Redemption

Comedy Friday, Indian summer style and I sneak out into the heat to meet a couple of friends and ride in the sunshine. It starts badly when Rich realises that the lateral movement in his rear end is around the same as the up and down motion and abandons all hope to scoot home.

I am grumpy. It's fashionable to like heat and dust and sunshine, but I don't. I like dry and cold and crisp. I like ice. And frozen Peak ground that grips and rips like coarse Velcro. Given sunshine I mostly want to stop and bask in it. Look at distant hills. Yawn and doze and sleep. I don't want to ride in it with sweat running into my eyes and soaking my clothes.

The wrong bike, skulking. As well it might. Nothing to do with the rider's shortcomings...

And, like Gromit, I have 'the wrong bike'. I have my RC405 which after a change of head angle and fork and return to the original shock feels slow and heavy and just wrong. I have no idea why I brought it. Well I do, a small, quiet bit of my brain thinks it might be 'necessary' for the not very legit', rocky, twisty trail we've earmarked.

God knows why. Why I think the Ragley might not be up to it, it's ripped down everything else round here with a sort of bright-eyed, disdainful, insouciance.

And I ride the trail incredibly badly. Part of it I don't ride at all, I ride round it, and the rest I sort of thump and graunch and haltingly fall down. It's really quite nasty. And meanwhile Emmy makes it look easy and graceful and smooth and streaks off into the distance grinning like a cat that's massacred a whole park's worth of pigeons.

The rest of the ride is similarly rubbish on my part. I feel guilty for being grumpy and cussed. I choose a really astonishingly bad route back out of Glossop and even a new to me, entertaining, twisty, grassy descent doesn't change things.

So on Saturday I break myself in the sun on the road bike. Savouring the oddness of furnace-like heat, bright sunshine and wafting gently down back lanes strewn with autumnal leaves. In temperatures of 25˚C or so. You can't help thinking that however pleasant it is, the world is somehow broken. This is October?

Sunday. Redemption day. Early day. Head out with Dave Next Door and ride a succession of bad things on a weekend linked with the odd legitimate trail.  This time I'm on the 'right bike', the Ragley. Fast, borderline psychotic, and lover of steep things.

And the right one. A tight bundle of aggressive, slack-steering confidence.

 This time we ride the grassy, twisty downhill thing without the bike sucking the life out of it. Then twist our way round, via a chance meeting with a local friend out on his rather nice new bike, to the top of 'the trail'. A rubbly, rocky mix of steps and turns and twists that corkscrews its way down the hillside. It's as good as anything I've ridden in Spain or France or Nepal or the Andes and this time, I ride it properly - neat and composed and smooth.

Feeling relaxed on the bike and just, well, together. And halfway down I start to grin like an idiot, because it's a brilliant trail. And the sun is shining. And the Ragley's ability to slow down time on the steeps and the trickies means I never feel remotely out of control.

It is the right bike. And just for ten minutes or so, I feel like the right rider.

Dusty.

Rode Cut Gate out and back last night from the front door. On the Pace. Wondering why on earth I'd set the bars up quite so high. I think the Ragley's got to me. Anyway, cracking evening, dry, loose, dusty. Funny riding suspension again, but a bonus in the flat half-light when rocks look like shadows and shadows look like drops and drops don't really look like anything till you launch off them. I decided that discretion was the better part of valour and slowed down. I'm starting to realise now that I'm not that quick at night. Maybe because I can't see anything. Mind you, the dust made it worse. But I'm not complaining about that.

Everything's gone white.

I really am stupidly fussy.

I killed the Pushed Pike on my Pace. Or the Peak did anyway. Despite regular oil and seal changes, the vaunted reputation of Rockshox for durability and the the use of the finest lubrication - organic extra virgin olive oil or its suspension equivalent - the shiny aluminium patch on the left-hand stanchion got bigger and bigger and bigger.

It was an interesting process to watch - the shiny, polished, burn-scar patch  ridged gently, then like some sort of mutant birth mark started to spread up the stanchion. In a dry region it probably wouldn't matter. In a dry region it probably wouldn't have happened. But in the Peak, the end result was that a mix of grit and water tip-toed past the wiper seal, foam ring and oil seal and contaminated the lubricating oil in the fork lowers, screwed the action and caused yet more wear. Weekly oil changes. Not good.

