I love a filthy ride
2 weekends ago I managed to get out to play on Betty's rival. She's been out of action for a couple of weeks whilst I was getting my forks serviced. I also bought a new headset which ended up being a bugger to fit. I spent all evening Friday trying to remove the old headset and finally yielded to the idea that a local bike shop would do a better job with the right tools.
But that was not all that bad cos it meant I could delay my planned ride to Sunday and head out on the lash instead! So there was me again dancing at 5am, singing along to a mash up of popular indie songs in the Melkweg. I can recommend a monthly residency called Club Rascal. The DJ's appear to be an odd couple, one short dude with some sort of irregular shaped back disorder and a larger lady but they love it up there dancing away on the stage playing their favourite songs. Rubs off well on the crowd. Much respect this time cos he played my request of Everlong by the Foo Fighters towards the wee hours.
And there began my odd sleeping pattern for the weekend. After 3 hrs, I was up and at the bike shop at 9am to ensure they could fit my part that day so I could ride on Sunday. Back to bed by 10am. Woken at 11 by the phone to find out the bike shop had already completed my bike. Back to bed by 12. Up at 3 to start rebuilding my bike. I had stripped everything due to the need to remove the handlebars for the headset fitting. With a bit of phaff with other stuff, iIt took me till 3am to get it back to tip top condition. Up at 9am to head to the trails the next day!
When I arrived at the trails there was a number of guys building the next section of the trails whilst two other dudes took me under their wing and showed me the lines. The top section splits to three sized drops and then you have 3 routes, a bermy fast run with a wall ride, a progressive jump section ending in a huge 5m road gap or a northshore run including a gap and seesaw.
I comfortably managed the medium drop, lost some fear of the doubles by nailing the 3m double and loved the shore even if it scared me silly!
The bigger drop was a little beyond my confidence level. I concentrated on hitting the medium one slow so I could make the tighter corner to the jumps or shore. Whereas perhaps I should've praticed hitting that faster. What put me off the bigger drop was the distance I had to clear to land safely.
I was in love with the double jumps. First 1m gap which I confidently went for, then cos that felt easy I kept going and surprised myself over the second 2m gap. It was on my second run I felt smooth enough to fly over the 3m gap and I was beaming. Never jumped doubles that big before :-) The 4th was another 3m gap but with less of a kicker and pretty close to a corner. I gave it a go eventually but hung up and popped by front brake cable around the fork to rub on my rim. Didn't do that again. But should do really as I don't push myself to failure enough on my bike - I think I have plenty more potential I'd like to explore. At the end of that run was a road gap and well....just watch the video footage I took of the day and I hope you'll understand why I did not give that a go!
The seesaw was at the end of the north shore run which had another couple of elevated sections. At the end of the second elevated section, say 2m high, there was a gap to the down ramp of about 1.5 metres. When I first saw this I was adamant I was going nowhere near it. But after nailing twice the distance over the doubles I was on a high and gave it a go. The first time I landed a little too close to the edge of the down ramp. The second time I went a little slower but had to huck a bit more resulting in my feet leaving my pedals - "Sweet, a no-footer". Err no I shat myself!
This is the original promo video that does a better job of showing the whole setup so far but they have big plans and hopefully an uplift service so I look forward to watching the acorn grow. I also read in a recent MBUK that there is now a legal formal agreement for trail building in the UK. So long as some rules are followed like no chicken wire to harm wildlife and less than 1.5m off the ground, we should start finding more places pop up in the UK to ride like this.
Find out more about the filthy trails on the website here and you'll find more videos on youtube including some headcam action. I only took a few photos of the day as left my decent camera in the car but there was a guy who also snapped me a couple of times and you can view the slideshow here. Now I've sussed it out I'll take my SLR and get some decent snaps next time.
Right I'm off to bed to dream about what I would like my perfect bike to look like and maybe I'll spot it tomorrow.
But that was not all that bad cos it meant I could delay my planned ride to Sunday and head out on the lash instead! So there was me again dancing at 5am, singing along to a mash up of popular indie songs in the Melkweg. I can recommend a monthly residency called Club Rascal. The DJ's appear to be an odd couple, one short dude with some sort of irregular shaped back disorder and a larger lady but they love it up there dancing away on the stage playing their favourite songs. Rubs off well on the crowd. Much respect this time cos he played my request of Everlong by the Foo Fighters towards the wee hours.
And there began my odd sleeping pattern for the weekend. After 3 hrs, I was up and at the bike shop at 9am to ensure they could fit my part that day so I could ride on Sunday. Back to bed by 10am. Woken at 11 by the phone to find out the bike shop had already completed my bike. Back to bed by 12. Up at 3 to start rebuilding my bike. I had stripped everything due to the need to remove the handlebars for the headset fitting. With a bit of phaff with other stuff, iIt took me till 3am to get it back to tip top condition. Up at 9am to head to the trails the next day!
When I arrived at the trails there was a number of guys building the next section of the trails whilst two other dudes took me under their wing and showed me the lines. The top section splits to three sized drops and then you have 3 routes, a bermy fast run with a wall ride, a progressive jump section ending in a huge 5m road gap or a northshore run including a gap and seesaw.
I comfortably managed the medium drop, lost some fear of the doubles by nailing the 3m double and loved the shore even if it scared me silly!
The bigger drop was a little beyond my confidence level. I concentrated on hitting the medium one slow so I could make the tighter corner to the jumps or shore. Whereas perhaps I should've praticed hitting that faster. What put me off the bigger drop was the distance I had to clear to land safely.
I was in love with the double jumps. First 1m gap which I confidently went for, then cos that felt easy I kept going and surprised myself over the second 2m gap. It was on my second run I felt smooth enough to fly over the 3m gap and I was beaming. Never jumped doubles that big before :-) The 4th was another 3m gap but with less of a kicker and pretty close to a corner. I gave it a go eventually but hung up and popped by front brake cable around the fork to rub on my rim. Didn't do that again. But should do really as I don't push myself to failure enough on my bike - I think I have plenty more potential I'd like to explore. At the end of that run was a road gap and well....just watch the video footage I took of the day and I hope you'll understand why I did not give that a go!
The seesaw was at the end of the north shore run which had another couple of elevated sections. At the end of the second elevated section, say 2m high, there was a gap to the down ramp of about 1.5 metres. When I first saw this I was adamant I was going nowhere near it. But after nailing twice the distance over the doubles I was on a high and gave it a go. The first time I landed a little too close to the edge of the down ramp. The second time I went a little slower but had to huck a bit more resulting in my feet leaving my pedals - "Sweet, a no-footer". Err no I shat myself!
This is the original promo video that does a better job of showing the whole setup so far but they have big plans and hopefully an uplift service so I look forward to watching the acorn grow. I also read in a recent MBUK that there is now a legal formal agreement for trail building in the UK. So long as some rules are followed like no chicken wire to harm wildlife and less than 1.5m off the ground, we should start finding more places pop up in the UK to ride like this.
Find out more about the filthy trails on the website here and you'll find more videos on youtube including some headcam action. I only took a few photos of the day as left my decent camera in the car but there was a guy who also snapped me a couple of times and you can view the slideshow here. Now I've sussed it out I'll take my SLR and get some decent snaps next time.
Right I'm off to bed to dream about what I would like my perfect bike to look like and maybe I'll spot it tomorrow.
posted by Malcolm at
2:27 am
1 Comments:
Awesome! I really should head out there sometime soon!
By
Tanja, at 31/7/07 13:25
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