Singletrack Staff Blog

When I was a kid I had a little BMX-a-like bike. It was ace. It had blue mag type wheels and everything. At Fort William I noticed Chris Kovaricks 4Cross Intense has some fancy looking mag wheels, and they looked superb. I think it’s time for a revival. But I don’t want them to make a come back based just on their looks, I want them to come back because Photoshopping between spokes is a flipping nightmare! I’m trying to make bike racks look pretty for the next issue but it means cutting out wheels (don’t ask) and it’s driving me nuts! And breathe.
Bring back mags, keep art directors sane.

It’s 2.45am and I’m still thinking about the blinking magazine…
I won’t pretend that I’ve not had a fine evening off eating Chinese food and drinking red wine, but I’ve still got phrases and words floating around my head, waiting to be caught, assembled and laid down on screen into something resembling the final ten pages of the magazine… it never leaves you. Sometimes that’s bad, but usually, it’s pretty welcome…
Right. Apparently everyone else in the world is asleep, and I should be too…

Another Thursday night and another ride. Trails are still dry and dusty though there was a noticeable increase in midge numbers. This week we rode from the Office to revisit some more trails usually too boggy to bother with, and we were rewarded by a top sunset just as we began to drop back into the valley.

A night riding the Chameleon up Calderdale steepness without too much pain, so I’m quietly confident I’ve done “just enough” riding to prepare for SSMM next weekend. So one more weekend of long rides then a week of chilling before the big event.

See you there, finger crossed there’s no deluge this year.

Yep, it’s us glamourous journos at it again… Now why don’t we have a webcam? Then folk would see just how glam we’re being this week. Mark’s spent all afternoon mounting and remounting roof racks to retake the shots that were painstakingly done last week, but then mysteriously lost somewhere and I’m still in the office at gone 11pm. And I’m staying until I finish this issue’s Route Guide, dammit!

Actually it might be home-time soon - the article’s nearly done, but my letters aren’t being typed in the right order any more… it’s a sign…
Ahh, a nice eight hours’ sleep and back in again… This time to finish writing the bike test - which I have been putting off for as long as possible… It’s only a day’s work, but why do it today when you can put it off until tomorrow? Why? Because it was due last week, that’s why… And not doing it is making my teeth itch. Right then… I’m off… Woohoo!

I’ve just about finished the bit I hate doing most in the mags design process; Grinder. None of the text is the right length ( for me anyway), pictures that I’d like to be portrait are landscape and it hurts my eyes a lot.
It’s a bit like playing graphic design Tetris getting the right length review into the right spaced gap and crow barring in a photo as well. When it’s done it’s quite satisfying though.
Time to delve back in…

It’s raining here a the moment. That’s a good thing. It means that I won’t be tempted to go out and ride (or even play with) bikes and I’ll be forced to stay in and finish writing stuff. Sometimes rain is good for mountain bike magazines…
Chipps

Apologies for reminding you of Europe’s ‘finest’ moment. Not long now before the magazine is due at the printers so it’s time to do all the little last minute jobs that always take ages to do. Captioning photos, proof reading, cover lines, spine lines, doing the route guide maps, confirming product details, taking ’sympathetic’ pics to go with features (I have to take a pic of a grimy workshop and a rear shock in action by tomorrow morning - it’ll be ‘right).

We even found time today during coffee break No.1 to work out (some of) what’s going in the issue AFTER this one :-O

It’s the last week of the magazine and we’ve still got loads to do. But it’s warm, the incredibly heavy showers have stopped for the moment and the magazine’s kind of getting there. Even better, it’s coffeetime.

The Bristol Bikefest was great. I decided to do a lap on Sunday in the 12 hour race and felt OK, so I did three more. I used to ride in Ashton Court ten years ago when I worked for MTB Pro and it was great to ride some of the old trails again. They do get hammered there, mainly due to there being great, legal singletrack a short spin from the city centre. The trail crew there have done a good job, though, and it was a great 7km lap with some really hard, twisty singletrack and a couple of nasty climbs. I’ll run a story on the event once I’ve edited down some shots.

Not!

Here we are guests of Kona in the resort of Leogang, Austria. So far we’ve spend one whole day sitting in various bars drinking beer; another day riding lifts up the mountain and bikes back down; and another day sleeping off the previous two. Well, Matt did most of the sleeping but then he did fall over while having a piss on the way back to our room last night.

Doesn’t riding down hill make your calves ache?
That or the beer, we can’t work out which it is right now.

I’m trying to put up some pictures of the new Kona bikes on the main site at the moment but it’s taking a while so you may have to wait until we get back on Tuesday for the full story of next year’s Kona range. On the whole there’s nothing revolutionary going on. There’s new colours of course and some of the XC bikes have lost some weight and had minor tweaks to stuff like geometry. There is one thing that’s quite newsy though and that’s the new Dope braking system that Kona have added to some of their more burly bikes. It’s a big floating brake system that attaches the braking arm to the seat tube - Matt tells me it’s the same system as the Brake Therapy system and it essentially stops the back end of the bike jacking up when you brake. Anyhoo.. more of that techy stuff later, we’ve got a party to go too

Oh and yesterday I had breakfast with Geordie Lunn of ROAM fame.
He didn’t have porridge.

Just finished building up my new bike - an Evil DOC. It’s not for review by the way - it’s mine, ALL MINE I TELL YE!

The forks on it are a bit long (I just transferred all the bits off my old bike) so I’m now on the hunt for some suitable 100mm ones for it now. Hmm…

Despite having this shiny new bike to ride I think I’m going to pop out for an evening sunshiney spin on my old Kona Kilauea to see if it’s in working condition (and it has some tyres on it that need testing more) in time for SSMM. Which is only a couple of weeks off! (Gulp)