http://www.atbsports.co.uk/msgboard/viewtopic.php?p=76818#p76818
Thursday 25 March 2010
Sunday 21 March 2010
New Cheddar Vid, and bad, bad news
ATBA-UK Down Hill Mountainboard Track 2010 from Harry Jessop on Vimeo.
Meanwhile, plonker of the year award goes to me for thinking the ATBA downhill event was around the 20th June and so booked a holiday to the Med jetting off on the 11th Absolutely gutted :(
Wednesday 10 March 2010
Stuff, and things!!
Haven't blogged in a while due to work and things, which is a pity as there's plenty of goings on in the world of mountain boarding.
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...
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...
New MBS Matrix Pro Trucks
Certainly look the business! From the bits and pieces circulating round the 'tinternet, the following comparisons to the bogo standard matix truck can be determined:
1) Top hangers now metal instead of plastic.
2) Kingpin bushings instead of bearings.
3) Extra spring compression.
4) No inner spring location.
The repercussion of this are as follows (in my opinion!)
1) Plastic hangers tend to break. This is okay because they are cheap to replace (~£8-9). Question is, will an all metal truck bend in a heavy collision, and if so, what will be the cost of replacement parts? The forum says that so far a truck has yet to bend....*
2) Sounds good to me! At present we have a couple of bearings per truck that move a maximum of 120 degrees. Scrapping this system should lead to a lighter, simpler truck which should be easier to maintain. Further info on the bushings can be found here.
3) No more matrix/trampa dampa combinations! Sounds as though standard egg shocks should fit in nicely without having to screw down just to keep everything in place. Is this a good thing? Pfff, I don't know! Perhaps someone cleverer than me will comment below with something on progressive turning or something...
4) ...Just like the matrix lites then. I know that some people do ride with the spring in the inner location, but meh!
Sounds good. Only question is are they £150 good? (Assuming £75 is the price for each of them). Visit ATBSports here and find out....
Alternatively, information direct from MBS can be found here.
Then it's just a matter of choosing black, silver or gold.
Edit 27 April 10: MBS Metal top hangers will be available from ATBSports here for £15.
Monday 1 March 2010
Cannock Chase, the official write-up...and more!
It seems to be these days that if you throw enough boarders together in one spot, that at least one of them will publish an on-line a write-up, pictures, a blog post, a forum post or facebook comment detailing all of the fun that took place that day.
After last months visit to Cannock chase, I did a quick write up of the event, but don't take my word for it - now Smilie has done the same but with more content, more pictures and with the bonus of an extra weekends write-up for the meet in Bradenham - sounds an excellent day was had by all. Read all about it here on the excellent Remolition website.
In other news, for those curious in regards to this years ATBA downhill event, the route is now to be found on Roger S' most excellent mountainboard trails map. Hint, it's near to Cheddar. If you're in the vicinity you can probably help out by clearing some of the alternative lines out prior to the event.
New blog of the week: Dirt doesn't Melt! - Original art and videos taken in the Derby area in the more popular areas used by mountain boarders.
After last months visit to Cannock chase, I did a quick write up of the event, but don't take my word for it - now Smilie has done the same but with more content, more pictures and with the bonus of an extra weekends write-up for the meet in Bradenham - sounds an excellent day was had by all. Read all about it here on the excellent Remolition website.
In other news, for those curious in regards to this years ATBA downhill event, the route is now to be found on Roger S' most excellent mountainboard trails map. Hint, it's near to Cheddar. If you're in the vicinity you can probably help out by clearing some of the alternative lines out prior to the event.
New blog of the week: Dirt doesn't Melt! - Original art and videos taken in the Derby area in the more popular areas used by mountain boarders.
If you go down to the (Allestree) woods today....take a saw
Good session Sunday morning. Really quite slippery - the kind where when walking back up the track you can see the exact point where tyre marks turn into arse marks, but not surprising given the recent wet weather. Top of the hill ran the quickest due to better drainage and with the predicted bad weekend weather there weren't too many dog walkers. Unfortunately, recent winds seem to have blown over a few trees here and there including one across one of the main woodlands downhill tracks.
Fortunately, it was the upper end of the tree but it will still take cutting through around three 9 inch trunks and a load of shifting to clear, or at the very least a whole load of smaller branches to chop back so as to not get snagged on when bunny hopping the larger parts. I'm hopeful that with a load of recent ranger development in the area that one of them will cut it down into manageable parts sometime soon, but since there has been signs going up around the top discouraging people from leaving the main paths, perhaps they will leave it alone.....Hence the need for a saw!
An upshot of all this was the new requirement to take a couple of slower, but more technical lines around the edge, which with the amount of woodland foliage led to some lovely deep drifting carves and as an alternative was arguably is more fun to that of the (would be quick but actually slow this time of year) line straight through the centre.
Still got a couple of runs in mind that I think will be running great given a bit of time and sunny weather, but in the meantime you've got to make the best of what you've got, and thankfully it's all good stuff.
Fortunately, it was the upper end of the tree but it will still take cutting through around three 9 inch trunks and a load of shifting to clear, or at the very least a whole load of smaller branches to chop back so as to not get snagged on when bunny hopping the larger parts. I'm hopeful that with a load of recent ranger development in the area that one of them will cut it down into manageable parts sometime soon, but since there has been signs going up around the top discouraging people from leaving the main paths, perhaps they will leave it alone.....Hence the need for a saw!
An upshot of all this was the new requirement to take a couple of slower, but more technical lines around the edge, which with the amount of woodland foliage led to some lovely deep drifting carves and as an alternative was arguably is more fun to that of the (would be quick but actually slow this time of year) line straight through the centre.
Still got a couple of runs in mind that I think will be running great given a bit of time and sunny weather, but in the meantime you've got to make the best of what you've got, and thankfully it's all good stuff.
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