Category: Words

I’ve added quite a lot more from the old site back into the new version. There’s more to come over the next few weeks.

Today’s is going to be a none bike related post. I’ve been having a lot of problems with the site guestbook since I relaunched the site. It’s the fourth piece of guetbook software I’ve tried over the years and I’m currently using Matt Wright’s simple guestbook. The problem is that this seems to be a known favourite with spammers, which has meant that over the last few weeks a number of spammers or spam robots have made entries.

Now these have tended to be adverts for drugs and given this is a cycling website, that might not be so out of place, but as it’s now reached irritating proportions a fix was needed. This has come in the shape of Junkeater, a tidy little PHP utility that filters entries for spam origins and also includes a nice little javascript confirmation utility. First impressions are that it seems to do work, so I’ll have to see if it solves the problem over the next few days.

Photos from yesterdays Langsett ride are now up here. The weather wasn’t great and so the pictures are tinged with that grey overcast tone, that I think is the reason that British weather has received unfavourable stereotypes with foreign visitors. It was warm for the time of year and the moisture just ended up being trapped as low cloud.

Rock Shox have launched their new forks in the wake of Manitou‘s not particularly inspiring new line up previewed last week. It looks like Rock Shox is going to claw back some sales with the new additions, but this will be no simple task with recent market share increases for Fox and Marzocchi. I think they have a good chance of regaining ground in the XC and Freeride (as opposed to all mountain) markets, to the detriment of Marzocchi and Manitou, manufacturers who seem to have become associated with other aspects of the market in the last two years.

This is the current Trek Fuel OCLV Carbon XC race bike, probably one of the most materially advanced full suspension bikes on the market.

The choice today was either to head over to North Wales and ride some man made trails or to stay local and try and tackle a new route in the Peaks. The peaks option won through and I ended up heading up to Langsett and doing a big ride around the reservoirs in that area. I took the singlespeed out again and it’s the first time I’ve chosen it for a big ride in the Peaks.

I’m still running 34:16 from Thetford, which if you get enough weight behind, is okay for most of the riding on offer. There were a couple of highlights like riding the Snow track that runs to the Summit of the Woodhead Pass and a few other well constructed tracks. The rest of the ride was a mudbath, traversing poorly drained moorland and bog.

The winter boots proved their worth once again, but there were a couple of times the front wheel sank up to it’s axle and pitched me into the mud over the bars. In all there was enough good riding to make it a worthwhile route, but I don’t think I’ll be going back there until we get summer drought conditions for a month. Most of the trails just seem to double up as wet weather streams. Photos will be added soon.

Went local today looking for some new riding spots. I hooked up wit the Fallowfield Loopline and headed east and took the trail as far as it currently goes, ending up at Debdale Park. Whilst it isn’t a mind blowing place to go there’s enough varied riding to make it a suitable alternative to the Trans Pennine Trail along the Mersey, with singletrack riding around the reservoirs and out by the golf course.

I even found a jump spot, carved out of a bit of waste land by some motocrossers, that with a bit of playing about on demonstrated another great characteristic property of the Deluxe Singlespeed – it’s a great bike in the air, almost like a 26inch BMX. After finding an alternate way back, through the Park I tried to link up with the Trans Pennine Trail by riding into Reddish Vale and looking for the Country Park.

Despite riding around for 30 minutes, I couldn’t find it and ended up going home the way I had arrived, but later consultation of the map showed I had only been one street away from finding the road that leads down to the Cafe. In future there’s now a way of linking in some interesting additional riding to the normal river run.

I found a link to this Singlespeed website earlier in the week. It’s the first time I’ve visited the site and it looks like there is some interesting stuff on there. Might be worth taking a look.

Last night saw nightriding by moonlight up on the moors above Oxenhope with some friends. Chris is back from the US for a week and Mike Ferrentino is over at the moment doing some research. It was a great night for riding and there were a few beers along the way too.

I’ve updated the site with the Zermatt pictures. I’ve relected the best and resized them a bit bigger than before, there’s going to be some more stuff added to the escapism part of the site soon.

The new Howies catalogue is out now. You can find most of the new stuff on the website now.

Not been feeling too clever recently. I think ‘work’ is catching up with me, which may mean if I keep on at full tilt I’ll be okay, but I reckon there’s a fairly good chance that now it knows I’m feeling the pressure and I have to keep looking over my shoulder I’ll probably end up getting ill, which is a bit crap.

So I’ve spent the weekend cleaning bikes and building wheels, including the new singlespeed wheels. They’re great. Wasp noises now accompany every freewheeling moment. There are some new pics up here including the drilled Phil Wood bottom bracket shell. I haven’t built a pair of wheels from scratch in a few years and there was some kind of zen moment over the weekend doing the truing when I rememebered why I used to like it. So I’ve got a minoura wheel jig for now, but in the long term I still want one of these – these are the daddy’s of all wheel truing jigs, the dogs bollocks and the last time I checked were about £500. They also weigh about as much as a Fiat 126.

