Start As You Mean To Go On

This was my first weekend of the New Year (too much celebrating wrote off last weekend) so I was keen to get in as much bike related action as possible. The plan was to ride Woburn Sands on Saturday then help out at the Aston Hill dig day on Sunday. And that's exactly how things panned out.

So, Saturday I was up early and met Mark and Paul at Woburn. It was raining a bit on the way over and when I got there but when it stopped the tracks quickly dried up and started running faster and smoother. With no snow this time we rode a mix of everything, from all lines to new tracks

Amos was the only member of the Maidstone Massive to make it today. He left his at nine but thanks to traffic on the M25 didn't get there till just before three. Like a happy couple picking up their newborn baby from the hospital, Ben and Will spent the day picking up Will's new frame, a Morewood Makulu with a BOS Stoy rear shock.

Talking of rear shocks I played about with the Vivid Coil R2 on the Glory and got it set up quite nicely. Basically just stiffened it up and slowed down the rebound. Makes the bike corner better in tight turns and it jumps a lot better too.

As soon as Amos started riding the pace picked up; everyone started riding faster and jumping higher. I followed him down and did the large road gap, something I hadn't done for a while. I remember on Kona having to sprint like mad into it and getting bucked about on impact. On the Glory though I just had to put in a few extra cranks and the landing was smooth as.

We kept on riding more tracks and sectioned corners until we could barely see, then headed into Woburn itself for a post ride drink.

Still pretty tired from yesterdays riding I got up even earlier today and put a spade in my car along with the Glory, ready for the build day at Aston Hill. I ride at Aston as regularly as possible and it's home to some of my favourite tracks in the UK.

This wasn't the first dig day at Aston but it was the first one I've been able to attend and it felt good to help out and 'give something back' for a change. So I spent the morning doing some maintenance work on the 4X track; getting rid of the grass that had grown on the jumps and berms, moving fallen branches off the track and clearing nettles.

The work was done by about one or two and everyone was rewarded with cake and brownies back at the car park. I thought about putting the Glory together and going for a ride, but in the end I decided to head home so I could give it a bit of TLC in the light. Although I still forgot to sort out the front tyre, but that's another story...