R O T H A R . C O M

Seeing as the ‘midget is busy at the moment there is some other suitable ranting going on here.

Did you know there is another Nike Lance Armstrong video out in the US at the moment? No? Neither did I ’till I checked out the diary over at Gaansari Cycles. So after a top tip you can get to see it here. Lance has also been continuing his work with cancer survivors and there’s a new site established called Livestrong as an information service. It’s why Nike sponsored athletes are wearing yellow wrist bands these days.

Things have been kind of weird recently with all sorts happening at chez moi and then today I worked my last day in the bike shop. I have said I’ll try and do the odd day every now and then. It’s the end of a job I’ve enjoyed for years and I know I’ll miss certain aspects of it.

My latest (very long-term) project is back from being refinished at the skilled hands of Dave Yates and is looking rather lovely. More on my classic steel project soon, at the moment it’s just a frame forks and headset that I’ve had for a few months in a rather poor state. It’s amazing what a lick of paint can do.

The use of St. George flags on cars during the football has been causing a huge amount of interest and debate. It seems to be raising all sorts of nationalist emotions and a lot of discontent in certain circles, but what ever you think about the broader implications – having a flag on your car is just daft unless of course you’re a diplomat. Last time I checked they weren’t driving Toyota Corollas

Warning from the Department of Transport

In order to assist other motorists in identifying potentially dangerous drivers, it’s now compulsory for anyone with a lower than average intellect to display a warning flag, comprising of a red cross on a white background, attached to the top of at least one door of their vehicle. For drivers of exceptionally low intellect, additional flags are required.

Suz was over from Switzerland recently for some rock down at Donington and had this to say about her recent excursion back to UK:

From: Suz
Subject: Hello!I have to say, the flags on the windows were bugging the hell out of me driving up to Donington. That was a general car disaster actually. I got a diesel hire car so I must’ve stalled about 20 times over the weekend, we actually lost the car in the
parking field on the last day. We couldn’t find the damn thing at all – it was good exercise – we ended up walking around in the dark for 2 sodding hours, gave up and came back the next day. Of course it was there, then it took over an hour to get out of the field queueing with all the people leaving who had camped in the grounds…THEN we went the wrong way round that sodding ring round London so added another hour and a half to the drive back to Brighton…

So next weekend is Mountain Mayhem. I think we’re ready. It could be interesting as some of us might not be able to see where they’re going at night. So who’s doing the run?

Is the new Beastie Boys album the LP of the year? It gets my vote – get over to Amazon and check out To the 5 Boroughs.

This new job, which at the moment involves sitting in front of a computer all day writing websites, means it’s not what you want to be doing when you get home. I guess the good news is that it’s a short term project and will soon be over.

The new major sponsor for Lance Armstrong’s US Postal team has been announced and it’s the Discovery Channel, who will be taking up sponsorship immediately and will be the new major sponsor from the start of next season for a minimum of three years.

Craig’s in trouble with Google. Seems they didn’t like him using Coogle.co.uk and altering their logo. Quite where the similarity between a mountain biking website based in the north west of England and the World’s most popular website search engine based in California lies is a bit unclear and as for “likely to dilute the distinctiveness of the mark” I think they can just feck right off.

Remember how Levi’s went a bit quite over the whole Howies jean think once they started gettig loads of adverse publicity? I reckon the best bet is to make Google look like the complete arses they are. It was a bit of a piss take, but this just makes Google look stupid.

The Tour de France is approaching and as has become tradition in recent years the Cycling Weekly fantasy Tour de France is going to be happening once again. Get your teams in now.

I’ve been hitting Launch a lot the last couple of days there’s just so many videos on there and it’s intelligent enough to play stuff it thinks you might like too. Only thing is that you need a Yahoo account, but that’s free and you don’t have to use it for anything.

Oh and the latest edition of Dirtrag arrived today.

I’ve just spent hours trying to sort the sound out on my PC. Looks like the Creative soundcard might be shafted and at the moment I’m tempted to throw it from my third floor window, the only thing stopping me is the niggling thought that it might be a shonky set of drivers, I’m more convinced that it’s these at fault, because of course there’s always the Windows operating system to stuff things up.

Anyway surround sound is now restored, which is important when you don’t watch TV and the only other thing to listen to is the traffic. And most importantly the Beastie Boys are the Artist of the Month over at Launch and there’s a load of Beastie videos on the site including the legendary Sabotage and the new Ch-check It Out – which is you should, now.

