Category: Words

No riding for me. There’s just far too much other stuff to do and just to rub it in this has come in…

From: Nathan
Subject: Canada Rocks

Hey,

Finally have time to sit down and email you about the weekend. The mountain biking was AWESOME! Holy crap man. I’ve only ever ridden on my own rigid frame bike, so even just riding one of the suspension bikes was a whole new experience. Of course the absolute swine thing was that the brakes were the opposite way round – back brake on the right hand instead of the left. Interesting trying to remember that at a critical moment…especially with those crazy ass disc brakes that will lock the wheel with just a light pull of the fingers!

Anyway, for the first run, Andrea took me down a black diamond. Ha ha! Good thing I was wearing body armour shall we say. It was wet and those rocks were damn slippery. After a couple of runs I was used to the bike though, and from then on it was just a complete blast. We went and did that first black diamond run again in the afternoon and I conquered it, so that was satisfying. I think Andrea likes the runs that are slow but very difficult, requiring control and technique, whereas I think I found myself preferring the runs with the speed! …and all the jumps 🙂 Those were the ones that I got the biggest buzz from anyway. Although on the drive home I found myself thinking about the slow difficult ones and wishing I could do them again to see if I could improve.

So, thank you VERY much for putting me in touch with Andrea. We got on well and I think we both had a good weekend.

I’ve rented myself a nice 4×4 today, that has enough room in the back for me to sleep in. Tomorrow I’m taking off for the Rockies for a week or so. Tonight I’m going out to a club for my first drinks in Canada!

On that note, time to leave.

Thanks again man, good luck with the biological warfare.

Nathan

And this is in from Conradski:

From: Conrad
Subject: Whole lotta nice bikes

DOOOD!

Hello! Not read your site for a while but looks like you’re doing pretty
good…that is a whole lot of nice bikes you have now! I’m jealous! Let me
know if there is any racing you’re doing on a road or cross bike and i’ll
get involved! Can’t afford mountain bikes these days, being a bike courier
has its ups and downs. Dont earn loads but do get to spend 45 hours a week on a bike…not sure where the ups are there…

Anyway hope you are good man

Take it easy

Con

My old club, the Guernsey Velo are in the middle of moving over to a new website. It’s looking good. It puzzles me that riders are clearly heading over to the UK to race (some even to Manchester), but none get in touch. That puzzles me a bit. Maybe I need to return to the island and see if I’m still able to mix it with the mountain bikers in their races.

Not a day after I popped into Harry’s and hear that Ben has not only found work in a bike shop again, but is living in a tent, I get this:

From: Ben
Subject: Yo, Yo, Yo!
Howdy folks,

Hows it going? Hope this finds you all ok. Thought it was about time to let you all know what I’m up to. I dont get much access to the internet at the moment, so i’m making the most of it while I can. Well, I’m still living up in scotland, not at my folks house anymore though.

Got my self a job in a bike shop again, Up at Bothy Bikes in Aviemore. It was a very short notice thing, went in and asked for a job – they said yes and that was that. Moved up about five days later. Didn’t quite have time to find accomodation though, so went armed with all my camping stuff. Now, all the campsites were full when i got there – so I’ve kinda started camping out with a few guys from the shop. They’ve started a little campsite of there own, randomly in a field (right to roam act!), and I was invited along. After looking for a few rooms etc, I decided (and was told) that I was gonna stay at the campsite! Hell its free rent, no bills and good craic too. So to cut a long story short I’m living in a tent in a field in Aviemore. Bliss.

So if your ever up that way give us a bell. I’ve just come back from lets gets too. A weeks mountain biking. It was dope, although it rained heavily at first, so super muddy. But it dried up and we had the best time, going over to switzerland and all over the place. Some pictures will appear soon. My rear wheel kinda died and i missed a days riding which was gutting, but I get trade price again now so its all good. Bikes are expensive though, my rear shock blew up just before going out so that needed replaced too! Now my vans too rusty to fix up for its mot so I need a new one of those too. AArgghh. Just as i was saving money. Ahh well, thats the way it goes. Gotta laugh really, It could be worse.

