Dismantled biscuits

Thats right, crumbs.
Imagine the scenario; you are on a new descent, you know the kind of trail you are on, watching for rocks, watching for patches of mud, taking conservative lines around the bends, head up, everything is just fine. In fact its a ripper of a trail and even at a reasonable speed you are pretty gripped with a tense grin under your mud-spattered sunnies.
In a split-second it all goes wrong, a tiny quantity of time but a complicated sequence of events that leads to, well, lets get back to that.
It all goes back to the time that I hit upon the neat idea of using tennis racquet grip covers on my handlebars to counter the slippiness of sweaty hands. A very good idea that was born when I had another crash not 5 kilometers from this scene of shoulder-pain. What happened (back then) was that I was a tad sweaty (its 33 degrees here with 98% humidity for goodness sake), I did a little bunny-hop over a small rock and as I lifted the bars my right hand slipped off the bar, you can imagine how good the landing was with one hand....SPLAT!
Back to the present and now those towelling tennis racquet grips are quite old and have a lot of threads hanging off..... threads that flap around and get attached to the velcro on my gloves.
I sat up as the trail levelled out, glad for a few moments to relax went to look at my watch and as I took my hand off the bars I turned left extremely quickly, well the bike did anyway, I went straight on quite quickly but without a bike to stop gravity from claiming me.....SPLAT (again)
Once the adrenaline had worn off and the self-loathing was getting started I took out some snacks in the form of individually wrapped chock-chip cookies which seemed to have taken the brunt of the fall, right after my shoulder had as I rolled over and were almost dust.
The shorts I was wearing now have a hole in which makes them indecent and to this day I have never touched a tennis bat again.

A diamond in the dirt

Hands up if your time in the saddle mentally recharges you in exactly the same way that it physically exhausts you?
I thought so, and in times like these there are plenty of reasons to get away from the pressures and distress that flood every day life.
Lets face it, there are very few of us that are able to say that we have had a bumper few years recently, well unless you are a banker(!) and if you are then shame on you (may your fancy carbon frame fall off the back of your Land Rover and get run over by a very big truck).

Its clear to me that I get a primitive urge to do certain things, drink beer (that one is more frequent than I would like), listen to old rock music very loud and go mountain biking. Yeah yeah I know what you are thinking but some things are best left unsaid....

Sometimes I am so ready to go out for a ride, ready to hurl myself down the ugliest, slimiest track knowing that I better get it right and I think its because I need something to challenge me so much that it needs to scare me a little too. Without conscious effort I am swilling out the garbage in my head and almost without exception get back to my car with a daft grin on my face and all the worries put a little closer to perspective.

I pity people who have not found mountain biking as a life tool, it seems sad that people actually go through life without having that fix of two-wheeled fun to provide succor in difficult times.

This is the gospel according to MTB.......

I'm not angry, I'm disappointed...

The jetwash debate (pressure washer),
When my pedal decided to die on sunday (10k up an 11k climb, just before the sweeeeet downhill) and end my ride, the guys who were with me immediately insisted that it was because I use a pressure washer to clean my bike after a ride.
This myth about pressure washers destroying.... er... pedals and stuff is starting to bug me. Does a jet of water really get into bearings and destroy them? No seriously I would love to know for sure one way or the other. Obviously you would have to be pretty dumb to shove the nozzle into a fork seal or bearing dust cap and blast away so discount any of that.
My company has about 50 bikes and we use a pressure washer to clean them, its really the only way to do it without employing half of the Philippines, bikes are tricky to get clean, its complicated and tedious. I do sometimes wonder, when something breaks on one of them; is it because we use a pressure washer?
My pedal is two years old, had a lot of time in rivers, covered in mud and silt and done quite a few miles, is it at all possible that the pressure washer had bugger-all to do with its demise?
I stand to be corrected, at your service, let me know the results of your research, or the considered opinion of a respected professional (I am afraid that since I know several MTB journalists I do not consider their sayings as particularly sooth).
My ceramic bottom bracket is fine, not a hint of a grind or wobble but when it eventually goes, as will all the moving components on my bike since I am too tight to replace them out of vanity, I have little doubt that someone will utter the words "thats what happens when you use a pressure washer" with a knowing grimace (and probably a maid that cleans his / her bike).
Its not a rant, more of a rail against nonsensical mountain biking mythology. It is human nature to hear something and simply believe it because it sounds like it might be plausible, the problem is that it then gets repeated and repeated like an old piece of wisdom passed down through the ages like 'dont lick your razor' or 'wear trousers in the snow'
Off to get some new pedals tomorrow then.....

Message to me

A depressing truth about modern society is that we have to take more and more responsibility for ourselves in completely new ways.

