54. CAN YOU DIG IT?

It's stereotyping is what it is.

See, at some point or another, if you ride your bike enough, you end up having to replace the rubber bits that go round and round on the outside of your wheels. And I think it's a sad indicator of the preconceptions of some bike shop proprietors that a man of my age and, cough, dimensions, fronts up for some new tyres and the default response is - 'That'll be for cross country right?'

Nice and safe that cross country riding. Maybe you'd like some extra gears so you can your fat arse up those nasty hills.

I'm being too harsh.

As scenic as the views frequently are, I have found that there is a limit to how many times I can ride up and down the local fire trails without it becoming a whole bucket load of boring. The whole reason I went for a mountain bike (as opposed to a road bike) was that long hours in the saddle grinding out the kilometres was not particularly attractive to me. Apart from anything else my arse just won't tolerate more than about 30kms before expressing it's displeasure in very colorful language indeed.

Which is why I've started throwing the bike in the back of the car and driving down to Ourimbah where some very nice people have spent what must have been a shit load of time and money building trails specifically to make things more interesting.

And why I've started digging these...

....up behind the chook sheds.

I figure if I twist and turn enough there's enough room up here to build a track for at least a couple of hundred metres. More, if I decide to get stupid and run it down to the main driveway. More still if it goes down to the dam and up the other side.

As a bonus - I'll save a lot on petrol when compared to the 60 km trip to Ourimbah and digging up dirt provides for a shockingly effective cardio session. Hell of a lot easier getting it all to hang together since the rain we got a few weeks ago made the dirt a bit more pliable as well.

Might hold off on throwing in too many jumps just yet. It's still a long way to the nearest hospital.

53. UPGRADES!

What is it? 4 weeks and bits are already falling off?

Pfft to the very suggestion. This is in fact my recently removed front chainring which, after several rides (and then a few more just to make sure....and then a couple after that while I waited for the new chainring to arrive in the mail) I decided to swap for one with 2 more teeth.

What does that get me exactly (besides an excuse to get another package in the mail)? It gets me slightly more speed when combined with the smallest ring on the back wheel (generally on downhill or flattish bits) with a corresponding hit to the Granniness of my Granny gear (the really low gear that is being employed by the rider you see going up a hill very slowly while spinning his or her legs very quickly).

The new one looks like this....

It's a Renthal....which is just massively credible....trust me. So far I'm liking the change and haven't yet felt the need for a gear lower than that still available to me with this set-up, though I have been studiously avoiding some of the more ridiculous hills available to me in the local area (hills mind you, I couldn't grind up with any of the 21 gears available to me on the Mongoose so just DON'T JUDGE ME ALRIGHT!).

Also - It is significantly harder to keep the front wheel on the deck when climbing up steep hills due to the shorter backend and higher front end aaaaand it came to my attention that I had not routed the front brake cable correctly...

....running the cable on the outside of the fork (picture A) is incorrect. Snaking it around the back (picture B) is in fact the correct method.

Which is why I changed it.

You should all take note of this for reference in the construction of your own bicycles.

Carry on.

52. ONE BIKE. MOUNTAIN IN SHAPE. ENTIRELY OPERABLE.

Looking back through my emails I notice that the one from Dan at Stanton Bikes (excellent man - fantastic service - what a bunch of legends) notifying me of the shipping of the frame (described by him as a 'pink little girls bike') around which this is built, is dated April 18.

Now, 5 months later, give or take few days - here is the finished item (barring possible future additions and/or adjustments to handlebars, saddle, suspension travel, grocery basket etc).

I'm not one to big note myself in any way but seriously, how smart am I.

I'm even fairly confident, having gone for a couple of rides on the thing, that all the bits that are supposed to be on it are 1. Actually on it and 2. Won't be falling off it.

See. Very attractive.

From the other side - still bloody attractive. Note the state of the art, hand carved, black wattle side stand - fashionable as, that is.

Here's a few observations.

FULL SUSPENSION?
This doesn't have it. Full suspension is pretty much standard for bikes of a certain price point/component level into which I would have say this bike fits. I stand by my decision on the grounds that there is a lot less to go wrong with this, I was able to put the extra dollars into other components and frankly I like the clean look of this bike, which I may have previously described as 'bloody attractive'.

ONLY 10 GEARS? REALLY?
I was a bit nervous about this decision as most of the online discussion about 1x10 drivetrains inevitably include a suggestion that you must be a high performance athlete with legs of steel and the aerobic capacity of a marathon running Kenyan tribesman to deprive yourself of all the super low gears made available to you by the inclusion of 2 or 3 chainrings up front.

Anyone who has seen more of my body than that revealed by my Facebook profile shot will be aware I am neither high performance or Kenyan. I do have quite strong legs however and from my experience so far I've got to say I haven't felt the need for a gear lower than the ones provided by this set-up. I am even thinking I might need a bigger ring on the front to give me more speed at the other end of the range. That might make a difference at the granny gear end I guess.

Worse case scenario - I get subject matter for another post a few weeks down the track lamenting my poor hill climbing ability related to disastrous component choice in which case - everyone's a WINNER!

