I took the simple for a spin at the Clydach pump track yesterday evening with Gav from wheelies. It was a great evening session, Gav was absolutely smashing one of the corners and sending dust flying. The bike has a few teething problems mainly that the quick release slips when cranking hard, tensioners are ordered and on the way so this will be fixed shortly. Its so nice feeling a rigid front end again, for generating speed over the humps this was mint. I also have some funky plans for gearing on this bike, the concept has been proved to work, just waiting on the chainrings to arrive now so that the plan can be seen in action, watch this space.
Gav took me to see some of his local DH runs on the way back. Fully rigid downhill is hilarious. My lady wings got a thorough working out as they bounced all over the place on the way back down. Suspension forks are amazing things when you realise just how much faster they allow you to go over rough terrain.
Thursday, 25 June 2009
Crynant Pump Track
Wednesday, 24 June 2009
Builders Tea!
Heres a sneaky peak at my new project. The plan is to build a minimal and light street, trials, xc, fun bike using one of Cy's lush new Tea coloured Simple frames. This bike is a hard one to categorize but having taken her out for a little spin last night I can see we were right in thinking this bike is going to be a lot of fun. It is light and long enough to play with some trials moves but the bike has the Cotic stability and stance that makes her planted and have a nimble BMX feel whilst charging through the streets. I took her to the miniramp and felt more than comfortable boosting a few airs. I think what this bike is and what it can do will evolve the more she gets ridden. Right now I reckon she is far too pretty with her immaculate shiny new paint job to hammer too hard, I am sure this wont last!
Bath Trails
Mint session with my bro up at Bath trails. Its the first time I have ridden these jumps and they are really cool. The place has a load of pretty sizeable jumps sandwiched into a small plot of land by the river. There were a ton of tour boats chugging down the river, I am pretty sure they werent expecting to see bikes flying through the air must have made their trip a load more exciting! Thanks to Alban for being photiographer for the day.
Wednesday, 17 June 2009
NPS 4X Rd 4 - South West Extreme
This was a new venue with a fresh built track. Rocking up we had no idea really what to expect from this place. The location is amazing, the track is in Bideford near the North Devon coast. We made a weekend of it and got a load of surfing in on top of the racing which was brilliant. The weather also managed to defy the weather men and produced fantastic sunshine all weekend.
All this sunshine left the track incredibly dry and dusty creating some really interesting racing and a lot of crashes. In the corners only the main line had grip and so making a pass was risky. It was all about drifting moto style and then trying to hold as much speed to make the pass stick. It was a track where taking a longer line and holding more speed out of the corners paid off as many riders struggled to maintain their position after making a pass as too much momentum was lost doing so. This all created some really lively racing. The plumes of dust being ejected from the rear wheels of riders was pure moto cross and made for some great spectating. It would be nice to see a few meatier jumps on the track but for a newly built track it was a lot of fun.
Racing the track was a tough one the first straight was tight and narrow so as ever the first corner was the one to get. Once cleanly in front the track was so much easier because you could just hold the main line and stay out of trouble. The tightness of the first corner however meant a clean lead was hard to get and most motos were well battled with a lot of inside lines and cutting up. My motos went well with 2 wins a 2nd and a 4th. One moto was particularly eventful, leading into the 3rd corner I slid out managing somehow to stay rubber side down but veering across the track in the process. This caused the other 3 riders to crash one guy managed to scrape the ends of his bars down my back in the process, total carnage!
Unfortunately quarters were less successful and in trying to make a move from 3rd to 2nd I lost the front wheel and finished in 4th getting knocked out of the comp.
Isaac was on it all day in the youth and has some serious talent shredding the other riders, he will be one to watch for the future. Senior in the end was won by AJ Boardman. There seem to be far more Elite riders this year which is great to see. The racing was well contended. Will Evans was one of the crowd favourites as usual and doing a lot of passing to take 3rd. Pat having recovered form his brutal crash at Blandford came second with Beaumont taking the win.
Next round is back to Redhill, another great venue and a really good track. This will include the National Champs so definately one to get to even if it is just to watch and check out the action.
NPS 4x Rd1
Mop Head tagged me in this pic on Facebook I reckon its a pretty cool shot. Thanks to the Mop and Terri-Anne Busbridge for this one.
Tuesday, 9 June 2009
Brechfa Raven Trail
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Its great having these light evenings, after a day of slacking and flying the kite I met Tam and Oli for an afterwork ride on the new trail up at Brechfa. It was really good other than swarms of pesky midgies and a stupid crash early on in the ride. The crash was a beauty involving some horrendously gnarly northshore skinnies which were nearly a foot wide and prob a foot and a half off the ground, totally full on stuff! Anyway it caught me off gaurd and sent me over the handle bars a few time with my leg wrapped round the bar, no idea what my feet were really doing up there. The crash managed to cause both my brake hoses to unscrew themselves dripping fluid everywhere. This is pretty miraculous I can only assume someone has a grudge on me and took a spanner to the brakes, how I had the dexterity in my feet to perform such an act to both hoses is just totally implausible. A bit of trailside bodging and the BFe was back on the trail and all in all a great ride. I am loving the last section down to the car park the trail has loads of large woops smashing up and down around trees. The mission is to ride it death grip and with no peddaling, it is a great challenge for keeping momentum going.
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