I had a bike maintenance disaster this morning. Brett went one better this afternoon.

I woke up late, leaving myself about an hour to replace the drivetrain on the Cove before Owen arrived to go out for a ride. Not to worry – it’s only a chainring, cog and chain. Easy peasy, except for one small problem. One of the bolts holding the chainring in place point blank refused to budge. I got the new cog on the back, the new chain went on fine, but that chainring bolt didn’t want to know. In the end I gave up, left the old chainring on and we went out anyway.

Now, considering Owen hasn’t ridden his bike in about six months and professes to have done sod all exercise in the meantime, he showed few signs of the blatant unfitness he was claiming. Sure he was slow, but there was no sign of the nearly throwing up that we saw last time. I guess it was the promise of candy shrimps as a reward for getting to the top – that and not wanting to be shown up too much by some mentalist on a singlespeed… ahem. We got fantastic sunshine without it ever getting too hot, which always seems to make the singletrack flow that much better. A good ride all round I think.

We got back and I cleaned my bike for the first time in weeks. Simoniz Back-to-Black does really a fantastic job of making your bike shiny again doesn’t it? I’d noticed a bit of play in my rear hub while having my nightmare earlier on and also wanted to change the oil in my forks. The final descent on today’s ride finally convinced me that a five inch travel suspension fork is useless if it doesn’t actually use any of that travel.

I stripped the hub down for the first time in years. It’s seen plenty of riding (not to mention jet-washing) in the meantime, but while the grease looked old and used, it was still clean. The bearings were in pretty much perfect condition. Sealing that good is the reason why you spend that little bit extra on a Shimano XT hub instead of a Deore. They work, and as long as you look after them, they’ll continue to work for a long while. Clean out the old grease, put in a load of thick, gloopy new stuff, put it all back together and it’s rock solid again. Lovely. I’m not looking forward to opening the Deore hub on the front though…

After that I changed the oil in the forks – some ageing Marzocchi Z1 Drop-Off’s. They’re really showing their age on the outside, but within the stanchions they appear to be as good as new. Top caps off, springs out, drain the oil away, new oil in, springs in, top caps on. Adjust to suit and you’re sorted again. They’re showing an instant improvement – in that they actually seem to absorb the odd bump now. Bonus!

In the meantime, Brett tried the same thing with his significantly more complex Marzocchi 888R forks. Things didn’t go altogether to plan. Top caps undone, pour old oil out, all fine so far. Try to remove top-caps from damper-rods… ARSE! Brett manages to break the top off of one of the damper rods. He is not a happy bunny.

It’s funny (well, it’s not really), but he seems to be doing everything in his power to ruin his upcoming mountain biking holiday. First he dislocates his shoulder with only three weeks to go. It appears to be healing very well, but then with just two weeks remaining he dislocates his forks internals. One has to ask, what more can go wrong?

I haven’t written much here for a while have I? Every so often I get into a cycle of I really should post something but I don’t really have anything interesting to say, which of course isn’t the case at all. I’ve got plenty to say, I just can’t be arsed to actually write it. Its also partially because I’ve gone right off the design of this place again, but can’t seem to get myself together to to anything about it. I was described as terminally lethargic once. I’m going to get all predictable on you now and talk about mountain bikes.

This time last week, I was recovering from an epic cross-country ride with Lord Simon Everitt and Stu Bond. It was the hottest day of the year so far, so obviously we set off on our bikes shortly after midday.

Interesting point here. Si’s XC bike is an old Yeti DH-6. A few years ago, this would have been considered a state of the art downhill bike, yet here he is, with a single crown fork on the front riding it for miles on end. I was on my Cove Stiffee single speed, so our bikes couldn’t have been much more different if they tried.

We got to the furthest point from home – Cranham woods – and myself and Stu were really suffering. I wasn’t dealing with the heat very well and Stu was very dehydrated, so we decided to head down to the pub to fill up with water. Si’s phone goes – its Gary. My flatmate, Brett, is in casualty, having dislocated his shoulder. He was on hist first run, hit the first corner too quick, lost the front end and down he went. Winner! While Si is on the phone, a car goes past and suddenly just spears off of the road. Most bizarre.

It took us bloody ages to get home. Si was an absolute dynamo and didn’t appear to tire at all, but I was absolutely knackered by the time we got back. The highlight of the return journey was bombing down Leckhampton at significantly higher than the speed limit. Always good for a laugh.

We finished off the day with a barbecue at Si’s place, which was nice.

Since then, I seem to have picked up a minor addiction to XC riding. I’m enjoying it again like I haven’t for years. I went out on Tuesday and Thursday nights and then again today. Ker-ray-zee dude! Its partially down to my DH bike being in desperate need of attention, but even if that was fully working, I wouldn’t be riding it nearly this much.