BETTER OR WORSE THAN THE MONGOOSE?
Just riding down the driveway I can't help but notice several things..

1. A distinct lack of rattling noises.
2. A distinct lack of bone jarring impacts.
3. A really quite amazing ability to steer in a straight line over ground I would have rated as quite challenging 3 weeks ago.

...add to this the fact that when I operate the gear or brake lever the function controlled by that lever occurs instantly and with almost no effort on my part PLUS a riding position that is not unlike cruising around in an armchair compared to that of the Mongoose and I would have to say - Yes. This IS a better bike than the Mongoose.

More pictures? Certainly...

This is what I am talking about when I say 'drivetrain'. So neat. So entirely unclogged up with 17 years of filthy greasy mess....

And this is one of the reasons I went with less gears. In my early 'just bloody buy a bike from the shop you idiot' phase I looked at one or two that had 6 or 7 cables running off their bars (what with the front mech, remote shock lock out, remote seat dropper)....I have 3. So much neater. So much more stylish. So much more space for a nice cane basket I can put the shopping in....

51. BREAKING NEWS - MATT FINISHES SOMETHING HE STARTED....

I was going to be so detailed with the whole bike build thing. Here's the nut going into the thread from 6 views and download the video HERE! kind of thing but really - it all just got away from me a bit.

But here's the abbreviated version in pictures...

It's hard to come back from hacksawing your steerer post if you f**k it up. Happily it all went swimmingly (once I'd done some judicious filing). Straight as a die it was. 

That's the rear brake disc skillfully bolted in place on the back hub. The bleeding finger on the right is what happens when you don't pay attention whilst spinning the front disc around and around trying to fit the pads properly. You could slice ham with one of those babies. I really hope human juice doesn't contaminate brake pads like just about every other f**king thing apparently does.

Whilst it is very handy indeed being able to buy brakes with all the cables and levers already attached and fully bled, it was pretty clear once I had bolted them on that the cable was too long.....by quite a bit really. I suppose I could have looped it around my leg to keep me on the bike or something.....I chose to cut it shorter instead.

Totally didn't screw it up thanks again to the sterling educational resource that is the internet. Swear to God you could find clear and concise instructions on sewing your own freaking arm back on if you knew where to look....and could type with your non severed arm.

That red thing attached to my seatpost is a quick release clamp. It allows you to quickly adjust the seat height for maximum effectiveness in the rapid descending of hills (down low) or peddling efficiency (up high). Well it does if you put it on around the right way.

If on the other hand you put it on backwards like I did, it allows the seatpost to slowly slide down underneath you while you ride no matter how loudly you swear at it or how tight you screw the little bolt up. Only did it for week though and I fully managed to pick up on my error BEFORE spending more cash on another clamp that would have been just as useless if applied in the same way. Moron.

COMING UP NEXT: The finished item. Pictures. Lessons learned. I am a genius.

50. 2013 WOLLOMBI WILD RIDE 'RACE' REPORT

Last Saturday at 0915 I lined up for the start of the 2013 Wollombi Wild Ride (30 km version).

It was my very first bicycle race - not counting several impromptu sprint events between me and the State Rail timetable in the days when making it to Berowra station by 0800 was the difference between attendance at my first 2 lectures or an hour and a half spent in Berowra's less then stimulating central 'business' district.

I should point out here that the race was not so much against the very many quite fit and outstandingly well equipped riders that made up the 500 strong field, but more against the triple threat of my own fitness, the ability of the Mongoose to continue changing into a useful gear once wet and of course the need for my body to lie down and go to sleep after the night shift I had worked immediately prior to the event.

While I know for a fact I wasn't the oldest rider on the course by a long way, I'm pretty sure the Mongoose was close to the oldest ride, evidenced by numerous comments along the lines of 'You did the ride on that bike. Hey well done man' (and thank you SO MUCH for your pity). 

Couldn't really be helped though due to the late arrival of the final component I needed to finish the new bike. Honestly - I reckon I would of done it on the Mongoose regardless, just to give it an honourable and well deserved last hurrah for it's loyal service.

UPSIDES
I did indeed finish, in 1 hour 35 minutes and 57 seconds according to the little timing tag I had velcroed to my left ankle, and I was pretty happy with that. Plenty of people in front of me of course, but more than a few behind and I even overtook a couple of people on the run home.

Also - I totally didn't die while pushing my bike up the really quite absurdly steep hills.

DOWNSIDES
Aside from the photographers on the course whose photos of me made it pretty clear I have a fair amount of work left to do in the protruding gut department (I unfortunately can't post any of these photos as I 'accidentally' deleted the link to them from my inbox....and unleashed a virus into the web that should by now have deleted them and all websites on which they reside....and had the photographer and all his minions quietly disposed of...), none that I can think of.

All in all it was a thoroughly worthwhile way to spend a couple of hours on a Saturday morning.

Two things I reckon I'd address if I did it again:

1. I might consider not working the night before, not so much for the race (the effort of propelling a bike all over the place focusses the mind quite nicely indeed) but I suspect my conversational ability come Saturday afternoon was somewhat deficient.

