We’re riding in and around Morzine in the French Alps. It seems the trail-pixies up here don’t like Orange 22x bikes for some reason:

• Nick fell off his Orange 222 in a big way within thirty seconds of starting his first ride out here a week or so ago. He broke nearly every major part of his bike and he’s covered in scabs and bruises, but at least he’s out there riding.
• Gary fell off his Orange 224 while riding the Mega Avalanche, busting a rib. He can’t sneeze, cough or laugh, let alone ride his bike.
• Anton re-opened a large wound in his leg whilst riding his Orange 224 into a tree somewhere near the Super-Morzine on Tuesday.
• Charlie fell off his Orange 222 on the way back from Chatel on Wednesday. He went down hard on his front, before bike came down square across his shoulders, doing in his clavicles. He’s on his second day off the bike.
• Literally two minutes after he got back up, I fell off my Orange 222 in a big way (trying to overtake him) and busted my right hand. Simon told me that was the biggest crash I’ve seen in a long, long time. I too am on my second day off. It’s feeling a bit better today though.

Of course, everybody else in the group is still in one piece. It’s quite clearly because they’re riding Santa Cruz, Mr Big, Ancilotti and Intense bikes.

My theory is completed by Mr Steve Peat, who fell off of his Orange 224 on the last corner of his World Championship run two years ago. At the time, he was a good couple of seconds ahead of the eventual winner, Fabien Barel. Where was this? Why, it was just up the road at Les Gets.

Thankfully, the two days riding that preceeded the accident were fantastic fun, including a great run right from the top of Les Gets’ Mont Chery course (the lift doesn’t go all the way up – you have to walk from the top of the bike park lift) and a stormer of a day riding in Chatel with Colin Williams of Team Yeti UK fame. The 303 DH rail bike does work after all, and it’s a really lovely thing in the flesh. Another one for the wish-list: I bet it doesn’t pick up enourmous rocks and fling you over the handlebars…

SMS From: Brett Mob
08.07.2005    21:23
Olly, kind of fell
off your bike and
put a cut in
stanchion :( i
asked at shop
and can get a
new crown +
stanchions 4 £70
so i'll pay for new
ones, sorry

[For the uninitated, the stanchions are the sliders that go up and down in the suspension fork]

It was Owen’s 30th birthday the other day, so to celebrate it a bunch of us descended on Go Ape! in the Forest of Dean.

Put simply, it’s a great big ewok-village style obstacle course set up to 35ft in the air. When you’re that high up, all of the front goes out the window and you can really see who’s scared – It’s usually not the people you’d expect.

The highlights of the whole thing had to be the zip-wires. They pale into insignificance compared to the Fantasticable, but they’re great fun nonetheless. Clip on, jump forwards and WHEEEEEEE! You’d inevitably crash land at the other end (unless you were Ben), filling your shoes and pants with wood-chippings. Sweet.

The pictures are up on Flickr should you be interested.

So, my first @media is over and very good it was too. Highlights for me (in no particular order):

• Jeff Veen‘s presentation: Designing the Next Generation of Web Apps. Caused me to have all manner of light-bulb moments.
• Chris Wilson’s very informative presentation about IE7 – and (perhaps more importantly) future versions beyond that one.
• Mexican food with Adam and Gareth.
• The relief when Peter Crouch finally scored for England, then the elation when Steven Gerrard sealed it.
• Kate “buying” us (Amanda, Rich, Ross, Alan and myself) the most foul champagne of all time, then running away without drinking any enough.
• Ian Lloyd mistaking the moon for Big Ben.
• Robin Christopherson’s presentation was absolutely amazing (despite the technical hiccups). It gave a real insight into how a blind user operates a PC and what problems they can (and do) run into on a daily basis.
• Chatting with Adam, Nate Koechley (it’s pronounced “Keckley”) and [insert name of that canadian dude who took a liking to London Pride here] about some of the innovations going on at Yahoo! including a great sounding inverse-forum on their corporate intranet.
• Andy “Malarkey” Clarke‘s presentation: The Fine Art of Web Design. Really inspirational talk on pushing web design out of it’s current “comfort zone”. I intend to try. I wonder how far marketing will let me push it?
• The “hot topics” panel session which closed the conference. Jeremy Keith lorded it over Molly, Jon Hicks, Eric Meyer and Tantek Çelic, which produced a very entertaining debate.
• Inventing a series of new microformats (including hTopTrumps and hLove – for dating websites) in the pub with Rich, Gareth and Andy.

