It's Autumn but looks like Summer..

Here we go.
Our first ride of Autumn.
What a great day it was too.
The sun shine ..er .. shon .. shined.
Early morning freshness soon turned into warm, bright conditions.
That saw the long sleeved layers come off and replaced with sexy little numbers.
The ladies followed suit moments later.
I love Summer (Autumn).
The trails were as dry and hard packed as a hard packed dry thing.
The surface was almost too hard (if there is such a thing as too hard).
The only moan was about the dust in your eyes if you were at the back of the train.
(Eric's glasses sitting on his kitchen table were, surprisingly, no use to him out on the trail)
There were no excuses to go anything other than flat out along our favourite tracks.
All flow and speed and warp factor 10.
Everyone seemed to have a huge grin on their face.
That could have been wind but I like to think it was because they were having a load of fun.
No one wanted to come home.
We added more bits to the ride but finally had to admit it….
…we were tired and needed that refuelling fry-up.
Boy. Could do that ride every day.
I love days like those don’t you?
Perfect trails.
Perfect weather.
Perfect flow.
Perfect riding buddies….
..well….as near perfect as they can be!
(breaks into song)
“Oh it’s such a Perfect day……..”
And to prove to us how lucky we were….
The very next day we woke up and there was 10ft of standing water on those same trails.
A typhoon warning and horizontal rain.
Hey. All be good by next Sunday.
Roll on.
:O)

Carnival time in Chamonix 2007

We have just got back from our 2007 Chamonix trip.

Did you miss us?

What a great 4 days of riding.

As usual, the weather changed from rain to a heatwave as soon as the Carnival arrived.

Roasting hot for the whole 4 days. Lovely.

We had two Cham virgins with us.

Darren and Nicky.

Despite the riding there being of the most technical you can get, both Darren and Nicky rode like experienced pro's.

Well ridden to both of them.

Happy Jon is guiding for MBMB this season and laid on some new trails for us.

He knows what we like and the trails he had found for us didn't disappoint.

Soon we were dropping 1000's of meters down rocks, roots, berms and just about every other obstacle you can imagine.

That is what we went there for.

To practice all our varied techniques of descending.

Two wheeled, front wheel, back wheel only, no wheeled (on head).

So many techniques to use.

We had plenty of crashes, as is usual for us, but no serious injuries.

Just loads of rolling around in the rocks and off sides of mountains.

(Don't tell Nick's mum though. She thinks we were looking after him)

I took my injury with me to cut out the middle man so had to do extra training in between rides.

Lifting 1kg weights as often as possible seemed to do the trick and got me fully fit for Alpine riding.

See? Look at me go. Greased lightning or what?

Great fun had by all.

All in all.

A wonderful 4 days of riding.

Very tiring with everyone sporting a few new bumps and bruises but well worth the trip over.

On Sunday afternoon Phil sorted out a bridge jump for those who enjoy launching themselves off high structures and swinging by a tiny thread above a 50mtr drop into a rocky river.

Ooohhhh. My knee hurt on that day so, obviously, I couldn't join in the fun.

cluck...cluck...cluck...cluck. (what was that noise?)

There will be plenty of video of all the jumps, screams and laughter soon.

Pictures from the weekend are on my Fotopic website now.

Only been back a day and I miss Cham already.

Roll on next year.

I will be back there ASAP.