2. The weight of my bike could do with some adjustment. And here I am at an advantage - because while all those carbon equipped lunatics that finished the 60km race in 20 to 30 minutes more than it took me to ride half that distance have to shell out hundreds of dollars to save 3 grams by switching to kevlar shoelaces, I reckon I can dump 20 kilos by drinking slightly less beer and leaving that brownie on the Trading Post's counter next time I'm in getting 'milk'......

All hail the mightly Mongoose. Official race number in place. Disc brakes. Clipless pedals. More than 60mm of suspension - These are for the WEAK (I'm talking to you Arthur).

49. WELL. THAT WAS LAZY.

Oops. Where does the time go. 

I have been lazy. I have some excuses. I let this blog lapse terribly while I was finishing off the 100 Drawings in 100 Days on account of the terrible burden that little act of craziness placed on my normally unquenchable creativity.....My car broke (see previous entry for a full(ish) account of my mechanical ineptitude)....I had to.....do the washing? And paint stuff....

So. Not good excuses to be sure. But still.

At least I have been actually riding. And the other day I pulled the rear cassette on the Mongoose apart and scrubbed off all the crap that had built up on it over the last 15 years. While I'm not totally sure it rides any quieter or more smoothly for that, it at least looks better.

I even lugged that heavy bastard up over the hill behind the house and rode out to my daughter's school down some really quite steep hills before the heavens let loose and drenched me and her in the middle of soccer training so that was pretty hardcore and dedicated. 

Didn't even mind getting wet for the handy excuse it provided to consume a hot chocolate at the very hospitable Great Northern Trading Post while we waited for Sandy to come and pick us up. I find the deliciousness of hot chocolate is directly related to how cold and uncomfortable you are when you drink it and frankly, that's about as close as I'm going to get to feeling like I'm at the snow for a while so it was all good. 

Right now it's really quite early in the morning and I'm looking at a shopping cart (an electronic shopping cart of course...a real one would be silly) full of the last bits I need for the Slackline. Brakes, discs, shifter, rear derailleur (more or less all the bits with cables attached to them) and a chain. And I'm finding it very hard to pull the trigger on it. Which is just bizarre considering some of the things I've ordered from the internet at 3 in the morning. 

I guess it might have something to do with the fact that this comparatively small package of bits costs more than I would pay for the bike I was checking out for my 7 year old the other day (I have an idea that I would like to use our sudden lack of vehicle as an excuse to start riding to school with her. And that's not going to happen on her pink chunk of iron with 16 inch wheels, 2cm cranks and a basket attached to it).

Screw it. 

I'm pressing the buy button......

Crap.

Maybe tomorrow.

48. DEATH BY NEGLECT.

I killed our car. The second car that is. The one we used to do little things like take our child to be educated, shop for food to continue living and take the occasional holiday.

Don't need to worry about that last one anymore since we won't be taking any holidays in the near future on account of I killed our car and replacing dead cars is shockingly expensive.

How did I kill our car?

By completely failing to replace the oil that has been leaking out of it for the last 6 months is how. I'm not even going to try and defend myself. As I said to my wife after meeting her on the side of the road where she had been sitting for 3 hours after the engine seized up - 'I don't know what I was thinking....'

On the bright side - I'm not going to be short of opportunities to exercise for a while since a whole lot of the things we used to do in the now deceased car will have to be done on foot or bike.

In fact I have no doubt when my daughter is climbing the steps to receive her Olympic Gold medal in whatever it is she will be looking back to this time as the start of her long rise to athletic excellence.

See. Bright side.

I would now like to take the opportunity to warn readers of an approaching expletive. 

I am. 

A fucking. 

Idiot.

47. JUST GOING FOR A RIDE........maybe not.

So it's been two weeks now since I've ridden my bike in anger thanks entirely to the great hijacker of personal time that is the 7 year old's school holidays. 

I did manage a couple of hours at daughter speed along the Newcastle waterfront last week and while a year ago that would have had me sucking in oxygen like a stranded whale, now that I am a finely tuned athlete it's hardly the kind of pace that's going to get my heart rate above resting unless I did the whole thing with my brakes on while peddling with one leg and bunny hopping every 5 metres. And I'm shit at bunny hopping.

We did see a pod of dolphins off the breakwater which was pretty excellent. 

This country is awesome.

It has made me think though. How the hell is anyone supposed to get the time to exercise these days. I'm not so much complaining for me - I don't get to complain given my current situation work wise (in fact if you catch me complaining you should well and truly deliver a swift kick to whatever part of me is available and most likely to cause me maximum discomfort) - but seriously. 

When I was working morning shifts I listened to a lot of radio in the car during the 0530 - 0630 bracket so I got to hear the daily litany of traffic chaos on Sydney's main roads. Putting aside the sense of smug satisfaction it gave me (it's a long way to anything from our house but at least there's no traffic), it clearly demonstrated the sheer number of people that start work at that ridiculous hour of the day who presumably don't return home until after 5 or 6pm at night no doubt entirely shagged.

My wife is in the same boat. Out at 0530 and back at 5pm arse busted.

