My Ring.

My pushbike has taken quite a lot of stick recently. After the wee trip up to Applecross my bottom bracket was sounding a bit grindy, it only being eight months old On One sold me another at a discounted price. Then Dave pointed out that my chain was stretched and worn out and that it could have worn out my cassette too.
Now I know that whenever you change a chain and sprockets you do the whole lot, not just the chain and rear sprockets like I did. The result was that the chain skipped on the front ring, which resembled a row of fucking piranha's teeth. The chain started to skip just at the start of the cycle so I nipped home with the plan to replace the bash guard with the original large chainring. It didn't go to plan. Here's an excerpt from an E mail I sent to Dave telling him how my repair went.

Went out on a cycle tonight but it didn't go well. Mind my worn chain and cassette? Well I replaced them and didn't remember to replace the front sprocket. Which looks like fucking piranhas teeth. Result? It's slippy as a cunt. I tried to replace the bashguard with the big ring I have in the shed but the Mech was to low. When I discovered this I addressed the situation by losing the plot and launching the bike across the garden. What a twat.

As J Dawg says, "The learning curve is still steep."

Aye, the learning curve is steep all right. Jason gave me a few pointers on where I was going wrong and with a new front ring (only the 32 tooth one was worn) from Adam at  The Bike Chain I got the back on the road no worries. Here's the video.



With the pushbike sorted I've managed to get down to Glentress a couple of times. On the first trip I was joined by J-Dawg, (Jason's extreme street name) Big G and G's laddie Ian. We took the easy option and parked up at the top car park, with the plan being to do our favourite bits of the red run and play about on the jumps, practicing catching sick air and the likes.

G gettin air.

Ian about to take off.

Jason was riding really well, flying down the hills, and Big G and Ian really enjoyed their first visit to Glentress.

A few days later Jason, Woody and myself went back down for another evening cycle, with the same plan of parking at the top car park, doing some red and then hitting the jumps. Woody got some good jumps, but J Dawg must have been having a bit of an off day. He done a massive jump at the top of Spooky Woods and ripped his tyre off the rim upon landing, leaving lots of jizz looking sealant out his tubeless tyres all over the place. Then on the next run he went over the bars going into a corner!

Don't worry J Dawg, I'm sure you'll be back to your usual self soon!

Luckily I managed to catch all this on film, watch out for me hitting a tree too, the gopro even knocks a bit bark off, but the camera was undamaged. Sweet!