Some bikes, people, components and habits need to be cast into Room 101. Mark is judge, jury and executioner.
From the Archives – Singletrack Issue 103 – 2016
Words Mark Alker & Contributors | Photos Various
All walks of life have a Room 101 into which they can throw the daft, self-defeating and just plain annoying, and the Bike Industry is no different. In this spread we invite you to suggest the items, concepts or even people from the bike world that you think deserve to be kicked down the cellar steps that lie beyond the door to Room 101. Our Judge Mark will preside over your case and sentence your topic accordingly.
Submission: Crowdfunding bike ‘inventions’
Applicant: Rufus Copping
Argument: Hi, I’ve invented something which I think is cool, but I can’t be bothered to write a proper business case for it (or if I did it would add up to a big hole in my bank balance), so please give me some money. In return, if I manage to fool 1,000 suckers into thinking this hitherto unthought of and unwanted item is actually a brilliant idea, I will find a factory in China to make 10,000 of them. I will then send you one. The other 9,000 items will then tour trade shows until I make my fortune. At this point you will be able to say you had one first. Alternatively, I will continue to tour round village fêtes and local markets until I sell them all or successfully crowdsource funding for a long-term storage unit.
Mark’s Judgement: But the thing is that although any workshy idiot with a brain fart can now get funded by a load of gullible clowns, there’s been some exceedingly awesome stories that wouldn’t have come about without this new funding stream. I need illustrate this with but one example: that of the fundraising win by the legend and winner of 2015, Martyn Ashton. Before Christmas he was about to sell his road bike to fund his future physiotherapy when someone suggested he should crowdfund it instead. He needed £7,000 to get his next course of therapy underway but he ended up with just shy of £55,000! Enough to keep him inspiring the rest of us for a long time to come. For that reason, bike-related crowdfunding projects do NOT go into Room 101.
Submission: Trail dogs
Applicant: Olly Cheesman
Argument: Yay, you’ve got a dog. You love it. It loves you. You take it riding. It is now a trail dog, and you are a trail dawg. Dude. Your dog shits in the woods, but you’re too busy shredding to stop and pick it up. It’s the woods, man, walkers should just look out for that stuff. Your dog runs along the trails beside you. And behind you. And in front of that kid who has just about managed to stay balanced on the fire road. Your dog is well behaved, it knows to stay out of the way of the bike – but nobody else on the trail actually knows that. Or your dog is distracted chasing a rabbit, and runs into a rider. Your dog’s soft underbelly isn’t going to stand a chance against some DMR pedal pins. Now your dog hates you because it has to wear the cone of shame. And you’ve spent all your new bike fund on the vets so you hate your dog.
Mark’s Judgement: I’m conflicted here. I have two dogs. Well, actually I share a house with two dogs. I maintain to this day that when I married my wife there was no subclause in the marriage contract about transferred ownership of non-human dependants and so, as far as I’m concerned, I am cohabiting with two dogs (AND two cats FFS). I’ve ridden with one of our dogs numerous times and the experience has been mostly untroubled and the dog absolutely loved it. Everything is great, right up to that point where we meet other riders and she tangles with their wheels and I end up using my mad teacher voice and screaming myself hoarse to get her out of the way. Trail centres are an absolute no-no. The risks are just too great. She’ll either bring someone down or get flattened herself. Out in the big wide world of the countryside though, we have a Walkydog device that is essentially a pole with a short lead on it that sticks out from the seatpost. It keeps her next to me when I ride and all is well. When the coast is clear in big open spaces we can unclip her and let her run. So, I’ll put trail dogs in Room 101, but with an amendment to ‘trail dogs at trail centres’.
Submission: Inner tube ‘borrowers’
Applicant: Andy Sackville
Argument: You both know that you’ll never return it. So it’s the same as asking to have a fiver off someone. If it’s a puncture-laden ride, then you’ll probably make efforts to replace the tube you borrowed after your third one blew. But if you don’t bring a tube, or you only bring one and you’re prone to punctures, then you’re just asking your mates to give you inner tubes.
