Diary of a Mountain Biker

Ride Archive

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If you ain't fallin off regularly you ain't tryin hard enough

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3rd May 2004 Richard, Mark, two Daves and Marcello - Pitch_Hill

As the Beatles sang, I should have known better than to arrange a ride out on a Bank Holiday Monday. It was raining lightly as we left the cars at Pitch_Hill car park and headed for Caution_Steep_Slope. After capturing me nailing the roll-in on video and messing around for a while we met some latecomers and then headed over to Winterfold Woods.

The trail pixies had been hard at work laying out even more singletrack in this cyclist's paradise and Mark led us along some recently discovered and more recently built singletrack.

Stacks were had by Bandana Man who face planted a quite large jump followed by Mars (Marcello- see video) on only his second MTB outing and finally Dave 'Notwell' who had a set of slick tyres on his OCLV carbon Trek frame. Not a good move in this weather.

The rain gradually got heavier until it turned into that really heavy stuff that blurs your shades and penetrates even the most heavy duty waterproofs you are wearing.

After visiting Judges_Seat and nailing the small drop-off rain finally stopped play and we headed for home.

Don't miss two great videos taken today. Richard doing the roll-in at Caution_Steep_Slope and Marcello face_planting.

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Dave 'Bandana Man' launches well but lands nose first and takes a dive over the handlebars

Marcello eats dirt at Sleepy Hollow. Check the video_clip (475kb)

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Dave 'Notwell' just about to see it all go horribly wrong

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Mark on his Klein Attitude Y2K

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Mark makes it look easy

Richard nails the easier drop at Judges_Seat. Photo © Mark

9th May 2004 Richard, Mike and the Chocolate Footers - Pitch_Hill

A disjointed ride today. Lots of downhill rigs in evidence which is great to watch going off the edge of Caution_Steep_Slope but means a lot of waiting around.

I seemed to have left my bottle in the car and it took ages before I finally nailed the steep roll-in again and launched off a few small ramps.

After visiting Judges_Seat and a few XC miles around Pitch_Hill I called it a day. As Clint Eastwood said "a man's gotta know his limitations" and I certainly wasn't going to be pushing them today.

Now that's what I call extreme car-park fettling. Neil takes a hacksaw to the 2004 Marzocchi Bombers he is testing

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Straight out of the June edition of MBR and onto this site - Neil on the new Global Ti frame with carbon top-tube and rear end

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Hamish on his Dawes Watoga at Judges_Seat

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8-ball launches his SantaCruz Bullitt off caution steep slope and you can see it is already going the way of the pear

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Johnny was awesome, nailing the drop followed by the double and straight into another large drop.

Hamish tries the skinny log and it's all going Pete Tong

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Jim nails the larger drop at Judges_Seat on his Cannondale. Daryl and Gav look on in awe

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24th May 2004

No chance to ride off-road for the last two weekends because of that dang personal life interfering but don't worry, there's still plenty of riding going on.

I am now fully into my road ride to work - 30 miles a day, 4 days a week on the road_bike (well, you need to give your legs a rest one day a week) has seen me clock up 240 miles since my last post and my fitness level rise to the level it was last year.

This evening I have been round to see dialled_mike to pick up a pair of his infamous XC Pablo_Esco_bars and these will soon be fitted to the enduro.

Made from cold drawn, seamless, butted and shot peened aluminium they are 26 inches wide with a 1.5 inch rise, 5 degree upsweep and 9 degree backsweep. As the blurb says, now you can control your bike with the same ruthless efficiency that Pablo used at the height of his powers to control the cocaine trade. And at 337 grams they are a whole 67 grams lighter than the specialized own brand bars they replace.

I also visited Huey and Sue to deliver some of the free samples of gloves I have been sent. They will be conducting an extended test for me and reporting back in due course.

Hope you like the picture to mobile phone facility - try_it and see. If you don't have a picture phone yourself, why not send it to a mate's phone!

dialled_bikes Pablo_Esco_Bars

30th May 2004 Richard, Huey and Sue - 100k road ride

I was at a loose end when Huey asked if I was interested in joining him and Sue on a 100k road ride. They had this planned to warm them up for the Marin_Rough_Ride they are undertaking next weekend. As I have been 'roading' so much recently on my daily commute I was keen to see how I would fare - plus it would be good for a laugh.

The day dawned bright and off we set with H and Sue on their Cannondale RT 3000 tandem leading the way and me draughting along behind.

Now there's a whole new set of disciplines with road riding including constant speed, constant peddling, draughting and changing speed without using your brakes. This is exaggerated when following a couple on a tandem that may struggle uphill when compared to a light road bike but have a hell of a lot of momentum on the descents.

The battering your wrists, forearms and shoulders take from the road up through those 25c tyres pumped rock hard at 90 PSI is incredible and starts to wear after a while.

The pace was fast - we flew past a very professional looking set of riders who were farting around at the bottom of Pebblecombe Hill and they looked visibly shocked to be passed by a tandem and a peaked lidded, baggy shorted rider on an ancient raleigh.

It's also amazing how happy a tandem makes people. Everywhere we went, people would laugh, wave and comment about the bike, from young kids to worther's originals sucking, pension collecting elders.

The weather varied wildly, going from bright sunshine to pouring rain but a great day out was had and this was an interesting departure from the mountain biking. Well worth a try if you want to do something different.