R O T H A R . C O M

So the leaves are turning and the Howies Autumn catalogue has arrived. I guess summer is finally over. Howies have to be my favourite clothing company, but I’m not sure I know where they’re going. It used to pretty clear in the past, lots of nice stuff made out of environmentally sustainable materials like organic cotton and merino wool with natural dyes and socially responsible manufacturing. It’s not the cheapest, but it lasts well, it’s made well and you can have a reasonably clear conscience about buying Howies stuff.

The problem is they’re now doing lots of stuff made out of polyesters and other synthetic materials. Now while many of these are potentially sourced from recycled plastics, at the end of the day you can’t help thinking that you’d be better off with a nice bit of wool or cotton. How about silk? Any ways what it’s made out of is less of an issue than the fact they keep harping on about consumer debt and then sending out catalogues to people tempting them to buy the latest lovely things and add to the £1 million of additional consumer debt that Brits run up every four minutes. It’s a tricky one. Live, buy, consume, die?

Talking of such catch phrases the Designers Republic team have been busy. There’s a great new video they’ve produced for Citizen Bird. Check it out here – it’s part of a Coca Cola sponsored initiative.

So I’m feeling quite lucky to be alive after this little incident. Slow depressurization and then catastrophic failure at 80mph. Tasty. The advantage of low pro tyres is that you don’t loose too much control. So that’s another pair of Eagle F1’s then…

IMBA UK have redeveloped their site. I have to say I thought it was better before, but hey who am I to mention such things. I didn’t step up to get involved and the new site will feature: A revised “Routes” section, including a new Challenge Trails section with an interactive map giving links to appropriate websites and soon there will be a Paypal facility for merchandise and subscriptions.

Here’s an important notice that all riders need to get involved with and behind to support:

From: IMBA UK
Subject: MTB Byway campaign

MPs will be voting on the Natural England & Rural Communities Bill (NERC) on 11th October.

We can help influence MP’s to amend the Bill to allow mountainbikers to claim Restricted Byways (used to be RUPPs). The Rosedale case, and two recent Public Enquiry rulings have shown that the law discriminates against cyclists wishing to claim new routes after 20 years of uncontested use. IMBA is working with CTC to persuade Ministers to modify a clause in section 6 of the Bill to confirm that cyclists can claim Restricted Byways.

As time is short, the easiest option is to go here and “Open Up New Rights of Way for Off-Road Cycling” and click on “Join Campaign” and then “Lobby your MP”. Then just type in your postcode into the box under “Recognise My Right of Way” and the job is done. Alternatively, a more personal method is to send your own e mail to your MP. Go to this site and type your postcode into the “Postcode Search” box and then click on the subsequent e mail link. A sample letter can be found at the end of this mailing. Let us know of any responses.

And finally get behind the IMBA International Report Card. Yes it’s that time of year again. Last year, voters from the UK gave the Forestry Commission in Scotland a great confidence boost by voting Scotland the best international destination – so your vote does count! If you wish to record your vote for England, Scotland and Wales then you will have to do this on different days – only one vote per day.

So the first ever Independent Fabrication Owners’ Club in association with rothar.com invitational is fully booked. Organised in conjunction with the wonderful Mary Kirkbride from Ride the Alps, riders Jed Southwood, Nige Harris and Jam Price will be joining me and a handful of other people for a summer epic in the high alps next summer Chamonix to Zermatt over a week in a fully supported epic adventure. It’s going to be great and then there’s the extra riding we want to fit in too. So all we need to do now is persuade Jed to get an IF so he doesn’t fit left out…

One person who’s not feeling left out is Wee Ben, who’s riding like a bit of a legend up north of the border.

From: Benjammin
Subject: Westcoast100

ey up,

Hows it going?

I’m doing pretty good, fitting into country life pretty well, enjoying the more relaxing slow pace – its all good.