Big thanks to Patrick, Amanda and the rest of the team for organising it and everybody else who made it such a good event. It was great to meet you all again / for the first time. Can we book tickets for the next one yet?

[Technorati tags: atmedia, atmedia2006]

I’ll be jumping on a train to London in the not-too-distant future and making my way down to the @media 2006 conference, which is nice.

If you’re going, I might well see you there. I you’re not, well, yah boo sucks to you.

[Technorati tags: atmedia, atmedia2006]

Them: “So what were the highlights then?”
Me: “Um…”

It’s amazing what happens when you’re on holiday for three weeks. You do so much that you start to forget things. I started looking through the photos this evening and it all started to come flooding back.

That awesome fountain in Kings Park. The DNA tower. The bikini photoshoot. The mental waitress and the Arsenal-supporting (HA-HA!) waiter from Islington. Waffles in Fremantle. The scary prison tour. The tandem on Rottnest Island. The supermonsterpatrolmeister 4×4 behemoth truck. The evil seagulls. The penguins. The only miserable aussie. The biggest ants ever. The steaming lake at sunrise. The trees you can walk through. Dôme. The high pitched receptionist. Owen’s crazy ladder tree – and the bonkers granny who went all the way to the top. Hardcore offroad driving (dude). Those amazing caves, and the guide who’d clearly spent too much time down there. Tales of the runaway “controlled” bush-fire (oops). The wine tour. The streak, ah, the steak. The road-trains. Getting up before sunrise to see the pinnacles. The sand-boarding. The snorkelling. The trek through death valley. The world’s biggest spider (except for that even bigger one). The stripey feet. The parrots. The reunion. Dim sung for breakfast. The booze run across the border to Kuala Lurah. Sushi. The crown prince, twice. The water village. The most ostentacious hotel on earth. The lagoon. The most apologetic staff in the world. The safe. Getting the bride. The wedding. The reception. The hangover. All-you-can-eat noodles. The goodbyes. The not wanting to come home, but being glad to be back. The passport with a nice selection of stamps.

…and that’s just scratching the surface. Man, we did everything! I’ll start uploading photos at some point. There’s just sooo many to work through… I’ve started uploading my photos to Flickr – there’s a whole set dedicated to them.

I’ve returned from the other end of the world. In the last three weeks we did Western Australia, Brunei and Malaysia (briefly). As a result, I’m kinda tired. Apparently I’ve got 1.3gb of photos to sort through – not including the ones Owen and Anne took. More when I have the energy.

Big congratulations to Wei and Steve on their marriage, and thanks very much for having us. It was fantastic to see you all again and meet so many new people.

Oh, the answer you were looking for is a pedestrian crossing in Perth. They made me laugh every time.

The day of the wedding. It started at Steve’s place in the morning, where he gathered all of his homies together. We all trooped in convoy over to Wei’s house where he (along with the rest of us) had to pass a variety of tests in order to get to the bride.

Once we’d got through that, we proceeded to the church for a traditional catholic wedding. It was a very nice service, in which Wei sang the psalm – very brave, but she carried it off perfectly.

The evening saw probably the biggest wedding reception ever, followed by a party at which certain people got ever so slightly inebriated. Great fun.

See more photos taken on 3rd June 2006, or all of my photos from Australia and Brunei.

[The very next day we headed for home. Alas I’d managed to pack my camera very well, so alas there are no photos of my hangover. Gutted.]