outside a house following a burglary on Friday night.

The full article is on the BBC news website. The part that particularly grates is this bit: “The person who called police told officers they had seen people driving around Stephen as he lay on the road. A post-mortem examination showed that he died as a result of head injuries, but that he also had two broken legs which could have been caused by being run over by a car”.

If I saw someone lying in the middle of the road I wouldn’t just drive around them. Quite why other people felt it was okay to do so is beyond any justifiable reason I can think of.

It was cold last night (just above freezing I think) and only just 5ºC and wet this morning on the ride in. It’s April. This time last year some of us were enjoying dusty moorland trails and were slapping on the suntan lotion to avoid sunburn. The reason for this cool weather I’d argue is La Niña and we’re likely to have a fairly cool wet summer this year as a result.

According to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) moderate La Niña conditions are present across the tropical Pacific Ocean. This is characterised by equatorial sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean remain below average from west of the Date Line eastward to 120ºW. Recent trends and simulation model forecasts indicate La Niña will continue for the next three months. After that there is some uncertainty as to what will happen next, but there’s a 50% chance that La Niña could continue well into the second half of the year.

So don’t dig out the summer wear just yet…

Mountain biking is a sport that has progressed massively since it’s conception. Of course not all of us were there back in the day when the original repack riders were hammering around San Francisco’s surrounding mountains. In fact they’d just started racing mountain bikes the year I was born (check out Charlie Kelly’s site for more info). Yet even in the time I’ve been into the sport the changes have been significant. Look at this photo of Steve Peat from 1993:

Photo from MBUK

Rigid Kona, early SPD pedals, helmet with about 9 vents in… My first mountain bike was being hammered around the trails on the hill behind my house in the late 1980s. I started racing and buying mountain bike magazines in about 1992 and the trends and technology were very different. I remember the first suspension forks – early Rock Shox and Manitou models being introduced. SPDs came along replacing clips and straps. There was a lot of skepticism towards many new technologies, but not half as much as the amount which followed early disc brakes and full suspension frames.

Still the big companies threw lots of money into R&D which progressed the designs and ideas. Eventually they began to convince people with light, expensive and strong components and designs that worked efficiently. The benefits became tangible. This is why these days Steve Peat is racing something very different and despite the debate between hardtails and full sussers still refusing to die, Peaty is undoubtedly riding a lot faster, getting bigger air and hammering the trails more aggressively than he used to.

Photo from Dirt

I spent part of saturday working on the Harry Hall Elan. Whilst a fairly solid commuter over the last few years, I have toyed with the idea of singlespeeding the frame ever since I had it restored. This has been due to the fact that it was built with Campagnolo horizontal drop outs which have the advantage of plenty of adjustment to run such a setup without the need for any chain tensioner, keeping things clean and neat. So off with all the gears and on with a Gusset Singlespeed kit (thanks to Kelvin and Cy).

The drop bars and stem came off (due to relocate to a new home shortly) and were replaced with a 130mm Thomson and a pair of Azonic double wall flat bars chopped down to 20.5″ and fitted out with some Deore levers and a pair of lock-on grips that were floating around in the spares box. The flat bar, singlespeed  result is something that looks a lot more interesting than it did. Based on the absence of any gear changes on my Mancunian commute I’m confident that its 50:16 setup will be do-able, but we’ll have to wait until Monday to find out.

Rode with Tyrrell for the first time this year today. Armed with Singlespeeds we rode out to test his legs. Not knowing how far would be too far we kept it a fairly open route and in the end after crossing the Goyt and the dirt jumps, decided to head for home. Essentially this was a repeat of route 28, but a plan has been hatched to do a ride to Edale from home which I haven’t done in a couple of years, so I think that’s next.

I’ve posted a further selection photos from the inaugural Eiger Sanction trip up in the photo section powered by Flickr. They remind me what a cracking trip it was! Can’t wait to get back out to the Alps for the next big ride.

Left outside year round. Subject to extremes of temperature. Lightweight aircraft grade aluminium formed into distinctive shapes and painted in memorable colours…

One of those dream bikes that I always wanted back in the mid 1990s. This one was discovered still going strong in Switzerland.