December 12th, 2005
Eat Stem Fat Boy
Went over to Calderdale for a ride on Sunday and spent most of the day grovelling up hills eating stem.
Considering that this was supposed to be a camera free ride at least three of the party were at the coogleplex flashing digital SLRs around. I had my handy little Fuji with me, but it struggled with the light and shade in amongst the beech woods. Which is a shame as the dry leaves kicking up off our rear wheels was downright picturesque. Still, I managed to snap the sexmidget on the way back down from Jack Bridge. Papa Makin has a great shot of the sexmidget’s shadow on the garage door. Now he just needs to overcome his hippy technophobia and work out photo-sharing.
Once we’d ridden back to the skies for a trip down Midgets Pit X it was on to the steepest climb of the day. If it hadn’t been for papa makin insisting on riding everything I might have succumbed to Dan’s taunts to get off and walk. At least Dan had a singlespeed as an excuse for walking. Me? I was just grovelling along.
Coming down Mytholm Madness I managed to boil my rear brake and ended up with DoT fluid leaking out of a seal near the brake lever. Feel the sponge. So I now have a rear brake that’s cock all use until it’s boiled up up at which point it won’t let go.
Still, the promise of Pecket Well B kept me riding. When I finally reached the top of the trail Dan, Makin and crazy-legs were sat like the three monkeys taking in the best light of the day. Ben and sexmidget were nowhere to be seen behind me so off we went. I tried to do the whole descent using as little rear brake as possible. Good job I’d picked up some new Bontrager Jones Mud-X tyres from Blazing Saddles before the ride. I can’t say that they let go on the rocks any less often than the old Trailblasters, but when they did they were predictable instead of shooting sideways. So I kind of skidded/nose-wheelied my way down the trail. No sooner had I reached the bottom than Ben and midget came whooping down. A quick blast along the river back to the coogleplex and the day was done.
A cracking ride with cracking ride partners, helping to rediscover the Joy of Riding™
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