Category: Words

So there is a bucket list of places to ride and trips to do. Some are more obtainable and do-able than others. Not that it is written down, but it’s there. Some of them are things I’ve read about, or heard of, others are places I’ve driven past and thought – need to ride that one day. Having been a resident Northerner for nearly 25 years, heading towards South Wales means passing through the hills of Shropshire and the enticing lure of Long Mynd.

Translated as the Long Mountain, it’s a 7 mile (11 km) by 3 mile (5 km) wide lump of volcanic geology sticking up to 1,693 ft (516 m) at the Pole Bank trig point. The heathy moorland plateau is designated as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and is largely owned and managed by the National Trust. Bit like the Forest of Bowland – steep sides, flat on top.

Anyway enough waffle. Met up with Al as it was about half way for each of us. Rode a route based on Al’s prior local(ish) knowledge. It was ace and well worth the wait. Bluebird skies, the sun burned away the chill and the wind picked up but the trail conditions were good!

Time does a lot to your memory, back in 2006 I did a big ride out of Dunsop Bridge in the Forest of Bowland. With a new bike, I decided it was time to revisit it, but after the ride the gift of Strava reminded me I’d been back in 2010 and re-ridden some of it.

The epic steepness of Bowland wasn’t forgotten. The difficulty in following the trail was, that and the knee deep mud. There’s only one time I’ve done more pushing and pulling a bike and ended up quite so physically tired after a ride.

Views are still epic. Even if the wind on the tops was strong enough to blow you over, the rain was horizontal and it felt more March than August. 

Still the sun came out for the last descent of the day. The endorphins kicked in and the sense of being utterly worn out by an epic day (6 hrs to cover under 45km) was temporarily dispelled by hammering down a lush green toboggan run…

Last December I went to California. I rode for the first time in the USA. I had a good chat with the folks at Mike’s Bikes in Sausalito as I was passing by (new Specialized road lid and some gloves picked up) and took a good look at the Santa Cruz line up.

Having some saddle time on a 29er led to the Chameleon and after clocking up 600km on that I’ve been loving the dynamics and fit. To the point that riding the Genius just felt cramped and after my last outing over the reshaped trails of Llandegla I was decided. New bike time.

Start Fitness in Newcastle provided the goods. Standard prep and upgrades commenced. Rockstop inserts this time rather than Procore, refurbed the XT Trail pedals, swapped the 36s and Transfer post over and invisiframe wrapped the whole thing (that took about 5 hours but looks great). Ready to roll…

More photos here

I’m feeling the need to revisit this

Many moons ago when Levis tried to put the squeeze on a little British company called Howies. It put them into the national news. Since then and for a long time before I have been working fulfilling a Howies philosophy – wear it out. Last week I had to retire three pairs of jeans and trousers, some more than 20 years old. Time for a new pair, but none of this skinny jean nonsense.

So after going to California, riding a 29er hardtail and spending time in Mike’s Bikes in Sausalito, I decided that it was time to make some changes in bike ownership and get a Santa Cruz.

Whilst the Carbon option looks lovely I’m not sure it’s justifiable to pay the premium to save 1lb in weight. So the alloy frame it was with a combination of repurposed parts of other bikes to personalise it.

Forks off the Scott, Push Tuned by TFTuned with external lockout. Front wheel rebuilt onto a Hope Pro4. Hope headset to replace the Cane Creek one before it gets wet and seizes solid. Hope Race Brakes and floating rotors. Forged and CNC’d stem. SDG Saddle. XTR SPDs. Sensibly Helicopter taped. A tad over 29lbs for the lonnnng XL frame. More photos here.

Winter trail exploring bike sorted. Question is how long can I put up with the vague SRAM NX (not exceptional?) shifting.

Order new Hope pick and mix headset for hardtail. On basis that Cane Creek might be fine for California but seems to last about 5 minutes in the British climate.

Spec is IS standards top and bottom for a 1.5 tapered steerer. Parts arrive. Fettling commences.

Bottom half no problem. Straight in. Split bottom races for fork steerers are a lot easier than trying to drift off tolerance fit ones.

