The Bad News - I’m staying here tonight until I’m sure there’s another eight, preferably 17 pages of the magazine are finished.
The Good News - Ali Baba’s have a new pizza menu with 40 different pizzas! Can you make that many different pizzas? 
Someone once said, ‘it’s not all glamour’. Can’t remember who it was but it’s stuck in my head tonight 
I left the orifice sometime a whisker short of midnight, where I’ve left our quarterly VAT return considerably not done. reconciling bank statements and trying to dicipher factoring statements was not on my ‘things to do with my life’ list when we set out to do this mag thing, but it turns out that the amount of government faffing you have to do just to keep the Man from kicking in your door and stealing your shirt is considerable when you run a business.
No one said anything about multiple spreadsheets, Sage accounting systems, online factoring systems and how you make them all fit together at Mountain Bike magazine School. But then I have noticed a vague connection between bikes and accounts..
Take a bike apart.. clean it.. lube it and put it back together again and no matter how careful you are there’s always some small washer, bolt or widget left over and you can’t for the life of you work out where it came from. I’ve discovered that accounts are the same.. No matter how carefully you add up the numbers, track every penny or calculate the VAT component of mixed t-shirt/sub combos, there’s always some bloody amount left over that doesn’t fit anywhere. And why is it that when you can’t get the fucking numbers to square up it ALWAYS means you end up giving more of your bloody money to the sodding MAN.
And now, having got home at midnight, I’m still wide awake at 2:20am writing this shite! Alarm set for 7:20am so I can get back in to the office to add up some more numbers for the government, probably before my screensaver kicks in from leaving tonight.
I’d like to shake the hand of the person who said, ‘its not all glamour’. If you know who it is, let me know eh?
Blogging from bed today. It was all going so well - a weekend of fun and friends and a bracing walk and all that sort of stuff. The Ibis is all lubed and shock pressures checked for a final afternoon ride - and then I get struck down by lightning food poisoning - or something.
The culprits could either be the meat pie I had for lunch yesterday, or the mushroom risotto on Sunday. I always used to be allergic to mushrooms in my childhood and had feared them ever since, but in the last year I’d tried welcoming them into my life, with some success - or had I? Who knows? There was certainly none of either in my system by the end of last night…
I’ll certainly continue to fear mushrooms, but then I’ll probably fear meat pies too. But how about a mushroom pie? Would that be the worst combination? Or would the two evils balance themselves out and make a positive pie?
I’m obviously rambling now. I’ll go back to sleep and see you all in the office in the morning!
Edit Office consensus is that it must have been the re-warmed steak pie. And Sim says that CSI Todmorden would agree the mushroom poisoning would have taken effect much sooner. Glad that’s sorted then. And as you’ll see above, my appetite is back.
I appear to have bought a new bike frame.. Well i definitely have bought a new bike frame, after battering myself on the Orange Alpine 5 (see issue 38) I couldn’t help myself, true it was somewhat prone to wandering on climbs and maybe a little slack for a lot of the UK , for the steep sided valleys of Calderdale and trips to bigger mountains abroad I’m sure it’ll be perfect. The fact that i was always prepared to drag it up and down hills in preference to other bikes on test said a lot really.
I want to build it in a lot lighter mode than the version we tested,and so I found my self last night searching through wheel manufacturers for the lightest rims available ( lightest that is, that are 32-mm wide) hubs, spokes etc.
I can’t remember the last time I did that for myself. We are generally very lucky when it comes to kit, but there’s also the fact that it’s going to be fitted to a bike for test regardless of weight or any other factors.
First things first though is a BIG travel fork, that’s adjustable up and down to help with the wandering front end and still not weigh to much….
Pictures as soon as !
Matt
It’s deadline time again - and it seems like a short while since the last one. Though thinking about it, since the last deadline I’ve been to Saudi Arabia, had a couple of days’ holiday, road cycling in Dorset and, er, that’s about it actually. But I suppose that counts as long enough to do enough interesting stuff for the next issue. It’s got some great stuff in it by the way… Hmm, I’m rambling now. I either need more coffee, or less coffee…
This time last week, Sim and I were talking about doing photo-shoots in banks of stacked, golden leaves. Riding crispy trails with perfect traction and yellow and red tinged leafy borders. That’s all gone to cock now, as Winter (capital W needed) has now arrived. Autumn has left the building quicker than Chuck Berry with a bunch of cash and the promoter’s daughter…
We went out on Sunday on one of those rides that you know will have been great. In that it was comedy misery while we were riding, but the beer and chilli-filled Yorkshire pubs in the pub afterwards immediately started to heal the pain… I was actually quite toasty, but only because I was wearing winter boots, winter tights, fully waterproof Endura Event trousers, a base layer, a (great…) new Helly Hansen mid-layer and a Goretex Paclite jacket. And a Buff. And winter gloves…
The ride was actually pretty fun. Splooshing through puddles, laughing at Matt’s lack of winter boots and worries of faux-frostbite, and generally feeling secretly smug that we were out on the hills when the vast majority of the population were indoors with the ironing and the Sunday afternoon film. Afterwards, I managed to put wet stuff on the radiator while I ran an un-necessarily hot bath (the colour of Lagavulin, due to the rain and my house’s reliance on spring-fed water…) which I promptly soaked (and then fell asleep) in…
Winter? It’s crap. But at least you expect it to be - unlike this summer. And you can go out dressed for it. And you know that the Karma Bank(tm) will deposit one dusty, dusky, sunburn-glow sunny ride in your Ride Account for you to collect next summer. It’s the way it goes… A wet ride for a dusty one. Everyone knows that…
Don’t they?