Today it was my turn to be the dynamo, though I went out on my own so there was nobody there to witness it. There was virtually nobody else out on the trails at all – I guess they’re all either hiding from the mud or they’re at SSMM.

I rode up Leckhampton Hill, down the other side, up some hill whose name I have no idea of (the other side of the Seven Springs junction), across and down again, then back up Lecky, then down the other side out towards Birdlip, rode a load of cheeky singletrack over there, found the world’s muddiest bridleway, saw some wild deer on the path, got lost for a while, eventually popped out somewhere I recognised, rode back up Lecky again, down the other side towards Cheltenham, and finally saw another rider – Alex, braving the mud and pushing his DH bike up the trails towards me.

I was feeling a bit tired by this point so after chatting for a while headed off down the tramway and then blatted across town and back home.

I can see myself going out for a similar ride tomorrow too, though the single speed is in need of some attention now too. The drive train is well and truly shagged so a trip to the LBS might be needed in the morning.

Looking back, there was one particular track where I’m quite glad I was on my own. I had the Kaiser Chiefs playing loud on my MP3 player, and was riding no-handed down the trail, singing along and air-guitaring like a maniac. I must have looked mildly silly to say the least. I was having great fun though.

Right now, I’m listening to Glastonbury 2005 on Radio 1. Annie Nightingale and Annie Mac are hosting an afternoon of biggup jungly massive dance music live from the festival – they’ve just a set from the Plump DJs on and now the Evil Nine are on. I’ve got it on very loud and I’m enjoying it loads.

Oh, and Owen – my bike was very muddy before I went out and it’s significantly muddier now. Guess what? It still works! Surprise!

The F.A. Cup is seen as the holy grail of English football. My team (Crystal Palace, sadly releagted from the Premiership this season) have only ever got to the final once, back in 1990.

We beat the then dominant Liverpool 4-3 in the semi final, which was a huge result for us, largely because they’d inflicted a record defeat on us (9-nil) earlier in the season. We faced Manchester United in the final, which ended with a 3-3 draw. We came so close to winning it right at the death but alas it was not to be. We eventually lost out 1-nil in a replay.

I was absolutely gutted. For a team like Palace to have got that far at all was a huge achievement, but to have come so close to winning, against one of the biggest teams in the country, and then have it taken away like that was really harsh.

Which is why I have some sympathy for the Manchester United supporters this time around. Believe me, part of me is extremely happy that Arsenal lifted the cup – mainly the parts that have an intense dislike for Alex Ferguson and Roy Keane (on the other hand I’m not so keen on Arsene Wenger either), but United didn’t deserve to lose the way they did.

To their credit, Arsenal managed to keep United from scoring at all, but this wasn’t really down to their superior defending. Their goal keeper, Jens Lehmann, was on inspired form and pulled off a string of fantastic saves, but that was about it. United (especially Ronaldo) broke through their defence countless times only to fluff it at the last moment. Rio Ferdinand did manage to get the ball into the net once but he was (correctly) judged to be offside. Goal disallowed.

But even then United wasted so many chances it was almost funny. There were shots into the crowd, free-headers into the crowd, mis-kicks galore and Ruud Van-Nistelrooy even failed to connect with the ball at all on a couple of occasions. Every time they went forward I found myself thinking “this is it, they’re finally going to do it” but the goal never came. Chance after chance after chance came and went until eventually, after 90 minutes of normal time and a further 30 of extra time they were still deadlocked. Nil-nil. A goal-less draw.

These days they don’t hold a replay a few days later. It goes straight to a penalty shootout. Arsenal scored all five of theirs and United only managed to put four away. Arsenal went home with the silverware and a lot of very happy (and no doubt hugely relieved) fans. Despite supporting the better team for most of the match, the United supporters went home with their heads hung low.

I guess that’s football for you.

So we’re sat in The Conservatory having a pint on a friday night. The DJ ends his set with I might as well plug the album. Its called Trouser Jazz and its been out a while.

BLOODY HELL! That’s Mr Scruff! Playing in our local!

About 24 hours later, Owen and myself are at the town hall for his proper gig. Pete was supposed to be joining us, but unfortunately he was stuck at some family do or other. Its safe to say that he missed out, big style.

We had a fantastic evening, spent chatting at the bar to various random people we hadn’t seen in ages and dancing to one of the most random mixes I have ever come across. A nice selection of classical jazz standards, mixed in with various cool rhythms from around the world. Then just when you thought it was safe he’d chuck in some big and bouncy hip-hop number or some classic techno. This was of course sprinkled with Mr Scruff’s own tunes — Spandex Man went down a storm. The graphics up on the big screens were ace too. Classic Mr Scruff imagery mixed in with a selection of fantastic slogans like Wobble Those Legs!, Drink Tea!!! and Big Up Cheltenham Massive.