 This stuff - doesn't like moving parts...

So in the end, much as I loved the Air U-Turn with its Push damper for its ability to wolf down repeated rock strikes at speed and come back unflustered for more, it had to to.

Normally I'd just swap like for like, but Air U-Turn Pikes are like hen's teeth now, so after several calls, mails and googles, it was off to buy a Dual Air Revelation, a 2011 with 150mm of travel. It's white, which after three years of black Pikes is weird. And it's light, around a pound less than the Air U Pike, I guess.

 Memories are made of forks

So anyway, tore the Air Pike apart and swapped the Push bits into the Pig's Pike coil - result - and stuck the Revelation on the Pace instead. Done and ride.

At this point, I'm meant to rave over how amazing the Revelation feels, but actually I'm so used to the Pikes that fresher, lighter, longer, whiter forks feel disconcerting.

I know how much weight shift it takes to lift the front end, not any more, 1lb less makes a real difference. The extra 10mm travel seems to raise the front enough to screw up steep climbs, grrrrr, miserable failure on Lockerbrook fighting just to keep the wheel on the deck, and the stickiness and set-up teething issues mean that the bike feels like a strange, foreign thing. No more plugged-in confidence, just this slightly disconcerting, alien, front-end frisk.

 Darn, innit....

And I don't care what anyone says, you can feel the difference in stiffness, the Pike was somehow just more implacably planted, the Rev just has that little bit less - but then that weight had to come from somewhere and that somewhere is the chassis.

To be fair, it's getting there. The seals are breaking in and upping the negative pressure pulls the fork down far enough to compensate for the extra height and adds small-bump plush as well and I'm recalibrating front-end lifts as well. Give it time. And failing that, give it the Pushed Pike from the Pig.

 Pig Pushed - win!

I don't believe in 'perfect bikes', that's just an industry marketing strategy and I feel slightly sorry for people who seem to be engaged in a doomed pursuit of the bike that will somehow transform their riding, and when something I have just works, I don't generally see the point in changing it unless I have to, because that just interferes with what matters, which is riding.

Oh, and the bike looks odd with white forks. Less solid, more flighty. Which clearly is utterly petty. But there you go. Black forks are stiffer and faster and just work better. Give it time.

And if time doesn't work, then it's off to eBay for another Pike Air.

Fork hell

I'm essentially conservative when it comes to my own bikes. I don't see the point in changing things that work well, I tend to replace like with like unless something comes along that's either a definite upgrade or free, preferably both...

... so the trashed Pushed Pike - anodising worn off big time, gritty slurry getting in past seals and gungeing up fork as a result - on the Pace is a pain in the butt. It's a brilliant fork, eats rocks at speed unlike a standard Pike, and has a steamroller-like implacability to it.

One problem, they don't make Pike Air U-Turns any more.

Rats. I've bored 'them as ought to know' stupid with questions, been confused by the new RS line-up with multiply revised Revelations in 2010 and 2011 spec, thought about Sektors, tried to work out which other RS fork will take the Push damper gubbins currently in the Pike and the answer seems to be to buy a Revelation with the dual wotnot rebound damping and stick the Push damper in the coil Pike that's currently on the Blue Pig.

Or I could stick the coil Pike on the Pace and Push it then put a cheaper Sektor on the Pig. Or I could hang around eBay with my hands in my pockets, whistling quietly, until a suitable donor Pike appears. Or... I could just buy a bloody fork, stick it on the Pace and then go ride it.

And then there's colour. The Pace looks right with black forks, but mostly 2011 Revelations seem to be white. And what is a 'titanium spring tube' anyway? Hmmmph...

Sod it. White 2011 Revelation RLT Ti it is. And if I don't like it. Or it looks wrong. Or both. I can simply stick it on the Blue Pig and put the Pushed coil Pike on the Pace. Or could I buy a 140mm Maxle Recon and stick the innards from the Pushed Air U-Turn in it. Or I guess I could just go ride my bike.

Sorry, just wanted to share my inner turmoil. If the Revs were readily available in black I'd just buy the bloody things. Or I could get a Sektor and save 200 quid. Or...

Two weeks...

Two weeks - mostly - off the bike. Resting. Feeding ducks. Dosing myself with weird supplements to make it feel as if I'm doing something about it. Just broken by my own stupidity, which is arguably better than being broken by someone else's stupidity, but has the flipside of removing any possible get out clauses.