Time Outdoors seems to be a new website which I haven’t heard discussed anywhere. Which may be the problem with being in a very small clique. It seems to be similar to the old madformountaingbiking site – they were an outfit that were around a few years ago during the .com boom. It all looks very reasonable too.

Here is some mindless bike related violence to keep you occupied and this will probably let you calculate how many times you need to walk to the shops to burn off all those donuts.

I managed to do lots of work on the website yesterday. I have finished the bikes section and have also done some more bits and pieces elsewhere within the site. I’ll continue doing more as I get time.

I’ve decided that guestbooks are a pain in the arse, but i’ve even managed to get one up and working again. It’s about as good as the last one….

This is for Jed and anyone else doing long commutes. It saves lots of money on batteries.

Yesterdays ride didn’t get off to a particularly good start. I spent the morning getting the full susser going again, which as I thought had a bent rear derailleur hanger that needed swapping out and after a quick scan of the National Rail times, I thought everything would be good to go by 12.45. Rock up at the station to dicover no train to Sheffield, it just says ‘Bus’. A bit more investigation shows that there is a train going on the Trans Pennine service leaving at 12.45, but it’s only going as far as Chinley. I decide that’s better than nothing and board it and start planning route alternatives.

It’s not the first time this has happened when I’ve wanted to get to Edale, but today I decide that I don’t fancy the Sett Valley trail from New Mills to Hayfield and then tackling the ascent and descent of Jacob’s ladder, so I stick on the train as far as it goes and get off at Chinley and then climb up through Wash to join the old Sheffield road as it climbs up the spine of Rushup Edge.

Somewhere along this climb there is a comedy moment as my baggies snag on the STI lever and there is a low speed sideways dismount. Dented pride, some road rash and its time to get climbing again. By the time I reach the turning down into Perry Dale the sunlight that had made the slog up through Wash a bit uncomfortable has turned to overcast grey clouds and snow is threatening.

There is so much snow in the sheltered trackways behind Eldon Hill Quarry that in some places riding is just not an option. Fortunately by the time I reach the head of Cave Dale things are ridable in a mudfest kind of way. Despite having been up in Manchester for a long time now, I’ve never ridden Cave Dale and recently it’s moved to the top of the ‘to do’ list and the descent is so good I decide that a revisit in drier conditions is due later in the year.

From Cave Dale it’s familiar territory. The ascent of the Roman Road to Hope Cross, down to Edale via Nether Moor and the finally ugly hike and bike climb out of the valley via Chapel Gate. There’s at least four feet of snow in places. Rushup Edge has a fair covering too and large parts up on the moor just isn’t ridable. The stepped descent is ridable in places and as the offroad finishes there is just enough fading light to drop back down to Chinley in safety. Photos from the ride are up here.

The Armstrong close down of Simeoni in last years Tour was one of the most notable events, but it seems the Italians are too happy about it and Hein Verbruggen has now stated that the Simeoni event is stopping Armstrong riding the Giro. Maybe they should just have a proper fight and sort it out – Fisticuffs at dawn, gentlemen.

Finally Independent Fabrication’s Full Suspension Tungsten Electrode is based on the DW Link technology that is also licensed to Iron Horse. Originally this was only available on the XC orientated Hollowpoint, but now they have released something a bit burlier. Here’s the 7point7.

Finally there has been some research carried out to investigate why the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.

The road season is starting and Armstrong is already getting grilled by the press. Will he make it seven tours this year? I don’t know, but it’s unlikely that he’ll give up the chance of the title without a fight. I mentioned this a while back, but here’s an update on the ProTour.

After months of planning and political shenanigans, the jewel of the UCI’s cycling reform, the ProTour, kicked off in Issy-les-Moulineaux with the four kilometre prologue that opened this year’s Paris-Nice. Despite the fact that Paris-Nice organisers ASO are still at odds with the UCI over some aspects of the ProTour, there were no obstacles put in the way of the first day of competition…

Mountain Bike Action Magazine tested an 18.5lb Full Suspension Extralight a few months ago and they’ve still not broken it, despite ignoring the owners manual instructions for suitable use. Here’s the running report.

This isn’t about bikes, directly but if the government gets it’s way lots of people will have less money to spend on bikes if they own a computer:

Computer tax set to replace TV licence fee

THE BBC licence fee should be replaced by a tax on the ownership of a
personal computer instead of a television, ministers said yesterday.

Tessa Jowell told the BBC that the licence fee would be retained for at
least another ten years until 2017 in return for abolishing the Board of
Governors. But the Culture Secretary conceded that technological
advances would mean that a fee based on “television ownership could
become redundant”. More…

Tonight I recatalogued the cd collection. I wish I hadn’t started, but at least now it shouldn’t take five minutes to find things. The day kicked off with news that Renault have won the seasons Formula One opener and was followed by a three hour ride out along the Mersey towards the hills.

After getting frostbite on Thursday night, I now have some winter boots to keep my feet warm and they seem to do the job. Toasty toes even at the end of the ride. Saturday was a day for some new shiny kit courtesy of Tim Johnson now all I’m waiting for is some spokes to get them built up from my favourite bike shop:

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