The way we work these days seems almost deliberately designed to ensure we don't have the energy to escape the grasp of our corporate overlords even if we didn't all have 30 year mortgages to ensure our ongoing compliance.

When I finally made the effort to be slightly less morbidly obese last year, I at least had the advantage of shift work which gave me a significant number of daylight hours in which to walk or ride or carry big logs up and down hills. 

Here's a thought. Instead of attempting to eliminate all physical activity from the work place lest the employer get sued because I hurt my back or sprained my dainty wrist, maybe it should become accepted that making it possible to get more physically fit (possibly, dare I say it, even during work hours) is an actual priority in the workplace. And maybe that should cut both ways. 

If, just say, I was employed in a job that required me to occasionally restrain a person and then hold that person for a period while one of my workmates went to draw up the injections, MAYBE my employer should devote more time to my readiness for this than to tell me how to lift boxes during the annual mandatory manual handling workshop. And MAYBE I shouldn't be able to work in this area if I wasn't willing to utilise whatever time my employer gave me to prepare myself properly.

I'm game if they are.

46. LOOKING LIKE AN ACTUAL BIKE.

In large part for my own benefit...

Behold the no speed, chainless, seatless, air in tyreless Thomas Slackline (2013).

Morale was getting low, so last week I put all the bits I have so far collected together, to form a shape that is, apart from being entirely unrideable, not entirely dissimilar to an actual rideable bike. Very attractive I think.

Missing from this picture are the chain, cassette, inner tubes (hence the rather flat appearance of both tyres), brakes and rear shifter (don't need a front shifter as I plan to have nothing to shift up the front - a decision I might live to regret were I not a finely tuned athlete with legs of steel and no need of the lower end gears that are merely a crutch for the weak and powerless), plus of course anything to sit on. Though all the hip and crazy youth don't seem that committed to having usable seats on their hip and crazy bikes anyway so maybe I just don't worry about that.

It's no co-incidence that all the missing bits are the most complicated bits to attach, as these are the parts most likely to expose me as a complete fraud in the bike building stakes. 

You will know when I have ordered and attempted the installation of these mechanisms when this Blog goes offline for about 3 weeks and then returns as a cutting edge political comment Blog (with a slight lean to the left of centre) that doesn't mention cycling at all except to trumpet the professionalism and service of whatever bike mechanic I end up paying to put it all together (once I regather the bits I throw off my balcony and into the surrounding bushland).

An alternative to that option is almost identical, except the break will be 6 weeks and the new Blog will be focused on the shortcomings of the health system of which I will have been a client after horrendously crashing what I THOUGHT was a fully assembled bike when everything I have attached to it becomes DEtached the first time I ride it in anger.

Fingers crossed for option 1.

45. SEE WHAT I'M DEALING WITH HERE...

See what I'm dealing with here? That's the thorn I found sticking through the tyre of my daughter's bike last week. She'd actually ridden around on it for a good couple of days while her tyre slowly deflated because it had so cleanly punctured it that it was sitting through the tyre and into her inner tube neatly enough that the leak was nearly sealed around it.

Not so neatly that it didn't deflate at the time most inconvenient to us of course. 

And it's not a puny tyre. No kevlar or genetically engineered spiders faeces or anything like some of the kit you can get these days but still - very annoying.  

I haven't had a puncture like this since I swapped out my normal inner tubes for thorn resistant ones last year some time, but it does make me reconsider the whole idea of going tubeless on the new bike.

Tubeless tyres are one of the many MANY innovations that seem to have poured into cycling in the 15 or so years since I last purchased a bicycle. It's one of those things that gets referred to in the cycling press in such a way as to make me feel like a total caveman for not having done it years ago (like dual suspension and owning a frame that has been tested thoroughly by NASA on the International Space Station). 

What you do (after making sure your rims and tyres are fully compatible of course) is pour some liquid sealant into your tubes, inflate the tyres rapidly enough so that they seat themselves properly in the rims (requiring of course some kind of motorised pump and special valves) and then slosh the sealant around inside the now inflated tyre until it's filled up all the gaps. 

Assuming all this has gone well, the still liquid sealant then fills any small punctures that arise during use of the bike, theoretically removing the threat of punctures from your world forever. 

Brilliant.

I hate this stuff. 

Why?

Because despite the fact that it sounds like a great idea that has been proven to work pretty well by the aforementioned mountain biking astronauts, I will almost certainly NOT be doing this to my bike and the main reason is embarrassingly obvious...

I am, in fact, a caveman.

44. INSERT CUP A INTO STEM B

Well it’s raining again. Mind you it’s been raining all week and then some in the big city (Sydney not Cessnock) so for a change they’re all up to their necks in water and I get to look confused when I hear about it instead of the other way around. So I can’t complain too much right?

Does mean I haven’t been able to get out for a ride as much as I would like to, and by that I mean absolutely bloody well need to, lest all the good work I've done turning my soft and spindly legs into storehouses of barely contained raw power just waiting to be unleashed in athletic endeavour, go to tragic waste. 

I suspect this enforced inactivity may have contributed to my criminal lack of motivation in the whole ride a bike, blog about riding a bike sphere. I realise I haven’t written anything on this blog since my rather random ranting of last week so shame on me for letting down my loyal readership........all 7 or 8 of you.

