The basis for riding heaven? So, for those that read my last missive, here is the result of much internet auction site searching in my quest to replicate the unobtainable Santa Cruz dream machine that realigned my Mountain biking expectations last time out. It’s a 2019 Cotic Rocket frameset and this will be the basis …
Category: MTB / Offroad
The Pearl Beyond Price. A Mountain biking Parable For Our Times.
One of the perhaps lesser known Biblical parables is the story of the Merchant and the Pearl often known as The Parable of the pearl beyond price. To heavily paraphrase the verses basically a rich Merchant see’s a beautiful gigantic pearl and is so consumed with the need to possess it he sells everything else …
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In Praise of Natural Trails.
I rode au-natural the other day. Casting off the shackles of my normal riding conventions I set off unburdened and free into the unknown. It was a challenge, it was painful and exhilarating in equal measure and it felt good. Don't worry I did have lycra on. It wasn't that sort of ‘au-natruale’. I’m talking …
A Tale of Two Rides. (Part 1)
It's been a busy couple of days in Declining Cyclist land. One might almost think I was thinking of taking my riding seriously again! Two days running I've put a significant ride in both in and out of doors. I'll give you a quick run down, I know you're all waiting with bated breath and …
The Maiden Voyage of the Little Blue Steed
Well as some may have seen of the book of faces, the new bike in the shed has had its maiden trip out. So whats the verdict? has the whole exercise been a colossal waste of time and money? or have I inadvertently created cycling nirvana? The truth as it usually seems to be is …
I Just Love The Smell Of GT85 In The Mornings…….
In our last gripping instalment your faithful correspondent had offered some half-hearted excuses and tried to explain the rational behind his latest cycling folly. So what did I buy?? Ladies and Gentlepeoples, let me introduce 'Little Blue' This is the eBay picture which instantly caught my roving eye as i scrolled down the endless listings …
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The Hopeless Quest for Cycling Nirvana via eBay and Mindless Optimism
Theres a well-known cycling adage that the formula for the perfect number of bikes for a cyclist to own is n+1 where 'n' equals the number of bikes a rider owns at any given time. The implication that a true cyclist is always thinking about the next bike they're going to buy as they toil …
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Time for a Change……..
Sometimes you just need to mix things up. Take the road less travelled (or in this case the trail less ridden), take a risk, try something new. After all as some random wise man once allegedly said 'variety is the spice of life'. It's all to easy to get into a riding rut. Same …
Guilt and Neglect
Guilt is a very corrosive emotion. It nags and niggles and eats away at you from the inside. Insidious thoughts begin to pervade your waking hours and darken your dreams. Its even worse when the cause of your guilt is based and founded on your own wilful neglect of something that once was so special. Once she was …
My Fat Tyred Addiction
My relationship with cycles with treaded knobbly tyres is a long and complex one. Once way back in the mists of my competitive youth off-road riding meant winter cyclo-cross races held at muddy playing fields or municipal recreation grounds during the road racing off-season. Like many aspiring junior roadies I subjected myself to these bleak windswept afternoons of cycling …
The Declining Cyclist 