I really ought to biggup mattmagic. He’s managed 5000 miles by bike this year, the majority of it off-road on his singlespeed Chameleon. Well done sir, that’s a big total.
By the way, that fantastically high quality photo is of Matt at Mountain Mayhem a few years ago – back in the days of Team Kusatado Ninja. Ah memories…
Blimey, that was cold.
Saturday 26th November 2005: Myself, Anton, Flash, G-Dog, Rob and Stubacca drove up to Rheola, in the Vale of Neath, South Wales, for a bit of Dragon Downhill uplift day action.
After about ten minutes stood on the back of a truck, chugging it’s way up a snow-covered fire road, you get to ride down the track – and it’s epic. The first third is awesome – the closest thing I’ve found to the alpine courses. Fast, wet, rocky and very very good fun. We finished that section by blatting out onto snow-covered fire road, before diving into a completely bonkers chute-of-doom. From there on down it was tight, deeply rutted singletrack to the bottom – with the occasional “North Shore” interruption.
It started off being quite rideable, but by the time we got a couple of runs in the track was getting really proper mental. Bikes and riders were completely unrecognisable by the bottom – coated from helmet to tyres in a thick layer of the local mud. I’m told that I looked like the “Wild man of Borneo” by the end of the day. That didn’t stop it being bloody great fun though.
I had a series of absolutely comical crashes – none of which hurt (at the time), which was nice. There was the headfirst dive down the chute, the getting high-sided by the bike wedging itself in a rut, falling off and sliding backwards into a ditch (in front of the photographer girlie), not to mention the one where I rode off, failed to grab the handlebars properly and ran straight into a tree. Wonderful.
I also ended up on a pretty exclusive uplift truck at one point. This lot will mean nothing to those of you who don’t follow the sport, but I was stood alongside Brendan Fairclough (they Royal Racing rider who was second in the World Champs), Rowan Sorrell (of Mojo fame), Steve Jones (Dirt Magazine) and a load of others who I recognised but couldn’t name. Oh and me, who in comparison can’t ride for toffee. This lot could probably ride a shopping trolley down that track faster than I could on my bike. Proper bonkers quick.
Big thanks to Anton for the lift up there, Alex Burwood (I think?) for letting me have his place on the uplift, G-Dog for taking my bike up there and back, Jason Carpenter and the Dragon Downhill crew for organising it and Maccy-D’s for feeding me at the end of it all. I might have left your bathroom a teensy little bit muddy – sorry about that.
Loads of congratumalations to Mike and Sandra on the birth of Isla Rose Davis!
Woohoo! We beat Liverpool! I really wasn’t expecting that result at all, so I’m really quite happy about it. So much so that a teensy little bit of gloating was required:
SMS From: Olly Mobile To: Baggus Mobile So does that mean we're better than the european champions then?
SMS From: Baggus Mobile To: Olly Mobile I think cheltenham town under 16's are better than us at the moment
Nice. Good win for Blackburn too there Mr Pollard.
Owen posted an album of his life today. He’s by no means the first either – Stuart posted the wonderful Ubermix a while back aswell.
I’ve thought about doing a similar thing myself a few times in the past. The thing is, I don’t think I could – at least not without it being a huge multi-disc compendium. There’s just so much that i’d want to put in there, and I can’t see myself being able to edit it down to one CD at all.
The problem lies with albums, or rather that I can’t pick out one particular track. I too remember the evenings in the first year of college spent listening to Portishead’s Dummy. There’s no way I could pick one standout track from there – there’s too much good stuff to choose from. Then there’s the other albums that I played to death back then: The Fat of the Land, Mezzanine, Brothers Gonna Work It Out and Asylum to name but a few. How can I take just one track from each of those? I can’t (especially seeing as one of them is a mix album where are no tracks as such).
Sod it
I thought, I’ll list off my all time favourite albums
. That’s all well and good, except even that list got far far far too long within a space of about ten minutes. Right then, favourite artists it is then.
Or rather, it isn’t, because again, there’s bloody loads of them. So I’ve given up on that idea for now.
So it seems that Olly’s favourite band is “Various Artists”. Stick that on your shiny new iPod, it’s bound to be good.
We [myself, Brett, Adam, Justin and Steve] visited Gethin, South Wales on Sunday, for the second weekend in succession. Despite some grey skies in the morning, it brightened up nicely, leaving us with a grippy, fun course on which to pilot our downhill bikes. “Alpine Olly” was back in force, riding the bike properly again. The top and open sections provided the most entertainment. They’re ace fun once you learn the right lines through the tight, twisting switchbacks. The rock garden is still a real challenge and shows what long-travel bikes are really made for. A great day all-round.
This was probably the last time we’d see Adam on a downhill bike for a while. There’s a short video of him too [AVI, 4.26mb]. This weekend he leaves Cheltenham to spend 12 months doing a digital effects masters degree down in Bournemouth. Good luck dude!
It’s late July 2005 and The Hills Have Eyes monkeys [Adam, Alex, Anton, Brett, Charlie, Gary, Gaz, Nick, Olly, Rob, Stu] hit Morzine in the French Alps.
We ride bikes like nutters. We do over 200 miles, nearly all downhill, over the course of two weeks. We rail berms, fly off drops, ride see-saws, and rule the singletrack. We fall off a lot. We kneel at the altar of body armour. We kill several pairs of forks, a rear shock, countless tyres, gear cables, chains, brake pads and other myriad parts. We spend an obscene amount of money on replacements (Yes Brett, we mean you). We make silly BWAAAARRRRRP engine noises as we fly down the trails. We celebrate my birthday. We’re given free drinks by friendly bar staff. We fly from one mountain to the next on the Fantasticable. We think Anne-Caro is a vindictive cow to have come up with that track. We chat to old friends in the pub. We eat too much food. We take pictures. We throw each other in hedges. We have an awful lot of fun.
We come home. We are depressed. We are really looking forward to the next time.
Update: We take more photos.