In an effort to kick my arse out of this shameful slackness I bit the bullet and actually put some stuff on the bike today.

To be more precise I used the thingy marked ‘A’ instead of the considerably more expensive thingy marked ‘B’....

 to put these thingy’s (which when put all together are known as a 'headset')..

...by means of the process pictured on the left in the picture below to end up with an installed headset as pictured on the right in the picture below...

All clear?

And besides one or two dodgy moments when I thought I had jammed the silly thing in sideways and would have to cut it all out with a hacksaw or something (remedied via the judicial application of the my state of the art wacking hammer), it all went very smoothly.

Brilliant.

43. IN DEFENCE OF OPTIMISM.

Be honest with yourself. Doesn't it make it just a little bit easier to sit around in comfort when you hold the opinion that nothing you do will make any difference anyway.

Is it a co-incidence that the societies that tend to think this way, which is to say any culture that has successfully invented the talk back radio show, are also the ones that have it pretty good right where they are?

It's no use coming up with alternate forms of energy - those other bastards won't do anything and we'll all get done over.

No point paying taxes - our dirtbag politicians will just waste it all anyway.

Screw doing anything about the ongoing obscenity that is large chunks of Africa - THEIR dirtbag politicians will just steal it all, turn it into bombs and send it back to us strapped to some boat person.

Do you reckon the farmer who gets up every day in some country where they wouldn't know what to do with a triple soy latte if one landed in their laps, to tend the 13 cows that are the life of not just him but his or her entire family, can afford to think like that?

For that matter, do you think those struggling up the Kokoda Track, or carving a living out of the Australian bush or insert whatever other noble endeavor you like at this point, had the luxury of thinking 'Ah f**k it all, what's the point it's all going to end up being wrecked by some other incompetent anyway'.

The hell they could.

We can of course. Because if we do nothing we still get to have our TV's and our cars and our lattes (yes I am aware that the use of the latte to illustrate 1st world hubris is a tired and much beaten about cliche) and our 2 thousand dollar mountain bikes. 

At least until the guy with 13 cows notices we have all this stuff and seem to be taking no action whatsoever to try and maybe cut him and his family in on the action and decides maybe he and his mates should do something about that....

Or...

Maybe we stop making the excuse that someone else is going to put all our good work to the sword and demand that they don't. Instead of asking our Politicians over and OVER what the price of a litre of milk is or whether they got pissed in university or whatever. Instead of demanding they adopt position B instead of position A over and OVER and then calling them back flippers entirely lacking a moral backbone when they do exactly that. Instead of that, maybe we could make the assumption that most of them didn't get into politics with the specific aim of screwing us all over and get them to accomplish a few things. 

Maybe we adopt the attitude of all those people from our past that we profess to worship and make the decision that a bit of sacrifice today is a small price to pay for the entirely self serving opportunity to look back in 30 years and say as a generation....

'We built that. Now say nice things about us on your radio show.'

42. GEEZ. WHERE DID THAT WEEK GO?

Oops.

Skip one blog and then another and all of a sudden it's next week. Crap.

Ok then. I'm probably going to back off on the 3 times a week posting for a little bit while I continue to churn through the award winning, intellectually invigorating and massively entertaining 100 Days of Drawing Challenge. 

Looking at the number of times each of my recent posts has been viewed, even if I get a 100% hit rate on self harming directly related to this news that shouldn't keep our health system jammed up for longer than a few minutes...even better if a couple of those people are in another country (though if you're in the States please make sure your insurance is all paid up).

......just to be sure - please don't self harm. It's not funny or clever.

Might take a break for this post from the whole cycling thing just to raise a couple of things I wish happened last week that didn't.

1. I wish Julia Gillard had smacked Howard Sattler in the face. For that matter, she could do a lot worse electorally speaking than book herself onto all of the programs that choose to operate with his particular style (I'm thinking Alan Jones, Andrew Bolt, possibly Ray Hadley if he still has a show...) and haul off on all of them. I'm sure she wouldn't have to wait long for what most courts in the land would consider just cause. Probably wouldn't even have to sit down in the case of Alan Jones before he'd something ludicrous.

2. I wish Joel Madden had fronted the media to bring to their attention the absurdity of running the news that he - the heavily tattooed rock star famous for being a....heavily tattooed rock star - had been caught with grass in his hotel room.

This reminds me of the time that snowboarder at the Olympics got  caught with marijuana in his urine. Ooh. A snowboarder. That smokes grass. Shocking.

I also wish I'd stubbed my toe on a huge gold nugget while feeding the chooks. But that's probably pushing it.

41. ATTACHING SOME BITS

Behold the attached whirly bits.

If you could use your mind to stick some pedals on the end of those cranks that would be good (I left them off on account of it being more convenient that way when I go to add all the other stuff I'm ordering next). Take my word for it - everything went into the holes they were supposed to and everything spins, or alternatively does not spin, as it is designed to.

So I'm pretty happy with myself. Of course I haven't actually done anything remotely bike like on it yet due to the fact that it, well, isn't remotely bike like, but I am confident.

and here's another view...