Bikes sulking and stropping in the bike cave. Bike shoes skulking unseen. Chain lube getting dusty.

Mornings watching RHR dropping daily, frustratingly, slowly, like a stone through treacle - 50-ish - 48, 47, 46, 44, 43, 43, 42, 41. Which is almost normal.

So this evening, the Pace got dragged out, lubed up, lit up, pumped up and loved. Local shop ride, old people, new people and familiar trails, grippy in that slightly damp grit way. Up Chunal, cruising, then onto the Shooting Cabin backwards. Clean across the bridge, then swing right and wide, cruise the first step then through the scrabbly loose stuff, gently through the ruts then wide, left and soft-pedally up the loose climb.

And yeah, to cut to the nub of it, better. Or at least close to it. Just lovely to be back on a bike, the speed, the movement, watching the sun slowly sinking. All the familiar sensations I've missed - the chattering speed of loose, rocky descents; burning legs on friendly climbs; a half creditable attempt on the Middle Moor steps - I'll nail it one day and soon - and a fuss-free clean of the bottom of William Clough.

And the kick is back - fierce and bright and sharp. I can't stop smiling.

Just Riding

Blinding ride on Monday. Straight out of the front door and into the blue. Or the grey. Pausing to meet an old and good riding mate in Royston Vasey then off for a chatty roll aong the Longdendale Trail and over - via the old railway line from Dunford Bridge - to Langsett.

I don't rate brutality. It's premeditated, a choice and I don't think the hills make choices, they just are. But the climb over Cut Gate, all five miles or so of it, was quite hard. Into a screaming headwind, ridden on sludge. The sort of day when you think, 'it's just me', then realise that your mile-toughened mate is also having something of an epic. Granny ring all the way, mostly rideable, but every so often a step or nadge where you're already at redline and there are no more revs for the step up, so you're off and walking.

The relief of the top and the familiar sight of Ladybower spread out below. Loving my bike for taking me there, then down, cautiously at first, along eroded, rutted trail, then as things firm and loosen at the same time, that mental plummet back to ground level and the roll along the side of the reservoir.  Chatting to leisure cyclist - leezure cyclists - on hire bikes, knocking along with a couple on a tandem, noticing, wryly that we're the only people there liberally splattered with gritty mud.

So the pasty and tea was earned. And needed. And go away, sharking, begging ducks. Cheek.

And after all that I nearly cleaned the Lockerbrook climb, failing mentally rather than physiologically near the top before the roll over to Potato Ally, the Roman Road, Jaggers - a familiar Peak litany - up the 'surprisingly rideable' and unsurprisingly unrideable climb to Hollin's Cross.

Just lovely to be out with stellar views across the Edale Valley to Kinder and, tucked away in the corner, Jacob's Ladder. But that's for another day. A quick conference and we opt for a headwindy roll along the road rather than the Rushup Quagmire, then right onto the Roych track, the first time I've seen it without snow drifts this year. And it's April for gawd's sake, how did that happen?

And is it wrong to laugh at a convoy of 4x4s stranded and grounded on bedrock slabs? Especially when they're so shiny.

Then it's the last proper climb out of the ford. Winching up in the small ring, head-windy miles leeching into tight calves and hamstrings and taking enough of an edge off things to make the final steppy climb over South Head a two-stage affair. Then springs unwinding on the plummet down Highgate Lane into Hayfield where the shop is shut, but the caff is seductively open.

Way too close to home, but hey, never look a gift cake in the mouth. And we do get gift cakes as well, scones which would otherwise have gone in the bin. What a great place, fab cakeage and should be on all western Peak itineraries. Mountain bikers welcome, muddy or not. Try the muffins, they rock, but then so does everything else.

And so finally limped over Lantern Pike and screamed back into sunny Glossop with legs both in pieces and reassuringly still quite functional. A lovely day with a gentle hint of spring in the air and good company. Not about the speed. Or the pain. Or the miles. Just the riding.

Summer's last knockings...

Maybe it's not fashionable, but I like autumn. It's honest, you know which way things are going - winter - and you don't kid yourself that you're about to cop a bucket-full of Sierra Nevada sunshine and if you do, well, that's just a bonus.

