Singletrack Staff Blog

That’s it. I’ve just left the office until the 18th July. Next stop Canada for a real Planes, Trains and Automobile adventure.

But before we get there I’ve got the small matter of what to pack. The weather in BC looks pretty hot at the moment but we’ve got quite a bit of high altitude mountain stuff planned. It’s no easy job packing for yourself and two young lads. Since most of our previousl holidays have revolved around beaches in silly hot places the packing has never really been a problem. Now I find we have two massive piles of gear for each of us: one for hot and one for cold.

Do we pack our own helmets or rely on the hire places? Somehow sticking my head in a lid that’s been worn by countless other sweaty riders is akin to wearing someone’s shorts in my view. We are in serious danger here of being massively overloaded

Back to the packing. Next update will hopefully be from Vancouver.

It’s nearly a week since Mayhem and the bruising from my night lap stack is only just residing. Once again good course, good heckling, and good to meet old friends and make new ones. It was also good to feel the ache on Tuesday’s night ride.
Much as I love events like SSMM, I know I’ve got an itch developing for an adventure. Time to dust down the portageable bike. There’s already an email circulating and plans are afoot. A ride with views, hardship, friends and maybe a bit of bivvying thrown in for good measure. Old school? Maybe, but it’s good for the soul.

Well, it’s not rained today. This must be the ’sum-mer’ that American (and Canadian and European…) folk talk about…

So far today, we’ve had a nice new Petzl torch in, a camera lens, and one of the drunk girls who sit on the canal drinking Stella barge in and demand we drive her home because she was too drunk to walk. It’s all glamour here (I think she got the bus…)

And now… time for some food and a daylight Thursday night ride on the newly refurbished Maverick ahead of my jaunt next week… woohoo!
Chipps

So I’m having a day off… What shall I do with the whole potential I have before me? Why am I in the office at 11am checking my email?
I was just passing? Er… Right, I’d better go…
In brief though, I thought Mayhem was great - and having been there from the Tuesday evening and seeing it grow from a few marquees in a field to the monster festival of cycling it has become - it was slightly sad to help pack it all away on Monday…
I managed to get out for a spin last night with Matt and Dave - my legs hurt… So I don’t know if a six hour road ride is on the cards today - I might just have to go to Ikea instead Isn’t that what normal people do on days off? And, as it’s a Wednesday, the fishmonger is at Tod market, so it might be sushi for dinner…
Yum. Right, just a quick coffee then and I’m outtahere…
Chipps

I knew this would happen.
I’ve done my best to avoid racing. I’m naturally not that competitive and would rather just ride my bike than race, but I’ve had this hunch that if I did race I might get a little bit competitive. Having completed SSMM as part of the mighty Patella Love Spank team I’m starting to think about doing other events.
I’ve already said I’d do SITS as a pair with Mark.
What’s happening to me? During the race I wasn’t that bothered if I was overtaken and was quite happy to chat on the climbs, but when the results went up I started thinking about how I could improve my results, if my gear ratios were right and if semi-slicks would have helped.
Is this the beginning of the end?

I wonder if I could solo Mayhem next year…

Back from Mayhem. The weather was great and I thought the course was a very good race course (a few whingers seem to be confused between ‘riding’ and ‘racing’ trails). My team (’Singletrack Gigglers’) amazed ourselves by doing quite well - 36 laps, singlespeed, fully rigid - totally idotic! Not sure if I’ll do that again, we’ll see.
The new mag arrived at the office today. Looks really good (although I haven’t been able to focus well enough to actually read it! There’ll be a downloadable ‘teaser’ up on STW soon - once we’ve all had some kip.

For many years the Alker annual two week holiday has been deliberately as far removed from mountain biking as possible. It’s usually the time when Rachel and the kids can look forward to not having me waffle on about bikes ad-nauseum. For me it’s a neccessary clean break from work too. It’s that whole avoiding a busman’s holiday thing I suppose.