I’m quite excited, we’ve just got back a sample of our new limited edition Howies wool t-shirts.
And they look ace!
There will only be 40 of these made and once they’re gone they’re gone.
Based on the Howies Vail t-shirt it’s 100% superfine merino and will serve happily as a regular t-shirt or as a baselayer, wear them with your riding shoes or your Birkenstocks.
They will be £55 from our online shop when we get them delivered, so keep an eye on the homepage for stock updates.
Anyway, enough waffle, here’s some pics. Special thanks to Fidel Castro for coming all the way from Cuba to model for us.
*That should get the blog up Google’s search results.
After a long couple of weeks off the bike I’m finally going to be back in the saddle this weekend. My shoulder still feels a little bit dodgy but I don’t think cycling will do it any worse (unless I crash on it again!)
We have a Pace RC405 in at the mo and other STW Testers have been riding it on their normal local trails. So I’m off up to Scotland with some friends to do some manmade miles on it (apparently “trail centres” were one of the main considerations when Pace were designing the RC405). We’ll probably take a Santa Cruz Blur 4X and new Chameleon with us too…
The plan for the weekend is quite “fluid” (ahem) at the mo. Pretty sure we’re going to do Kirroughtree and Glentress though as they are our favourite 7stanes.
Fingers crossed!
UPDATE: And now one of my teeth has decided to explode so I’m unlikely to able to go to Scotland for the weekend - emergency dental torture instead. Ace(!) 
234km later and I can’t remember how much ups and downs, sand and camels and deserts and mountains… Today’s stage was ‘only’ 21km, but it featured lots of short, sharp, bottom-of-granny-ring climbs. Oh, and it was all above 2,200m.
One of the rocky, cacti-lined tracks of the final stage.I became focussed on just finishing, not particularly caring if people were overtaking me or not. There was a mix of smooth tarmac and scrubby, loose 4×4 tracks. We finished in the car park of the Abha Palace Hotel, where we’re staying. For the final four miles of high speed tarmac back to the hotel, the Saudi police had closed the entire road, holding back apparently patient traffic and leaving us the full width of the road to try and eke out a little more free speed on the descents. When the hotel finally hove into view, it was a great relief.
Before dinner we had a gala prize presentation, complete with the Deputy Governor of the region, many armed guards and all of the high and mighty from the host villages. There was a general thanking of just about everyone and the winners received their enormous prize trophies. And special prize went to our mate ‘Q’ for being the oldest giffer in the race (only by two months, mind) so he got a plaque for his efforts.
The Ibis is now packed away and we’re off to meet the governor tomorrow. If we’re lucky we’ll get a chance to buy some carpets…
Well, that’s the hardest stage done, according to those who’ve raced the Abha Trophy before (they have some good pics on their site by the way). There’s just the final stage to go tomorrow - 21km. Not far, though the route profile describes a rough jagged line of steep ups and downs with 386m of climbing. At least it’s a late start - 2pm rather than the usual 9am start, and it finishes back in the Hotel car park. I suspect that it’ll be more than a mere procession though. Some of the boys at the front still have scores to settle.
So what made today so hard? A total of 44km, 3000m of descending on rough, loose jeep tracks and 1000m of steep ups, including a steep, switchbacked gravel climb and an absolute monster of a tarmac climb with a 31% grade.
And this was the easier of the two big climbs todayIt did end with a big downhill, loose at first, leading onto tarmac. I took the opportunity to enjoy the descent, knowing that it’ll be the last time this year I’ll be able to descend at 40mph, wearing just a jersey and shorts and still feeling warm. The buzz of that unfortunately didn’t last as long as the short 4km road climb to the finish though, where I grovelled up, struggling to keep it in the middle ring. Behind me I had my own police escort - lights flashing on a police jeep, doing about 5mph.
So, tomorrow, we have the final stage. I’m looking forward to it already.
Don’t forget that you can see more pictures from my travels on the Singletrack Flickr page - www.flickr.com/photos/singletrackmag