The Cheddar ATBA-UK Downhill Championship!
...course was visited recently by GM, Mutley and LB4UL. I know this because GM did a sweet write up of the session on the Surfing Dirt forums here. He finishes off the piece to say "So if your not sure if your experienced/skilled enough for a comp why not give it a go - it can only make you a better rider." and sure enough it generated interest through the forum. With any luck, more people will read it and decided to take part and it will end up being rather well attended and we'll be able to have a big old meet-up with members of the forum and put names to faces.
So, that should have been the end of the storey, but was (un)lucky enough to be working in Cardiff last Wednesday, so headed down Tuesday afternoon to have a gander. [I work with heavy testing equipment and Cardiff is not the easiest of places to park so lugging equipment across the city centre is a ball-ache. Otherwise, Cardiff is a lovely place!]
After wandering round the rough area and finding lines all over the place I knew that I was going to need more specific directions. Phoned LB4UL for assistance who is fortunately very good at giving directions! In addition to this, there are very specific land marks at the start, midpoint and end of the course so at least I knew that I was in the right area.
Whilst 'leaping before you look' is a good idea when in a group, I was up on this hill alone and didn't fancy dragging myself back to the car in case of an accident. I also didn't think that an ambulance man would be very quick, so put my sensible hat on and walked the track.
All looked reasonable with many different line choices. Not too steep, but as GM stated in his report, running fast enough with tree packed together densely enough to certainly keep things interesting!
So back then back to the car to grab the gear and humping back up the hill to the start. Only started strapping in to find that I'd forgotten an allen key and I'm in the habit of lossening off the springs at the end of each session. 'Hey, it'll do me good to practice riding loose trucks', I think.
That's the really bad decision of the day as I don't go far before hearing the front truck dissemble. Luckily all the bits were found and it was straight back down to the car, quick truck reassemble (with allen key this time!), and ascended back to the top just in time to see the sun setting.....
I promised myself that if I could make it from top to bottom without unstrapping, then I'd enter the comp. Well, it wasn't pretty, but got to the bottom, riding each part in sections in a combination of falling leaf and 'sod it, lets ride and see what happen' with just enough time to ride the bottom steep section in the last of the light.
Yes it's a technical course, but it is certainly ridable and I too encourage anyone with a board to take part. If nothing else, I think watching some of the top riders tackling this course at full pelt will be something spectacular to see.
Mountain Boarding on Radio 2
Woke up last week to a mysterious text that read "Mountainboarding on BBC Radio 2 today at 6.45pm."
An explanation and most excellent write up of the whole matter can be read on the Remolition Blog here.
All I can say is most excellent choice of tune!
New MBS Matrix Pro Trucks
...was just going to be a couple of lines and a picture, and then got a bit longer. Read all about it here.
General Riding
As 'original artwork' seems to be the in thing right now, erm...
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