Got myself a litlle van (m reg renault extra) which is sweet, you can get two downhill bikes in it easy (with the wheels in – bonus for bolt through owners), so i’ve kinda been jetting about in that since i got it. First up was checking out my mates trails in inverness (glen urquhart bike park), which are dope, the bike park is well good with a whistler style jump box, a little road gap thing and loads of north shore skinny’s. There’s also a secret trail if you’re in the know – which is such good fun, steep, rooty, rocky and slidy. And it boasts (i kid not i’ve seen it) a 30 foot gully gap (gap being easily 25 foot down onto rocks), which i didn’t do. Nae chance.

check out pinkbike put ‘glen urquhart‘ into location, i think, on the photo page and its mostly there.

Went to the fort bill world cup too which was great fun, saw my old mate rich, aka cunny, (see the newest dirt – he’s the ugly one doing the road trip) and saw peaty win which was pretty special, he was the last man on the hill and the crowd went nuts.

Anyway, we’re off to innerleithen in about a week for the next uplift, soooo looking forward to that new dh course it looks like fun.

Any way i’ll get some photo’s up soon (the site doesnt like mac’s, and my pc’s dead), you’ll have to bare with me though.

laters dude

Anyway there were a few who wanted to be involved but couldn’t quite make it, so I’m proposing a multi day Trans-Wales Epic sometime around Easter next year. The usual suspects are all invited. More details soon, but it’ll probably be a variation on the IMBA UK route.

Loads of mountain bike stuff out at the shows, including lots of carbontastic stuff from Specialized and a new Trek Madone Mountain Bike, the 9.9 Hardtail. So all those people who said the hardtail was dead a few years ago will be gutted to hear that if anything the hardtail is definitely still alive and now fighting the substantial full suspension market with the latest composite materials, but they’re far from the do everything bikes of ten years ago. These latest bikes from the big players are 100% cross country racers – you’ll not find the downhillers racing these bikes. If you want something that’s an evolution of bikes from back in the day check out the Surly Pugsly. 10 Psi tyre pressures anyone?

So here’s a great bit of PR, but for who? Not all news is good news that’s for sure. Finally, do you know anyone from Northern Ireland?

Freshers Flu has taken me down and my computer has a virus:

Dear Receiver

Bejaisus! You have just received an Irish Virus. Since we are not so technologically advanced in Ireland, this is a manual virus.

Please delete all the files on your hard disc and send this mail to everyone you know.

That’d be grand.

Tanx, Paddy O’Hacker

So after a year and a half off the bike David Millar is now looking at a return to racing. With Armstrong’s departure the peloton next year is going to be an interesting spectacle and Millar will be an interesting addition into the pick and mix of possible stage winners in the big races.

David Millar, whose two-year doping suspension ends in June 2006, is looking to come back as soon as possible. After rumours began that he was in touch with a number of teams, including Quick.Step, Liberty Seguros and Illes Balears, it looks like he has found a place at Saunier Duval-Prodir. Team manager Mauro Gianetti said over the weekend that the team was preparing to sign Millar. “As far as we’re concerned, the deal is perfect. The contract can be signed within the next few days,” he said, adding that it was possible Millar could even ride in the 2006 Tour de France, which starts nine days after his suspension ends (Cyclingnews).

The Sexmidget has been busy in Wales.

This looks like a fairly good place to start this update.

From: The Darwin Awards
Subject: Surprise Attack Surprise

(3 January 2005, St. Maurice, Switzerland) It was the first week of a weapons refresher course, and Swiss Army Grenadier Detachment 20/5 had just finished training with live ammunition. The shooting instructor ordered the soldiers to secure their weapons for a break.

The 24-year-old second lieutenant, in charge of this detachment, decided this would be a good time to demonstrate a knife attack on a soldier. Wielding his bayonet, he leaped toward one of his men, achieving complete surprise.

But earlier that week, the soldiers had been drilled to release the safety catch and ready their guns for firing in the shortest possible time. The surprised soldier, seeing his lieutenant leaping toward him with a knife, snapped off a shot to protect himself from the attack.

The lesson could not have been more successful: the soldier had saved himself and protected the rest of the detachment from a surprise attack. The lieutenant might have wished to commend his soldier on his quick action and accurate marksmanship. Unfortunately, he had been killed with one shot.

