"High fever, a nose problem… Phlegm! Phlegm! Phlegm-phlegm-phlegm!" - Joey in Friends!! :-D

Damn this cold! Fed up with it! It's on my chest now too! Nnnnggh!! Perhaps I'll get something else useful done this weekend - like wash the car or fit my Psylos. I'll have to resist that all-consuming lure of internet shopping for bike bits. Boredom is the marketeers' ally!!

What's new?

Not posted for a few days - so what's happenning. Saturday I was arm twisted into a trip to Shepton Mallet Antiques Fair. Not good - cost several hundred full suspension bike vouchers!! ;-) But, that meant a free pass for Sunday - good - I set my mind for the first section of my Sarn Helen route. But... events conspired against me and I ran out of time - not good. Concillation prize - I decided to do Whites Level in Afan Argoed instead in the time left. Blasted that in 2 hours 10 minutes - a superb personal benchmark - excellent!! Thought I had a sore throat on the way round - not great. Monday - sore throat, proper - bad. Sent my Rock Shox Psylos to TF Tuned for a service - good. Tuesday - really ill, in bed til lunchtime - very bad. Today - not so ill, back in work, but no cycling, no tinkering with the bike (and sod's law the weather's good) - bad. But the Psylos came back - talk about a slick service (pardon the pun) - very good.

So .... plans? Weather for the weekend looks good. If I'm OK Friday, may scrounge an early finish and blast The Wall in Afan (Wonder what the chances are of getting the Verbal Athlete to jon me!?). The Verbal Athlete is that guy in everyone's office who says "I can ride faster than you, or I could if I was training." or "I can run faster than you, but I can't join you tomorrow (or the next day...) because I'm busy!". Saturday, I'll use the good weather and daylight to put the Rock Shox back on the bike. Sunday - maybe my Sarn Helen route.

I'll share my experiences of using TF Tuned Shox. I arranged with them to courier collect the forks. So they booked me in over the phone for a Tuesday service. And told me they'd collect Monday. Sure enough - en queue. Tuesday the service engineer rang me (unfortunatley I was ill and all he got was my voice mail). Not that it mattered it was just to tell me what they'd done. Later that day - got an email with the tracking number for the parcel. Today the tracking website said it was on the van. This afternoon, forks arrived as promised. In the box was the old seals and wipers and a note (well a page of A4 just about!!) explaining the findings from the service. So far for customer service TF Tuned are spot on. In todays world I reckon it's rare I say that. I'll let you know how they stand up on the trails.

A Mint Sauce moment

(See Jo Burt's full strip on http://homepage.mac.com/pfellows1/thisiswhy/Images/eternalreek/eternalpage13-mud-unpub.jpg or the article this appeared in "The Eternal Reek of Damp Wool" at http://homepage.mac.com/pfellows1/thisiswhy/articles.html)

Another weather record broken this summer: Saturday's weather forecast was the most welcome forecast since 1976!! How did you spend your summer? For me the plan was bike ride up Sarn Helen Saturday and mow the lawn on Sunday (for the 2nd time this year!!) However, I had a Mint Sauce moment. The crank felt stiff so I started dismantling it. Inside was a scene from Halloween 3!! So I mowed the lawn instead, then a bit later with some help from J, I got new bearings pressed in. Sorted!

J and I then decided to ride one of the trail centres. We picked Brechfa's Gorlech trail. Though it's graded difficult like the Afan Argoed and Glyncorrwg trails, the jumps and berms seemed on average to be more severe in Brechfa. I got very tired towards the end and came off twice. Combination of no exercise for 2 weeks and eating enough chicken and sticky toffee pudding to feed an American family last night!! That and the fact that it was a fight from the word go to keep up with J (which I didn't!!). Sarn Helen will wait for another day.

More fantasy MTBing??

I had this idea 15 years ago! It's ambitious and may never be completed by me. However, the idea is an XC mountain bike route from Neath in South Wales to just outside Conwy in the north. Not that I would ever imagine riding that distance in one go, I've split it into bite sized chunks to do over a period of time. This is the first section from the Roman auxiliary fort in Neath via the fortlet and watch tower on Hirfynydd ridge to Banwen and back to Neath.

Sarn Helen - NIDUM/Hirfynydd section

http://www.bikely.com/

It's all going bloody wrong!! :-(

I don't know? Nothing's going right! I hurt my ribs again on that last ride in Mid Wales. I had a week after that booked off work which went out the window and it rained the entire week! My dog hadn't been 100% so we took him to the vets. He was x-rayed and they discovered a lump in his bladder. It turned out to be a benign cancer. So £700 later he had that removed cleanly (bang goes that full sus bike I had half an eye on!) The one thing that is going right is that he's bouncing back at a rate of knots. My wife started a new job this week and it transpires she needs a lift in in the mornings because of the time she has to be there. So it looks like it's bang goes my cycling to work. I'm 2 weeks without a bike ride and that was going to be the gentle way back to full off-road mode for my injured ribs. Scuppered! Daylight's disappearing at a rate of knots! That Indian Summer never materialised! And I think the clutch is going on my main car!! :-(

I've plotted out my routes from the Mid-Wales trip on bikely.com. Below is route 1 from a week last Monday. It's an OK route, but not outstanding.

Pont-Rhyd-y-Groes route 1 - The Arch

Share your bike routes @ Bikely.com

Route 2 below from last Friday has been tweaked heavily from the route I took, and is a much better route. Well worth doing if I'm ever up that way again.

Pont-Rhyd-y-Groes route 2 - Rhiwlas

Share your bike routes @ Bikely.com