Tinkering.

Been riding my road bike, lots, trying to make up for lost time - carefully - and get my legs back. Feeling somewhat slow and lumpy. And I've been tinkering with things. Notably my old ti Setavento frame with original Marin Rocky Ridge geometry.

Everything's Gone Ti...

It was just sitting there looking light and fast and redundant, so I singlespeeded it with the bits off the Wanga, which I've always liked but found a bit twitchy on the rocky stuff, particularly with its seized carbon seatpost set at optimum over-the-bar altitude...

Getting singlespeeded...

Thing is, I don't like singlespeed tensioners and the 'vento has vertical drop-outs. The answer turned out to be a Forward Components outboard eccentric bottom bracket. Made in Canada, it's HT2 compatible and gives around a half-link's worth of adjustability at the BB.

Slightly fiddly to set up, but it does what it says on the box and, thankfully, 32/17 on the 'vento turned out to be a near 'magic ratio'. Not sure how the bearings will last or if the 12 little set screws that hold the revolving eccentric bearing housings will stay in position, but it's neat and clean and once I'd adjusted the chainline to suit, does that magically smooth and quiet singlespeed thing quite pleasingly.

Getting new paint and some cable-guide modification...

Flipped the stem - Thomson upside down spells, erm - to lower the cockpit slightly and put a little more weight on the front wheel and I have to say, it looks quite nice, weighs around 23 and a half pounds with an old 130mm Revelation Air U-Turn and fattish, Peak-friendly tyres  and I'm kind of looking forward to riding it.

[I was? Hmmm... flipping the stem wasn't enough, this thing needs a lower front end, break out the alternative flat but wide bars with some sweep please. And a non-creaking head-set that works, I'd forgotten how grumpy that mark one Hope thing was... A slightly slacker Wanga might just be singlespeed better.]

A Slacker RC405?

Tinkering part two - ordered a custom angleset-type thing for the RC405 - idea is to slacken the head angle by 2˚ to make it a bit more Ragley like and stop me riding off the edge of the trail every time I swap bikes plus add some downhill stability. It'll drop the bottom bracket slightly and steepen the seat angle by a corresponding 2˚ as well - nominally that's 75˚, which is steep, proper front of saddle stuff, but it all depends on rear sag too and where the saddle sits on the post.

Getting slacker? Vroom...

I'm thinking it might allow a 150mm fork to work without screwing the climbing up, which is what it does as standard, and that I'll probably need a shorter stem, as per a Ragley. Hard to know exactly what the geometry will do. The Pace figures are all with a 130mm fork - 68.5˚ head angle, 73˚ seat tube I think - but I run a 140mm Pike, so slightly slacker and a fair bit of sag at the rear, so I figure the current effective geometry on the trail is a little slacker than Pace quotes to start with.

I guess it might all go horribly wrong, but if it does, hey, it's just a question of swapping back to the standard head-set again. And if it works, it'll be a trail-friendly, 130mm/150mm full susser with a slack front end for downs and a steep enough seat tube to keep things on track on the climbs...

Crossed fingers eh...

Trusting the bike that bit you...

My Voodoo bit me last week. Took a chunk out of my elbow and had a quick gnaw at my right knee for good measure. Evil little git. Cruising fastly down an innocuous, used-to-be-rocky descent, thinking how smooth and quick it is now when, POW! Front wheel smacks hard into something invisible and KERBANG, I'm flying through the air in slo-mo, with 'this is going to...' OUCH!

Followed by that cursing, near tears, two minutes of indignant pain mixed with self hatred - YOU IDIOT! - followed by limping CSI forensics. Yes, that's the gouge where the bars hit the ground. And the skid mark and, oops, that'll be two inches of angle iron poking out of the trail. Which would explain why the front tyre is flat and...

So of course it wasn't the bike's fault at all. It was mine. Predictably. And whoever stuck that bit of metal in the middle of my trail. BASTARD!

Tube replaced. Home limped to. Damage tallied and Wanga stowed in the bike cave.

And now two weeks later, scabs and bruises crisping and fading, I contemplate riding the thing again. Except now I don't trust it. Despite knowing that actually the crash wasn't the bike's fault at all, somewhere at the back of my mind, I kind of suspect that my Pace would have shrugged it all off, shivered, shuddered and carried on. But slim-tubed, steel hardtails aren't quite as forgiving.

The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.

And it's not rational, but somehow I feel I have to change the bike to trust it. Because it's bitten me once. So tyres that are perfectly good are about to be torn off and replaced with something else. That rear Saguaro that's always felt a bit loose in sketchy dry conditions, it's out of here - the compound's just too hard, right...  And yes, I know, it was the front tyre that did it, but what's logic got to do with it?

And the front, which incidentally has flatted again just sitting in the cupboard, a Minion DHF, that's going too. Despite me knowing rationally that nothing I replace it with is going to grip well on sharp bits of metal. But it's out of here anyway.

Because strangely, trust isn't completely rational. And it's easier to blame the bike than my own blase incompetence. Easier to assert that the Wanga is actually possessed. And evil. And new tyres? A ritual offering to appease the bloody thing.

