Birmingham Bike Polo Chat & BS Thread

yeah ill bring lunch club and ill pigs

I can bring drill collins but lunch club now belongs to claire...

Matt couldn't you get mya or chris to borrow a 5d mkII and a couple of lenses? Would look so lush, as below.

Also next time we get 10 players we should have a go at Bench Minor format.

http://vimeo.com/36680505

Aside from the lens flare and trendy music that's a pretty boring polo video. Would appeal to hipsters though! Can the video not just be normal? No spoof, no cheese, no trendy effects. You can watch a hundred polo videos online, the important thing is to make it personal to Birmingham. Show the kind of people who are playing, the kind of bikes we use and explain how we play the game! I'm sure Matt will end up doing a swell edit anyway...

I'll bring my ill pigs tee but would be nice to have regular looking throw-ins too I think?

Yeah, I was just thinking throw-ins, but mix up t-shirts so that it's easy to see who is playing with whom on video.

We may get 10 this Sunday - Simon texted me to say he should be down. LJ said he's going to be back soon too! Lefty's return!

I would quite like to get some more quality bonding time in with Hyper. But it's not much fun being our third leg, and we don't learn much against weaker opposition.

I think we have to return to fast/slow games when we have 10-ish players, too.

So many things to balance!

Fin, can you make it to Cambridge on Tues 28th? You can have my place in the car if so, would make more sense for you guys to go together.

LJ, if you're reading this... I'll believe it when I see it!

Can someone give me a shooting masterclass on Sunday? If I waste one more sweet break from goal I'm going to snap my mallet in two.

I think you've got to come in from different angles - most of the time, you're on a break, coming in on a straight line, then you shoot straight. It's pretty predictable. But don't be hard on yourself, fixed makes things way harder.

The easiest angle is to come up a bit on the goalies back-side, and do a sneaky wrist-shot. The goalie has poor vision from that angle, and it's hard to judge the angle. B/B shots and wheelie goals are other options, but probably aren't going to happen until you go freewheel. Sometimes you can shield the view of the ball with your front wheel, then brake sharply, pop the ball round the front and shoot one off. (So much innuendo in polo).

I reckon all the power comes from 'snapping' the wrist. You don't need a mega back swing, although it depends on your mallet feel/weight I suppose. Putting pens/cocktail sticks/outer cable inside the grip so you can feel the alignment of the head* definitely *helps.

I have such feeble wrists, getting power from any angle is difficult but especially the sneaky back shot. Ah well, practice makes perfect. Can't wait for the new bike!

Selling a volume thrasher frame and some velocity chukkers. I'm in Brum.

http://www.lfgss.com/thread80375.html#post2705821

Aside from the lens flare and trendy music that's a pretty boring polo video. Would appeal to hipsters though! Can the video not just be normal? No spoof, no cheese, no trendy effects. You can watch a hundred polo videos online, the important thing is to make it personal to Birmingham. Show the kind of people who are playing, the kind of bikes we use and explain how we play the game! I'm sure Matt will end up doing a swell edit anyway...

I'll bring my ill pigs tee but would be nice to have regular looking throw-ins too I think?

I was referring to the superior resolution of the 5d mkII and having a fixed 50mm with f1.8 or f1.4 would make filming so much richer.

re: shooting. Practice in your free time. When I build up new mallets i take them for a bit of solo polo shooting at a single cone or bag to find the optimal hand position on the shaft before fully cutting them down.
Dan and I have mallets around 90cm and we're over 6ft. IMO longer mallets are harder to shoot with. When you swing the mallet you want to reduce the amount of contact with the ground. Shorter mallets facilitate this. Also a shorter shaft will make your mallet lighter.

Definitely - I'm going to bring scales and a tape to polo tomorrow, and I reckon there'll be a strong correlation between mallet length/weight and shooting accuracy as recorded in the Bench Minor thread...

We could even do a graph.

Or several graphs.

yes - i used to be terrible at shooting until i made that super short mallet - it was crap for everything else but it was sweet for hitting it hard and true! then i changed back and the skills stayed with me, i became the awesome polo player that everyone fears.

in short - practise shooting with a shorter mallet first.

I reckon around 90cm is right. You have to accept that you need to lean forward a long way to reach around the front wheel.

Lazy, long mallet wielders just want to sit in their saddle all the time and expect their mallet to reach the halfway line from the charge.

So, we learned today that afternoon polo isn't as good as morning polo; that the perfect court (Highgate) is about 32 x 20 metres; that StuF's mallet is twice as heavy as mine; that Mya's and Asim's bikes are ludicrously heavy and that MG's bike is ludicrously light.

MG, did you measure the Small Heath courts?

EMM, how does the footage look?

also: i may have cracked a rib in one of my andy-esque amazing skid crashes. my shin looks like its been attacked by a dog too. post some footage up matt!

I think I got that one in the corner that everyone laughed at on camera. Some top-quality zooming and panning in that video, believe. Like most misguided noughties teenagers, I did media studies A-Level.

that one in the corner with matt was the rib cracker. fell on my own front wheel somehow.

I've decided to try and grow out of my skidding fetish and go for a double brake lever. Can anyone tell me the difference between these:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Savage-Double-Cable-Aluminium-BMX-Bike-Cycle-Brake-Lever-/300645995089?pt=UK_sportsleisure_cycling_bikeparts_SR&hash=item45ffe5d251#ht_2065wt_1270

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Double-Pull-Brake-Lever-twin-dual-pull-NEW-BL-47-/270914505325?pt=UK_sportsleisure_cycling_bikeparts_SR&hash=item3f13c34a6d#ht_1185wt_1270

Also does anyone have a spare black stabbath t-shirt? i cant find mine anywhere

i'd suggest using a converter with one of your current levers as you already know they pull the cable enough...steve posted a link to an adapter in the trades and sales thread on ebay - dan has one too.

Uploaded the photos I was snapping today if anyone is interested :)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/casa-steve/sets/72157626792766645/with/6904443709/

Small selection:

And how Marcus and I ended up killing time ;)

4ndy - I'd go with the first one, as it's a known quantity. Me, Hyper, Neil and I'm sure many more people use it. In theory it doesn't work because the pull is meant for road calipers/cantilevers, but in reality, if your wheels are straight it works very well for dual-brakes. I think it's due to the fact you're pulling two brakes with one hand, and sponginess is almost desirable.

I converted my actual v-brake lever, and it's currently about as good as the promax one, but I'm hoping to make it a bit better with the kit Neil mentioned. I'm sticking with it only because it's XTR, and I like being different, really.

You definitely need a decent front brake, though. You'd be at least 11% more devestating on the break if you had one. I mug people several times in every game by simply out braking them. Only Neil seems to notice this, and constantly blocks me so I end up riding directly into him/his back wheel.

Uploaded the photos I was snapping today if anyone is interested :)

Some top-notch spreading out right there. Looks like the wales killing that poor seal in that recent Attenborough programme.

Thats Squeaker blocking off Jess -if you look at the photos in order they continue to me scoring....big question is, Asim was in goal, where was Dan? tapping out again.

I made a hero gif for you n3il!

Actual speed too!