Stop clipping that hedge, jet-washing your patio, or scrubbing that grout. It’s time to kick back, and watch some MTB films where other people are putting in the effort.
How Was It Made?
It’s always fun to see how Danny manages to pull off his tricks, and this video shows some of the tweaks he makes to his bike to make them work. Or, in the case of the puddle trick, more than just tweaks.
On The Spanners
This is a fun MTB film series getting the pros to take on the jobs they might usually have a mechanic do for them. It might just make you feel a little better about some of the jobs you ask your local bike shop to do.
Coal, Cake and Calzone
This is a short MTB film by one of our contributors, Olly Townsend.
It’s a short film I shot over the course of the last 3 years and features my local MTB club – nothing very revolutionary about that you’re probably thinking! But the difference with this club is how much they’re part of the community – they’re based in a tiny ex-coal mining village to the west of Newcastle and the members are totally addicted to singletrack (and cake).
But they’re also big pizza fans. When their community hall was threatened with closure a few years ago due to council budget cuts, they helped take it over and run it as a charity and one of the ways they made it pay was to build a wood-fired pizza oven which they fire up regularly (or at least they did before COVID-19 arrived) and the money they’ve made helps keep the community hall going.
True Story: Ben Hildred
Ben Hildred has spent years in search of the eternal summer. A native of Lincoln, England, he milks the Northern Hemisphere’s warm months in places like Whistler, British Columbia, before absconding to Queenstown, New Zealand, to make the most of the Southern Hemisphere summer. Ben’s quest for the endless summer has allowed him to explore the world’s premier riding communities on his constant source of ground transportation—his mountain bike.
He’s never owned a car, opting instead for two-wheeled freedom, whether commuting to work or simply riding his favorite trails. Ben’s daily bike time is sacred, offering space for relaxation and reflection, as well as serving up a perpetual series of self-conceived challenges.
In 2019 his challenge was to climb 55,000 vertical metres in just 30 days, while also working as a full-time bike-mechanic. ‘Burning the candle at both ends’ in December, he woke each day at 5 a.m. to grind out a minimum average of 1,834 vertical metres of ascending before opening the bike shop at 7:45 a.m. to work a complete shift.
