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 30^th 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 3^rd 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.]