I decided to go for just the top part of the chain guide (which is almost certainly going to need some further adjustment once I get around to running a chain through it) on the grounds that 1. I am not a World Cup winning downhill race lunatic and 2. As previously mentioned - I can always attach it later on if I need to.

Next up is quite the shipment. Wheels, forks, headsets, stem and handlebars. Or if you want to be technical about it - the round rolly things and the steering whatsits. Preliminary YouTube research suggested I would need to invest in some fairly complicated and not exactly inexpensive tools to go along with those purchases in order to fit them in a manner considered safe and professional. Secondary YouTube research however suggests I can do the same job with some plastic pipe, threaded rod, two nuts and some blocks of wood.

So I'm going to go with the cheap option for starters, at least to the point where I'm absolutely certain carrying on in that manner will entirely fuck my nice new bicycle. It's all about the confidence right? As I'm sure I will find out when I finally get to the point where I have to cut a chunk of the steerer off my new $400 forks with a hacksaw (or possibly a pipe cutter). 

Measure 16 times. Cut once.

40. STUPID ELITE SPORT NANCY BOYS....

I was watching the Giro d’Italia (which as far as I can tell is Italian for Tour De France) on SBS the other day, mainly because it immediately precedes the excellent and very much underrated Ninja Warrior, and there was footage of one of the lead riders whose bike had had a ‘mechanical’ (which as far as I can tell is Normal Person for ‘busted’).

I was faintly amused I have to say, by the little tanty the guy threw on the side of the road in response to his bad luck – he got off his bike, stomped up and down a couple of times, chucked the bike into the bushes and then retrieved it all in very good time – but then I was amazed to see his support car come screaming to a halt behind him.

In response to furious beckoning, one of his crew ran up with A COMPLETELY NEW BIKE, then gave him a nice big push to get going again before cleaning up the riders now discarded bike, hopping back into the car and shooting off in pursuit of his man (presumably in case he needed to get a new pair of underpants 3kms up the road or something).

Now. I am aware of the arguments around this kind of thing at the top level of any sport. It’s all about allowing the athlete to do what he trains to do at the best level he can and the punters don’t pay to see Cadel Evans (it wasn’t Cadel, he’s just the only name I could come up with at 5 o’clock in the morning. Cadel would have fashioned a new tyre from surrounding vegetation, made the change and been back in the lead before this other guy had finished his first stomping dummy spit because he’s a TOP AUSSIE) or whoever sitting on the side of the road/track/oval twiddling his or her thumbs instead of being all elite and shit.

I reckon those arguments are bollocks.

I could go completely off on the whole interchange/replacement thing at this point (and don’t get me started on all the fluoro wearing bastards that get to run around all over the field during Rugby League and AFL games) but let’s just stick to cycling for the moment.

One of the great justifications for the absolutely INSANE levels of money pumped into the top levels of cycling as a sport (and you can probably apply at least some of this to motor sport as well) is that it allows the big companies to test out new products and pass on what they learn to us. Which is fine. What better way to sort out a bike that I can buy and ride securely for years than to submit it to the punishment of elite competition?

Except if you remove the need for a bike to be durable by allowing a rider to replace it, in its entirety, in the middle of a race, where is the value to me. Particularly as one of the reasons it broke down was almost certainly because it had been so absurdly engineered to be light as a feather with strength a secondary consideration.

And speaking as a punter. I LIKE the idea that a rider can have a breakdown, whip on a new tyre from the gear he is carrying himself and continue on valiantly. Given (in my world at least) all the other guys are in the same boat and just as likely to have the same problem at some point in the race, isn’t that just the kind of thing that makes for truly awesome spectacle.

Next: Friday? I don’t know. I am now making this up as I go.

39. BIKES I CURRENTLY KNOW - THE MONGOOSE...Pt2.

There are a few issues that arise when you choose an item primarily on the basis of colour and a 14 year old's memory of what a cool bike would be. 

Geometry for starters.

I know about geometry now because I've done a whole lot of reading on the subject of 'things you need to know before buying a bike' that I didn't get around to doing before I bought the Mongoose. If I had done all of that reading then, I might have been a bit wary of the really quite forward body position demanded of the rider by the Mongoose Hilltopper. 

It's an excellent body position for climbing hills apparently on account of it keeping your weight over the front wheel which stops it lifting off the ground and presumably flipping you over backwards as you grind up whatever hill you are 'topping'. Which is good and all, but I don't spend all of my time grinding up hills (in fact I try to spend as little time as possible grinding up anything) and when you're just rolling along the flat, or even more noticeably, riding down a steep and rocky trail, you tend to get a fair old workout on your wrists and forearms.

I've made a few alterations over the years in an effort to ameliorate this tendency, new handle bars being the chief one, without much success. All in all, it's something I might have paid more attention to when I was riding it around the Dee Why Cyclery's back carpark in '97 thinking - 'This is pretty cool but I wonder if my wrists are supposed to hurt after 3 minutes of this'.

To show I have fully learnt my lesson from this I am building my NEW bike without the benefit of any kind of test ride at all.