Before we left Owen bought a tea towel and I got myself a nice mug. I’d probably have bought a teapot too, but they were a tad expensive.

All in all a quality night out, despite the lightning and torrential rain on the way home. It was quite amusing watching people absolutely jump out of their skin at the sound of thunderbolts.

I didn’t get to bed until early Saturday morning, thanks mainly to a couple of DVDs — The Forgotten (silly) and Dodgeball (very funny) — and a certain flatmate getting home from the pub without his door keys. Anyway, not enough hours of sleep later, that very same flatmate knocks on my door:

Him: “You coming to Cwm Carn?”
Me: “Mumble grumble mhrrrr”
Him: “Sweet! We’re leaving in about half an hour.”

And so we did. The main aim of the trip was to play on the new Mojo downhill track, but seeing as my DH bike is currently lacking its rear shock, I took the Big Red Stiffee.

Frustrating

As soon as we got there I remembered. I hadn’t ridden my bike since Cumfest and had forgotten to sort out the singleator. To do that I’d be needing an 18mm cone spanner. Where was that? Yep, you guessed it, its in the garage back home.

That wasn’t going to stop me though, and it wasn’t long before I was off and riding round the “Twych” cross-country trail. Unfortunately my complete lack of fitness and the aforementioned chain tension issue got in the way every time the trail went uphill (its amazing how much confidence you lose when you can’t be sure a pedal stroke won’t slam your knee into the bars), but even so it was great fun. The singletrack (clearly inspired in places by the trails at Afan Argoed) was great fun, especially the whoop-de-whoop bits, and the final descent to the car park. Perhaps the most satisfying was the short descent that goes alongside the forest drive. I was absolutely flying along there with some kids cheering me on from the roof of the big 4×4 that I was comfortably keeping pace with. Then the trail went back into the woods and that was the last I saw of them. The only problem is that its not long enough. Still, I suppose you’re allowed to do as many laps as you like…

Mynydd Mojo

I got back and found the others playing on the new DH track. Now, before you start moaning about how its not open yet and we shouldn’t be riding it yet, several of the Mojo crew who built the trail were riding it too and encouraging the rest of us. They just don’t want you doing uplifts yet.

Its proper big — like something straight out of the Alps. There’s plenty of massive berms, hips, drops, doubles and even a few bridges to play with, but its all rollable – so if you don’t fancy flying 30ft through the air you don’t have to. There were a couple of locals playing on there and making to look decidedly easy, or so I thought.

Nope, that’s nothing. A bit later Rowan Sorrell and Tim Ponting of the Mojo Racing team turned up with some mates their mates and made everybody else look silly. They were going massive off of everything they could. Really really impressive stuff. I want to go back and have a play on my full susser now.

“I’ve got a fork between my legs”

We stopped off on the way back, picked up Brett’s sister and went for a pub dinner somewhere near Crickhowell. I’m not sure quite how we got her and two big mountain bikes across the back seats of Brett’s car – it certainly didn’t look very comfortable. I’ve not laughed that much in ages.

Should you be interested in such things, there’s more pictures in The Gallery.

Just got a text from Lewis:

Keep your eyes open for a patriot with plasters on the brake handles and non working front gears. Mine’s gone missing. Bastard.

So if you happen to see a black Orange Patriot around Cheltenham that fits that description, and looks like the one in the photo below, feel free to get in touch.

I do it every time I go on holiday. I’m fine up until the last day, and then for some inexplicable reason I fail to apply sunblock. As a direct result of this, my cheeks and the tip of my nose are currently a somewhat different colour to the rest of my face. To me it says “No worries, you’ve just spent the week snowboarding in the Alps”. No doubt to the rest of the world it says “FREAKAZOID!”.

See, I’ve just got back from a week spent playing with my friends in the snow. Charlie drove Gary, Emma, Rob, Brett and myself down to Les Coches in his fantastic VW Transporter Caravelle Minibus thing, where we met up with Neil, Simon, Pete, Owen and Anne.

I spent most of the first day desperately trying to remember how to ride a board. The first run we did – a steep blue from Les Coches to Montchavin – was a nasty bugger and I spent most of the time falling down it. Luckily things got better quickly and my confidence grew quite quickly from there on in.

