This really was an off!!

Back in February, I happened across an incident on Whites Level. It found it's way into my blog, and I wished the guy well and figured I'd never know anything more about it. Well it turns out it was a guy named Chris Halshaw and it was nasty, but he did at least win some 661 body armour from MBR magazine!! Chris should you ever read this - best of luck fella hope you recovered well!!

The boredom of recovery

This is what I'm reduced to, while I wait for my leg to heal! I've bought all sorts of bits and bobs over the last few days. It's a sort of fantasy mountain biking along with mucking about with routes some of which I may never ride. I bought a set of decent Park Tools allen keys and some bike stickers off ebay. I got some new wet lube to try and treated my self to Lezyne trail tool. I'm a sucker for a nicely engineered tool or part! I've said it before "Boredom is the marketeers' ally"!

In fairness these were all things I needed (except for the stickers perhaps!) I've not tried Finish Line's wet lube and the trail tool and the chain tool I have is a bit cheap and nasty, so I went for a quality combined one. I desperately need quality allen keys, so it's not money wasted.

I also decided to buy an RRP Neoguard. It's a superb idea that's been round since at least the early 90's (I think some think/claim it's new idea - it ain't!!) I've always been a fan of the old inner tube fix (especially considering RRP's rrp is £15) (Did you see what I did there? Did you like it!!??) However, someone made the point to me, why stick a tatty old bit of inner tube to £1200 bike right where you're going to see it, when you can do something neat for £14 . So, I've capitulated and come round to the idea. As you can see it is neater, and whilst it's OK to use tatty inner tube on my tatty old forks, it's worth doing on my new steed.

£14 was as cheap as I could find a Neoguard (including postage). Certain desirable niche products very rarely come up on eBay, but a Neoguard was on there the other day. It said it was used but he'd bought the wrong size. So one assumes it's not too tatty. I put a bid in, up to £11+ including postage - I thought maybe a little over the top considering it might turn out to be grubby and used. When I checked later on, after the auction closed, some idiot had bid it right up to inside of £1 from the cost of a new one - blithering idiot! If you happen to read this, mate - every offence is meant - you're dumb! You've taken a risk of buying someone's tat for the sake of a few pence.

The nightly ritual!

I'm starting to enjoy this nightly soak!! It started of as a bit of a chore, but it's actually quite therapeutic! Every night I have to soak my bad leg in salt water and redress it. And along with the antibiotics it seems to be working. The wound's healing now at a rate of knots and the infection looks beat. The hope now is to be back on the bike in time for a reunion weekend with my college pals at the May bank holiday. Then I can take the bike with me (and my pads!!) and do a ride around the Cotswolds. Fingers crossed!!

Random bike routes

MBR threw darts at a map to decide where to ride. Pa!! I was doing that years ago! In fact my method is far more high-tech. I use a spreadsheet to generate random OS grid refs and then I plot a route between them. Once-upon-a-time it was done with a map and pencil. Nowadays, I use a combination of Memory Map (1:50000 OS maps), online 1:25000 maps on the OS website, wheresthepath.co.uk to link aerial photos with OS maps, and GPSies.com or bikely.com.

MBR, I laugh at your feeble attempts! As it happens they ended up with 2 pretty rubbish routes. That can happen, you have to exercise a little pragmatism. It won't work if your start and finish cross a large town or city, etc. Discard such attempts! I've created some quite good routes this way in the past. Think I'll give it whirl again. :)

Hopefully it's a case of it gets worse before it gets better!!

Oozing mess update!

Don't google "debriding wounds" if you have a graze. After several rather shocking minutes in Google Images I resolved to see the Doc in the morning! I'm sure I'm not about to lose my leg to necrotising fasciitis, but I'm not letting this wound go any further, un-checked.

Mental note: Gotta wear pads!!!

Hurts! Ow!! :(

Feeling like I'm as good as recovered, I head for the hills. Part way through a spin around Penhydd, on probably the least difficult bit, Desolation, I came off in in a dazzling display of ineptitude!! And oh boy does it smart now!! The really stupid thing was I didn't put my pads on, they were still strapped to my back. Just to drive the point home, as I hit the deck the pads launched out of my pack, and being tethered to the pack, they swung round and clouted me in the face. Pee'd off!! :(

GPS map fest!

A bit of self indulgence: My Pembrokshire Coastal MTB routes and my Sarn Helen Route (so far):









And one of my Pont-Rhyd-y-Groes routes:

My Cleeve Common Route.

MBR's Doethie Valley route on GPSies

Farewell Bikely.com, long live GPSies.com!

Just discovered this site GPSies.com. Previously I used Bikely.com to post up routes, which was OK. But GPSies is brilliant. Absolutely loaded with features in comparison to Bikely. With Bikely you got the distinct impression that the development had gone as far as they were prepared to take it. MBUK/bikeradar magazine had taken over the site, but development and changes were slow to non-existent. GPSies appears to be streets ahead of Bikely in development terms - I love it!