Today I left the Trek Remedy with the expensive Schwalbe tyres and 6 inch bounce in the garage.

I took out the steel hardtail with the mud tyres and 9 gears. It felt like cheating. When i turned the handlebars the bike actually changed direction. When I got home it weighed pretty much the same as it did when i left thanks to the absence of 2kgs of mud. There were no strange creaks or groans and I didn’t have to spend 4 hours cleaning it.

Never doing that again. Totally ruins the existential mud surf vibe and makes everything soo easy. Think I’m going to have to buy a 42lb downhill bike with semi slicks and no brakes to ride up the nearest boggy, root infested climb. Have to cleanse my soul and reaffirm the fact I’m better than everyone else.

Sounds like you need a unicycle. No sense in making it too easy.
(Once met someone doing the Brechfa green on a uni – he seemed completely sane in all other respects)

Yes a 6 inch bike probably does make hard work of a canal path cycle…

Weird.

I once met two chaps doing the hamsterly black route on unicycles, stopped for a chinwag turns out one of them runs unicycletrackworld, (unicycle.co.uk) nice guys but I did think something must be missing upstairs

Just got back on the skill compensator after 2 years Bfe-ing up hill and down dale. Christ it feels good 🙂

Not enough skill compensation to ride Cavedale yesterday, unfortunately, but still great to ride a FS round the Peak for the first time.

Horse for courses, innit? Agreed though on cleaning / looking after the linkage being a bit of a ballache after you’re used to the HT.

I like to share the love as equally as I can between the steel hardtail and the Covert. Riding the same trails pretty much but getting a different buz from different elements of the trail each bike.

Bikes are cool aren’t they? 😀

I’ve got a rigid SS Swift and a Spesh Pitch. Brilliant combination as whichever I use I’m always faster, getting back on the Swift and I’ve lost all fear of going quickly so overcook 90% of things (that 10% get’s established as some kind of new limit), getting back on the Pitch and I’m so used to being out of controll and bouncing all over the place that I go quicker again. Repeat on a vaguely bi-monthly rotation.

Both are brilliant althouh I’d not take the SS on a mountain epic and I’d not take the Pitch on an evening singletrack ride (it NEEDS a gradient).

The unicyclists are regulars at Hamsterley, I think. Did they have wacky mohawks stuck onto their helmets?

I can’t remember one lad was maybe mid twenties the other a bit older. I wouldn’t like to think I was going to the shop on one let alone a trail centre.