Let's offroad / mountain bike / mtb / ride dirt

Thanks for the info chaps, I will try to get to far flung Norf Lundin today.

Righto. The ghetto bleed helped a lot but I still can't develop any actual braking power with them. Can't even lock the wheels on dry pavement. A few months back I split an o-ring on the master cylinders (yes both of them. Somewhat of a weak point on these brakes apparently) and lost some fluid so I wonder if they just need topping up.

This is what Owainga and myself got up to:

http://connect.garmin.com/player/53362023

Swinley is awesome fun. The Lookout bit was populated by some interesting characters, a number of families appeared to have come straight from the Harry Enfield sketch with the dog that is just shouted at continually. They provided some comedy value, my slow mo crashes probably supplied the rest. The best one involved my wheel getting stuck in a rabbit hole that swallowed a 1/3rd of my wheel, cue me slowly (as Owain said) with balletic grace rotating over the handlebards to land on my back, get up and laugh.

We went around fire roads and a little singletrack in the first half and then did more singletrack later on. Our lack of map and pisspoor directional skills did not help us in finding the MTB area until later in the afternoon.

I shall be getting a blank memory card for the garmin and using open source maps for offroad stuff in future. The riding was great fun and lots of other avid cyclists bouncing around. I think this could well be the venue for us doing MTB training with Lucy on a weekend day soon. £2 for a day pass and there is ample space for us to go and practice some techniques in the morning and then do some loops in the afternoon putting new skills into practice.

Roll on next weekend...

So jealos, once my exams are over I'm going to be all over Swinley, Dorking, etc.

did you find the jump gully james? plenty of scope to spanner yourself there. :-)

Awesome! Although not as much fun as my half hour test-ride around Putney Heath I'm sure :-/

Bleed-kit, new fluid and pads are ordered for mine so should be ready for next weekend.

jump gully? fuck me there are so many new terms i never even knew existed

suffice to say mud, roots, slippery stuff, steep ascents, steep descents, etc all gave me opportunity to spanner myself

it was funny, one section of tight turns showed the limitations of the 29er, but another section of tree roots demonstrated its rolling ability over owains 26er

i think i saw a group of people getting training on the jump gully, i did not fancy my chances on that at all.

well it's easy to spot. a cut out channel the width of double track with about 3 sets of tabletop doubles down the middle. usually a group of groms on shonky bikes getting sick air.

that must of been the corkscrew or labyrinth trail you found. i don't know the area that well.

well it's easy to spot. a cut out channel the width of double track with about 3 sets of tabletop doubles down the middle. usually a group of groms on shonky bikes getting sick air.

that must of been the corkscrew or labyrinth trail you found. i don't know the area that well.

mrsmyth appears to be speaking fluent chav or some other language

am totally confused, now off to do further research into ways i can harm myself involving kitchen furniture etc

That was indeed awesome.

Pity I almost blew up half way through, time to try and get on the cardio hard on the commute, methinks.

James, the jump gully was the one you're thinking about (according to phone map, at least).

Looks like I'm utterly free next weekend, so definitely up for something again.

Alright

Sunday again

Swinley again

List

Dirty James

Should be up for it.

List:
Dirty James
Owainga

List

Dirty James
Unharmed

Oops. Submit-button fail:

List:

Dirty James
Owainga
Unharmed

I would be up for this. What is the general plan? Or isn't there one yet?

Looking at the Garmin link, yeah you hit the jump gully section but not the corkscrew. That's off to the north west somewhere.

will probably catch train from Richmond around 10am.

exact timings to be confirmed later

One for you mudpluggers with a sense of style...

Expensive filth

Rapha line of MTB stuff in the future maybe?

Expensive filth

Don't give me that.

I hear that you mop out your jizzy navel with Rapha scarves.

You'll be dressed from head to toe in off road Rapha as soon as the range is out.

The fop of the forest, suffering over sartorial single-track, the dandy of downhill.

I doubt I'm sartorially qualified enough to even click the link tbh.

http://www.pinkbike.com/news/freeride-red-bull-trailer-2010.html

hippy

you been playing with the thread name?

He really knows how to fuck up a snappy title.

Rapha line of MTB stuff in the future maybe?

no i can't see it working myself.
mtb clothing is a million miles away from what rapha is about. a lot of the clothing borrows from motocross style or is just functional/nodder style.

if you want well made but not troy lee/fox/royal racing downhill style then gore/endura/sugoi/maloja do nice stuff. i certainly wouldn't buy rapha mtb clothing because it's going to get rips/thorn pulls after a few rides.