By the end of the week I was joining Charlie, Gary and Brett on their mad off-piste adventures. Our final run of the week saw me have a fantastic crash in the trees. Tired legs got things wrong and I ended up lying with my head pointing down the hill and my board caught behind a tree. Escaping that one would have been interesting had Charlie not come to the rescue…

There’s loads more to tell (the dutchmen, Brett’s rock trotters, the flirty waitress, Si’s cooking, the fosters girl, the flashing bouncy ball, the world’s hottest fajitas, the list goes on…) but it can wait for another day. You can find a load of pictures in The Gallery.

Lets see what google searches a post title like that brings in…

So, I arrive home on Thursday and go bike mad. There’s a vague plan to swap bits over from the DH to the XC bike, in order to create some sort of burly XC bike with gears and enourmous disc brakes. It comes grinding to a halt quite early on, when it becomes clear that an 203mm disc brake rotor blatantly doesn’t fit into the back of the Cove. In the end I settle for just sticking a spare disc brake on the front – I’ve had the bits lying around forever and just never got around to fitting them to the bike. Unfortunately, a quick test ride around the block reveals that it quite blatantly doesn’t work anymore. So I spend quite a lot of Friday morning bleeding it, which is always a fun operation. It seems to work now though, which is a bonus.

So why am I doing all of this? Its the inaugural [and ambiguously named] Cumfest this weekend! Friends, bikes and all manner of other things all weekend up at Andy & T’s house up in Garrigill, Cumbria.

Mike D spent most of Friday afternoon driving myself and Rich up there in his absurdly practical Peugeot Partner (holds three people, four bikes, all of our kit, some food, drink and a big box of choccy chip cookies easily) with Green Day, the Chilli Peppers and The Pixies blasting out of the stereo. We make it fine despite driving up through some full on millenium falcon style blizzards on the M6, and begin to party in earnest. It goes a bit wierd at one point when a somewhat inebriated Bez puts a beer bottle between his bumcheeks (probably best not to ask – mainly because none of us can remember bquite why he did it). Comedy injury of the weekend occured during the bicycle-pursuit races around the inside of the village hall. Rich managed to fall off of his bike and onto a radiator, puncturing one of his bumcheeks. There’s a slightly disturbing trend developing there isn’t there? I should probably point out that both incidents were entirely unrelated and even happened in separate buildings, but that might calm some of your fears so I don’t think I’ll bother.

Saturday brought one of the best bike rides I’ve had in a long long time. A group of about thirty of us headed out of Garrigill into the hills. The amount of bike porn on offer was silly – there were at least three pairs of the rare-as-hens-teeth Maverick SC32 forks and a mad variety of machinery going from Shaggy’s fixed-gear rigid Spot all the way through the spectrum to Lee’s Orange Patriot 7+.

Within half a mile we hit snow, but carried on regardless – we’re hardcore like that. About a mile into the ride we’re all walking through knee-deep snow and its snowing, hard. I’m wishing I’d brought the snowboard instead. Most of the group turn back at this point – bunch of jessies. However, about ten of us continue upwards and onwards – some have scampered off into the distance, leaving myself, Mike, Bez, Dr Gray and Grant in the chasing pack. We never did catch up, though we did discover that you could ride through quite a lot of the snow, and when you did fall off it didn’t hurt. This meant that riding back was one of the all time classic descents, with all five of us flying over the handlebars into snowdrifts countless times and laughing most of the way down.

We finally got back to Garrigill just in time for the pub to stop serving food, so Mike and Timmah went off to Alston and returned about a pint later with ten rounds of fish and chips! Rocktastic! Cue another evening of eating, drinking and being merry – this time largely without injury.

Saturday dawned bright and sunny. A small part of me wanted to go and go and attempt to climb that hill again, but it was outnumbered by the other 96% of me, which was only really up for being downright lazy. I settled for riding around the village on Mike’s Dialled Prince Albert. It was far too big for me (even though it was about half the size of Phil “Nightfire” Tonkin’s ludicrous Ferrous 29’er), but I loved the huge handlebars on it. About three feet wide with much the same rise on them. Meanwhile, Make, Bez, Drac and Timmah competed in the Tour de Garrigill -a five lap race around the village. At the end of each lap all of the competitors got pelted with snowballs. I think Tim lasted one lap, Lee did two, Bez managed three and Mike romped away to a crushing (if a little hollow) victory.

With the riding over it was time to pack most of our kit into the car (I seem to have left my shorts on the radiator in the village hall – D’OH!) and head for home (this time with a soundtrack from The Damned and The Beastie Boys). A fantastic weekend all in all.

Big big big ginourmous thanks to Andy and T for hosting it, Mike for the lift up there and back, Matt for being mum and cooking a couple of fantastic large-scale meals, and to everybody else for making it well worth making the trip up there. Roll on next time…

Oh, by the way, there’s some pictures out on t’internet, by Simon, Rich, Lee, Grant.