Which was yesterday all over. Dry, bright and breezy, so popped over to Ladybower and rode Cut Gate out and back in a riot of smooth, fast, grippy singletrack with added bonus rock and rubbleries and that proper big moorland feel that takes your breath and reality away.

Somewhere in the middle of it, I got my technical riding mojo back. The Pace's new shock has, erm, pertened up the rear end nicely, the Pushed Pikes just do, and the new single-ply Minion DHF up front did sterling duty of gripping and pointing as directed. But the bottom line was nothing to do with kit and everything to do with soaring spirits, a grin as wide as the Derwent Valley and the thumping, pattering, rush of gunning a bike hard down an epic, rock-strewn trail.

The conditions are lovely right now. Just enough recent dampness to stick the dusty bits back together and make for proper hero-grip under-wheel traction, but not enough to slow things to a sludgy crawl. There's plenty of rubble on the Mickleden Edge singletrack singing broken crockery style under the wheels. Stay loose and let the bike dance across the looseness, surf the corners and STAY OFF THE BRAKES!

Just catching the looks of walkers as you whisk past, curious spectators to a world they don't quite get and proper satisfying, 'you're mad, you are' expressions.

All the sweeter for being transient and doomed. In a few weeks it'll have reverted to sludge, brooding, belligerent clouds and wind that tries to bend you double and spit you off the trail. Just a distant memory.

And of course, that has a discrete charm all of its own. But that's another story altogether. Watch this space.

Just the best day...

Been out in the French Pyrenees with the nice people from AQR for a week now, but due to the vagaries of Bmibaby's Manchester flights and my inability to plan more than 20 minutes in advance, I ended up with an extra day here. On my own. And what a fantastic bloody day it was.

It's been an ace week generally, but a big group of quite mixed abilities meant lots of stopping and waiting. In some ways that's great, lots of chances to admire the stunning views, talk to horses and keep a wary eye on circling vultures, but the downside is that sometimes trails lose their flow and so do riders.

And, to be honest, after a week of communal living, it's just great having some space and quiet again. So this morning me, and the Pace - minus its blown DT Swiss shock - took off into the hills for a repeat of an awesome ride we did as a group on Thursday. It starts with a steep, moderately techy climb with big drops to one side and the promise of an early bath at the bottom, screams through rough downhill meadows, then climbs an endless fire road to the crest of a big mountain ridge marked with a single, solitary tree. And today complete with circling vulture.

Finessed my way up most of the climb, remarkably remembered the way and bludgeoned it through the horse meadows before snicking down into granny and starting the long spin up steep, dry, rough fire road. Fantastic and strangely effortless even after riding seven days out of the last eight - tiny lizards scuttling across the track kept my brain vaguely alive - and stunning views back across then into the valley.

No stopping this time, just a steady climb to the top and awesome views down two of the main local valleys. Lots of sitting with jaw dropped to the floor, surviving energy bars munched, then pads on and it's off and away down a screamingly fast descent alternating tussocks and rockeries before diving into downhill traversey forest singletrack spiced up with the odd rock and root step to keep you awake.

Then before you know it, a proper gravity sink of a roller coaster dip and a fast super steep downhill through a forest of shoulder-high ferns. You don't realise just how big the vertical drop is till you stop, look back and realise where you've come from.

And then, looking down, Luchon itself spread out below you, a lot closer than you expect. Bonkers. The rest is all good too. A mad, fast rocky trough of a descent into a village followed by a lovely, kamikaze switchbacked descent on black, shaley rock that finally spits you out on the road just above Luchon itself, all smiles and pumped forearms.

Galette earned. Ice cream paid for. Funny how different the same ride feels ridden alone. Less time, but more time to think and more thinking too. And more flow. A perfect end to a lovely week of riding a magical mix of loamy, hair-pinned forest singletrack and steeper, mountain rocky stuff.

All that's left to do is the familiar routine of stripping and packing the bike. Swapping the dead DT Swiss shock for the emergency and welcome but slightly unconvincing Magura stand-by, battling with greased but stubborn pedals and hiding away the vulnerable bits from the baggage handlers.

And now it's off out with a good book - the Time Traveller's Wife, no less, bought on impulse at Manchester Airport and strange and beautiful, unlike, I gather, the film - for something to eat and a solitary, celebratory beer. Home tomorrow and a week of British riding beckons. Phew, I need a holiday...