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It’s gone mountain bike event crazy…

unexpected drafted into a SSMM I ended up doing the 24hr team thing again. I think I prefer the solo rides – there’s something about riding round a field every 2 hours that reminds me of the apocryphal cure for teenage smoking by making them smoke until they’re sick. You’re going to camp in that field and ride every 2 hours until you get it out of your system. Ride, eat+drink, sit, ride etc. It’s cool because it’s big and you get to chill out with a bunch of bikers before and during the event, but it’s not so fascinating when you’ve done it a handful of times. That said, riding the dawn lap where you get to see the sky turn from black to blue to gold, you get to see the dozens of little lights winding along the hillside where dozens are people are fighting their personal battles to keep the cranks turning, and you get to feel the sun’s gentle caress before it becomes a scouring burden – that is a unique moment.

From there, it was some culture with John B Keane‘s The Field at The Tricycle in Kilburn. First a side-note: there are some references on the web to a place called CTJ Vegan Chinese Restaurant – there is a Chinese restaurant at that address, but it’s not vegan and it doesn’t even do good veggie food. I hear the meaty dishes are good though. The play was excellent. Tense, funny, endearing and well produced it made an excellent change from norm. The last thing I saw that was remotely like it was Ibsen‘s “A Doll’s House” but a closer time period and a closer culture made The Field much truer to my heart.

Still more to say… but no time to do it. Story of my life at the moment

Bristol bikefest – another great small-scale mountain bike event. I rode in the 12hr solo event and it was a hell of thing.

They put together a nice course with loads of singletrack and attracted a perfect number of riders (maybe a 100 soloists… I’m rubbish at esitmating numbers). Even the start was amusingly low-key: we all rolled out to a patch of grass and the organiser shouts, “3, 2, 1, go!”.

The cheer of the other riders, the unbelievable uncouragement from the marshalls, the funny announcer on the PA system, the cheers from the spectators in the arena – there was just a great vibe the whole time. As for the riding, it certainly felt pretty strange as the 7 hour mark went by. That’s longer than I’ve ever ridden continuous and was still only just over half way. I was happy to keep it together for pretty much the whole time, fuelled by fig rolls and bananas on the course and oat cakes, peanuts, apples, and potatoes in my “real food” breaks. The potatoes especially were great, bringing back a section from a Terry Pratchett book

“I never worry about [religion stuff.] Never –ing give it a thought. I’ve got my potato.”
“Potato?”
“Oh, yeah. Keep it on a string round my neck.” Mr. Tulip tapped his huge chest.
“And that’s religious?”
“Well, yeah. When you die, if you’ve got your potato, everything will be okay.”

“A potato can be a great help in times of trial.”

and indeed it was. My only disappointment was that I came in at 11hr20min (plus a bit) and was lapping about 40min by there so I didn’t push it to squeeze in another lap. My excuse (such as it is) was a puncture on the previous lap which cost me 10 minutes due to exhausted lack of co-ordination (even then I had to stop a bit later and put more air in).

All in all a top weekend, and next year I’m dragging some more people along 🙂

To linux hacking… I’ve had a spot of bother enabling dma on the optical drive of my Shuttle SD11G5. It uses a Intel 915GM ICH6M with SATA hd and an IDE optical drive. The way I had it set up,

hdparm -d1 /dev/hdc

returned

HDIO_SET_DMA failed: Operation not permitted

which is no good because without dma, watching dvds and ripping cds both kill the cpu. Turns out that the solution is in the BIOS. In Integrated Peripherals/OnChip IDE Device, make sure that OnChip Serial ATA is set to “Enhanced Mode”. Having done this, the cd drive becomes /dev/hda (it’s no longer related to the hard-disk) and enabling dma works… woohoo! Now I can watch The Incredibles.

…and that’s surely a good thing.