But the funny bit is that while I know it was my fault and I know that the bike was essentially blameless, changing the tyres will make it feel better. And it'll be the first step on the ladder to rebuilding faith in the bike and, more importantly, faith in me riding it.

What tyres for trust?

Packing...

In a pre-Spanish packing frenzy - bikes, bits, clothes, sticky tyres, pads. New seals and oils in the trashed Pushed Pikes so now they're trashed, plushed Pikes. RP23 or DT Swiss for Spain? CK BB snugged up, lubed up and happy again. New P20 on the table. List of things to do on the bench. Procrastination on the mind because I hate / love packing frenzies. Hence the lap-top on the lap.

And somewhere on the edge of awareness, a quiet, warm, smile drifting into the edge of the weather map,  because... well, because I'm off to where it's warm and dry and the trails are fast and dusty and rocky. And beer comes with free snacks. And I'm going to see friends who I haven't seen for far too long.

Full circle.

Last ride before heading out, as non-Spanish as possible, so Voodoo singlespeed on illicit Peak singletrack. Lovely. Right, better do some packing. Tomorrow I wake up in the sun.

Magic people, Voodoo people...

Winter has gently killed my bikes. Attrition. They all have something mildly wrong with them - worn bottom brackets, slack pedals with plates that no longer hold onto fresh cleats no matter how much you wind in the tension screw, forks that need servicing, broken spokes, wafer-thin brake pads, grips that don't....

... with one exception. Mr Wanga, with his lithe steel tubes, stainless Surly cogs and chainrings is in the rudest of singlespeed health. Admittedly that's because he's had minimal use this winter, but hey, I'm slightly scared of the evil little bastard and his surrounding invisible zone of malevolent mechanical mayhem. Lifetime ticklist includes a washing machine, two cars, numerous expensive bike components, though rarely his own and, apparently, a classic Anglepoise lamp while sojourning darn sarf.

But needs must, so out he came for yesterday's night ride. And do you know what, it was ace. I'd forgotten - again - how much I enjoy the absence of chain clatter and shifts, the focus on lines and traction and that funny thing of out-climbing geared bikes not because you want to, but because you have to. The bike made me do it, your honour.

A sweet, gritty evening made sweeter by knowing that I'm off somewhere warm and dry and friendly in just a couple of days time. Like staying with friends because it is staying with friends, ones who I've not seen for far too long.

Mr Wanga however, is staying in his bike cave.

Is it breakfast time yet?

Ghostly white.

I like snow, it kind of adds epicness to everything. Cover Catstycam with a blanket of the white stuff and it suddenly looks like the Matterhorn, which is nice. And cheaper than flying out to Zermatt. So snow saves you money as well.

Had a proper white weekend up under Rivington Pike with friends. Biking Saturday on deceptively grippy snow. Food, wine, conversation on Saturday night, then a relaxed stroll in the snow on Sunday. All quite lovely.

Miniature epic drive to get home to a white-blanketed Glossop and, well, it would have been rude not to go running. Rubber-studded soles gripping nicely on crisp pavements, running past warm, glowing houses and best of all, a ghostly white, snow-lit detour up the bottom section of Doctor's Gate, glistening in the moonlight.

Then today, stuck some Bonty Mud Xs on the Voodoo Wanga singlespeed and went for a gentle roll along by the Longdendale reservoirs, except that the snow meant it wasn't very gentle at all. But it was beautiful.

Making the most of it before it turns into brownish slush and I migrate south for Christmas.

Fear of singlespeeding...

Saturday morning. Grabbed the Wanga by its ridiculously wide bars, put some air in its tyres and dragged it out kicking and squeaking into a slidey, slippy, grit-slurried November Peak morning. The Pace has eaten its drive bits - chain, jockey wheels, cassette all expensive trash - the 'vento has a flat front and, well, it was the obvious thing to do.

Anyway, cliche or not, it was like meeting up with a an old friend, a good but slightly eccentric one. After a first five minutes of fumbling for shifters and awkward spinnning out, a gradual dawning recollection of why I liked the thing in the first place, followed by a glowing, grinning, warm fug of affection.

I don't do quasi-religious, singlespeed-niche, self-definition - not that there's anything wrong with that, you could be into, erm, unicycling, for example, and that would be considerably worse - but for me anyway, the nice bit of singlespeeding is the way it changes familiar trails into something else altogether. The climb you habitually breeze up on your geared full-susser is suddenly a tricky amalgam of line choice mixed with sudden demands for spurts of step-clearing power.

On long Peak climbs, half the battle is knowing where to be slow. Being able to back off and still turn the pedals, so when you do hit the steep technical step that really does need that turbo-charged moment of sheer power to clean, you have't left it lying around somewhere lower down on the climb.

And that's the bit I'm missing. That top 10 per-cent of the rev range, the ability to push through just one more pedal stroke when your legs are screaming. The point where you suddenly become just lungs and legs and nothing more or less, and the bike improbably, impossibly pops over that step and leaves you bent over the bars, a mess of hyperventilating lungs and lactic-filled legs.

Need to ride it more.