Big ride out today, one ride I’ve been planning since February the result of combining two routes together around Bakewell, Longstone Edge and Chatsworth. It was all fairly good and another testing opportunity to iron out some more issues with the new bike. Little things that will be annoying in a race situation. Here’s a few pictures from a glorious day in the Derbyshire Dales.

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A near perfect day almost marred with a crash on a techical downhill section. I was already off the back of the bike, hovering over the back wheel and then ended up almost losing it and getting sucked into the v-brake/frame area by the tyre. That kind of smarted a bit. Worst bit of the day was seeing the aftermath of a 40 something motorbiker getting scrapped up by the emergency services on the A6 between Buxton and Bakewell. Messy.

Looks like it could all go down in California over the next few months. If you like me hold any interest in one day riding the famous areas around San Francisco, then its in your interests to take note of this.

Big Jonny linked this recently. Seems like a fine idea to me. When can we have it here?

And finally how to go from winning to losing a sure thing in three minutes. Yeah, c’mon England. Was it the heat or was it just because they were trying too hard? Either way it was almost a great start to the football.

Vanderman is a name that strikes a chord with all of those passionate about bike and trail access. The man seems to have a mission to conduct poor scientific research and target mountain bikers as a group that he sees as a threat to the ‘natural’ environment.

I won’t go into the hermaneutics of that concept, but lets just say there is a school of thought that disagrees with what he is saying. Anyway make your own mind up by reading what is proported to be a letter of his to the IOC regarding the inclusion of mountain biking a few years ago.

The Secretsinglespeeder is as infamous as the Sexmidget and Jim the Gimp in the shop and holds the infamous reputation as being classed as ‘another one of those singletrackers’. Looks like a clique has been mentally created. I think I might be in it too or maybe that’s the ‘singlespeed weirdo clique’. Not sure if that’s a good thing, but anyway RHS has a lot of nice photos on his site including these.

Given the Irish title of the site, I don’t do enough Irish stuff on here really, so here’s a link to a site of due relevance: Mountain Bike Ireland.

This is Notoriously Bad Typist’s website it has a few routes in the Peaks and Derbyshire. Somewhere I’m hoping to be riding this weekend.

Finally Armstrong finished a surprise 5th in the Dauphiné Libéré today. There’s perhaps a lot of reason in the thought that says Armstrong is playing mindgames with his opponents in the build up to the Tour. It’s going to be interesting to see what happens in the big race this year.

Regular readers maybe excused for thinking that I have fallen off the face of the Earth. Unfortunately this is not the case, but there has been a lot happening at rothar.com towers that has been conspiring to prevent frequent updates.

First up my time in the bike shop is drawing to a close and on Tuesday night several drinks were downed in celebration of the fact I’m leaving. Much entertainment was had and it was good to catch up with a few old colleagues who haven’t been around much recently.

Secondly I’ve already started my new job on a part time basis too, so I’ve been busy doing all sorts of stuff for that and then there have been some changes in my living arrangements that have caused a fair bit of termoil around these parts. To cut to the chase there hasn’t been much of an excuse, I’ve just been really slack.

There has however been one rather fundamental, important and rather secretive development. The much awaited new bike has landed and this morning I picked it up from the wonderful Mr & Mrs Johnson at Sideways Cycles, took it home, built it up and then after work test rode it extensively until it had turned dark outside. Another reason I’ve not been updating. There are some pictures here.

This may come as a bit of a surprise to some as I think they may have had a vague idea of what was coming but not really exactly what. When I was looking into getting it, I really struggled to find much to look at in terms of what was available in terms of finishing and options. The answer is that pretty much anything is possible if you can afford it. This one had a few custom options like disc and v-brake bosses, a forward facing seat tube slot, drilled BB shell for drainage, custom cable routing, geometry and paintwork.

Anyway to make life a bit easier for other people in a position similar to mine looking at getting something new, there is now a whole website dedicated to some of the finest bikes on earth over at ifrider.com, the home of the Independent Fabrication Owners’ Club. There’s now a permanent link to it from the main page too.

Perhaps most importantly I now have a bike for Mountain Mayhem…

I’ve been busy recently and that has meant not much time for riding. After watching all the beautiful weather we’ve been blessed with recently from behind a desk, when it was another bluebird day when I woke up this morning I was determined to get out and make the most of it.

