Blag and Swag

Somehow I've ended up with this beautiful Giant Glory 1 to test for the next issue of IMB. Today was the first time I've been able to ride it and even in the grim conditions up at Aston Hill it was so fun to ride.

Also in for testing are the sinner knee pads from O'Neal with Sas-tec padding, some more knee pads from Fox and a ton of winter riding kit from them. It's going to be a warm winter!

Packing Fail

Laptop's are seriously handy pieces of kit. But only if you remember to pack their charger. Without it you're left with a glorified paperweight. I spent the start of the week at Pete's new flat and even after previously blogging about how important chargers are, I forgot mine. Again.

I was planning to kill some time at his playing about with some video editing and a bit of research for the shows I was going to, but instead just had to sit around watching daytime TV and 'wakeboarding' on the Wii. Lesson learnt? Hopefully.

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...

World Champs 2010

Yeah, this video from the Santa Cruz Syndicate pretty much sums up what the UCI are doing to Downhill. Cheers guys...

IMB Issue 7 out now

Issue 7 of IMB went live early this morning. Way before I was out of bed. IMB's been going for a year now and already has over 10 million page flicks. That's pretty insane. Only two articles from me in this issue, but hopefully it's a case of quality over quantity! I'll let you guys be the judge.

Check out the latest issue here. Links to my work are below. Enjoy. Hopefully.

"Cube Your Life"

"Park Life - Winterberg"

ICE Bike Winter

ICE bike is the trade show held by madison to show off their latest kit to dealers and the press. This year they deiced that one show a year wasn't enough so as well as their February show they held one in the summer. To show of their winter kit...

This time instead of just enjoying the free food and chatting to people about bikes I did something a bit more productive. Check it out here.

Graduation

Last Friday I graduated from Staffordshire University with a 2.1 in Journalism. Thinking about it I really don't know how I managed to get a decent grade. I started writing articles for IMB in December and found working for them much more fun than my modules so put everything off until the last two weeks before hand in.

I wasn't really fussed about the graduation ceremony beforehand but it actually turned out to be a really fun event. Even more fun was having a few drinks with some of my tutors afterwards and going for a night out up Hanley duck.

Video Editing

When I started putting videos together it used to take me weeks and weeks. Thankfully now it doesn't. One of my house mates taught me to be more brutal when choosing what clips to use and the best ways to link them. Now the hardest part is trying to find music to go with the riding.

I'm still using iMovie. One day I'll be able to afford a macbook pro with final cut. Until then iMovie works fine. Apart from it wouldn't load up the 'MTS' files that Pete's camera saves videos as.

If anyone knows how to convert files to '.Mov' for free without getting a massive watermark in the corner of the clip give me a shout. Here's a sneak look at the video for Winterberg. The real version will be in the next issue of IMB.

Trips Away

Holidays, I mean work trips, for the magazine are awesome. Packing isn't. This is how things were looking before my visit to the Cube headquarters in Germany. When going away the three most important things to pack are your camera charger, laptop charger and phone charger. Forget one and things get a bit tricky. Forget two and you're screwed...

And if you forget all three and your house key so you can't get in when you get home then you may as well just give up. Lesson learnt I suppose. Also if you're going to be testing bikes take your own pedals. No matter how good your shoes are you won't get any grip on plastic pedals.

Note Book

I know we're living in a world of netbooks, dictaphones and apps but having a simple notepad is seriously useful. Scribbling down a few words at the end of the day really helps when you come to doing a write up on what you've just been riding.

It doesn't matter if you're in the passenger seat of a van on the motorway or sat on a balcony overlooked by mountains. Notepads are awesome.