Sure we have more trappings of civilisation; legal institutions, UN conventions, media, communications, free markets and all that but these things in themselves present us with dilemmas and issues that have been hitherto almost unknown.
Yes it is a mountain biking blog, bear with me.
I dont need to move too far in my everyday life, got motorised vehicles, got remote controls, got portable communications devices, so there goes most of my 'incidental' exercise.
Food of a high standard (protien and fat loaded) are extremely accessible, even delivered if I wish and at a very affordable price so theres the fuel that my everyday life no longer requires.
You see where this is going?
The upshot of this situation is that we are in need of a reality check from time to time. For one there are millions of people who cannot find enough food to fuel their every day life, despite the shrinking world. Secondly it is a dangerous situation for our physical wellbeing, ah you know what I am saying, it makes us fat. Too much food, not enough exercise = lard-ass. ipso facto.

That is right, back to the subject of the blog and dont think this is purely a 'get out there and ride to stay slim' message I'm not that banal (not today leastways), its a case of performance and physical shape that  affect your riding.
For a start heavier means slower climbing & harder climbing. It also has impact on how the bike and you perform technically, more top weight means balance is harder, more chance of pinch flats and loss of traction not to mention the potentially hazardous (or comical) situations when the brakes are not up to the job of bringing you to a stop in time!
Sure Mountain bike riding is a great way to stay in shape but the very sport you love could become far less fun if you put on the weight.

I will be headed to the hills this sunday, rain or shine, to slog it out on the trails and remind myself why I got a carbon frame and lightweight components, not for the sake of being able to eat myself into a huge sofa dent but so my riding could be better.

Its going to be a good year for riding, I have a list of trails that I need to explore and lots of people to go riding with.

Navigate

A necessary evil this one, but somebody should know the route you plan to ride.
Had we not met a logger driving a vintage Landcruiser or a bunch of Christian 4WDers we may well still be out in the jungle right now.
20k isnt very far in most places but in the Crocker Range National Park where there are only hills that go upwards its a bloody long way.
Out of water (schoolboy error), on the wrong road (ditto) the only thing that went right for us today was the fact that it was overcast. Had the sun been out we would have fried.
When we finally found a way out and made it to a small village, there was only rubbish Indonesian Cola for sale, no water! the obligatory sunday drunkards got free entertainment as Mark dispensed a tuneful belching session thanks to the over carbonated beverage.
Alls well that ends well or so they say, and apart from a little chafing we are none the worse for the experience and in a funny way it was a good day out on the bikes.
Grown men in their 30's and 40's, with more than a little experience riding mountain bikes in remote jungles of Asia, we really shouldn't be getting into scrapes like this should we? Theres no fools like an old fool...........

Wakey wakey!

You'd need to be a bit short of adequate mental faculties to have escaped the non-stop battering from both the 'Arab Spring' and the Global Financial Crisis.
We are, as a race committed to an awareness of the wider world and its goings-on. Tsunami in Japan, Russian space station, US presidential elections, whatever. There is no reason why many of these things should impact our lives but we choose to know about them. Knowing about them gives us perspective, enables us to reflect on our own lives and influences and enables us to become more rounded human beings.

In the Middle-East people are rising up, enough of the brutality of dictatorships they are saying and many are giving thier lives to the cause, nothing is more noble than sacrificing your lives for the benefit of the future of your people, nothing.
In the world of global financial wrangles there is almost the opposite going on, self-serving minorities of privileged people draining the world of its heart. Sucking out the hopes of millions of hard-working people and injecting vast quantities of despair where they had built hope and the facade of opportunity.

I was mulling these issues at the weekend as I watched the sweat stream off the end of my nose onto the hard-packed gravel on what felt like the worlds longest hill. My thighs were burning, not just from the exertion but the sun was stripping my flesh with no wind at all to cool me.
Its an abstract existance we have, so little of what we consider comes from direct experience, while I can get irritated by stupid European polititians whacking each other with their pathetic egos I dont really need to know this stuff, its makes little difference to me.
What did make a difference was the fact that every time I go out on my bike I realise that there is something that I meant to fix after my last ride that I never got around to. On this particular occaision it was sticky brakes, on the uphill that is far more irritating than anything Sarkozy or Cameron can say in a news conference.
Damn Juicy 5's have some glitch with the return spring on the levers and they just stick the pads against the rotor preventing the wheel from rotating freely. I am sure the resistance is tiny in real terms but on a hot uphill it feels disastrously unfair and I feel like a seal pup being beaten to death by a cruel Alaskan just because Sarah Palin needs a new purse.

The new carbon frame continues to be a source of pleasure and I remain happy with the gamble on buying unbranded from China. I guess it could blow apart any day but so, so good.

Gimme dirt and gimme hills....

Right then, a lifetime ago I decided it was time to run a marathon, no idea why, why did not come into it, I just decided to do it. Had there been any mention of a why then it probably would never have happened and my knee would not hurt so much now but you live and learn, apparently.
Thing is my life has been dominated by the training, like a downtrodden servant I have been dutifully getting up way before dawn and plodding the streets of Kota Kinabalu to meet the demands of my evil master - The Training Schedule. It all culminated in a sweaty, nauseous overheated, five-hour odyssey of bleary-eyed ass-dragging on sunday.
Now I can go riding again.... and. I have four new bearings in my suspension, hopefully some improved stamina and a hunger for trails.
I shall take some photos of Dave trying to keep up with me, like he did to me before, git.