Man, this morning’s commute was hard work. It’s not very far, but this morning I rode out onto the Tewkesbury road into a headwind that nearly had me going backwards. I bet it’ll have swirled a full 180° by the time I come to ride home, too.

Even so, the ride always becomes more fun when I get into town. Inevitably most of the traffic gets snarled up at some point, so I can often bomb past it all. This morning it was especially good, as I traded places with a rather nice Porsche 911 several times, before eventually beating it to the town centre. Winner!

Right, I’m off to get some new batteries for my head-light. It’s slightly disconcerting when it fades away to nothing as I’m riding around a big scary roundabout…

“Hey Olly, you just hipped off that jump.”
“You what?”
“Yeah, you rode in, took off and swung the bike around under you.”
“Sweet! I had absolutely no idea.”

I wouldn’t have the first idea how to hip-jump. The truth is, getting air still scares the crap out of me.

Say good bye to the summer, autumn’s here with a vengeance.

Myself and Weon had a fairly typical autumnal ride. We encountered everything from blazing sunshine to torrential rains with howling winds chucked in for good measure. The leaves carpeting the ground made navigating some of the unfamiliar trails an interesting exercise in guesswork. They were all still on the trees the last time I was there. Still, we didn’t get lost at all.

We blasted down dry hard-packed single-track and ploughed through axle-deep bogs. We sheltered from the weather in a forest and ate cake, fruit and chocolate. We wheel-span up slick wet grass hillsides and picked our way down rocky technical descents that had us shouting expletives as the bikes misbehaved beneath us. We kept riding until we were both completely and utterly exhausted.

It added up to about 30 mainly off-road miles all in all. I feel a bit broken now, but with that satisifed “I did good stuff today” feeling. Rocking.

I really should have cleaned the bike when I got back.

Man, I’ve missed this. Today was my first ride since the broken hand incident. I saw a dead snake and what I think are some Crias (baby Llamas). I’d not seen a snake in the wild since the adder we found in the woods at school. Exciting huh?

Obviously most of my strength, fitness, confidence and stamina had evaporated (although bizarrely my legs seem as strong as ever). They’ll come back though, given time and effort. My hand was absolutely fine throughout. Winner!

Great fun. Glad to be back.

This weekend saw the final round of the UCI Mountain Bike World Cup, at Schladming, Austria.

Both Steve Peat and Tracy Moseley went into it at the top of the tables, but it was damn close, so they’d need to be on the gas in order to win the overall.

As it happened, Peaty came in 12th, which was just enough to hold off race-winner Sam Hill. Biggups to Gee Atherton and Marc Beaumont, who finished the championships in 5th and 7th places.

Tracy managed 3rd in her race, again just enough to stay ahead of the race-winner, Sabrina Jonnier. Rachel Atherton and Helen Gaskell finished a fantastic 3rd and 5th in the championships.

As Dirt Magazine put it, has there ever been a better day in the history of UK downhill mountain biking? I think not.

I looked up at her with what must have been a look of blind panic across my face. I had absolutely no idea where I was, what the hell was going on, or indeed who she was. Why is everything blurry?

Mr Hodgson? Are you OK?
Erm… wha?

I can see now. Oh, hang on. I know this place. You’re a nurse aren’t you?

Um, I think I must have passed out.

You see, about five minutes earlier, they’d taken that fetching blue plaster off of my hand (mmm, yellow and smelly) and handed me a leaflet explaining what might happen. The first thing in there?

You may find you feel faint or nauseous — don’t be alarmed — this is because your limb has been in a cast for some time.

I wandered out into the waiting room, then almost immediately got called into another room to wait for the doctor to get around to me. So I sat down to wait for a while. Next thing I know, I’m looking up at the nurse, wondering what the hell was happening. They moved me onto the adjacent bed and put an oxygen mask on my face.

I was feeling relatively normal after about ten minutes, so the doctor came back. He said it’d continue to hurt for a while (he’s right, it does) because I haven’t used it for weeks. No bat or raquet sports, pneumatic drills or power-tools for the time being. Jogging or swimming is fine though (boring!). Come back in a couple of weeks for a check-up.

I asked about mountain biking and he said I ought not to for a little while — but my commute on the road ought to be OK. That amused me, given the state of Cheltenham’s roads. I may also have neglected to mention I have a tendency to hoon off speed bumps and and down flights of stairs en-route to work. I might have a spin on the Cove tomorrow and see how it feels.

Oh, I still appear to be operating left-handed. What gives?

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…

I was a little worried to begin with. I’d ordered a set of RockShox – and my previous experience with their forks hasn’t been brilliant: I had a 1996 Quadra Q5R, which needed to be ridden for a good couple of hours before it’d do anything that even resembled suspension.

Then there was the Judy in 2001 or so. OK, so it was a bit better than the RST Mozo Pro it replaced, but that’s not really saying much. Obviously I loved them at the time, but back then I hadn’t experienced anything better. This time around, I have.

So I bolted them to the front of the Prophet and away we went…

A few rides in and I’m really quite happy with these ones. They just sit there and do their job: they’re plush, they work and you don’t need to worry about them. They’re plenty stiff enough for me: I ragged the bike down the back of Leckhampton Hill, zigzagging across all sorts of ruts and gulleys and found no sign of any twisting or deflecting from the fork. It’s actually showing up a bit of flex in the bike’s swing-arm, which can twist noticably when you’re really pushing it. I wonder if I can get the Prophet MX’s bolt-thru swingarm after market…?

There’s a couple of nice features that I honestly never thought I’d find a use for. First up is the U-Turn system, which lets you wind the travel down from 140 to 95mm. This lowers the front of the bike significantly, which is superb for riding up the really steep stuff. It’s a bit of a faff, but if it’s a long, steep climb then it’s worth it.

Second is the lock-out. Now, most of the time I like to keep my forks active. After all, what’s the point in all that travel of you’re not going to use it? That said, it turns out that the blast home across town is much nicer with the forks locked. Accelerating away from the lights without the front of the bike bobbing like a buoy in a storm is just plain ace.

The Pikes aren’t by any means perfect though. I like the front of my bike to be quite high up (it’s to do with the fear of steep slopes) and these are somewhat shorter than the Marzocchi All Mountain 3’s they replace. No biggy, it’s just something I’ll have to get used to.

Slightly more concerning is the Maxle quick-release axle. It doesn’t seem to be especially robust around the QR and I’ve already seen one break there. Something to keep an eye on methinks.

I’ll take some pictures of them eventually. I’m just not really in a camera mood at the moment. Yes, that’s a really bad excuse.