Mark’s Judgement: There’s often a romantic notion that it’s all fine to ask for a tube from your mates because you will be fine offering yours to them when they puncture. That’s all great if you live in a world where the chances of a puncture are equal among riders, but that’s not this world. In this world there’s always someone who just rides like a behemoth. They usually have 2.1in tyres, ride a hardtail (‘cos it’s more real) and still smash into stuff as if they were riding an enduro stage. The system fails at this point because it’s like going for a meal with your mates where the bill gets shared equally. There’s always one who gets the starter, steak and massive pudding. That guy, is the guy with no tubes smashing his way through boulder fields on his skinny hardtail. That guy is a knob and he’s going into Room 101.
Submission: The mid-ride tea stop
Applicant: Chipps
Argument: Unless it’s physically the furthest part of your loop and you have no choice to ride back
from it, then the ‘mid-ride tea stop’ is effectively the end of the ride. If it’s in the middle of a figure eight loop and you’re going to do a second loop after tea and cake, it’s 78% more likely that you’ll have second helpings, a second coffee and sack off the rest of the ride because it’s getting dark, or you’re tired, or you’re full of cake. Save cake stops for the end of the ride! (Or the beginning).
Mark’s Judgement: And even worse is the mid-ride pub stop that involves beer. One beer makes you invincible of course, part from when it doesn’t and actually makes you more dangerous… which is every time. But Elfin Safety aside, the main reason that mid-ride café/pub stops should never happen is that moment when you have to put your damp, sweaty, cold helmet back on your head. Then there’s wet gloves too. Even if the hostelry has a roaring fire, you are never there long enough to really dry out. Mid-ride stops are a product of bad planning and are never as comfortable either during or after as you imagine they will be. To be honest, every ride should start and finish from home for maximum comfort. And you should always live within 200 yards of a good pub. The mid-ride café stop goes into Room 101.
I once went out with a friend and his mate who obviously thought he was ride leader. Half way round I asked my friend where the cafe stop was. Rather shamefaced he told me Pete doesn’t do cafe stops. The end of a friendship!
I once went on a ‘social ride’ that went past 3 pubs and a very nice ice cream shop. None were stopped at. Didn’t go again.
Is it tragic that I remember that article originally and the last point (mid-ride cafe stops) triggered a bit of controversy.
They’re literally why I ride.
A couple of years ago I went out with a mate on a route he’d planned which he assured me was about 50 miles, with a cafe stop. What he actually meant was 50 miles TO the cafe stop.
That was a serious test of friendship, that one.
I’m not a fan of stopping mid ride unless it’s a reasonably short leg home. Don’t want a load of food making me bloated and beer kills my legs.
Especially in winter – just get really cold (usually fingers) and the rest is miserable.
The ride has to end at a pub though
I think that’s an MTB Vs roadie thing though.
Possibly because a lot of MTBing is contained to a small area, doing laps of the same woods/hillside for an hour or three. There’s nowhere to go for a coffee except the car park you arrived at. Even if that’s not every ride, the mentality spills over into the others.
Roadies on the other hand, even in mid-winter a normal ride is 2 hours to a cafe and 2 back again. And routes are almost always devised to go somewhere with a purpose (the cafe), it’s unusual to do a loop, it’s generally an out and back on slightly different roads
Eve evening rides, the roadie club posts up the ride as “to the ………. pub" even if that’s only 20min back into town afterwards, the MTB’ers go for a “ride around …… hill/wood/area" then go to the pub after.
I think the mid-ride stop depends on the ride. It can be a destination in itself. I used to do a ride to the Mortal Man in Troutbeck and then back to Ambleside. Having a pub lunch and a pint absolutely made the the ride but there was no driving involved and the return leg didn’t involve too much climbing.
If a ride is long enough to warrant food (and more than a single water bottle in these packless times!) then its nice to have a defined point for this ideally that occurs midway through the ride and roughly at lunch time; and always good to contribute to the economy of the local area by spending a few quid.
Can also see the appeal of a regular, local ride whether on road or off, using a pub stop (at about 60-80% distance) to force a variety of routes by changing the pub.
It’s when the “ride" turns into a “cafe or pub social" that tangentially involves a small amount of low effort bike riding, that I get a bit bored or annoyed.
Amateurs all of you. On a 30-40 mile loop I can do a pub, café, pub, cafe and finally a pub. In fact I think there’s a new cafe before the first pub which I need to try. I mean I don’t normally do all of them but have the option.
Wonder why I’m such a tubby git 😄