True to type, yet another opportunity for moi to be completely tangential:
seacliff climbing; Fear not Razorbills don't attack abseil ropes.
I once abseiled down a 400ft crag in the Western Isles and needed to swing in to a ledge about 150ft above the sea, thing was that a Fulmar was sat on my landing site (for those that havn't met these chaps, they vomit in your face with great accuracy from up to 4ft away)so I started tw**ting it with a long sling to get it to shift…in the process I unfortunatly lassoed the bird and pulled it onto my lap. We stared at each other for about 3 seconds before I chucked it into space and it flew off.
A mate of mine was less lucky pulling over onto a ledge…that was the day he learned to keep his mouth closed when expressing suprise!!

Another great ride. Was really funny setting off along Phantoms and seeing the cloud of dust from the other 20 riders in front. It felt like Glupton was there – in spirit at least.

Lovely ride, lovely route – cheers for organising. Great conditions in the Pentlands right now.

Just in – 29ish miles logged and avg speed up to 9mph. Not lightening but good for 21 people i think.

I was feeling like utter bobbins this morning what with hayfever and a cold at the same time and this perked me up a treat. Thanks for coming along to this every week guys – it's a good laugh!

Nice trail that Red Road one on the way down. Such a nice sound and feeling under the tyres.

Druidh – TJ is faster than you. He got 43mph(!!!) down Beech Ave. You only got 41 or something off the arse of Schiehallion. FAIL! Once again physical laws were defeated!

Great ride tonight , Nice to meet people and put faces to names. Many thanks to Rob Garrioch for showing me and Coast kid scalextrix . Discover a lot of trails tonight that I never new existed the descent from the red road to Exponential was epic. Was funny seeing Tandem Jeremy boaming down beech avenue and 21 bikes on the boardwalk . Thanks to Coast Kid for the lift and Colin for the advice on fixing my gears.

Nice one chaps. I am now broken
From my flat –
Out for 5 hrs
34 miles.
3hrs 30 riding time,
9.5mph average
Max 43.5mph 🙂 Who needs a big ring 🙂

– perhaps a tadge ambitious for a wednesday night. 9+ mph average is fastish with all that climbing- the fastest we have done.

Max 43.5mph Who needs a big ring

you want to make sure you have the wheel size correct in your wee computator thingy…

You mean I don't have 36 inch wheels?

The wheel size is right, it's just that it counts in Lilliputian miles.

Cracking outing chaps.

Good to meet some new folks.

Just set the alarm clock for 5am…. WTF!

Hopefully see you next week!

Thomo.

Time does, indeed, fly when you're drinking rum, or something.. Always seems like I get in, look at the clock and have a 'WTF!' moment too, in a good way, 'natch!
A few from the evening –

Many more + mandatory rad-ness vid here

Good times again, and not a drop of water through Phantoms or Hare Hill??

Just finished my takeaway pizza – time for bed now.

Great ride!

My GPS says 55.2km, out for 5.5hrs in total. My photos will be online in, ooooh, about 2 months 🙂

Nice pics

edit – new flikr I can't get it to work 🙁

great evening ride…nice to put some names to faces too… 😮
thanks for a great nights riding guys…
all my pics are on face book (bruce mathieson), i need you to ID the trail names for me before i upload films, thanks… 😮







all my pics here…
flickr pictures]flickr page[/url]
get films uploaded tomorrow evening…

coastkid's photos:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/coastkid71/sets/72157624343042790/

Bruce – ygm

thanks colin, and kit for link 😮

21! And I thought it was my popularity drawing in the high numbers…. 😮

Illegal riding? 😮

Que?

At the sides of exponential hill.

I would have thought you would know better than to bandy around the word illegal when it clearly is not against any law.

Arguably it would be against the code of conduct for reasonable access under the land reform act but given how dry it was I doubt that as well.

But there's signs and everyfink!

accordingly to bruce (coastkid) the verges were not well enough maintained to be counted as verges.

good ride and nice to put faces to names 🙂

cynic-al – Member
But there's signs and everyfink!

It's OK Al, – the signs are at only the bottom. I always assumed that was to stop folk riding up and thereby spoiling a good descent.

Didn't we conclude last night that is was to keep folk off the cut verge directly adjacent to the road, i.e. to stop people driving on the grass? Either way, there's been little erosion of those bits of singletrack in the years I've been riding them.

Despite several setbacks last night I had a fantastic time, the trails are riding great at the moment. Sorry for the hold ups with all the flat tyres and cheers everyone who pitched in. Next week I'm bringing seven spare tubes and pumping my tyres up to 90. 🙂

George / kiwi joe … here's the 1 y.o. snowboarding i was talking about last night

just waiting on youtube uploading then post some movie action… 😮