Normally I’d talk bikes here, but most of the stuff I’ve been looking at recently has nowt to do with bikes at all so it’s not a particularly bike orientated post at all. Well apart from the fact the best saddles in the world just got even better – check out the Bel Air RL. So I guess that’s the saddle for the new IF sorted then. Oops guess I let that one out of the bag eh?

The Independent Fabrication family has grown and there’s a shiny new addition to the collection. If I was like the characters in Dear Wendy I’d probably have names for them all but I don’t. At the end of the day they’re bikes. Very nice bikes, but not as valuable as people and especially someone you really love and care about. Bikes can always be replaced, people can’t be. Anyway this particular new bike is still languishing in a fairly big cardboard box awaiting some fairly fundamental components to bring it to life, pictures will follow when it lives.

I read this a while back and it sounds like a pretty good idea. How many times do you wish you could watch that show you missed when you were late back from biking at the weekend:

From: Steve Malone, MacUser
Subject: BBC to offer legal free downloads of TV shows

The BBC is to allow British online users to legally download TV and radio programmes from the Internet up to seven days after their transmission. The announcement was made by Mark Thompson, the BBC Director General, in a speech at the Edinburgh Festival over the weekend.

Under the plans announced by Thompson, it is hoped that the new service called MyBBCPlayer will be launched next year. In addition to recently broadcast material, the BBC also hopes to include more of its archive online as downloads as well.

With some programmes, the BBC may go one step further. As well as offering downloads at the same time they are broadcast, some shows may even become available online before they appear on TV. In a pilot, the BBC Three comedy The Mighty Boosh has appeared on the Internet before TV. The corporation says that the comedy Titty Bang Bang, the sitcom ‘Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps and the Johnny Vegas vehicle ‘Ideal’ will be made available on the Internet first.

The BBC has already trialled a service of radio programmes and was surprised when it put the Beethoven symphonies online and received over 600,000 downloads.

The programmes are to be limited to British online users – who finance the corporation through their licences only. The BBC says it has gone to some lengths to ensure that Internet users from the US and elsewhere do not get a free ride.

The move is likely to infuriate online purists who will say the point of the Internet is to allow access to content from anywhere in the world. However, the BBC is looking for additional ways to add value to the licence as the government is currently scrutinising the licence system as part of the charter renewal process.

That said, the move is also likely to inflame those who say that the BBC will be encouraging the so-called ‘digital divide’ of those licence payers who will benefit by having a broadband connection and those who do not.

And Finally

From: Mike T
Subject: A Little Chuckle

A Jelly Baby walks into a bar and starts talking to a smartie. After a few beers the Smartie says “Ere, a bunch of us are heading to that new club, fancy tagging along?”

The Jelly Baby says “No mate, I’m a soft centre, I always end up getting my head kicked in”

“So?”, Smartie says. “Don’t worry about it, I’m a bit of a hard case, I’ll look after you”

Jelly Baby thinks about it for a minute and says “Fair enough, as long as you’ll look after me”, and off they go. After a few more beers in the club, three Lockets walk in. As soon as he sees them, Smartie hides under the table.

The Lockets take one look at jelly Baby and start kicking him, breaking cola bottles over his little jelly head, lamping him with little sugary chairs, and generally having a laugh. After a while they get bored and walk out.

Jelly Baby pulls his battered Jelly Baby body over to the table and wipes up his Jelly Baby blood. He turns to Smartie and says “I thought you were going to look after me!” “I was!” says Smartie,” But them Lockets are f**king menthol”

So two weeks without Internet, massive deadlines at work and a whole heap of stuff going on in addition to moving house equates to not enough time for website updates.

Mikey T sent me this link. It’s the Channel4 trailer with alsorts of TV people saying their favourite swear words. Not really safe for work. well not unless you’re having a REALLY bad day…

From: Michael Moore
Subject: Vacation is Over… an open letter from Michael Moore to George W. Bush

Friday, September 2nd, 2005

Dear Mr. Bush:

Any idea where all our helicopters are? It’s Day 5 of Hurricane Katrina and thousands remain stranded in New Orleans and need to be airlifted. Where on earth could you have misplaced all our military choppers? Do you need help finding them? I once lost my car in a Sears parking lot. Man, was that a drag.

