Just because there’s been nothing on here doesn’t mean that there has been nothing happening. In competitive cycling there has been British success all over the place. The Tour de France saw Froome take a third win, supported by a strong Sky team dominated by home riders. He did so in unusually flamboyant style including some frankly ridiculous-looking descending.
A resurgent Cavendish was back in winning form and powered to four stage wins before leaving to prepare for the Olympics. He is now second in the all-time stage winner list on the Tour with 30 wins. While Adam Yates came of age and finished fourth overall after a performance that proved he could mix it with the best.
Currently Britain are showing that they can peak for an Olympic games on the track and are dominating in Rio after four years of (by the high standards of British Cycling) mediocre performances in World Championships. While the untouchable Rachel Atherton has wrapped up the DH world cup with rounds to spare, and is unbeaten for something like 12 races.
All of which is very interesting, but do you come here for news you can get from other internet sources or do you come here for tales of my average riding adventures? No need to answer that, I know what you’re thinking, and rest assured that there are stories of living and riding with bikes in London and escaping to the country as often as possible to get my wheels running on dust and rocks and sometimes, mud. There are videos as well and Strava data to pour over, as if my words weren’t enough.
We’ll travel the South of Britain together picked out by rides that hide hours of driving, but let’s get started with what could have been a less positive story.
On one Thursday I was riding to work on the usual commuter bike. For those who don’t know this is a bike I’ve owned from new in 1997, and has gone through many incarnations as a mountain bike to take me on adventures through my early 20s then a singlespeed commuter, followed by the current state as a 1x9 commuter with a road set up on the back. It’s a bike that seems to have gone through just being an old bike and become a niche classic with the love for 90s Konas that exists in some places.
So, I was riding into town on the Lavadome, obviously feeling a bit cheeky as I was popping some little jumps off the many speedramps on the way. I’ve counted them and there are over 50 on my usual commute. Coming off one ramp things went a bit odd and loose. I stopped. I looked at the offending back end of the bike. I assumed something minor. I rode on.
The feeling did not magically go away, so I looked again.
This was not good. First of all I had to walk 45 minutes to work, as I found myself neatly half way there. Secondly, when I got there I now had a broken frame to sort out. First stop was a mobile mechanic plying his trade in the underground car park at work (in no way as mysterious and Tolkienesque as I made it sound). He saw the frame and turned out to be a Kona Lover. He recommended another Kona Lover, a metal worker in Croydon who had fixed his frames. I took the details and emailed at my desk, setting up an early morning trek to the middle of South London on the following Saturday.
Driving across London is, in fact, possible if you go early enough, and that’s what I did. I arrived at AG Major Metal Fabricators at a time of the morning that I usually don’t bother with and dropped the frame off with Phil, who would pass it to Rob, the Kona Lover. Crawling back across London I hoped this would be it and waited for Monday. As it is prone to, Monday arrived and so did an email from Rob. Rob was not sure he could weld the break and had taken it upon himself to contact Kona Tech Support and ask advice. The answer he had was that the bike needed the dropout sweating out and a new one brazed in, which was a specific skill beyond the welding that Rob felt comfortable with. We arranged that I would pick up the frame and look for a frame builder, so on the following Thursday I set off for Sutton after work, where I would eventually meet Rob, and his collection of Konas and collect the frame to take back on the train.
I had discovered a frame builder in London who would do the full job (albeit for much more money) so I continued a week of carrying a bike frame round the city by heading to the hipster centre of Lambs Conduit street. The people there were not Kona Lovers and managed to look at my frame with a distinct amount of disgust. In spite of this they deigned to fix it and I left the frame with them. They would just paint the repair with primer, “but you’ll hardly notice on that…”.
A few days later it was ready and I hurried off to collect it, handed over more than the value of the frame on eBay, and saw the result. Two new Richey rear dropouts and a very neat job, so I’ll forgive the snobbiness. At home I rebuilt the bike, and was back jumping speedramps for the Monday morning. I love how bikes give you access to all of this world and how even the most terminal-seeming break is a matter of finding the right skilled person to sort it out.
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