Anyhoo, I’ll stop waffling. Hope your all good and hope to catch up soon. As i said I have no internet so if you reply I may take a while to get back. If you’d rather, drop me a line or text. Look after yourselves.

Ben

Sounds like mr Davies has been up to some antics trashing his Demo. I hope he gets some photos up on that website of his at some point.

Now we’re doing the Cape Epic, certain people are trying to convince me to do a Bike Safari. Now hang on. When you do a proper safari you’re in a rufty tufty 4×4 with men with guns. I’m not sure riding through a game park on a mountain bike offers quite the same level of protection – I’m sure one of the riders in the photos on that website has a rifle strapped to his Camelbak. I’ll have a Beretta with hollowpoint ammo in a shoulder holster before I’m doing that thank you very much. It at least raises the question “What tyres for outrunning Cheetahs?”

I was a bit slow to get going this morning, largely due to yesterday’s antics, but in the end I drove up to the Lake District and rode some waymarked man made trails. If yesterday was proper mounatin biking I don’t know if today was pseudoriding or what, but the route sponsored by The North Face in Grizedale Forest was reasonably entertaining. It reminds me a bit of Dalbeattie, in that there’s not that much climbing, but the Singletrack flows nicely and it all seems to be over before you know it.

It my first ride in the Lakes despite all these years in the north and I swear that I’m going to return to the Lakes before the year is out for another ride. The North Face trail was taken at a solid pace. There were loads of wooden boardwalk sections thrown in too. Although I was expecting these, there turned out to be a lot more than I had anticipated – which made it even better. Not many photos but a few in the gallery.

With a shorter ride than expected there was plenty of time for a nice drive on the way back. I’d heard a lot about the Kirkstone Pass so I thought that I’d take a look. It turned out to produce a route that delivered the long way home. It was a stunning drive and was nice until I ended up stuck in traffic on the Motorway for about an hour.

I was sorting through some photos of things the other day and I have realised that I never posted up these two snippets from the US trip last month. The Americans seem determined to deny BSE and therefore are risking a massive population health risk if the link to vCJD is as solid as it appears. This report about turning a blind eye is from USA Today.This should need no explanation.

If Proper Mountain Biking™ involves getting a map and planning a ride from scratch and then going out, finding the trails and following them, then it’s my favourite kind of riding. The excitement lies in trying to follow trails that look so clear and distinct on the map, but in reality turn out to be vague and hard to place. Is it this path or that one? It’ll be a right bugger if I ride down this hill the wrong way and then have to ride back up…

Based on this assumption todays ride was was proper riding. The start point was Dunsop Bridge, tucked away in the stunning venue of the Forest of Bowland. There is a slight irony in the name because the Forest isn’t actually a forest, but does have a shed load of big steep hills and lots of valleys and moorland. Bowland was formerly called “Bolland” – a name for which there are various interpretations – a derivation of the Norse ‘Bu’ (cattle) or Celtic ‘booa’ a cow, signifying cowland. The word “Forest” is derived from the latin “foris” meaning an extensive wood or tract of open country.

After rolling out of the village Tyrrell and I spent about an hour looking for the first trail. This involved riding up and down the road on the same hill several times. Which was nice (in a “bloody hell this hill is steep” and “not a-bloody-gain” kind of way). In the end it turned out we had ridden too far up a hill we didn’t need to ride up chasing some dude on a road bike. Not only had we ridden too far up, we’d crested it and ridden all the way down the other side. We rode back to the summit three times before we finally worked out that we had misread the map…

Of course once we made it onto the trail it was a great day out. Half way around we stopped at a pub for lunch – a Trans Cambrian classic combination of Aberdeen Angus Lasagne and local Golden Trough beer. The afternoon brought the best riding of the day, but it came with a price. As we started the homeward section the riding took us through a small woodland, wherein the trail dropped down to a ford crossing.