Um. 

Regardless of that minor quibble I have had the Mongoose now for nearly 20 years and it continues to serve with distinction. And like the man who deliberately does all of his training for the big race with a 20kg pack on his back just so he'll go so much faster when he takes it off, I reckon the limited selection of gears (compared to modern bikes) and not exactly featherlight weight of the Mongoose will serve me in good stead when I hop on my new bike....whatever that ends up looking like.

38. BIKES I CURRENTLY KNOW - THE MONGOOSE.

The requirement to remove another persons crap (by which I DO NOT mean ‘assorted paraphernalia') from my landing notwithstanding, there was a element of satisfaction to be gained from the theft of my first mountain bike (see here). That being – I would now get to buy another mountain bike.

It’s one of the great unspoken ‘perks’ of having your personal space invaded by some self entitled, disrespectful arse, that you get to replace the stuff the aforementioned arse makes off with. Of course this in no way makes up for the feeling of having your personal space invaded, particularly when stuff is nicked that cannot be replaced through normal means on account of personal attachment (said the guy who lost his wedding ring at football training).

It also helps if you are insured. I’m no fan of the insurance industry. Well apart from them employing my wife for many years....and therefore helping us buy a house and raise our child...and um, paying for the repairing of my car in a speedy and professional manner every time a kangaroo decides to end its life on my car’s front grill....apart from all that - I’m no fan of the insurance industry.

But I can see how they might get a bit jaded by some of the more creative claims they get in a society that often seems to consider it their right to be compensated for the theft of their 17 dodgy compact discs and the shitty player that went with them, with a multi-thousand dollar shopping spree paid for by their insurance company.

Not me though. I am of course above that kind of moral decrepitude. The fact that I have not been insured for any of the 3 times I have been ripped off has of course NOTHING to do with my standpoint here.

Lacking an insurance policy from which to extract the cash for a new bike, I was afforded the time to have a good look around before making my decision. As the ‘internet’ in 1996 was something housed in a 15 acre warehouse kept under heavy guard by the US Military, this meant lots of visits to lots of local bike shops, the consuming of more than a few magazines and finally a decision substantially made on the basis of colour, price point (expensive enough to convince myself I was getting ‘quality’ with one eye on my not massively bulging wallet) and the fact that I always wanted a Mongoose BMX when I was a kid and I had the cash now so fuck it – I’m getting a Mongoose.

1996 Mongoose Hilltopper (with some alterations - details to follow)

This Mongoose to be precise...

Next: More Mongoose...

37. UM....ERR.....PLAY FOR TIME...

Bum. It's Monday night. It's 10:31pm and lets be honest, I'm getting fairly desperate about what to post. 

I mean I have put some bits on the frame that make it look nice. If I'd taken a photo of that it'd look just peachy if I placed it just about....well....here

...but I haven't taken a photo of the lovely new cranks and bottom bracket and everything NOR have I taken a picture of the view up the Valley that I was going to use to illustrate what a smashing pastime riding a bike is. 

So you get this instead. 

I am ashamed.

You can however check out my other Blog in which I draw heaps of things ....... here. 

36. BUYING LOCAL...FOR A GIVEN VALUE OF ‘LOCAL’.

The argument goes like this – The right thinking cyclist should support his or her local bike shop, even if it costs a few extra bucks, on the grounds that:

1. You get a whole lot of extra value from buying your gear from the local guy (like measuring, advice, experience and the ability to actually swing your leg over the merchandise before parting with your cash) that you don’t get from Mr Internet and,

2. Much more bluntly - If you don’t support your local guy he’ll go out of business and then what are you gonna do when you need to get your kid’s next bike (not to mention like, the bike shop owner gets to be unemployed and probably turns to crime and ends up stealing your bike so you don’t have a bike anymore and....it’s just all very messy).

Two very good points to be sure and I’m going to say that I agree with a lot of the first point and some of the second.

I should also point out, sorry, admit, that all of the stuff I have purchased for my bike so far, has been purchased online.

I know. It’s terrible. It’s like I don’t love Australia or something.

But seriously – Online prices beat the living daylights out of the local equivalent. The same goes for availability. Mind you, the bar here is not exactly set very high. I went into one of the local bike shops (local is a very elastic concept out here) a couple of weeks ago looking for some oil and not only did they not have it, they weren’t that confident that what they did have wasn’t what I wanted....which it wasn’t....confused?

See it’s fine to use argument No.1 but you’d better be ready to pony up with the expertise when it’s looked for. It is possible I admit, that the situation might be better if I lived slightly closer to civilisation. But I don’t. So I excuse myself.

I also excuse myself on the grounds that most of the research work in my case is being done by myself and the fact that I am building my own bike immediately disqualifies me as the preferred target of most bicycle retailers who would really rather sell me one of the complete packages they have sitting, ready and waiting, on the floor.

As far as argument No2. goes – I’m not as sympathetic as I could be here. I do feel somewhat sorry for the retailer who gets his or her time wasted by ‘customers’ whose only intention is to use the information gained to make an online purchase, but perhaps instead of simply lamenting the unfairness of it all a new approach needs to be taken.