Top half set was incomplete, no top cap in the packet. A week later top cap arrives. Concern that it’s not the right bit emerges shortly after. Err no that is not the right bit. Turns out there is an IS41 type 3 top half (pictured above) and a type 7.

That’s now on order, let’s see if it works…

It’s 2020. Yay.

After a very slack year, I am going to go backdate some posts to fill in the gaps, if nothing more than to celebrate December 2019 which was pretty cool and inspirational.

On that basis the fleet is getting a major overhaul to get it back into shape. By the end of last year it was all looking very sorry for itself.

• Independent Fabrication Ti Deluxe: Needs a rear wheel rebuild

• Independent Fabrication Ti Cross Deluxe: Mothballed pending sale

• Independent Fabrication Ti Crown Jewel: SRAM Crankset broken. Non drive crank has come unbonded from alloy axle.

• Scott Genius: Slow rear puncture of doom. Dropper seatpost has mind of its own. Front fork doesn’t lock out.

Getting the Scott sorted was the first job. New 36 Factory fork is a great improvement over the 34 Performance which is currently with TF Tuned.

Last night I took the tire off to find all the sealant had dried up so added in 4 fl oz, repositioned the Scwalbe Procore inner so it worked as designed, and added a new o-ring seal on the valve stem. Pumped up to pressure and water tested so the test will be tonight when it comes out of the Avant to see it’s held pressure.

Then I went to fix the X Fusion HiLo Strate dropper post. After giving it a fettle and clean, when reassembling the saddle cradle the alloy surrounding the rear bolt snapped. Must have had a fatigue crack in it.

So it’s a good thing I had a spare normal seatpost off the new project to keep that rolling. The X Fusion appears to need special attention so will need to be fully stripped and serviced if a replacement upper clamp assembly is available…

#Disapponting #Moreworkthanriding

The year that was:

• 88hrs biking
• 1,752km
• 22,912m climbing (that’s 2.6 Mount Everests)
• Longest ride: 3h30 Marin Headlands including most climbing in a single ride (978m). Thank goodness for Califor-ni-yah

So a nice end to the year with the chance to spend some time in Silicon Valley and San Francisco. I’ve been to the USA several time in the past but have never ridden a bike there. I decided that a free weekend in San Francisco was an opportunity too good to pass up – time to go biking.

First challenge, hiring a bike. So turns out that there are lots of bike hire businesses in San Francisco. Fewer with decent mountain bikes and fewer still with full suspension bikes. Chose Blazing Saddles in the end and although I went in wanting something bouncy I rode out on a Marin Nail Trail 29er 1×11 hardtail.

Biking to the bridge is flat mostly with a bit of up here and there and then a cilmb up to the bridge. Dodge the walkers, runners, Segways, slower bikers and zip across the bridge on the bike lane side. Very organised. Lots of people on expensive road bikes wearing Rapha. Kept up with some of them on flat pedals in baggy shorts – received some funny looks. Turns out fittish person on normal bike is faster than less fit people on electric bikes.

Over the bridge I had a ungraceful dismount stopping to take some layers off ripping the skin off my knuckles on some badly setup brake levers. Dripping blood I took a left climbing up past the Marin Headlands sign on the closed-to-cars coast road, until… offroad trails!

A lot of the trails are highway wide, sanitised by UK standards. Still rode a few of the classics that have graced the names of Marin Bikes for years.

Pushing northwards toward the Tennessee Valley trail head things became a bit more interesting – switchbacks, singletrack, steps and more mountain bike superhighways!

Didn’t see many people on the trails other than walkers, but there were a few out. Nice shorts and t-shirt day in mid-December just made it a nice ride to explore surroundings.

Came pretty close to the Muir Woods but was running out of time to get back in the day light. I’ll have to come back to ride those and head up Mount Tam. Stopped off at Mike’s Bikes on the way back through Sausalito. Had a good chat with the very friendly staff (one had recently been over to Scotland and had ridden Glentress) and dribbled over some Santa Cruz exotica before heading for Pizza.

Back in the city in the fading light, I might have to look at a 29er hardtail. They feel fast and one could be a good exploring bike.