The run in and exit of the ford and the stream bed over which the water was flowing was all concrete. As you might imagine it being in a woodland it had several years of rotten leaves breaking down on it and as a consequence was slippery as a very slippery thing. I was carrying far too much speed into it and it was like hitting black ice. One minute I’m upright and the next I’m sliding down to the river. Christ that hurt. New forks scuffed, dented pride a few laughs for Tyrrell, but no real damage done. Post ride assessment revealed a big bruise on the left hip with accompanying road rash and a bruised elbow. What an ace day out. Proper Mountain Biking™ rules. The photos are in the photo section.

Updated: August 2020 fixing broken links

Build No. 4

In the latest issue of Outcast Chipps made a comment that the organised racing experience and numbers at the SSWC04 in Berlin hadn’t really been to his personal liking. Now because I’m crap, I didn’t go to Berlin so I can’t comment on what it was like, but Phaty can ‘cos he was one of the organisers and while he respects Chipps’ right to an opinion on things singlespeedy and bikes in general, he’s clearly got a message to tell the world. Check out the Phatblog (and more importantly this Patriot 66. Where’s mine? And no, I don’t want a Rolhoff on it). Back to the point. To call it spew and lies is a bit over the top. It’s just an opinion. It’s like me saying I think that the Solitude Cycles website is a bit shit. Take it with a pinch of salt, ignore it or whinge about it.

“Pratting about with the details, such as who heads WADA and how he conducts himself, and whether someone at a lab has a friend at a newspaper is rearranging the deckchairs on the Belgrano. After Conquerer has fired the torpedoes.”

John Stevenson is ace. Read more about his take on what I think consider the ridiculous Landis petition. The bikebiz intro to the petition sets the scene for the discussion that followed. It’s a proper singletrackworld thread with a real discussion. About bikes too. And with big words, proper sentances and thought out arguments and positions.

I bookmarked a few other sites recently. I’m not 100% sure of the reasons that this spoof conversation between Dave Turner and Tony Ellsworth was created, but it paints a fairly clear picture of some ‘issues’. the disclaimer on the site is also worth reading:

***Disclaimer***
These articles are PARODIES (PAIR-O-DEEZ for our Maine visitors), please do not take the articles with anything more than a grain of salt. If an article is taken seriously, and we find out about it, we will beat you about the head and shoulders with a headset press. Also be aware that cranksets are not passed easily, and we don’t mean tossed or thrown… we mean PASSED.

Epic Journeys on bikes probably don’t get much bigger than ridding from England to China and back again. Edward Genochio on 2wheels is blogging it across the world. It’s interesting reading and there’s a fairly eclectic mix of photos too. Recent posts have included:

Ukraine
The hot news is:
1. It’s hot.
2. I’m in Lvov (aka Lviv), Ukraine, where it is hot.
3. It’s hot.Apologies for lack of blog since China. Will make up for it one day, I promise.

Hot news from Kazakhstan
Chaps, I’m in Uralsk. Edward

Shymkent
Shymkent. Hot. Cycling. 14,288 km since Shanghai. Hope you enjoy the new minimalist blogging style. Edward

Kazakhstan
I apologise for the absence of any photos in the previous post. Here is some clover, which made a nice soft bed for the night on the way to Almaty.

Day 271 – Clock-watching in Khorgos
In 14 hours time they will let me over the border, inshallah. Yesterday I haggled with the borderfolk for a long time. It really wouldn’t be such a bad thing to let an honest man into Kazakhstan 2 days before his visa officially starts, would it? “You must wait here”, said the borderman. “Khorgos (Huoerguosi, the Chinese call it) is a lovely place. Time will fly here”.

More at 2wheels.org.uk

Stage one of the busiest time of the year at work is out of the way. This means that there’s a chance to stop for breathand to get back into the world of bikes briefly. Which is a good thing because tonight it was the perfect reason to go to the best bike shop in the north west and visit Tim at Sideways. Some top quality bling bits have finally arrived from Mojo in the form of Fox’s F32RLCs. These are the 100mm versions.