Singlespeed UK champs were absolutely ace. Hamsterly is a great place to ride and the atmosphere all weekend was like music festivals used to be (except without the music which was, let’s face it, incidental to having a good time). Some tents, some booze and herbal cigarettes and 90s dance music pumping until the early hours. And then we rode a “race” on the Sunday. Tight technical singletrack on the first section caused predictable carnage from the outset; 1000ft of climbing per lap made sure we knew exactly how much beer (some free) and pizza (plenty free) had been consumed the night before; rocky descending kept it interesting on the descents and – amazingly – didn’t kill any of the people riding fixed. God knows how. The world needs more of this – 100 odd people in a little bubble of their own, making fun.

It’s not all about the bikes. On Tuesday, Sell Crazy proved that there’s more to Bracknell than just the forest. Another grass-roots kinda thing the gig was really good fun. They play kind of indie/rock with vocal harmonies in the SoCal punk style. Or at least that’s what my ears made of it. It’s good to hear a band that can write songs. They get the hooks, they get the length and the complexity right. Generally, I like challenging music – Sell Crazy don’t really get up in your face or confuse you but they do know how to show you a good time to go listen to them. Then buy their CD.

Next stop, Bristol Bike Fest. And maybe a rant to get off my chest about stupid project management courses… hmm.

Velcro is simple. Velcro is good. Why make a shoe like this

when the old design always worked? To launch a “new model” every year? I don’t know, but I do know that my 3-strap velcro shoes lasted 5 years before the sole cracked. After about a month these new fangled shoes are being relegated to road use only. And the genius who invented a mountain bike shoe that doesn’t come off your foot when the “M-lock buckle system” gets muddy should get his head examined.

Happily, Specialized offer “a version for those who prefer 3-strap closures” i.e. those who ride somewhere other than California.

Go riding and you find it. 10 miles each way on the road going to work and back; get home and switch to my mountain bike; set off into the rain. It was an awesome mid-week adventure: hauling my way through boggy mud and clay. Normal climbs verge on the impossible, singletrack becomes streams and a ride near home becomes something remarkable. OK, it all went wrong when my brakepads wore out over 15 miles from home, but I’ll quite gladly give 9 miles on the road for the feeling of doing something out of the ordinary and the sheer joy I felt when I could see the lights of Risborough up ahead.

Go ride a bike 🙂

The muddy footprints through the kitchen; the washing machine going 24/7; the OS map drying in the front room; the batteries charging in every socket I can get my hands on; the cycling shoes in the airing cupboard; the mud tyres fitted back to the bike with the recently un-seized hub.

Shit ride on Sunday, but there’s all the same work to do anyhow. I’m going to keep blind faith and squeeze in a night-ride on Wednesday. “showery rain, becoming more persistent later” be damned.

Still, Funland is the best messed up telly out there and a good way to take your mind to a whole other place

• Neurosis
• Yesterday’s New Quintet
• Caol Ila single malt

With those three, any week is a good week.

40 mile ride today, real training for endurance riding. Just to make things interesting, I swung back past my house at about the 3 hour mark to look temptation in the face. Then up a 1:4 hill, and hello lactic acid. Felt pretty good though and there’s slightly less reason to be scared of the Merida 100 in Rhyader. Even better, at the top of the 1:4, I managed a 180 degree turn from hopping on the spot which isn’t easy when you’re tired. A satisfying morning out, but I still maintain that The Chilterns features among the worst riding in the country… someone deliver me from the chalk, clay, punctures, and lack of technical challenge!

Which is a relief. 2 successful donations now since I did and we can say that it was an aberration. Waking up to find little old ladies consoling me when I’d just got back from a week of mountain biking in The Alps was embarrassing. Hooray for eating before the session and hooray for spinach generally.

Interestingly, my drained state and uninspiring day generally has given rise to an idea for a collaborative method of pruning the search space of web queries. Probably not going to be the next PageRank, but I’ve installed Google API to have a play.

In my opinion, the best mountain bike enduro out there. It rocked.

40 miles of real mountain biking where sometimes it gets hairy and sometimes it’s just sublime. Incredibly friendly locals, great organisation and a free mug… what more can you ask for?

Too knackered to write about the ride itself, but that’s a good thing.