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@dancing james
Stolen from the offroad thread.
Today was great fun.
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/132716564
5 went out into the woods today, and 5 bikes came back intact, with their riders unscathed! Clearly we iz well good and shit, or more likely we are just getting a little luckier.
mdcc_tester, Unharmed, Ben., Gabes and myself were the rag tag bunch. The Ti Transport was driven by Gabes, and he picked Tom and myself up from Kew on the way to Swinley - hugely appreciated by the passengers. Upon arrival we re assembled the bikes - a VW golf has limited space so wheels had to be taken off and seatposts removed (except the dwarf bike). One minor glitch was the loss of one of Tom.'s gloves between my house and the forest.
Rendez vous at the Lookout and the infamous 'Tester and Unharmed were ready to go. For some reason I have become the default leader for these trips, its like having the blind leading the partially sighted. I do worry that other people might be trying to follow my line. Given my dreadful habit of being able to spot a tiny potential hazard and then go straight towards it, this is a concern, but I am usually just struggling to keep the bike upright so can't always witness the expressions of "WTF is this muppet doing today", its probably a good thing.
Recently I have been reading up a lot on basic skills - my knowledge on such matters is that I don't know any thing about them.
http://www.mtbtechniques.co.uk/
The above link has been really quite useful in explaining how things ought to be tackled, so today I was trying to put some of it into practice. I had previously understood the need to be out of the saddle, but had never taken on board the notion of trying to ensure the weight is over the pedal axle (so moving fore and aft depending on if going up/down/flat). There is also useful advice on how to attack berms etc, and today I found myself not overshooting to the same extent, riding into the berms is a great tip. I fucking hate roots, but again there was a lot of advice on unweighting the bike, and that if you go faster over them there is less time for things to go wrong.
Trying these changes did seem to benefit my riding and increased satisfaction levels. It was a good day for me as all my fuckups happened out of sight of the others (though they may have heard me muttering to myself through the trees).
As a group we seemed to be fairly evenly matched, though I need to bare in mind the SS riders a little more on the ascents. After each of the sections we tended to regroup, gossip, banter and even admit moments of closet hippie dom (hugging trees), overshooting turns etc. There was a lovely sense of humility amongst the pack, no dick swinging and a lot of sharing of advice.
The trails were possibly the busiest we have ever seen them, a few other 29ers were also out, so Ben and I did not feel quite so out of place. It was generally fairly dry, but a with a few muddy puddles and somehow each time I splashed through the mud managed to avoid my glasses and splatter my eyes.
There was a very kind offer of lunch with mummy_tester, but too many in the group had other commitments to be met today. There had been suggestions of a quick lunch and then continue but Tom's lack of glove on one hand had started to cause some blistering and things were unlikely to improve on a post lunch excursion. Additionally the light drizzle was looking like it was going to get heavier so we returned to our respective homes. Back at Kew the glove was found on the railings outside my house, a satisfying end to a brief but satisfying ride.