Two's The Magic Number

Two downhill spots, two countries, two days. Also two broken rear mechs but more on that later. After numerous trips to Aston Hill and knackering myself out pushing up I booked myself and Pete onto uplift days at the Forest of Dean and Cwmcarn. It was such a good weekend.

I couldn't believe it only took an hour and a half to get to F.O.D. And that was in Ruby, my 14 year old Fiesta, so it's not as if I was ragging it to get there. I remember it taking ages to get home last time I rode there, but then I was pretty out of it on morphine. Definitely going to visit again soon now I know how close it is.

Even when we unpacked in the car park Pete thought the uplift was just going to be a tractor and trailer like at old races. He was pretty surprised when he saw the Fly Up Downhill van and trailer. The tracks at F.O.D are so fun. Nothing massively technical but lots of chutes, roots, berms and high speed sections.

Somehow I smashed a rear mech and hanger but the guys at PedalaBikeAway were able to sort me out with a new hanger and X7 and bent my chain back into place. Thanks guys for keeping me riding. Sorry I broke it all 24 hours later.

Cwmcarn was a bit of a shock to the system the next morning but by the second run everything clicked into place and we were grinning the whole way down. The track is pretty punishing on both your body and bike and on the 3rd run I smashed another mech hanger and bent my shiny new X7 rear mech.

I missed out on 2 uplifts getting a new mech hanger from PS Cycles but was just happy to still be able to ride. Even without any gears Cwmcarn is good fun. Which is handy because I really can't afford a new mech right now.

Over the last 18 months I've spent over £300 replacing five of them!

That's the same as:

142 pints of Strongbow at the student union

90 pints at the pub now I'm not a student...

252 Frijj milkshakes

152 packets of biltong

263 litres of petrol to get to riding spots (about 3,000 miles in Ruby)

12 uplift days

It's only the lower cages of the mechs that have snapped or bent so I might do a bit of research and see if SRAM sell replacements. Worth a shot. Don't really fancy taking that total to £365 just yet...