Singletrack Staff Blog

There’s a week to go until the Howies Dyfi Enduro on Sunday and I’m around all week for a change. Well, apart from a possible trip to the Peaks on Thursday or Friday. But apart from that, it should give me a chance to wash clothes, fix bikes, build a wheel and sleep in my own bed for a few days. The last few weeks have been a bit mad. Saying that, though, I appear to be in the UK until I have a week’s holiday in July - and, apart from two deadlines in the meantime, should mean that I can fully enjoy some good old British mountain biking. Yay!

UPDATE: Be careful what you wish for, eh? I seem to have caught some post-show lurgy and spent 12 hours in my own bed last night feeling not completely on form. Oh well. I’ll have to ignore the perfect riding weather and drink tea and take it easy instead…

Sim and I are back at our desks in the office. Our trip was a success in that we managed to see the Sea Otter and follow it with a lightning tour of lots of Northern California bike companies. Now all that remains is to work out which stories to put on the website and which are worthy of the magazine. Certainly some of the products were great and the scenery stunning. We even had a couple of days of sunshine, though not on a par with the sunny UK while we were away, but that’s the risk you take when you leave the UK isn’t it? A good sunny day in Britain is unrivalled.

South Downs? Lancashire Moors? Nope, Laguna Seca, California, though not as warm as Britain that weekend.

I’ve just moved into a new place. I can confirm that packing and then unpacking all your stuff is an extremely tedious exercise. And I don’t even have that much stuff to move.

Thankfully (apart from a car boot full of random stuff) I’ve pretty much unpacked everything now. And am now looking forward to exploring a new area for new trails. I might even do a few words for the mag about it, we shall see…

Sometime next month the Singletrack Office is moving to bigger and better premises. I dread to think what that move is going to be like! We’re only moving quite literally around the corner so we won’t even have the excitement of new trails to keep us chipper.

Wish us luck…

Lots of torrential rain today. Thanks to Santa Cruz for their Syndicate ponchos. Without them, Sim and I would have been washed away… Still got some more great new product shots though. Just need to get them edited and written now…

Syndicate team bikes in sunnier times. Their ponchos don’t suck either…

I guess there’s a few parties going on at the moment. But Sim and I are back at the motel room editing pics and planning tomorrow. Sim’s luggage still hasn’t turned up yet, it’s been missing since Tuesday now. I’ve got about 400 pictures to choose from for stories, but our admin system is being a bit funny, so I’m having to rely on Mark being able to fix stuff from the UK end of things.

And it’s suppose to rain lots tomorrow. While I hear that it’s lovely at home. Oh well, eh? We still appreciate how fab it is here. All the stars and all the manufacturers and all the products are here, so we’re doing OK. We even walked past Wesley Snipes in downtown Santa Cruz on Wednesday morning - as you do…

Right, bedtime here.
Chipps

Sim and I are now in our motel room somewhere outside Monterey. We popped into the Sea Otter venue late this afternoon having driven down from Santa Cruz. It was pretty cold and deserted, with lots of midget-height EZ-ups all around, weighed down against the stiff, chilly sea-breeze.

We’re up tomorrow at 7am to start the first day of the Sea Otter - we have a Tomac bikes presentation at 8.30am to get to, so that’s going to be a hard start to the day. From there we’ll move on to the event and start checking out the new and the crazy, the prototype and the new-old-skool…

Sim’s had to borrow T-shirts and socks off me because his bag’s been lost in transit by United, so he’s not feeling the glamour of the trip yet. I’m sure it’ll work out in the end though. And hopefully he’ll at least have a Tomac T-shirt to wear tomorrow…

Night all… The proper reports will start on the site tomorrow then…
Chipps

Sim and I are just packing for a trip to the States. We’ll be going to the Sea Otter this coming weekend and hopefully getting to see a few more California framebuilders and riders while we’re there too.

While this kind of stuff is pretty old hat for me (I just found a ‘Sea Otter ‘99′ press pass) I still appreciate that we’re pretty lucky to get to do all this travel and meet all those great people. I may harp on (too much) about how the job’s not all glamour, but at times like this, it actually is pretty cool to be a bike journo. Now all I have to do is make sure I do a good enough job at getting stories, pictures and interviews for the readers. I mean it’s all very well me seeing the Fox/Mavic/DT etc 2008 stuff, but it’s no good unless I can tell everyone. So, notepad, tape recorder and lucky pen all packed. And about four cameras too…

Three days in so far. Sharon’s off for Easter so rather than fly abroad somewhere, and seeing as the weather is sooo good we thought we’d ride local and make the most of it. Saturday was an extended local loop straight from our front door, Sunday we headed straight out of Hebden for a climbtastic repeat of Sharon’s Birthday ride with SteveM.

Today we set off from Singletrack Towers for a climb up onto the deceptively late summer-alike local moorland. Plans evolved to make the most of the wind direction resulting in a rather pleasant spin over sheep trodden between the tussocks singletrack to the locally infamous “Three Pigs Trotting” trail.

Riding local trails is great, make sure you make the most of the good weather wherever you are……