I’ve wanted these since they were launched earlier in the year and I think these must be some of the first ones into the UK. Any way I haven’t waited around. They’re already fitted on the Ti Deluxe and with the new wheels and Marta SLs I have to say it’s looking ace! Photos to follow.

I don’t like it when you ask Tim how something you have taken in for servicing is and he says, “well, it’s a bit fooked”. Ususally this means that a big bill is to follow either immediately or imminently. In this case the diagnosis on the Fox Vanilla RLCs isn’t great and probably means the latter.

They’re serviced and usable, but the stanchion anodising on the spring leg is worn away on the inside surface nearest the brace. I hope I’ll get another season out of them before I have to replace the crown, stanchion and steerer assembly. Either that or a new pair of forks is going to be expensive and they’re great forks! I think life was a bit easier when I had Manitou 3’s and you could replace stanchions individually.

Photos from the Trans Cambrian Trail are now up on the site. Paul and I had both waited until the article was published in Singletrack. For the record all the big photos that look ace are the work of Mr Childerhouse. Mine were the fillers. The strange couple on touring bikes were French and we spotted them outside the pub at the end of the first day. Eventually they came over and asked directions and we tried not to laugh and think of Monty Python.

We’re definitely in to the Cape Epic for next year. Tyrrell paid the entry fee this weekend. We really are going to have to start training and getting organised…

So read a No Fear T-shirt I had once. I had a few along the lines of “Second place is first loser”, “If you aren’t living on the edge, then you’re taking up too much space” and “Fear: Just do without it”. What happened to T-shirts like that? Did they go out of fashion? According to Eric Saxon in the Stanford Chapparel, the No Fear T-shirt phenomenon is:

“…an example of consumer fetishism at its most extreme. Here, the messages gradually degenerate from their competitive beast origins to reveal the true insecurities and fears of the human beings behind the coverings. The last words of Know Fear suggest that only through acknowledgement of fears and insecurities, which are natural, is the danger of fear ameliorated. Repression and denial of fear by projection of strength elevates fear’s presence in the subconcious. Mostly, however, it’s a convenient play on words.”

That motocross attitude certainly had a lot of appeal in the 90s and propelled the brand on to the high street, where (perhaps inevitably) it lost a lot of the credibility with ‘the kids’ that it had built up. It’s decline was from the roots. Brands like Xtreme and Fox never seemed to be quite so boistrous and seem to be much more focused on their core target markets. These days you can even get a No Fear Pickup – they’ve changed a lot from their early days and the new logo is crap compared to the old one.

Back to bikes. The Trans-Rockies is over and as I write the Trans-Wales is in full swing with Benji and Coogle flying the flag for the mag. Then there’s the Trans-Himalayas and the original Trans-Alp. That’s a whole lot of races with descriptive, but not particularly adveturous names. I mean Wilderness 101. That’s an ace name for a race. Even the Leadville 100 sounds cool even if the name isn’t that exciting, so how about the Welsh Death March or the Rocky Mountains Killer?

Talking of such things you can read all about a little ride across Wales in the latest issue of Singletrack (Issue 30). It’s the write up of our May lasagne and Welsh beer sampling mission.

Word reached me today that Jon Kirscher (of drunkcyclist and LiveWrong fame) has been involved in a hit and run RTA over in Flagstaff, AZ:

The man himself, Big Jonny, was struck by an automobile on his way back from the Saturday group ride and is currently in the hospital with multiple lumbar fractures (fortunately, no paralysis) and severe road rash.

Big Jon was legally in the bike lane at approximately 12:15pm and was hit squarely from behind on an uphill section of the road by a sedan traveling approximately 55mph. The driver left the scene but has now been apprehended and charged with felony hit and run due to the diligence and efforts of multiple other drivers on the road who witnessed the collision.

Jon is currently in good spirits and is expected to make a full recovery. An unforeseen, yet fortuitous, byproduct of this horrific incident has been the opportunity to have numerous conversations with Jon while he is under the influence of numerous pain killers.

For your reading enjoyment, and in the spirit of Drunkcyclist.com (NSFW), Big Pun and The Gnome have updated DC with a few of the conversations Jon has had over the last two days. It’s classic. Get well soon Grande Juan.

