There often comes a tipping point in our relationships. Sometimes you just know deep down that things just haven’t been right between you for awhile, and then it just takes a little nudge to plunge that interpersonal dynamic in full blown crisis mode. Questions abound, chasing each other around in an endless and remorseless loop inside your head ….. can we fix this? is it worth fixing? and do I even really want to try?

Then as you grapple with the emotional costs and implications of it all the practical world tugs at your elbow for attention – what will it cost me to start all over again? can I afford it? can I even face getting back out there and going through all the stress of looking for a new partner? what if after all the fuss and cost things end up no better? or even worse!? maybe I should just stick with things as they are?

There’s so many questions in those first two paragraphs I’ve given myself a tension headache just reading them back, and I don’t know the answer to any of them, the only upside of this unfortunate situation is that the other half of my failing partnership can neither talk back or pull faces at me, she’s just sitting disconsolately in my garage clamped reproachfully into my workstand.

In my case the crisis point was reached seconds after the chain abruptly snapping on a steep rocky climb which resulted in vulnerable parts of my multiplication equipment having an unscheduled and painful coming together with my handlebar stem. Harsh words were definitely shouted into the Welsh sky. An expensive steel framed bike may also have been unceremoniously flung across the trail which resulted in some accidental paint removal. Discovering the Quick-Link I was sure was in my backpack pocket was in fact nowhere to be found may also have resulted in more loud expletives and possibly kicking a handy tree stump.

So were did my relationship with my 2019 Cotic Rocket MTB go wrong? How have we gone from the proud pictures of the shiny new steed I was posting only a couple of years ago on social media to my fingers hoovering over the ‘list it now’ button on a hastily written FaceBook Marketplace post?

I think the root of the problem goes all the way back to the start, in fact things have never been quite right between us. You see the Cotic wasn’t the bike I really wanted, but it was the bike that I could afford. Now I’ve admitted that to myself I can see that any relationship which you enter into lusting for something else that’s tantalisingly out of reach is fated to struggle. It took just one sunny days riding on a borrowed bike as the world emerged from the Covid bubble in the late summer of 2020 to fix in my mind a seemingly unobtainable dream of mountain biking perfection (or as close as my riding skills would let me get)

This was the bike that turned my head that fateful day, a Santa Cruz Bronson which rode so well and was so capable it prompted me to sell my faithful Lapierre Zesty and liquidise enough assets to pursue my 27.5′ wheeled 150mm travel Enduro bike dreams. I’m not going to re-hash my adulation for this bike but if you want to read about how it captured my heart here’s a link to the post : https://thedecliningcyclist.wordpress.com/2020/09/21/the-pearl-beyond-price-a-mountain-biking-parable-for-our-times/

In fact looking back to the articles which covered the acquisition and build up of the Cotic Rocket (links below) show pretty conclusively that I was fully aware of the looming trap into which I’ve subsequently fallen. https://thedecliningcyclist.wordpress.com/2020/09/28/new-bike-new-fears/

So what to do? continue pining away for an unobtainable bike I still can’t afford while at the same time blaming my currently under appreciated and underused bike for the less than stellar experience I have on the rare occasions I actually ride it? No, I’m going to make a proper effort to repair our fractured relationship. I’m not ready to give up on my very orange riding partner just yet. I think I’ve already made the first and probably most important step, I’ve accepted that its mostly my fault and not the bikes. Take the last ride that ended prematurely with the bike being chucked into a bush with a broken chain and my voice being temporarily raised a couple of octaves. At the point the chain snapped I had in fact already aborted my ride and was taking a short cut back to the Trail Centre because the braking performance had dropped of the proverbial cliff at the bottom of the first descent. Once I’d got back to the Trail Centre café /shop and had been relieved of enough money to make me wince in exchange for a new chain and a couple of sets of brake pads, (I call this the Bike Park Shop Tax – they know you have no other option on the day so can charge pretty much what they want) the reason for the woeful braking performance was revealed, here’s exhibit A :-

The difference in pad size might not look significant, but believe me the uptick in performance when you have the right pads fitted in your calliper’s is pretty significant. And who had managed somehow to fit completely the wrong pads to his bike? because he was rushing his pre-ride checks the night before and didn’t check properly what he’d found at the back of his spares box? well this little snafu certainly wasn’t the bikes fault.

Likewise the chain snapping can happen anytime, and again was probably mostly down to my sporadic maintenance regime more than anything else, blaming the bike and chucking it in a bush might have been a bit of an over reaction.

Moving forward I’m going to do my very best to make things right, this bike deserves a better chance than I’ve been giving it. I’m going to start by showing it some love, and it’s past time to address some of the component choice compromises I made when the bike was first built. The rear shock was always a weak point as funds were pretty tight at the time and lets just say the shock that’s currently fitted is both very basic and very well used, so that’s ripe for an upgrade. Likewise the Rockshox Pike fork is well overdue a service which will hopefully restore it’s suppleness. A full strip down to a bare frame and a rebuild with all new cables is going to happen because the mystery clunking noise which has annoyed me every ride is going to be found and finally eliminated for good. I’m not fully convinced by the Box Components transmission that I fitted a few months ago but I’ll treat it to some new cables and a more careful setup and we’ll see how it goes. After being seduced by the wider is better internet propaganda a ridiculously wide riser bar has been fitted, I’m going to swap this out for something a bit narrower with possibly less spacers under the stem to try and get the front end lower and a touch more responsive.

Lastly, and I know I’ve promised this before, but I’m really going to try and ride it much more regularly this winter. The one bright spot of my last riding fiasco was due to the fact I’m about a stone lighter than this time last year and a lot fitter after a decent summer on the road the climbs at the trail centre felt like a comparative breeze. It would be really nice to make use of this extra fitness which should let me concentrate on regaining the confidence I had off road once upon a time.