Also, any idea where all our national guard soldiers are? We could really use them right now for the type of thing they signed up to do like helping with national disasters. How come they weren’t there to begin with?

Last Thursday I was in south Florida and sat outside while the eye of Hurricane Katrina passed over my head. It was only a Category 1 then but it was pretty nasty. Eleven people died and, as of today, there were still homes without power. That night the weatherman said this storm was on its way to New Orleans. That was Thursday! Did anybody tell you? I know you didn’t want to interrupt your vacation and I know how you don’t like to get bad news. Plus, you had fundraisers to go to and mothers of dead soldiers to ignore and smear. You sure showed her!

I especially like how, the day after the hurricane, instead of flying to Louisiana, you flew to San Diego to party with your business peeps. Don’t let people criticize you for this — after all, the hurricane was over and what the heck could you do, put your finger in the dike?

And don’t listen to those who, in the coming days, will reveal how you specifically reduced the Army Corps of Engineers’ budget for New Orleans this summer for the third year in a row. You just tell them that even if you hadn’t cut the money to fix those levees, there weren’t going to be any Army engineers to fix them anyway because you had a much more important construction job for them — BUILDING DEMOCRACY IN IRAQ!

On Day 3, when you finally left your vacation home, I have to say I was moved by how you had your Air Force One pilot descend from the clouds as you flew over New Orleans so you could catch a quick look of the disaster. Hey, I know you couldn’t stop and grab a bullhorn and stand on some rubble and act like a commander in chief. Been there done that.

There will be those who will try to politicize this tragedy and try to use it against you. Just have your people keep pointing that out. Respond to nothing. Even those pesky scientists who predicted this would happen because the water in the Gulf of Mexico is getting hotter and hotter making a storm like this inevitable. Ignore them and all their global warming Chicken Littles. There is nothing unusual about a hurricane that was so wide it would be like having one F-4 tornado that stretched from New York to Cleveland.

No, Mr. Bush, you just stay the course. It’s not your fault that 30 percent of New Orleans lives in poverty or that tens of thousands had no transportation to get out of town. C’mon, they’re black! I mean, it’s not like this happened to Kennebunkport. Can you imagine leaving white people on their roofs for five days? Don’t make me laugh! Race has nothing — NOTHING — to do with this!

You hang in there, Mr. Bush. Just try to find a few of our Army helicopters and send them there. Pretend the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast are near Tikrit.

Yours,

Michael Moore
www.MichaelMoore.com

P.S. That annoying mother, Cindy Sheehan, is no longer at your ranch. She and dozens of other relatives of the Iraqi War dead are now driving across the country, stopping in many cities along the way. Maybe you can catch up with them before they get to DC on September 21st.

Meanwhile Blair has been accused of slating the Beeb by that Murdoch. It was front page news over the weekend in some of the papers interestingly, the BBC tucked it waway on their website.

Sure enough at 3.30am on Saturday morning some barking mad Scottish folk fueled by the products of the finest distilleries in the land left an incomprehensible answer phone message telling me what a great evening I was missing. Wish I could have been there it sounded like a good time was had by all up in the hills above Glentress.

Planning for the inaugural rothar.com (in association with ifrider.com) transalp is now progressing nicely. The countdown has started to next July when the lucky few will be escaping from the UK to head out to some of the best big mountain riding in Europe, to cross borders, pass over cols and drink cold beers at the end of dusty alpine days. I’m looking forward to it.

News in the world of bikes includes the fact that Bontrager is going to produce some carbon rimmed mountain bike disc wheels following on in the footsteps of the likes of HED and ZIPP. Quite how they’ll hold up to boulder fields remains to be seen… Meanwhile SRAM is getting geared up to hit the road market.

More graffiti with a message here.

How illegal is it to vandalize a wall if the wall itself has been deemed unlawful by the International Court of Justice?

The Israeli government is building a wall surrounding the occupied Palestinian territories. It stands three times the height of the Berlin wall and will eventually run for over 700km – the distance from London to Zurich.

The International Court of Justice last year ruled the wall and its associated regime is illegal. It essentially turns Palestine into the worlds largest open-air prison. It also makes it the ultimate activity holiday destination for graffiti writers.

