The Love of Cycling

So it's been a while since I last posted. Partly because I've been busy, but mostly because I've been avoiding everything to do with the internet, emails, computers and cycling. There's a reason for that - Mountain Mayhem.

I've been working for Patrick Adams for 9 years at Mountain Mayhem and it has always been a fantastic week, the highlight of my year and something I always look forward to. This year was different. I wasn't looking forward to it. I'm not even sure why. There were various reasons but nothing in particular, just the amalgamation of lots of issues.

As many of you may know disaster struck on Friday before Mountain Mayhem when Patrick was taken to hospital leaving his beloved event, the biggest 24 hour mountain bike race in the world, in our hands. This made an already bad week, worse. But we got through it. (I'm not going to dwell on all the ins and outs of this week, it just wasn't as fun as usual.) There was the usual torrential rain on Saturday evening which turned the course to unrideable sludge and then gail force winds on Sunday morning tearing the arena and the campsite to pieces! But we got through it.

Two days tidying up and litter picking and by Wednesday I had totally lost my enthusiasm. Niggly things were getting to me and there was too much residual bad feeling hanging around. There's just too much politics involved in cycling some times. I've been saying this all year and Mayhem is no different. I'd had enough.

Then when I finally got home I made the fatal mistake of reading the forums about Mayhem. I always tell Paul Davis the course designer not to do this and I have no idea why I did, maybe because I had more input this year and just wanted to know what people were saying. Still, it wasn't a good idea and I got even more fed up! This was when I stopped looking at the internet. It was either that or go off on a big rant. But the damage was done. I didn't want anything to do with cycling.

Now I'm sure my indifference to cycling would have continued to fester if it wasn't for the fact that I'm a slack cyclist and when I unpacked the car I put Olive the dekerf in the dining room. There she sat all shiny and beautiful: incredibly neat welds, the trademark dekerf seatstays, stunningly designed XTR components, precision engineered beauty of Hope Mini calipers and the neat, slimline stiffness of the Rock Shox Team SID suspension forks. How could I stay mad at her?! It wasn't her fault after all.

I resisted for a couple more days - grumbling and moaning and being generally fed up with the world, and cycling and cyclists. Then I cracked. A cosmic alignment of circumstances occurred with Cyclenaut coming over for a few days from America, Deano popping over for a couple of beers, the funniest waitress in the whole world warning me about the 'blue cheese burger' and a beautiful day; I just had to ride my bike.

And it was ace!

I love cycling!

Malvern Meandering

Went for a quick spin over the Malvern Hills today in Worcestershire. It's somewhere I've been intending to ride for years now, but every time I'm in the area I get caught up at Eastnor or just end up passing through.

My new dekerf, 'Olive', is urging me to ride though. I can hear it taunting me from the back of the car: "Let me out... let me out to do what I was built to do. Get off your lazy fat backside and justify the astronomical price you paid for all of these shiny new bike parts you flamin' idiot!"

With that kind of motivation, how could I resist! I had to drop some bits off at Back on Track bike shop in Malvern. I should also say a great big thank you to Paul at Back on Track for doing a fantastic job of building my new bike at short notice a couple of weeks ago. And for letting me take over the whole shop for the 2 hour discussion involving four people and three members of staff to figure out what forks and wheels I should have. I swear Posh Spice, Paris Hilton and Jennifer Lopez could have picked an outfit for the Oscars quicker! But you have to get these things right, right? And it does look ace now! (Photos coming shortly by the way.)

So I parked in the car park just above the shop and asked Paul for some route advice, bought the waterproof Harveys map he sells and disappeared into the hills. It's fairly hard to get lost to be honest. The Malvern Hills is just one ridge line a few miles long encircled by roads - you can either traverse along the hill or climb up to the top, descend to the road, then climb back up another track and repeat. When you get bored, you just head back. Though it would be hard to get bored here. Even looking at the map there's a myriad of legal bridleways to be explored, and who knows how many unmapped trails!

A couple of hours playing on a wide variety of trails - gravel, stoney, grassy, rooty, muddy, steep, steady, technical, tight, wide and fast, the Malverns seem to have it all - and I decided to head home. Olive had done me proud again on her second outing and I'd had a blast riding new trails. Can't wait until I have another spare day to get back and explore some more. I think I have one in October sometime...

It's Here!

My spangly new bike frame! (giggles like a small child) It was like Christmas morning when the delivery man knocked on the door, even though it was stupid-early o'clock I couldn't wait to open the box. And here it is:


Sweet huh! Have to say a great big thanks to Michael Golinski at Dekerf Cycle Innovations for getting it to me so quickly. It really is a thing of beauty and I hope the build I've got lined up does it justice (sadly my photographs don't). Hopefully it should be built in the next couple of weeks, but I'm still waiting on a few parts.