I’ve been riding lots of new places this year and this was another opportunity to broaden my horizons. I choose to ride the Berwyn Mountains Wayfarer Loop ride as featured in Issue One of Singletrack. It’s an 57km route and the timing given was spot on, with a stop in the pub at Llanarmon Dyffryn Ceiriog it was just under six hours before I returned to the car.

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Although it rained on the way there and the way back I was lucky enough to have rain-free ride, although the river crossings mean that keeping dry isn’t as easy as you’d think.

There’s something very special about riding in the Welsh countryside. I think it’s the complete silence of human activity that is most stunning that and being surrounded by towering real mountain landscapes.. I’m looking forward to getting back out there and riding again soon.

Cunego won the Giro leaving a lot of people wondering who he is. Cyclingnews produced the goods with an insight into the Italian rider many are hoping will be the next great Italian all-rounder. Interesting to see that he hails form the same town as Paola Pezzo.

There is once again to be a Tour of Britain. News about it has been varied but basically its to run over five days between September 1st and 5th. It will be the first national pro tour in the UK for five years when the PruTour saw some interesting stages, least not the riders all getting sent the wrong way…

Anyway it looks set to start in the UK capital of cycling, here in Manchester and will be followed by stage in Yorkshire. The third stage will visit cities in the East Midlands, with the fourth stage centred on South Wales. The finale will be a criterium in London’s Westminster area. The BBC has secured coverage rights.

How about this for a piece of kit? How long before it is being used for all the wrong reasons. Swear words an’ everyfink.

I’ve posted a few links to kev’d up motors in the past. This one gets extra marks for the fact that some people appear to have taken it seriously. The good news is that the car in question is now dead. The better news is that there is another one in the pipeline…

Did I say we’re into Sleepless in the Saddle again this year? I think I forgot to post that yesterday. Jed and I are going back for another attempt at the pairs class. I’m hoping for slighly cooler weather than last year and will not be using a Camelbak bladder that has been breeding nasty bacteria for several months.

There’s less than a month left now until my last day in the bike shop, after well over ten years working in the bike trade I’m going to be moving on to other things. It hasn’t all really sunk in yet, but I know I’m going to miss working with some great people, good friends and being involved in bikes. Ironically I may have actually more time to ride – something which I’m looking forward to.

The Penguin game mk. IV seems to have been a reasonable hit, but arguably this is even better: Red Bull’s latest campaign.

GT’s parent company also owns Mongoose who are now developing their own spin on the i-Drive suspension system. Bikemagic have taken a look at it. For some bizarre reason I actually quite like the look of that.

There are some more results from Madrid over at MBA. Interesting to see Ryder Hesjedal so far down the finishing list. There’s a substantial age gap between him and Thomas Frischknecht and a substantial gap in their respective placings. Miguel Martinez’s time out from Mountain Biking doesn’t seem to have worked in his favour either.

I don’t know whether Travis Brown won the recent Big Bear event on his Singlespeed, but it is fairly certain he is a rather impressive rider.

Along with Singletrack’s Mark Alker, I was on Radio 4s You and Yours programme today to talk about the global shortage of certain raw materials and how this may impact on the bicycle trade. There’s more about it on Singletrackworld and Bikebiz.

My point is that new season bikes don’t all appear on a certain date. The launch of bikes in recent years has been staggered across many months, spanning from July through to January. Different models appear at different times and if a particular style of bike from one manufacturer isn’t available, it’s fairly likely that another company will have a similar product that is available.

The advantage for many small IBDs is that there is a certain amount of flexibility in being able to move between suppliers to meet demand. I still think that the coming months will be a real test of the on-demand ordering and supply chain that certain elements of the industry seem to have adopted. I think the coming months are veiled in a certain amount of uncertainty partly due to many of the manufacturers playing their cards very close to their chests.

Price increases which seem to be due, are probably the biggest variable over which uncertainty remains. Increases as high as 20% have been rumoured, but quite what level of increase arrives is unclear. Further some manufacturers may lower the specification on bikes to retain certain models at certain key price points. Again it’s a case of riding out the event to see what happens…

There ain’t no drugs for you to find here. I imagine there are a few people pleased about that fact.

Pedantic or a just decision due to a flouting of the guideline? The decision to strip Marcus Gronholm of his victory in the World Rally Championship is a controversial decision and one that has undoubtedly resulted in some harsh words in the Peugeot technical team All this because of a little bit of plastic.