_ _ _

spot the difference

There been quite a lot happening recently in Europe. in the alpine regions there’s been torrential rain, which has transformed areas that are usually safely enjoying 35 degree heat into dangerous and waterlogged places. In the thick of it all the rothar.com Swiss correspondent has some photos and a rather good insight into the character of certain individuals:

From: Suzi
Subject: Remind you of Manchester?

I can imagine you and Chris being this stubborn somehow 🙂

More photos here

Swiss television has shown pictures of bridges that have collapsed, huge chunks of caved-in motorway, farms swept away by mudslides and people being evacuated by boat through normally busy city streets. Electricity was cut off and drinking water contaminated in several parts of the country and many villages were isolated as roads were swept away and railways stopped their services.

Meanwhile Portugal is being toasted by wildfires that are burning out of control and are decimating a country which despite normally having some of the highest average annual temperatures in Europe does not maintain any contingency plan for dealing with fires. Firefighting aircraft from France, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, and Italy have all joined the efforts against the fires this week in answer to a call to help. Quite why Portugal does not maintain a fleet of water-carrying planes isn’t stated, but things aren’t looking good.

Meanwhile in the North:

From: MacPuppy
Subject: Groof woof yip gruff awooooooooooo !!!!

roughly translated : no I don’t fecking know when I’m going yet but the window of opporchancity to sneak in a last bivvi is closing as StuN will be sloping off to find some fruity trails in Sept and I might have been shipped out to the land of smellee cheez an onions by the time he returns. Ghostdog is also being exported – to the land of burning cottages so his time in the glorious North (no that’s the proper North) is also fading fast. Callum vanished without trace ages ago …. will he make it out to play ???

So a cunning plan has hatched – contraflow bivvi this friday night at Glentress.

Meet at the bottom car-park around 8pm … beyond that who knows but I’m thinking of stashing the bivvi gear in a car at the buzzards, riding light for the contraflow and then rendezvous’ing (note my command of the new tounge already) with buzzards before sloping off into the deep tree’s with our phones/hipflasks/cake – usual script.

Roll down to the hub in the morning for a full-on hubba bubba breakfast.

Who’s in and who’s satelliting ????

who have I missed ????

Mentalists. I of course have opted out of such lunacy (well this time anyway), but am fully expecting a whiskey fueled phone call in the middle of the night if they can get any reception. A bit more notice next time guys?

The singlespeed worlds have happened. Find out how the big event in Penn State went down over at Singletrack.

Finally read this and remember Jason McRoy. I’ve updated my page here.

First up an email from Ben:

Thats it all done. Finally got some stuff on the blogspot page. All of my canada 2004 photo’s, check it out and leave a comment if you want! www.westcoast100.blogspot.com

Looks great to me. Must admit I’m tempted, but I would definitely need some peer pressure to commit to some of that riding though! My efforts at the Ewok Village at Glentress have not convinced me of my North Shoreness.

It’s quite clear that Ned Overend doesn’t know how to retire, which for mountain biking is a good thing because he’s a bit of a character. Inaugural World Champion, he quit in 1996 at the age of 41, then joined the fledgling XTERRA off-road triathlon circuit and scooped up a couple of their World Championships before retiring again in 2003. Steve Medcroft catches up with Ned to talk about life at 50 for Cyclingnews.

Another Mountain Bike legend Keith Bontrager has had a bit of a shocker in his attempt to conquer the seven day long TransAlp Challenge. Read Keith’s accounts here, unfortunately it didn’t all go quite to plan…

Now Stateside the Leadville 100 has just taken place and for the first time in a long time I’ve been over to check out what Big Jonny has to say about things. thought he’d be back for revenge and sure enough revenge was involved, but the Gringos got the better of Big Juan’s bodily defences and almost finished him off. He has an epic write up of his race over at DC and the Gnome has more over at Onespeeder…

On the day that they have announced a rise in alcohol related deaths it seems only fitting to say something about bikes and booze…

Cycling on steep mountain trails will beat you up and wear you down. Through a long day of such activity, there is no better medicine than water to keep the athlete’s body functioning at its optimum level. Yet, wine has its rightful place in the realm of trail-riding… More at Dirtrag

Three weeks to go and I’m moving house. Reality is starting to take hold. It’s not going to be pretty! There are various implications, not least having to move several years of accumulated deliveries from Amazon. Fortunately however the new flat is well equipped with book cases. I wonder if I will find any hidden trails?

