The Morning After

I'm in a happier place this morning. The sun's out, my clothes are in the washing machine shedding mustard and I survived Murder by Burger last night. 

I think you need to have just worked a 14-hour day and be pumped full of adrenaline to beat someone to a pulp. If I get bacon & eggs thrown at me in an hour on my way back to work I might just take note of their registration number instead.

Road Rage

I've just got home after half an hour riding around my neighbourhood trying to find the little shits that threw food at me and just about knocked me off my bike riding home from work tonight. 

It's not the first time I've been hassled. I've been yelled at and had bottles thrown at me, but you almost expect that when you're out riding around town at midnight. This was much more dangerous as I was going close to 40kph and they slowed down very close to me to take aim. I got a hell of a fright.

So if by some strange coincidence the offender is reading this I suggest you don't do it again because if you get stuck in traffic this time I'm going to drag you out of the car screaming like the little coward you are and beat you to a pulp you miserable little fuck.

Ergon GE1 Review

A whale dies for each display-card produced

I just re-read my initial impressions and fell asleep half way through, so I'll keep this one brief. 

Thanks to fellow blogger DB I've been trying out the small size over the last fortnight as I had come to the conclusion that the large size was a bit big to use with gloves. I've been out to Woodhill a couple of times with mixed results. Super-comfy with my polyprop glove-liners but when I got hot and took those out they felt a little small and harsh on the bumpy downhill stuff. This was purely a sizing issue and may not be a problem with the suspension forks that most people run. I had lots of control for technical riding and I like they way you can slide your hands inwards against the flange for an alternative hand-hold.

What I liked:

- Comfortable

- Well made

- Really easy and quick mounting with the single clamp

- Quirky looks

- Wide grip area

What irked me:

- The packaging is totally over the top

- The clamp is a bit bulky (Slimmed-down on the updated model)

- No medium. Underwear doesn't just come in large and small. 

As Ergon states on their website: "The sculpted shape better distributes the load away from the nerves entering your hand. It may not look revolutionary, but the effect is noticeable."

My grandmother always told me that things come in threes and I've just won a third pair of Ergon grips in a photo competition on Flickr. Hopefully they send me a pair with "wings" as I'd like to see if they'd work for me with the sweep of my bars.

Woodhill testing ground

Testing finished and heading for home

You don't want to lose that silver ring inside the clamps

This is as high off the ground as I get

Family Mountainbiking at Woodhill

As I've mentioned previously there's no shortage of keen mountainbikers in our small cul-de-sac so every month or so a call will come out of the blue arranging a group ride. We always go to Woodhill Mountain Bike Park as it's ridable all year round and the kids enjoy the man-made structures out there. 

As anyone with children will attest to, just about any organized activity will cost you an arm and a leg. That's one of the attractions of Woodhill for me, it's actually reasonably priced and that encourages me to go more often. For casual visits it costs me $6 as an adult, $4 for my 11 year old and my 8 year old is free. We take our own food so the only additional cost is the petrol for the 70km round trip. 

It's a good set-up with plenty of parking and toilets, a coffee hut and a shop if you feel like spending more money. My boys aren't keen cyclists but they enjoy the trails enough to tear themselves away from their Nintendos for half a day.

Thing-One tackles the see-saw while we decide which trails to ride.

"I'll be damned if my big brothers going to do something I can't"

It's good, clean, healthy fun and until my daughter (The Midget Assassin) gets off training-wheels it's also a chance for a bit of male-bonding in the family. A bit of mud, sweat and blood is good for the soul.

Blog Superstardom again!

One of my recent photos of Thing-Two has been picked up by the excellent Change your life, ride a bike! blog for their "Photo-of-the-week". We made this robot suit for a school book week parade and I wanted to get some fun photos of it for posterity.

The original photo

Robot-free at unicycle club. The Midget Assassin having cone-avoidance-difficulties in the background.

Caught in the Helmet-War Crossfire

To helmet or not to helmet? A question thats been floating around in my head this past year. Of course it's illegal to not wear one in New Zealand, though I don't know how vigorously the police enforce that law. 

I recently left an innocent comment on copenhagenize.com, a site run by my old Flickr contact Mikael. Just a couple of anecdotes from my past where I felt a helmet had saved me at the very least a fractured skull, and in one of my motorcycle accidents I'm pretty sure it saved my life. For balance I mentioned that I don't think they should be mandatory and I certainly agree with the anti-helmet brigade that regulating helmet use reduces the number of potential cyclists in a population. 

Well this is obviously a passionate subject! Insults were flying in both directions, examples made to support both arguments and statistics twisted to fit all views. 

I'm so keen on all forms of cycling that I don't like to see us arguing amongst ourselves, but it is a subject that needs debate - rational debate. 

So I walked away from this fight for now, a little gun-shy but determined to learn more about the subject.

What's your opinion?

International Blog Superstardom

I was recently asked If I wanted to contribute some posts to the Mountainbiking New Zealand blog. If some of my stuff starts sounding a little poncy and formal (like the last review) It's because I'm thinking more than six people might end up reading it! 

I was very flattered of course, but as I alluded to in an earlier ramble I then realized I didn't actually get around to mountainbiking much anymore, despite it being one of my passions. 

Still if "real" mountainbikers are interested in the rantings of a forty-something-kid hauling-grocery shopping-singlespeeding-commuting-snowbiker than so be it. I'll soon take the hint if no-one reads it ;^)