I first saw this story on cyclingnews.com, but it’s sprung up in a few other places since then. In essence a cyclist in the US has been prosecuted for riding a fixed gear track bike on the streets without a brake.

The concern is that this case may set a legal precedent and the decision by the Judge raises some concerns and questions. Will the cops now feel emboldened to go out and ticket everyone on a fixed-gear? Are fixed-gears now essentially illegal? Are fixed-gears truly a public safety hazard?

Across the US as well as in Europe fixed gears, popularised by cycle couriers have become increasingly common with thousands of them on the roads. This issue is going to linger. Having spent a week in Boston where fixies are a dominant form of transport, I read this article with interest:

From: John Stevenson
Subject: Fixies outlawed?

There’s been a bit of hoo-ha in various bike forums around the net in the last few days about a case in Portland, Oregon where a rider was fined for not having a separate brake on her fixed-gear bike. According to bikeportland.org, bike messenger Ayla Holland was ticketed on June 1 and charged with violating Oregon Revised Statute (ORS) 815.280(2)(a) which states:

A bicycle must be equipped with a brake that enables the operator to make the braked wheels skid on dry, level, clean pavement. strong enough to skid tire.

Ms Holland’s lawyer Mark Ginsberg attempted to argue that a fixie’s transmission constituted a brake. The judge was having none of it, and in his decision said:

“The brake must be a device separate from the musculature of the rider. Take me for instance. I don’t have leg muscles as strong as a messenger… how would I stop safely?”

This has led to some rather alarmist talk about the future of fixies. “Will the cops now feel emboldened to go out and ticket everyone on a fixed-gear? Are fixed-gears now essentially illegal? Are fixed-gears truly a public safety hazard?” asks Jonathan Maus in bikeportland.org.

Well, no. The issue here is a badly-written piece of legislation being interpreted by a judge so that it achieves its aims, rather than what the absolute letter of the law says.

A fixed-gear bike with no brakes cannot stop in as short a space as one with a front brake, because only the rear wheel is providing the braking force. As a vehicle on the road, it’s therefore clearly less safe.

This is a matter of simple physics. In the third edition of Bicycling Science, David Gordon Wilson demonstrates that the maximum deceleration of a crouched rider on a standard bike (that is, not a recumbent) on a dry road is 0.56g. Try to brake any harder than that and you go over the handlebars, which is the limit condition, as the limit from tyre adhesion of vehicles that don’t pitch over (tandems, recumbents and cars) is about 0.8g.

If you brake with only the rear wheel, according to Wilson, the limit is 0.256g, because braking effectively shifts your weight forward, reducing the load on the rear wheel to the point that it skids at that deceleration. Once a tyre is skidding, its braking effectiveness is reduced because you no longer have sticky solid rubber in contact with the road, but a lubricating layer of molten rubber. (Which incidentally demonstrates that the Oregon legislation was written by someone with no clue at all about bikes.)

Therefore, however good a fixie rider is, stopping distance is roughly doubled without a front brake. In practice, it’s probably more than that.

In some jurisdictions, better-written laws make this issue moot. In the UK, for example, the law requires a bike to have two independent braking systems. I used to ride a fixie in the winter in the UK, and I knew quite a few fixie riders who dispensed with a rear brake on the grounds that the transmission was a braking system, but I never met anyone daft enough to have just a rear brake.

This judge has clearly decided to ignore the letter of the law in favour of enforcing its obvious intent, that bikes have at least one maximally effective brake. That’s the sort of thing judges are handy for: turning legislation written by idiots into rules that make sense in the real world.

All that fixie riders have to do to conform is slap on a front brake; hardly rocket surgery, and a long way from fixies being suddenly illegal. And to fixie riders who are about to reach for the email to defend riding brakeless fixies, I refer you to Cmdr Montgomery Scott: “You canna change the laws of physics!”

What an excellent idea.

Singletrack’s SOOB Day 2006. I guess BikeMagic will be busier…