So over the last few months I’ve been a little bit busy on the website front and not content to be doing it all day at work, I’ve been roped into doing a bit of extra coding. The result went live last week and is the Independent Fabrication on-line store. Check it out here.

Not going to make it to Pennsylvania and to be honest I’m a bit disappointed…

Bikeage ’05
Prime the pump for the SSWC’05

As promised, there will be a loosely organized, unrelated-to-the-official-event, low-key, pre-SSWC05 ride/beer drinking event for those coming through, and/or living in and around Philadelphia. Even if you don’t plan on attending the big event, come out and join us in Philly.

Bikeage ’05 will meet on the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway (you know…where Rocky ran up the steps in all his steroid-induced glory) at 2:00 pm on Friday, August 19th. From the Art Museum steps, we’ll head to the local trails for a rally-style ride and a sampling of some of the Keystone State’s finest beer. Afterwards, the festivities will continue at Tattooed Mom’s [530 South Street, Philadelphia, PA 19147, ph# (215) 238-9880)], a bike-friendly watering hole on the much over-hyped South Street. That’s right…more beer (and food) at one of the finest establishments on the “hippest street in town.”

The folks at Tattooed Mom’s will be offering us one-geared folks a $3 Yards ESA special, as well as 50 cents off of any food and drink. If that’s not enough to get you to the bar, we’ll also have some fabulous door prizes…even for the Canadians.

After that, you’re on your own. We’re doing this event early in the day to allow you (us) enough time to head out to State College on Friday night. Aren’t we thoughtful? It’s only about a three and a half hour drive from Philly, but we encourage you to stick around Philly until Saturday morning if you’re out sampling the sauce on Friday.

If you do stick around on Friday night, we suggest checking out a cool punk rock show with Del Cielo / True If Destroyed / Belaghost at Space 1026 (1026 Arch Street, Philadelphia, PA) put on by the ultra-righteous R5 Productions. See here for more info

There’s been a spate of tagging wars going on recently and the walk into work is a fairly interesting gallery at the moment. Check some more urban artwork here.

This is a great website for people looking for new fonts for making stuff. Why has it taken so long to find larabiefonts?

A while ago I linked posted something about Spinner forks. These are the lightest suspension forks on the market at the moment with a titanium, scandium and magnesium construction that ways little and costs a lot. There’s now a Spinner USA website up here so you can check out the Aeris forks in a bit more detail. From what I gather Spinner have been making forks for a certain big manufacturer for a few years (take a look and see if you can work out who, it’ll probably only take one look at the all mountain Echo and you’ll see the resemblance with another popular fork). Spinner’s previous own brand kit, In-Sync, has never been much to write home about, other than the fact it seemed to replace RST as the OEM fork of choice on sub £500 bikes.

Now this is a great website: derailleurhanger.com – What an original and simple idea and it serves a real and useful function, especially for those hard to get parts. As Matt Biskup, the genius behind the company suggests:

Please shop by the pictures, not the data. If you don’t see your bike on this list and would like our help locating a derailleur hanger for you, please email us at: info@derailleurhanger.com and we’ll try to locate one for you.

One way to really help us is to email a digital photo or two of your derailleur hanger and/or the dropout of the frame if that’s all you have. If you can’t do digital photos, simply place the derailleur hanger on a regular photocopier and fax the copy to (678) 530-1052 with your name on it and bike info.

We have located hangers for Look, Litespeed, HM and many other brands that aren’t up on the site yet with this method. Our intent is to make this site the single point for cyclists to find derailleur hangers on the web.

The parts on offer are professionally engineered and are stronger than one that came from the original manufacturer and therefore can take a bigger hit than a standard hanger. If like me you have a penchant for wrecking hangers these bad boys may be just the ticket.