If the local bike shop can’t compete with the prices offered by some of the online behemoths maybe they need to admit that to the customers, point them in the right direction, maybe even through a computer in the shop, and then make themselves available to fit whatever it is the punter ends up buying. I’d pay for that. Many would.

Because it’s one thing to get your hands on a cheap component. It’s another thing entirely to attach it to your bike without screwing the whole thing up.

Next: Bolting, screwing, whacking...

35. A BOX OF METAL STUFF...

I am conscious of the fact that my titles may be getting a tad unimaginative....

I got a box in the mail yesterday that was chock a block full of this..

....look at all that stuff. Mmmmm – stuff.

Before you ask – the blue handled thing to the left is not actually going to be a part of the bike, but is required to attach other bits that will be part of the bike, to the bike. This is obviously an area that could easily have caught one not so prepared as myself unawares – it turns out many of the things you need to do in the construction of a bicycle require tools specifically designed for that job and that job alone (though I suppose I could re-task this one as a makeshift club or something...).

I am assuming this is part of some frightfully well planned plot on the part of the Bicycle Mechanics World Wide Brotherhood to ensure their services are not easily done away with. There are a couple of tools I have come across that go into the $400-$500 mark (that it is not my intention to purchase by the way). Trick for new players.

I ordered all this stuff from an online outfit in England who were considerably cheaper than any of the other places I had a look at and even do free postage if you order over $99.00 worth of gear (something I’m outstandingly good at co-incidentally).

This is a practice that is the subject of quite a lot of discussion in the bicycle press currently, with the argument being put forward by many, that we (by which they mean – ‘I’) should be giving our business to local bike shops instead of feeding the insatiable and growing appetite of the ravenous beast that is online retailing. I do feel a little bit guilty about this (my wallet less so) which is convenient as it allows me to utilise the discussion of that guilt as the subject for another blog - everyone is a winner....except the local bike shop.

One of the downfalls of online shopping is that you don’t get to check the thing you’re buying before you leave the shop with it. A risk that has unfortunately been illustrated by the inclusion of a chain ring in my box o goodies that is different to the one I ordered. As a result I have two 34 tooth chainrings instead of a 34 and a 36.

So now I get to find out how good this particular online retailer is at customer service when it doesn’t involve me giving them money.

Should be a hoot.

Next: The ethical quandary that is online shopping.

34. PEDALS. COMPLICATED? WHO WOULD OF THOUGHT?

I know. Flat things that you stick your feet on and go round and round. That’s about as complicated as putting on a shirt right?

Well thankfully, for the sake of this last minute Monday morning post, the wonderful world of cycling has endeavoured to make it a bit more complicated than that. Please observe.

...now that I look at it, I could have labelled these in a more logical sequence but as the overall effect is to increase the confusion you all might feel, I will go ahead and pretend that it was my intention from the beginning to allow you to feel some of the ‘what the hell’ I got to experience when I started to look into what I thought would be a comparatively simple part of the bike assembly process.

The pedal at ‘B’ is what I have had on my various bikes since the first road bike I got back in the 80’s. Manually tightened toe clips that hung down whenever you took your foot out and were quite often a right pain in the arse to get your foot back into when pulling out at the lights or whatever. While they did anchor your foot to the pedal allowing you to pull up a little on the ‘up’ pedal (a phenomena I have since read is a load of bollocks) they also made it difficult to remove your foot, especially if you did them up tight, leading to some quite comical - 'Ooh look at him. Is he going to fall over? Yes he has!!' – moments.

At ‘C’ we have the pedals the rest of the serious cycling world moved into quite some time go. They are somewhat bizarrely called ‘clipless pedals’. I say bizarrely because the deal with these is that you actually clip your foot into the pedals via cleats screwed into the bottom of your shoes as illustrated in picture ‘A’ with an allegedly effortless, once you get used to it, twisting motion...I am assured.

Road cyclists with any kind of self respect whatsoever would not be seen dead without a pair of these and biomechanically these things give you all sorts of advantages and there’s physics and graphs and all sorts of shit to prove EVERYTHING baby LOOK just put them on your bike or you’re a total loser.

Despite those well put arguments - I have some issues with these pedals.

Firstly – it still seems to me I am nailing my foot to the pedal and I am not yet good enough on unstable terrain to give up my God given option to put a foot down really quickly. Secondly – using these means wearing the fancy shoes and clicking about everywhere whenever you aren’t on the bike like a dirt covered, entirely lost, tap dancer and I’m not sure that’s entirely me.

So I have elected to pay attention to the one or two articles I have found that say riding with flat pedals like these...

Shimano Saint MX80 flat pedals (I assume you get two in the box..)

 ...is entirely the go if you want to perfect your pedalling technique, gain more confidence in tricky situations, become less reliant on the fact your foot is nailed to the bike when bunny hopping etc and be able to walk around quietly in the relatively normal shoes you get to wear (though I should point out you still get the excuse to buy shoes with special ‘sticky’ rubber soles to maximise your flat pedal effectiveness).

Next: Hopefully – attaching the bits that surely have arrived by now....