Well after seemingly endless years of beach holidays we’ve finally changed track and are heading out to Western Canada for a road trip of outdoor stuff, including biking. It’s going to be loosely based on my press junket trip from two years ago, which ended up in the mag as a feature. That was an amazing trip and I decided back then that I had to drag Rachel and the kids out to see the place. So now we are.

No package holiday this time though. Instead we’ve planned the whole thing via Expedia with help from the tourist boards of both Alberta and BC (I’ve made the rash decision to write the whole thing up as a feature for the mag).

It’s a mamoth trip, that is changing on a seemingly daily basis. As of now the itinerary is looking something like this: We spend a few days in Vancouver to do some whale watching, sea kayaking and riding around Stanley Park before catching a train to Whistler for more riding (c/o Ticket2RideBC), rafting, walking, horse riding etc. Then it’s back to Vancouver to catch an internal flight to Edmonton in Alberta where we pick up a hire car and head for Jasper for a few days. Then we head down Banff and then Canmore. We catch a plane from Calgary back to blighty on the 18th July.

The original, naive plan was to hire a car in Vancouver and drive the whole way. I was of course warned by the tourist boards of both BC and Alberta that the distances involved were substantial but we blundered on regardless. That was until I googled the distance between Whistler and Jasper the other day and found out that we should plan to be driving on that day for 12 hours! So, now after good advice from those that know (and infact warned us earlier about) we are looking to fly from Vancouver to Edmonton instead.
For a family who’s previous experience of holidays together generally involves a trip to the travel agent before some taxi picks us up from our front door and then through various magical co-ordinating processes we really don’t want to know about are finally delivered beach side at the hotel to be left to bake for two weeks, it’s going to be a whole new kettle of fish for sure. Not that we aren’t used to doing the outdoor stuff, but just because we’ve never committed our frankly sacred annual two weeks to something as epic as this.
I’ll be updating this blog with things as they progress for all of you with kids who are interested to know how it all unravels

Well, the last batch of files is winging it’s way to the printers. The next stage in the mag production cycle is waiting to see which pages I’ve forgotten to send or that have got corrupted in transit. Hopefully not too many!
It’s a funny feeling finishing the mag, part relief that we’ve got another issue out of the door, and part apprehension at getting it back through the door in it’s physical state and seeing how it all turned out.
Does feel good to hold a freshly printed mag though. Job satisfaction. It counts for a lot.

Sim left the office about 11.20pm and I left about an hour later. Despite our printer throwing a wobbly earlier (and now only printing half size proofs for me to check) we’ve managed to go through over 110 pages, leaving only 30 or so to finalise, correct, pdf and upload to the printers tomorrow. In which case, we’re two days earlier than last issue and we’ve only had to work through one whole weekend and a bunch of late nights.
We obviously have some work still to do in the office on efficiencies, deadlines, delegation and commissioning, but hopefully we’ll get there in the end.
And now I have to pack for Mayhem. I’m going down tomorrow (well, today…) to help lay out the course. There have been a few folk down there already for a some days now doing it, but there’s always work to do there. At some point I’m racing too…
Ah well, I’ll get to it when I get there. I wonder if I dare wear the disco white bib shorts and matching jersey that Assos sent us to test there? On the grounds that folk will be offended (and that it might rain too and make it go tastlessly transparent…) I reckon I should…
Chipps

It’s always nice to add new trails to a well used circuit and that’s just what we did on Sunday on the “escape from the office ” ride. After prising Chipps and Sim away from putting the mag together we headed out on our Oxenhope local loop.

The added piece, now named “Shoeshine”, is a short but sweet section of singletrack that swoops through dense heather, with a suprise tight and tricky dropoff to catch you out before rejoining the main trail. Somehow I managed to clean that but then faceplant on an easy section I’ve ridden regularly for the last 12 years, it’s the first off I’ve had in ages too, how did that happen?

Highlights of the ride?

My Oakley Chop Tops not snapping despite the impact they took.

The hidden stash of Stella, a leftover of a february punkbike ride, that’s the perfect place to stop on warm rides.